Bilbo

AM listening to an interesting cd called Scenes From A Dream by Chris Minh Doky. Double bass with strings - kind of jazz/third stream - its passes perilously close to Radio 3 on occasion but I like it. His bass is beautifully recorded. He is not the most advanced or sophisticated DB player in the world but he plays some lovely lines here. Worth looking out for but I recommend you listen before you buy as it is a little 'left field'.

Your abilities. I would interpret 'showing your chops' to mean evidencing your skills as a player. However, this can be done in many ways and ripping out double-thumbed 16th notes is not the only way. Some people show their chops with one perfect note. Because massive amounts of technique used indiscriminately is indicative of an immaturity that shows that further work on musicality is needed. And I hate chops. Pork or lamb.

There remains a gunslinger mentality out there and YouTube is a great place for delusional people to shoot themselves in the foot. People who have an inflated opinion of their own abilities used to remain in splendid isolation, stood in front of a mirror, until they proved their worth and got a gig. Now they are given access to the whole world and can make themselves look completely stupid in front of millions. THAT's why they don't show their faces

You have to go back to the purpose of what you do and a straight forward cost/benefit analysis. I know a drummer who runs a weekly jazz club where he has 'celebrity' guests (if 'jazz celebrity' is not too much of an oxymoron ); people like Alan Skidmore, Alan Barnes, Tina May etc. The rhythm section is local guys and the gig charges on the door. THe thing is that the r. section don't get paid - only the guest. The rational is that the players all have a great night out playing the music they love with some top players that add to their CVs. If the door take is good, then they can make a modest protfit but, if its not, they lose money. It rarely costs them more than £40 or £50 but they figure thats what one good quality meal for two or one night on the lash would cost so where's the harm. I have been exploring the possibility of replicating this 'model' in my area and have some players who have agreed to come on board. The thing is, most of us have gear that was bought and paid for long ago and requires minimal maintenance so there is no real loss there. We all love to play (have to, in fact) and will do so whether we are paid or not. If you break it down in strictly business terms, the cost of having a band play at your function should be a minimum of no. of musicians x (%age of gear cost + 47p per mile on car + hourly rate equivalent to minimum wage). If its less than that, its about deciding what is important; the music or the money. I guess the question for some is whether or not hay can carry losing money on gigs. I did a show last year that involved 2 rehearsals and three gigs. The drive was £15 in petrol every day so it cost me £75 to do the gig. I was told we would only get paid of the show made a profit but I did it for the experience and networking. Of course, despite it being pretty good, the show made a loss (nor surprising; it had a cast of thousands) and we went without payment. I got another call from them a couple of months later offering me the same deal. Not a chance. I can't afford to lose that much to indulge the musical theatre fantasies of a generation of Suffolk wannabes. Pay my expenses and I'm there (I like doing shows every now and then) but not like this. Function bands, though. Its £100 or I don't even load the car!! I'd rather stay in and practice PS originals bands should get paid at least expenses also. If a venue hears your maerial and thinks you will appeal to its core audience, it should at least meet you at that level. You should share the risk as equal partners, not carry the venue.

GENE HARRIS!!! GENE HARRIS!!! Monster!

[quote name='Rick's Fine '52' post='1245694' date='May 26 2011, 02:54 PM']I'm from the UK, and have been playing for 25 years, although if you heard me, you'd probably think I'd been playing for 25 minutes!!![/quote] Too much time spent shopping and not enough time practising Welcome to basschat, Rick

There is a guy down that way called Tony Hougham but he is classical (top banana for arco by all accounts but expensive). You could try Steve Laws at Oakdene Music Services (Sible Hedingham near Sudbury?). I have Steve's no. if you want to PM me (he is also a luthier).

Try the local library and look for the full 6 Bach Cello Suites - or you can buy them for around £14.

I'd go to a luthier. A job like that would be about £20 and you know you haven't done any harm to your instrument or the end-pin.

15 months is 60 weeks. £4,100 divided by 60 = £68.33 p.w. - one pub gig a week and you're sorted. Join a tribute band and it'll be bought and paid for by July

[quote name='RhysP' post='1244198' date='May 25 2011, 01:14 PM']I'd love to hear some of the incredibly original & groundbreaking music that is being made by all these people on here who have cast off the shackles of conventional music theory & embraced raw naked atonal creativity....... [/quote] Having spent 15 minutes last night trying to make a B root fit a C7 chord and not sound like a train wreck, I would too I'm with Doddy. Its wrong.

