Bilbo

As awful as it sounds, I actually don't practice on the bass at all. With 97 gigs so far this year, I don't really have to worry about my 'chops'. My 'thing' is composing (badly as it happens but I am learning) and, in order to progress in this I study other stuff; transcriptions, scores, chord sequences, orchestration etc. There are a million things out there to get your juices flowing. I can NEVER find the time I wish I had to study all of this stuff properly. Get out there and LEARN!!!! This music stuff is just BRILLIANT!!

[quote name='mcgraham' post='274395' date='Sep 1 2008, 12:28 PM']and others where I'm working on my ear without any instrument other than my voice and my mind (if that can be called an instrument).[/quote] Its everyone's first and main one!!

A Remark You Made - Weather Report

I like tents

[quote name='The Funk' post='273271' date='Aug 30 2008, 06:24 PM']If it's a 34" scale, then all the notes should be in the same place as on your fretted.[/quote] Not quite. On a fretted bass you fret the note by placing your finger BETWEEN the frets. On a fretless, you place your finger where the frets would be. There is a marginal difference.

How is your reading? That is a skill that is particularly rare and VERY marketable. Needs hours a day to get it up to professional speed. If you can get to the point of sight reading stuff, you can access 1,000s of pieces of music that will stretch you and help you find that spark. Try transcribing some solos by other instruments: baritone sax and trombone are generally easy to start with but sax/trumpet can be demanding. Look closely at the phrasing; I was transcribing a Steve Swallow solo last night ('Wrong Together' off his 'Real Book' cd). Simple little solo until you try to write it down. His phrasing is sublime. Look beyond the notes and examine the music. Get a book on orchestration and learn some stuff. Get some orchestral scores (libraries often have them) and read them along with a performance. Buy some world music compilations; nuevo flamenco, Astor Piazolla, Cuban, African, - broaden you horizons. There is a lovely quote from Death in Terry Pratchetts 'Hogfather'; 'HUman beings are remarkable creatures. All the fascinating things in the world and they still manage to invent boredom'. You have just reached a plateau and need to look beyond it.

You'll need to play without looking if you get a reading gig! Its like anything else. Practise makes perfect. 10,000,000 orchestral string players can't be wrong!

Bilbo has entered the building....(sorry, am away at the moment and the net is hard to find where I am) Kind of Blue is a must - best selling Miles LP/VCD and the most influential jazz cd of all time. Others must haves: Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead are all Gil Evans collaborations - orchestral/big band jazz at its best - all Paul Chambers Milestones, Cookin' Relaxin' Steamin' and the other one - similar line up to KoB etc Birth of the Cool - created the West Coast sound in one hit (the band only ever did two weeks of gigs but still managed to change the world), Al McKibbon on bass Miles Smiles - Wayne SHorter/Herbie HAncock/Tony WIlliams/Ron Carter line-up - great band I am not a great fan of the electric stuff (there is better stuff out there). Tutu is not a players cd its a producers. Its a Marcus Miller CD not a Miles Davis one! Decoy, Star People, You're Under Arrest etc are ok/fun but not as dewfinitive and historically important as the ones I have listed.

'Trio Music' by Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes. How blinking marvelous is that? Just got hold of 'Damaged In Transit' by Steve Swallow with Chris Potter and Adam Nussbaum. Flippin' brillo pads. And 'Mud Slide Slim' by James Taylor - not even jazz but it gets an honourable mention for just being lovely and for influencing Pat Metheny's tune 'James'. 'And His Mother Called Him Bill' - Duke Ellington from 1967 - dedicated to the recently deceased Billy Strayhorn. If you have one Ellington CD, make it that sucker! Loose Tubes, how cool were they? Dave DeFries arrangement of his own 'Hermetos Giant Breakfast' - made the hairs on the back of my teeth stand up! I played with Iain Ballamy once (its always once with me....?) - what a gent!

A stylophone!!!!!!! PS Why did you use my picture in the first post on this thread?

A (slightly) simplistic way of looking at things is to say 'every scale has to have one of every note in it' So C major has C D E F G A B C So F major has F G A Bb C D E F - one note of each of the seven letters available. If you go to an F sharp major, however, you would get F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B, C sharp, D sharp, E sharp, F. E sharp is enharmonically F but F is sharp. Its actually to do with the written score. If a key signature on a piece of music has six sharps (the key of F sharp) whenever an E appears on the score, you play F but whenever and F appears you play F sharp. So a Gb scale has a Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, E, F, Gb - the Cb is enharmonically a B but if the score has six flats, Gb major, you play Bs as Bb and Cs as B. Its actually not nearly as complicated as it reads

Diminished is less then or taken away, an augmented is more than or added A fifth in C is G A dimished fifth is one semi-tone below a fifth i.e. Gb/F sharp An augmented fifth is one semi tone above i.e. Gsharp/Ab An augmented fourth is one semi-tone above a fourth i.e. in C major, the fourth is F so the augmented fourth is F sharp. But you are running before you can walk, Sarah. Stick to basic scales for now and, when you have that sorted, the rest can follow. The basic major and minor chords will work for 90% of the music you play.

