Bilbo

Bassbod's solution hit a bull's eye. The pick up is now working 100%. the more I think about it, the more I relasise that this may have been a problem for a little while. Because I put the blend pot central but a notch towards the bridge, the failure would have been that much harder to spot but I have, with hindsight, experienced a little bit of distortion that I put down to my playing too hard. I have a gig this weekend where I can check it properly but I think it may have been an issue for a while. Thank's again, bb.

Will try that and report back. Thanks.

This site is playing up and won't let me upload so the mp3 is hosted on my soundcloud page and called 'diagnosis' (should be at the top of the list). http://soundcloud.com/you/tracks

I have just discovered a problem on my Wal and hoped someone here can help with a diagnosis. When I turn the pick up selection pot tot he bridge pick up, the D string is a=barely audible and crackles. I assume the pick up has died? Am I right? If I turn it to the neck pick up, its fine across all strings. I attached an mp3 to show you the problem. I play a straight G major scale staring on the low G and go up to the D above middle C. You can hear the E F G are dead. Can anyone advise?

If you go to a teacher, don't second guess him/her. Let them teach you. Nothing worse than a student that already knows everything.

Welcome to the real deal. I am 30+ years in and still feel like a total charlatan. I would love to be a prpoer musician instead of pretending to be one. Probably done over 1000 gigs and never had any complaints from anyone about my playing but, from my own perspective, I get worse and worse the more I learn. I think they call it moving from unconcious incompetence through conscious incompetence.....

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='1375347' date='Sep 16 2011, 11:53 AM']Bilbo do you mean learn the notes (names) of each scale rather than concentrating on learning the names of notes in triads first? I guess knowing all the intervals would be more useful but it also seems like a much more challenging thing to do, which is why I was going to start with 1-3-5s.[/quote] Its called a third for a reason. If you know the scale, you know the reason why a 3rd is a 3rd and a 5th id a 5th etc. and it all makes more sense. I can't see why you would want to do it the other way around. Whilst I can't argue with the importance of chord tones, I do think that their usage is dependant on the notes in between them and there aren't many hip lines that rely soley on chord tones. No, I say learn the scales first.

Learn the scales first, then the intervals will make sense.

Just revisted a Branford Marsalis CD called 'Eternal'. Absolutely stunning. Beautiful lyrical playing, great compositions. I have liked BM for many years and still enjoy pretty much everything he releases. Saw him at ROnnies a few years ago and was absolutely blown away. Eric Revis on bass - monster player.

He's just one of those guys that has a broad range of abilities and can nail a gig. People like Dizzy don't really want to book the Wooten's, Caron's and Manrings of this world. They want solid professional musicians not circus acts. Good reading, good time etc. No need for acrobatics. That's why Pino is up there. Why book a great soloist if the bass is never going to play a solo? Had a Bailey solo cd. Listened to it once or twice and then used it to catch dust for a decade before selling it on. Great sideman, not a great writer or leader. Great player, weak ideas....

[quote name='lobematt' post='1371691' date='Sep 13 2011, 12:53 PM']Woah that is high, you got the tab?? Haha only messin, quick (probably quite daft) question though... If this did go between bass an treble clef, would a C in treble still be a C on the bass, as in it doesn't get transposed just a different octave??[/quote] The C on the first ledger line ABOVE the bass clef is the same note as the C a single ledger line BELOW the treble clef. THe note is the 5th fret on the G string or the open (top) C on a 6 string bass.

Prefer music to the bass guitar by a long chalk. If I was young enough to start again, I can see why other instruments may be preferable but, at that time, the bass was the only one I could make sense of sufficently to be able to invest in it emotionally and financially. I am a musician first and bass player second.

For that money, I'd suggest a second hand Stagg EUB. They have a good rep and a double bass for that price is going to need money spent on it that will double or even triple your budget easily (e.g. set up, pick up etc). A Stagg EUB can be picked up for £200 and its gig ready (doesn't sound like a double bass but you would certainly get away with it at one or two gigs a year).

An audience, what's that? I am a jazz musician. Seriously, though. My lowest is the usual single figures (poorly promoted bands in dodgy venues the same night as England matches etc) and the biggest, if I am right, was an open air event at Stroud House in Oxfordshire. The irony is that the low level audiences were rock and blues bands and the biggest was a jazz septet. That's that myth busted, then

Why would this need s seperate book? Just use any book containing one octave exercises and play them on one string. Or write your own?

