Bilbo

Finally got it booked in. My luthier (Steve Laws) was on holiday and only got back last night. I have to take it to him on 28th April and leave it there over that weekend (I am away anyway so won't need it any quicker). What a palarva!

Can't help re: rockabilly sounds etc but, if you are going to get the bridge adjusted, I would recommend you ask a proper luthier to do it rather than hack away yourself. It will only cost about £40 but may save you some grief later on.

I'm not the oldest!!!!! Welcome

[quote name='Alfie' post='1207034' date='Apr 21 2011, 01:17 PM']This type of thread is becoming a Basschat cliche. Things are sh*t, it was much better when I was younger, when you get to my age etc.[/quote] You'll see.....

There is a whole lot of credible stuff out there, mate. I got a Crafter starter bass for my nephew for £50 and he's buzzing. Keep your eyes peeled and something will come along someday soon.

There is no good music on tv and hasn't been for years because the channels all operate on the assumption that the average attention span of the British public is 3m 48s and not a nano-second longer. As a consequence, you are only ever presented with superficial s****, even if the bands involved have the potential for great things. I grew up with the OGWT with Whispering Bob and then Annie Nightingale but there was other stuff like Rock Goes To College (remember the Bruford gig with Jeff Berlin, Allan Holdsworth and Dave STewart. The WHOLE GIG, not just a three minute track). Then there were the stream of jazz programmes that have come and gone; the one hosted by Oscar Peterson, the one based at the 606 Club in Lots Rd., Chelsea etc). Great little programmes. Today, as a major music lover, tv (terrestrial or cable) doesn't figure at all on my radar. I know McCoy Tyner was on LWJH. Missed it but heard about the debacle from younger friends. I watch the odd 10 minutes of BBC Guitar Legends type programmes for nostalgia purposes but am invariably disappointed. Waste of 'lectric.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1206087' date='Apr 20 2011, 04:52 PM']To be fair Bilbo, you're pretty adept at that yourself.[/quote] When?

[quote name='Johnston' post='1206070' date='Apr 20 2011, 04:40 PM']I assumed that as a big proponent of notation and how it makes you a better musician you would have atleast looked into other forms of communication to improve your worth as a musician.[/quote] That post was not designed to contribute constructively to the debate but to attack the credentials of those with whom you disagree.

And a welcome 10c it is, fb. On reflection, I think my use of the term 'sophisticated' is probably erroneous. 'Complex' would probably do the job better.

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1205969' date='Apr 20 2011, 03:38 PM']he must've been at the wrong gig.[/quote]

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1205954' date='Apr 20 2011, 03:28 PM']it probably wouldn't help them to learn theory either,[/quote] I bet it would.

[quote name='Wil' post='1205942' date='Apr 20 2011, 03:20 PM']Hell, I can sight read for cello and piano, to an extent, but not for bass or guitar. I've just never seen the need to even learn the notes on the board besides the common chord roots.[/quote] Odd. If you can sight read for cello, shurely you can sight read for bass. Its the same clef. I guess you mean that, because the bass is tuned in fourths, you can't make the hands do what the eyes are telling you? Back to the OP. What I am sensing is that, whatever level of musical knowledge we have, we are occasionally frustrated by those who have less. In many situations, the required knowledge base is sufficiently limited for it to matter less (one band, one set of familiar songs etc). Personally, my pursuit of the knowledge is, in part, not because I don't want to be the bass player in the stated scenario, its because I don't want to be the guitarist. I did a gig once where the drummer was not up to par (too loud, too busy etc) and, after three or four tunes, the leader just turned to him and said 'can you not [i]sh*t[/i] all over my music, please'. I don't want to ever be that drummer.

I 'tabbed' Michael Schenker's 'Bijou Pleasurette' as a favour for my non-reading guitar playing brother once. I handed it to him and he looked at it and said: 'F*** me'! He never learned it.

[quote name='spinynorman' post='1205874' date='Apr 20 2011, 02:24 PM']Turns out the Queen for piano book missed out a whole section of guitar solo.[/quote] It happens a lot. Like proof reading an essay. Some of the suckers still get through.