An arpeggio is a chord played as a series of notes not as three or more notes played at the same time. Don't let ANYONE tell you it is better not to bother with theory. They are fools and will lead you nowhere. I have a saying: Ignorance is Ignorance. Theory is your friend - love it and it will give and give and give.

Sorry to be a tart but I have no time for high street music shops. After you have passed on from the beginner level basses, you are very quickly into territory that 99% of these stores don't ever go into - professional instruments. Places like The Gallery are perfectly willing to let people look and play because they know that this time, next time or the time after, they will come back with money. I tried an Eden Metro out at the shop and bought one, mail order, about two years later. Now they guys in the shop wouldn't have made any connection between these two events but they have enough insight to know that's what is happening and so encourage it. But, in the end, they are businesses and, like all businesses, it is their job to make as much money as they can. I am a customer. It is my role to spend as little as possible. There is a clash here. They are the enemy.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='266328' date='Aug 20 2008, 02:46 PM']I don't believe scales are the right place to start on bass. Instead, learn the basic arpeggios - major, minor, dominant 7th, minor 7th, major 7th, half diminished, diminished. If you're outlining a chord sequence that will help you far more than learning whole scales in each key. It's all about the root, third, fifth and seventh. You can do so much with those four basic notes. Alex[/quote] Root, third, fifth and seventh of what? Sorry, mate. I'd recommend going the other way and learning scales before chords

Bb is first fret of A string, B the second. Look at a piano keyboard. C major and A minor are made up of all the white notes. The black ones are sharps and flats. F major is all white notes except one flat, Bb. F and C are the only notes that can't be flattened. E and B are the only notes that can't be sharpened. Note for all pedants: I know!!!

I would say start with C major (no sharps or flats): CDEFGABC A minor (no sharps or flats) ABCDEFGA Then F Major FGABbCDEF Then D Minor DEFGABbCD Can you see a pattern developing yet?

First learn where the notes are on the neck then learn the following scales.... Major (12) Minor (12 but they are the same as the above only a minor third away) Melodic Minor (12) Diminished (2) Augmented (2) Chromatic (1) Pentatonic (12) Blues scale (12) It's the modes that start to confuse people each major, minor and melodic minor scale has seven each but the whole thing is a lot simpler than it sounds. The advantage of the bass is that the fingering pattern you use for one major scale is identical to that of another, you just start on a different fret. So you only have to learn one piece of information. In a nutshell, there are only 8 scales to learn. If I said learning 8 scales is the first and main step to knowing everything you need to know, it doesn''t look nearly as intimidating! You realise, of course, that you have an additional responsibility to learn this stuff properly so you can cut the blokes out there that think that girls can't play music, especially the heavy stuff?

[quote name='Sibob' post='266102' date='Aug 20 2008, 10:02 AM']Just chill out 'Feel' it!! Si[/quote] YEAAAAAAH! No need to practice - the Time Fairy will come and sort you out! Drum machine or metronome. Its the same thing. The discipline you are developing is in learning to play your lines whilst LISTENING to another sound source and making the minute adjustments you need to ensure that your playing is locked in with this other sound source. You could just as easily use recordings.

Can't read the article as my work PC blocks the link. As an electrical bass player, I acknowledge the relationship between a piece of kit and your sound but we have to remember that we use our ears to determine the sound we want and adjust our gear accordingly. Unless we get new ears, our sound is always going to be in the ball park of what they tell us is the best sound we can get. ANd our execution of ideas/phrases will be borderline the same whatever gear we have. There is a lovely story dating back to when Van Halen were supporting Ted Nugent in the early days and TN wanted to know the secret of Eddie Van Halen's sound. So he tried his gear out and sounded like ..... Ted Nugent!!! Ref: eqing the bass vd bass drum. That may apply in rock etc but, in jazz, you are better off eqing against the ride cymbal as it can kill your sound if you don't get it right.

I am astonished that any of this matters to anyone.

Natural wood basses tend to date less. And a beautiful wood finish will always win over a colour. Some of the exotic woods being used on the new wave of handbuilts (Sei , Fodera etc) are stunning - how can a tobacco sunburst compete?

I am working on inventing a bass combo the size of a credit card that sounds like an Eden Metro. No luck, so far .

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='259898' date='Aug 11 2008, 01:05 PM']Right how much blood are we talking? How many ambulances? In my head I have horror movie style spurting and just a flood of blood[/quote] One ambulance but we are talking swimming with blood and a toilet full of distressed female wedding guests all with their feet in the sinks (as reported by our female voclaist).

Debuted my SWR Baby Blue/modified GK MBX112 hybrid rig at a jazz trio gig yesterday. Not 100% as yet (first time out, as I said) but very promising indeed. Need to spend some more time with the amp's eq and fill out the bottom end a little but, volume-wise, the little poppets are delivering.