I am playing tonight at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds supporting The Brodsky Quartet, a world famous string quartet. They are doing an evening of Ravel and S. American inspired music as part of the Bury Festival. As we, Brazilliance, play Brazilian music, we have been asked to support them; only thing is we are playing in the foyer after the Quartet finish (9.30) not before they start. I think the idea is to keep the audience in the bar until closing time spending their money. Should be cool.

I have this but am managing to play without aggravating it.

No idea. I have a problem with this piece (have heard it before). Its a cheesy tune that is easy to play Wootenised into.... a cheesy tune that's harder to play. But its still a cheesy tune. Do something more useful

I and others have said many times, reading and understanding theory are not hard and can be enormously empowering. Noone is being elitist about it. Anyone near me wants a hand with either aspect of their craft, get in touch and I'll get you going in the right direction.

My bass is worth 4x what I paid for it. The money I spent would not have generated that much interest had I left it in the bank so that's cool. I have earned more with my gear than I have ever spent on it so I win.

3/4 is pretty much the standard, Skol. Not many play 7/8 or full size basses.

Music theory is the Haynes Manual of the music world. Without it, you can still fix the car. Eventually.

[quote name='dc2009' post='1242739' date='May 24 2011, 11:22 AM']So I was thinking last night: for those of you that sight read a score, when you read, how do you convert that into bass playing? What I mean to say is, do you read a note on the score and think, that's an A and then go for the most convenient A position on your fretboard, or do you read a note and think, that corresponds to a certain position of my fingers on the neck/fretboard (i.e. you read a note which happens to be a D and your hand instinctively is at 5th fret on the A string, without actually considering that the note is a D)? I think this is akin to learning another language in a language other than your mother tongue, as in to say, do you 'translate' the word twice, or can you bypass the intermediate stage.[/quote] Depends what you are reading and where you are with that part of the process. When you start to learn, you tend to read every note and 'translate' it and then decide which note to play and where. As you get better at reading, you tend to read in larger chunks (like reading words instead of letters). I tend to 'see' whole bars as a rhythmic phrase and then 'read' the note names with this in mind. You do make choices based on a sense of where the chart is taking you. So a D may be the 5th fret of the A string or may be an open string. It gets more and more complicated in extended passages at speed but these are, frankly, rare and most charts are quite simple (even the complex bits tend to be one or two bars long then repeated). As you get more and more fluent at reading, you become less and less conscious of it as a process, just like when you read words. Personally, I find that, due to a lack of practice, I sometimes get thrown by the higher numbers of accidentals (B or Fsharp) and, in those keys, I turn into Captain Klutz until I can lock my brain into the right key. Its usually sorted out by a rehearsal/band call and sorted before public performances but, in the world of New York sessions, I would fail.

Transcribe is certainly one I have used a lot and recommend but only to facilitate the transcription of stuff into something like Sibelius which is th esoftware I woudl suggest is my no.1 . My version is Sibleius 2 (apparently written during the Boer War) but it still delivers what I want from it. I would love to upgrade to Sibelius 6 but I haven't got £600 to blow on software!!! I also use Cubase but would love to get into Pro Tools but, again, can't afford it.

10.30 'til 3.00? It'll take you that long to get across town

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1241690' date='May 23 2011, 02:56 PM']Wow... why could that be? Are BC'ers really that simplistic and unadventurous?[/quote] I refuse to comment on grounds that I might incriminate myself.

I saw it last Saturday in Ipswich. Didn't buy it. Stopped buying bass magazines a long time a go when I realised that I learned next to nothing of value from reading them

[quote name='silddx' post='1241599' date='May 23 2011, 01:53 PM']I think ALL music is subjective. It's context that matters, and all the other things that BRX mentions with regard to what is technically correct or otherwise. Bending that 'wrong' note into the 'right' note is one of the most effective thing a musician can do. Also, I would assume that most people would know if it was wrong and not play it, after all, the fact that it is 'wrong' derives from the ears, not the theory and western ears are fairly capable of deciding consonance from dissonance. There are a whole lot of 'wrong notes' in western music that are 'right notes' in Arabic and Indian music, and indeed flamenco singers evoke the pain of the gypsies by singing a whole raft of 'wrong notes' over the accompaniment, listen and you will understand. Like how Indian raags clearly evoke moods and times of day through the raag's melody structures and use of quarter tones, something that is incredibly difficult for many westerners to accept are 'right' but which are evocative nonetheless.[/quote] All completely true, sil. However, having spent several years trying (and mostly failing) to get anyone on here to think past mainstream pop and rock and to listen to something else only midly challenging, in my case Jazz, I am fairly confident when I say that 99% of the people on here would probably be better off not playing a B over a C7 chord. Those that are exploring non-Occidental musics and raga melodies on their Fender Jazz can go to the forums on www.theyremakingthisupastheygoalong.com