Bilbo

Jazz bassist, Dave Holland: "When you find yourself struggling against the challenges of the music industry and your rent's due, those are the difficult times when you are tested. Each musician has to make their own decision about how they want their music to serve. When you make the commitment to stay true to your musical voice instead of giving into the temptations of some fantastic offer, that is when your music gets stronger. That's something I see as a positive result of this commitment: renewed energy. In the end, people do recognize that commitment."

14th, 18th, 20th, 21st and 31st dec, then 8th Jan and we're off again, I'd play every day if I could. I love it.

[quote name='7string' post='352148' date='Dec 11 2008, 09:03 PM']Death Jazz. I'll have to check that out. It's true that you learn something new each day[/quote] If ever there was a label that could be used as evidence of poor branding, this is it

[quote name='4000' post='349165' date='Dec 8 2008, 10:22 PM']Can you define how these pop bassists are "a bit weak"? Is the fact that they play for the song not sufficient? Was Jamerson "a bit weak" because he played pop? I know where you're coming from Bilbo and on some levels I agree, but sometimes it might help if you could get off the "jazz is [i]so[/i] superior to all other musical forms" soapbox. Besides which, there are many reasons for liking a player and many ways in which a player can be good, and it's not all to do with having the greatest technique or most sophisticated note choice, unless you only tend to think of music in intellectual terms, which for me is rather missing the point. (Sorry, I've had 45 years of this from my dad and it gets right on my Wilkenfelds!!!!).[/quote] My point was that the suggestion that a handful of high profile female pop bassists are carrying a flag for feminism in contemporary music fails to acknowledge the dozens of classical and jazz players out there who have been solid working professionals for decades. I know of one female friend who wanted to play the double bass but was told by a male d/b player that women couldn't play it because it was too physical - I'd like to meet the guy who told her that . Of course some of these players that are being discussed are perfectly credible bass players and are probably very capable but my point was simply that the 'phenonmenon' of a female bass player should not be seen as a novelty anymore than a female doctor, dentist, solicitor, judge..... For the record, I think discussions about 'female' anything are chauvanistic and indicative of a patriarchal attitude to women and to what they can achieve. PS Jazz is superior - its not my fault!

Like the Suffolk NWOBHM Tribute band Ipswichfinder General !!

Just saw this on Amazon Marketplace for less than £15 new. [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Village-Vanguard-Wynton-Marsalis/dp/B00003A9NY/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1229010384&sr=1-9"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Village-Vangu...0384&sr=1-9[/url] Its a 7 cd boxed set of Wynton Marsalis and his Sextet Live at the Village Vanguard. I bought it for nearly £60 many years ago and that was good value. Getting it this cheap is a steal. Some absolutely great jazz with the great Reginald Veal doing that thing he does, BOOM!

More sophisticated doesn't necessarily mean more complex but it usually does! I agree that composing is a great way to stay interested but, again, writing a 3 chord blues is not particularly satisfying if you have been playing/writing them for 30 years! I don't disagree with the spirit of what you say but simple is rarely satisfying enough to hold my attention for long (the recent exception being Javier Navarette's music for 'Pan's Labyrinth')

She's crazy!

The only way I can describe it is that learning theory is like learning any language. The more you know, the more you can express yourself and, over time, the more complex the ideas you express become. That doesn't mean you can't see the value, depth and strength of a simple statement such as 'I think, therefore I am' or 'His voice is much deeper than anything he ever has to say'. But it does make it hard for you to enjoy Carry On type innuendo and jokes about changing light bulbs! I did a wedding on Saturday and we were so in the pocket the drummer, a generally quite reticent man and a jazzer at heart, was laughing, actually laughing because it was grooving so hard. We were all smiling at the end and sharing a sense of a job well done. Fantastic feeling. If, however, I had to do that 4 nights a week, every week, I would get very bored very quickly (like after 3 gigs ). Just as a book of 'inspirational quotes' can cease to be inspirational, the enjoyment one gets from simplicity in music can pale quite quickly if its all there is available. Because people who study music tend (and this is a generalisation) to spend more time with it, they won't get the buzz you do out of a three chord trick because they have probably spent more time with it and know that it is a tiny part of the art form's wider potential. Its not that they don't see its value, its that they also see its limitations. I guess when all of us get into music we start with pretty basic stuff but we all move on because we look for somthing fresh to reinvigorate ourselves. If you keep looking, you need more and more sophisticated ideas to get you excited. I guess it also depends on what kind of mind you have, what kind of personality. Mine led me to jazz and Walter Piston's 'Harmony', 'Counterpoint' and 'Orchestration'

Just one more point that I thought of last night. The music notation we are all speaking off has particularly severe limitations when you move into ethnic musics like African, Indian, Latin music etc. For instance, the 'swing' that defines a folkloric samba groove, as defined by the sammmba schools in Rio De Janiero, could not be written down using conventional notation. It can be approximated but, unless you can hear the groove, you won't be able to play it just from the dots. But the dots undoubtedly remain the most credible means of rendering tunes performable accurately without rehearsal/pre-warning. They facilitate the use of deps without compromising the quality of your fundamental product, they reduce the cost of professional performance by reducing the number of band calls. They facilitate learning on a much deeper level than rote learning/mimicry and allow musicians to communicate much more effectively than other methods (tab is a particularly poor short cut). Mainly, and this is a VERY important point, the ability to read music DOES NOT and has NEVER impeded anyone's ability to improvise or be creative. If someone can't improvise or create original lines, it is because they have never learned how, NOT because they can read.

