Bilbo

If the audience is ignoring me but smiling, I know I have nailed it.

The only term I Know is whole-half diminished and half-whole diminished. But no-one uses those terms and just use the general term.

PM sent.

It took me a couple of years to get past 'suck'. I am still not happy but can play without making a complete tit of myself after about 4 years.

[quote name='cybertect' timestamp='1375816193' post='2166143'] John Etheridge *and* Jim Mullen. I'm more than a little green [/quote] Mullen was great but Etheridge took it to a whole new level! A career highlight for me (as was Mullen, to be fair).

[quote name='Jazzneck' timestamp='1375815314' post='2166124'] Oi, Bilbo - are you getting Mick Hanson back to his old stomping ground? [/quote] No.

Not interested and waiting for the September competition.

John Pariceli, f f s

Saw them on the Mama tour. NEC £19 Inc coach

Love the band. Not a bad note throughout their career.

C - Db would work on a C7b9 chord (i.e. a dominant chord) whereas CD would work better on a diminished chord like Cdim7 or plain Cdim.

There are very few bass players who have such an identifiable sound. Jaco was not the complete player everyone thinks; hi simprovisation skills were actually quite limited, for instance, and a lot of his work had precedents (listn Alphonso Johnson alongside JP on Black Market etc) but he changed the way we hear bass forever and made his mark. I agree that the kind of hero worship that ends with people wearing headbands to look like him is seriously naff. The best way to honour JP is to find your own path, like he did.

I find the word Jazz is equally distorted with all sorts of crap masquesrading as the most noble of sounds (like a solo singer with backing tapes of funk tunes or a quintet with a drum machine - scandalous!!). Seems all that is required is a saxophone and you're in!!

Db on a five string High C is has all the benefits of Ab on a four

I have now been recording my gigs for a few months and am happy with my intonation when I am moving around the neck in a step-wise fashion (whole tones, semi-tones, thirds, fifths, fourths, octave etc) but when I do larger jumps (playing a tenth a n octave higher than an open string, for instance, or moving from a rooted Bb to a written phrase higher up the neck), the intontaion is in the hands of the Gods. Any exercises anyone knows of to nail this? I can hear the notes and know how to make them right but, by then, its too late

Db I can live with. It's that A flat that breaks me every time

My own trio, [i]trio[/i] East gigged last night, doing mostly my own compositions. I mp3'd the gig and am pleasantely surprised at how musical it is. Some real clinkers and issues due to inadequate rehearsal time on what are sometimes quite complex tunes/hard reads but, in general, I am happy with most of what we did. The time is good, the 'sound' is good, the compositions seem to hang together reasonably well (although some are a bit 'naive' for my tastes). Trouble is, without any rehearsal, the harder tunes I write never get looked at in sufficient detail to allow us to risk them on a gig.

That is all.

I did a session for Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show. 1981. Been downhill since then

Depends entirely on what you want to achieve. The pentatonics you refer to are correct but they are just one option. You could play a G major scale right through but it would sound busier but not much.

I mentioned once before here, the fun of working hard at something like music. Using these SMART techniques is not about 'business' it is about achievement and that is something that is neutral. The only 'business' here is the business of getting better at what you do. How you choose to use that newly acquired skill is entirely up to you. PS I don't think 'Simon Says' you HAVE to use it. It was just a suggestion

Playing music is a pleasurable business. Why not use the tools of business if they transfer?

I play air piano...

Superb stuff, Si. My only observation is the inherent lack of clarity that this 'how' model provides in terms of the 'what' part of practice. A SMART objective that you set yourself is only as good as the insight you have into what it is that is worth practising. Your minor 7 arpeggio example is sound, to my mind, but I suspect a lot of people are guilty of spending thousands of hours practising things that have limited value, Often these are the things that I call 'party pieces'. An example would be my first transcription of a Jeff Berlin tune - 'Bach' off Berlin's Pump It LP. I got the notes down and could play the thing all the way through. Had this not been pre-internet, I woudl have videoed myself and posted it as a 'Jeff Berlin bass cover' and got loads of gooey teenagers posting stuff like 'Man, you are AWESOME!!' I would have sat in my woodshed feeling good about myself and start working on Portrait of Tracy, Teen Town or the Mario Brothers theme for two handed tapping. At the time, I thought I was doing something important and useful. Thirty five years later, I can see what a waste of valuable time that was. I had no reference to key centres, no idea what the chords were, why the noites worked, would never have played the tune with anyone else in any situation whatsoever and had achieved nothing more than a rote learning exercise. SMART objectives undoubtedly work but your [i]choice[/i] of objective needs to be properly thought out or you will be efficiently producing a useless product. Great thread, Si.

I am glad I got no votes. T'was s***.