Bilbo

An couple of examples of my guitar playing.... https://m.soundcloud.com/robert-palmer-1/turkey-three-ways https://m.soundcloud.com/robert-palmer-1/salome

I am intermittently quite a credible guitar player (depends on how much I have practised recently) and have gigged a few times on the instrument. I think the important thing to do is to understand the roles of the instruments and the sounds of chords etc. a knowledge of guitar and/or piano/keyboards has got to be good but a wider knowledge of horns etc i also useful. Composers and arrangers have to learn very early on about all instruments, ranges, tessitura (how notes work in different ranges), Transposing details etc etc. All knowledge is useful.

All sorts. It is like any pyramid of ability. More people at the bottom, fewer at the top and a gradient in between. There are absolute ('I have had a bass three weeks; which end do I blow into') beginners through to major pros. The level of playing is equally varied. The art is to understand who has the most sensible and mature answers to any questions. Remember, good teachers are not necessarily great players and great players are not necessarily good teachers. What you get here is a wide variety of opinions and abilities and, by trawling through each thread, you get a concensus. It is always interesting to hear what people on here are doing but it is also important to recognise when what you are seeing is someone's party piece not their basic level of competence. In truth, there are plenty of people on here who are better than most of us and plenty who are worse. It doesn't matter.

Ordered an audio interface from them on Monday. It arrived early Tuesday. Easy and cheap. Like me.

It is a symbiotic relationship between the artist and her/his tools. There is no perfect instrument and no bass player ever made a great recording without a bass It is not about the musician or the instrument, it is about the musician AND the instrument, the goal is to achieve the perfect symbiosis. This can be achieved with cheap gear or expensive gear and is unlikley ever to be a consequence of just 'shopping'.

The Jaco/Alphonso debate has raged for decades now and it is no more than a groove versus flash discussion. Some prefer basic groove playing, some the intense technical playing. In truth, most of us are somewhere on a continuum between them and, indeed, move back and fore. The simple fact is that you don't have to choose. A preference is a pointless position. You can love it all. The simple truth is that producers are generally drawn towards the groove playing because it is more in keeping with the narrower concepts that define 'pop' music. This is, in turn, because 'pop' music is generally 'dance' music and the lyric is king. A complex line a la Rhythm Stick is not remotely offensive if it makes a contriution to the tone of a song but creating a line like that for a pop song is harder than routine 'doink, doink' doink' lines and requires exceptional technical writing and performance skills on the part of the bass player. Unless the bass player is the composer, the bass lines are likely to be less sophisticated. A lot of Jaco's complex lines are contaiend within his own tunes whereas his best groove playing is in Zawinul and Shorter tunes. Alphonoso's compositions with Weather Report are all fairly bass-centric and would not have been written by JZ or WZ who both favoured more routine bass lines (I accept this is open to challenge). Nevertheless, AP is right; no-one ever made any real money by featuring a bass solo.

It came today but will have to wait until the weekend to be hooked up!!

No. No downloads. All bought and paid for.

It will all depend on the MD and the artist's preferred ways of working. My only comment is readers can do gigs that non-readers het but non-readers can't always get the gigs that readers get.

I just listed three tracks he played on in the favourite basslines thread. I think he suffered from being the guy Jaco wiped out of Weather Report which is unfair as his groove playing is comparable.

There are thousands.... Techno - John Scofiled (Daryll Jones) Run For Cover - David Sanborn (Marcus Miller) Ladies Night In Buffalo - Dave Lee Roth (Billy Sheehan) This Must Be Love - Phil COllins (Alphonso Johnson) Cucumber Slumber - Weather Report (Alphonso Johnson) Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly - Flora Purim (Alphonso Johnson) Hot Water - Level 42 (Mark King) Abraham's New Gift - Phronesis (Jasper Holby) Quinta Da Pontal - Alegre Correa Cool Weael Boogie - Chick Corea (John Patitucci) So You Say - John Scofield (Gary Grainger) I could go on forever......

Nope. I think there is a chart in one of the Real Books but I tore it out and wiped my a*** with it so cannot be absolutely sure.

Probably the best 'learn to read in easy steps' books are the Simandl book and Rufus Reid's Evolving Bassist. Other than that you could do far worse than trawling throught this thread: http://basschat.co.uk/topic/215336-learning-to-read-the-dots-sheet-music-to-learn-with/

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! No.