I'm with Sean. A good reader is one who can make the notes sing and you can't do that unless you have a good ear and a real sense of the music being performed. Session musicians got a bad rap in the 70s because there were loads of recordings made by musicians who didn't understand the music they were performing. They read the dots but didn't [i]play[/i] the music. Classical musicians who can breath life into a classical piece but can't play a jazz piece just don't understand jazz. Its not their reading or their ears that are at fault. Its their understanding of the idiom. Learn to read and develop your ears. You need them both.

I lived inCwmbran 'til I was 23 and then Newport from 1988 - 1994. Have they finished it yet?

Nope - my motive are purely the need to feel loved :wub:

[quote name='Merton' post='346534' date='Dec 5 2008, 03:43 PM']Kinda miss the trombone a bit, I have to say[/quote] I often miss the trombone - I think the sights on my rifle are out

Gulp! I have more guitars than basses! Gibson ES175, Adamus steel string and Takmine nylon. Only because guitars aren't as versatile as basses. I use the guitars for writing and recording not for gigging (have done 2/3 gigs on guitar over the last 20 years but, whilst I can pull it off, I would rather be a capable bass player than a weak/mediocre guitarist). I did think about gigging on guitar recently because most of the guitar players around me aren't actually that much better than me but, as I said, I am not really attracted to mediocrity. There's already too much of that around.

[quote name='SteveO' post='345248' date='Dec 4 2008, 12:17 PM']playing Jazz is more rewarding on the bone than the bass (sorry Bilbo)[/quote] For who?

[quote name='stevie' post='346439' date='Dec 5 2008, 02:18 PM']Question to the fluent readers on here: I've heard that mentally whispering the time to yourself as you go along is a bad idea - you should just see a bunch of notes and automatically recognize the pattern. What's your view on this?[/quote] Absolutely. You need to recognise massive chunks of material at one glance - sorry, that sounds intimidating, but I'll explain what I mean. If you take the word antidisestablishmentarianism, many of us will read it in a glance and not by going through it with a fine tooth comb like we did when we were learning to read. A + n = an, add at T = ant. The I makes it anti etc etc and so one. When you look at the above, you have the skills you need to see the whole word in one glance. With reading music, if you practice regularly, you quickly begin to see whole bars (and, eventually, several bars) at a time rather than having to labouriously count time in order to lock you playing in with the surrounding meter. The counting is useful as a means of making sense of it all at the outset but, in the longer term, you need to ditch it in favour of a more organic approach. Trust me, it will come. Just like reading books. Word of warning, though. If you neglect the skills, you will lose the knack. Did you knoo that, if a literate person goes blind for a long period and then regains their sight, they will have to relearn how to read. They will have simply forgotten how. Reading is like that, If you do it often, the skill improves immeasurably. If you don't, the knack fades.

In my one man quest to get you all to educate yourselves, I am drawing your collective attention to a resource I consider to be particularly useful for helping people who are trying to learn to read music music to develop the ability to read rhythms. The book stars on simple quarter note rhythms and, over 270 pages, gets more and more complicated. The progress is incremental and you almost don't know you are improving until you find yourself reading all sorts of weird stuff. It will take time but it is time well spent (and can be used away from your bass - so its something to practice when you are not at home). I am going to offer a prize to the first current non-reader who works throught the book and then gets to read page 265 without making any mistakes. [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Encyclopedia-Reading-Rhythms-Workbook-Instruments/dp/0793573793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228485072&sr=1-1"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Encyclopedia-Readi...5072&sr=1-1[/url]

[quote name='thebeat' post='345619' date='Dec 4 2008, 04:07 PM']I resolve to stop pretending that i give a f*** and admit that i don't...[/quote] Yes you do, youknow you do. People that say that always do.....

I need a dep. You free next Tuesday?

[quote name='L1zz1e' post='345580' date='Dec 4 2008, 03:52 PM']I have obtained "New Method For String Bass" Simandl and a few others including "The Cycle of Self Empowerment" Dom Famularo. Do you think these will help?[/quote] Don't know the Famularo book but the Simandl is an industry standard so its perfect. But the truth is it doesn't matter as much as you think. At this stage, the information you need is in almost every bass book you can buy. Its also out there free on a dozen website including this one (dlloyds primer thread). You need to get as much information in your head as you can and make sense of it. Just take the time to digest the information and learn one thing at a time - and REALLY learn it. If you practice, it will come.

To only play what I hear and not to wiggle my fingers indiscriminately, however superficially impressive it may look/sound

[quote name='Sarah5string' post='345075' date='Dec 4 2008, 08:55 AM']I like a warm, soft and mellow tone and have a dislike of treble. lol[/quote] So lose the pick

There are a million exercises that will make a difference and they will all work on some level. In my prime developmental period, my own regime was to play two octave scales in all keys and all modes followed by two octave chord tones up and down the neck in all modes and all keys. Took about an hour a day but I developed a lot of technique that way. I would really recommend that you learn to read the dots as soon as you can: a teacher is a good idea but F. Simandl's books or Rufus Reid's Evolving Bassist are good books to start with. When you have the rudimentary skills (i.e. you don't need to be able to sight read to do this), you can start transcribing bits of songs you like and to develop a vocabulary of your own. Then your playing will really start to improve. The very fact that you are even asking this question is indicative of a positive attitude to learning and you should be congratulated for that. The best piece of advice I can give is 'remember that the most difficult thing about finding your true path as a player is the realisation that you are already on it'. Everything of value that you will ever learn will come to you incrementally. There are a couple of things that may come to you as an epiphany but these are very few. Most things come from tedious repetition and, despite your protestations to the contrary, I would argue that just playing through scales at X bpm etc probably is working for you already, just not as quickly as you would like. Most things you learn in the practice room today won't appear in your playing for at least six months!Patience is of considerable value in learning an instrument, alongside the understanding that, if you haven't got that knot of frustration in your stomach as you practice, you probably aren't learning anything of value! You are on a wonderful journey that will last your lifetime. Enjoy.