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1205848' date='Apr 20 2011, 02:05 PM']..and can you dance whilst you're doing it ?[/quote] No, but you can

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1205848' date='Apr 20 2011, 02:05 PM']purely out of interest, are you listening and interracting with what's going on around you, or just reading and repeating verbatim (e.g. like reading aloud from a book you've never read before) ? [/quote] You can't deliver a performance of written music without listening and interacting with what is going on around you. Which notes to play and when is only the starting point. You still need to lock in with the other instruments and vice versa. You still need to guage your dynamics to the ensemble (in this case , keys, gtr, bass, dr, t. sax, trombone, trumpet, alto sax, flute, violin (x2), cello all under an MD/conductor. Everything is determined by the same listening and interacting skills as they would in any other musical setting. You are listening for cues, rubato passages, directed stops, vamps that are open ended. Learning to read the dots is only a part of putting in a musical performance of a chart. When it happens well, its such a buzz. One of the tracks on that show was Queen's 'Don't Stop ME Now'. It still had to rock, it still had that great guitar solo - everything was 'as per the reocrd' but we did it after one rehearsal and tucked in between 31 other tunes.

Because you get to the good bits quicker. I have rehearsed 32 tunes in one evening using charts. If I had to 'learn' them by rote, I would have probably managed a maximum of 4 that I would probably forget by the time I did a gig.

In fact, I think there was an element of 'hey, you could enjoy it even more'.

Same, five. Friday night, two on Saturday and two on Sunday.

[quote name='Johnston' post='1205595' date='Apr 20 2011, 10:38 AM']Learning to do it just so you have access to music you have no interest in seems to be a bit of a dumb reason to learn.[/quote] 'Thunk' (Bilbo's head hitting the desk again)

Up yours, sunshine!

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1205586' date='Apr 20 2011, 10:24 AM'].. but my ears are always open to what I'm listening to, and I get new ideas from that. I'll remember it, and work it out from my head whenever I'm having a plunk.[/quote] That'll work too

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1205505' date='Apr 20 2011, 08:55 AM']...but you want to play that kind of stuff. Dare I say most people don't...?[/quote] The material I use is irrelevant to the argument. It is the potential to access sophisticated music immediately and to spend time playing that music instead of just knobbing about with scales and riffs and stuff. 'Standing In The Shadows of Motown' would be just as good, a book of trombone solos, any transcribed lines or any conventional method book. It all opens up. When I hear people pick up their saxophones, guitars and basses, in my experiences, they generally all play the same few licks they always play. Written material is often great for pushing you into new territory which is where the learning is.

Can I stress one partifcular point that I have made in other threads but not here. Reading, for me, is not about gigs. I do no more reading gigs that anyone else (6 last year out of 50 odd). For me it is about efficiency and spending less time going over and over the same old same old (ziggydolphinboys story is a familiar one) and about getting the most out of practice time. I keep getting accused of being an elitist but I keep saying to people 'its not so hard to do'. Spend half an hour a day on it and, before you know it, it starts to come together. Then everything starts to open up. Its not actually that much harder than tab and, in the long run, a lot more useful. And its fun to play stuff. When I got my double bass last year, I was playing Bach Cello Suites and Paul Chambers transcriptions immediately, very badly and no arco but the learning I got from that was so much greater than learning a few riffs off Blue Note cds or just running scales (not that that is not useful). I could access various method books, Simandl, Sevcik etc and use them immediately without having to figure them out note by note. Much better use of time and a lot of fun.

[quote name='RhysP' post='1205198' date='Apr 19 2011, 08:57 PM']This is certainly true for me - I can't read music & know hardly any theory & it's purely because I'm a lazy c***. Never made any excuses to the contrary - it's something I really wish I could do but I simply just cannot be arsed putting the work in. For the amount of time I've been playing (over 30 years) I'm a sh*t bassist & it's all down to extreme laziness. If somebody told me tomorrow that in order to keep playing I'd have to study theory & reading for an hour a day I'd just give up. I'd very probably be a sh*t role model too.[/quote] But the world can always use another honest man