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1426427839' post='2717930'] If you need Midi on the interface. This is excellent from Steinberg, and comes with a cut down version of Cubase (if you need it). [url="https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/audio_interfaces/ur_serie/modelle/ur22.html"]https://www.steinber...delle/ur22.html[/url] £89 at the moment. [url="http://www.gak.co.uk/en/steinberg-ur-22-usb/78314?gclid=CjwKEAjw25SoBRCMn7Gc97Knj0ISJAC7vaMrJZxAabEYonDUNGtCWbTVqanRl8Pazoi0aUr-F0Ar9BoCZx_w_wcB"]http://www.gak.co.uk...0Ar9BoCZx_w_wcB[/url] [/quote] I went for the UR22 for the reason you stated, the midi connections. I rarely use them but rarely is not never so, for the sake of £5....!! Thanks again!!

I am having to read that a few times to understand it

Will check it out, mate. Thanks for the steer

I have an Edirol Audio Capture UA20, Rhys, but am thinking of upgrading that also and the Focusrite you have is one I am considering.

I have always mixed through headphones but want to get some small desk top monitors. A simple question. How do they connect to your PC? My 5:1 surround sound connects to the back of the PC tower using three mini-jacks whilst my headphone amp links via the audio interface. How do these desk top monitors connect? Is it through one of these connections?

Nailed it at last. It was a hardware fault not a software one. I won't waste anyone's time with details but it was essentially a gain thing. My monitoring signal chain had three gains in it (pc, audio interface and headphone amp). By setting these up properly, I increased the originating signal so was able to turn it down through the others and bobs your uncle. Very happy bunny! As for my Rode NT1A, I think it's a deader. I recorded using an SM58 tonight and it worked better than the Rode ever did!!

[quote name='phil.c60' timestamp='1426085688' post='2714191'] but was told that the difference in technique meant that initially my electric bass technique wold suffer especially regarding the 3rd finger on my fretting hand. Any thoughts, Bilbo? [/quote] They are different instruments. Treat them as such. Use double bass technique on the double bass and electric bass technique on the electric. I don't play electric for weeks and months at a time, only playing double bass, and it has no effect on my electric technique at all. I am not sure what your teacher was getting at. You can play 80% of the double bass repertoire with just your index finger. It won't make any difference to your electric.

A couple of thoughts. Giving the audience present 'what they want' is only one approach. A room with 20 people in it who are loving your Free medley is great but you may also want to consider why there are only 20 in there. Could it be because the 60 other potential audience members who COULD have been there are at home because thay have heard it all before? When presenting Jazz events, I have found that a band playing standards in a very bland way will 'entertain' those present (background music) but will not attract additional people. If you want to create a stir, you need more than the same old same old. Another thing that has seemed apparent to me over the years is the willingness of a section of the audience to 'suspend disbelief' when watching a live band, as if they are psychologically talking themself into liking the bucket of s*** that is our version of 'Ticket To Ride'? In short, they want to dance and they like (feel safe in) this pub so they will dance in this pub, whatever bag of B******s is on stage

Remember the bass player's mantra [b][size=4]'Nobody notices the bass player unless he catches fire'.[/size][/b]

Prompted by Nicko's 'Bad Band great bass player' thread, I wanted to raise something I have been ruminating over for some time (years, in fact). When I started on electric bass (1980), I spent the first few years trying to get better and better, transcribing stuff, reading up on who the big guns were etc and trying to get my head around all the different techniques. I started as a rocker and it was Chris Squire, Steve Harris, Geddy Lee etc who initially floated my boat but, as time passed and music changed, guys like Stu Hamm appeared and I felt I had to explore two-handed tapping. I also heard some funk guys (proably Mark King but not exclusively) and felt that, in order to be a rounded player, I need to 'deal with' 'slap and pop' as it was called in those days. 35 years later, I play almost exclusively double bass (no electric bass gigs so far this year and only about three last year) but I still find my self talk occasionally turns my head towards slap. I hear guys play that stuff and think, albeit briefly, that I should 'deal with' it. know I can do it (I learned Jeff Berlin's 5G intro when I was younger without any problem as well as Stu Hamm's 'Country' thing) but time prevents any serious exploration of these techniques. Going back to Nicko's thread, however, the simple fact is that the techniques I am weak on (through lack of investment not lack of ability) are basically things I won't be using because, clever as they are, I don't like the music that is played using them. I am reluctant to buy a CD if the bass player plays electric; if he slaps, it can stay in the shop. I guess I am saying that, when I started, I wanted to play everything that every bass player ever played; Teen Town, Silly Putty, Schooldays, Donna Lee, Portrait of Tracy, Joe Frazier, Hot Water etc etc. Now, I just want to be able to play bass at standard where I can do my thing within a Jazz setting. A lot of time could be wasted learning things that, for me personally, amount to little more than party tricks.

Your are correct. The book you are looking for does not exist. You could, of course, write it. The Chuck Sher real books have some bass parts in them but they are rarely complete and of limited value (unless you live near a Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea or are in a Tribal Tech tribute band!).