I nearly went for the Busetto before settling on a Gedo Musik 5 string. |I just liked to shape. Can't comment past that, other than to say the brand appears to have a good rep amongst its players (most of whom are first timers like yourself).

The whole treble clef/ledger lines/8va debate is one I have never been able to resolve in my own mind. I probably do it differently in every transcription. I guess the rule is, if it goes up there for a couple of beats, iyou seek one solution, if it stays up there for bars and bars, its another.

Just playing it on my ipod but can't download pdfs in work. WIll be interested to see how you have dealt with the rubato nature of the performance in written form.

Let's put this in context. Music theory is the whole shebang, not just the maths. If you know every single chord, scale arpeggio and substitution, you are not finished. The theory attached to playing a groove is still theory. The theory attached to ear training is still theory. The theory attached to any element of performance is still theory. The theory attached to bleeding every ounce of emotion out of one note is still theory. The learning we need to undertake to become better players is infinite. The theory bit is in understanding every element of what we do in order to be able to make the million minute adjustments per second required to execute a perfect performance. Being able to groove is not seperate to chord theory or scale theory, They are completely symbiotic. What theorist are appalled by is the 'bang away and if it sounds good it is good' school of playing. It may happen if the planets are aligned but, IME, if you don't understand, on at least some level, WHY something works, you will not be able to replicate it. If you understand it, and particularly if you can explain it, it is a theory that you have absorbed. If you don't understand what you do, you will remain a lightweight, a mimc and the musical equivalent of a child dressing up like his or her parents. You may be a millionaire doing it, and good luck to you if you are, but you will remain a musical lightweight.

Learning these patterns is very useful but you need to internalise the sounds of the scales as, depending on the music you are playing, thinking in neat little boxes will only get you so far. Once you get into more advanced playing, you rarely use a scale in the way you learn them in the early days. If you want to sound contemporary, you will have to start chopping them up with chromatic passing notes, tri-tome substitutes and conscious dissonance. Then the shapes can be a hinderance and the sounds become more useful to you. So, learning scales is not about the scale itself but how it sounds when you are playing it in the context of a performance. A lot of basic learning is like learning to spell. You eventually develop the skill to spell/pronounce any word but you still need to understand what it means to be able to use a word in a sentence and you still need to have something to say to give the process value.

I did a golf course gig once in Berkshire, an afternoon gig over 10 years afo. All this nonsense was in place but whilst we were there, there was this young woman in the bar with a see-through dress on who was not wearing a bra. Funnily enough, she wasn't asked to leave. These old school values are so quaint it is unblievable but the membership still buy into the whole thing. All you can do is laugh and play the game or refuse the gig. I guess its no different than wearing a tux in a pit orchestra. You deliver what the customer wants, even if he's a total prat. If you want a [i]real[/i] laugh, park in the captain's parking space to unload your gear

[quote name='xgsjx' post='1366503' date='Sep 8 2011, 03:15 PM']is that your way of saying you have an audience of 1? [/quote] No but they would rarely fill a coach

Never seen what the purpose of the legislation was. Let's be honest, the factors that determine where live music is played will be the size of the room the size of the potential audience and the cost of the band. Most of the venues I play coudln't take more than a 4 piece without there being no room for an audience.

Learning to phrase from non-bass instruments is a tried and tested method. I almost never learn bass solos as they contain a lot of bass cliches. Takes a saxophone, trumpet, keyboard etc anytime. Singers too, absolutely.

Its just not a sound I find emotionally engaging. A beautifully bowed cello, a nylon guitar, a saxophone, bass clarinet. All sound lovely and, when played, are deep instruments, complex tonally and profoundly versatile in terms of putting emotion into a piece of music. These tapping extravaganzas always sound two deimentional to me, even the good ones (the Epic Love one here and the one by Kevin Glasgow elsewhere on here). At worst they sound like someone threw a plugged in bass down the stairs. They are generally very repetitive (four note patterns created using two fingers off each hand then the arpeggio is moved up a whole tone etc) and there is little vibrato, little dynamic range etc. Just party tricks, rudimentary compositions played using a trick that is as much a visual thing as it is musical - played on a piano, it would be a bit naff. And, for my money, [i]so[/i] not worth the time investment required.