Bilbo

Thomann or Gedo basses will get you going. Agonising over the minutea will get you nowhere. Go for it.

I have less gigs now than in any time since I was 17 (am 55). I love the gigs I do but would like some more please!!

Perfectly happy with the annual cover idea but the idea is to do the thing in the month of the challenge. Otherwise, it's just a case of playing each other things we have written before and could have spent months working on. There is no challenge to it.

This transcription predates a Basschat upgrade where the attachments didn't make the cutover. PM me an email address and I will send you a PDF copy.

A musician, yes. Everything else is just detail. Professional, semi professional, amateur, talented, journeyman, good, bad, trainee, experienced, retired, Jazz, studio, session, classical etc etc.

Standards are an informal list of tunes that Jazz musicians are expected to know and to be able to play in all keys. I know players who know up to 1,000 tunes. I know three: So What, Impressions and Lush Life (that is an in joke for Jazz musicians). I play a regular weekly gig with visiting artists and some bring charts whilst others call tunes and expect you to know them. I have an ireal book so can pretty much pull out a chart for anything in any key but, without it, I would be screwed. It is called 'the Real Book of Shame'.

I have made an arrangement of Bach's second Cello Suite but transcribed for guitar and 'Latinised'. It gets a bit lairy in places to say the least. I put it into Sibelius and have been going back to it for months, gradually commuting sections to memory and playing them slowly, sometimes as the whole transcription and sometimes a few isolated bars. Progress is evident but slow. I think the early days of bass playing, when we are learning riffs and clichés that we don't yet know are clichés spoil us for understanding the long game. Evan the Cello Suites 'untouched' are long and detailed in bass terms, years of work especially if you want to bow them!!

I am spending more time playing guitar than bass at the moment as I am getting fewer and fewer bass gigs and there doesn't seem much point in practicing for gigs I don't have so I am working on learning to read guitar music so, in the longer term, I can become self sufficient as a player and end my days playing with myself This has presented me with some new challenges that I didn't expect. I have come to realise that, as an improvising musician, I have never had to spend time learning pieces that are very long. Bass parts tend to be very repetitious, solos tend to be relatively short etc. I am looking at guitar t pieces that could be five or six minutes long with endless streams of sixteenths (Bach mainly) and I have realised that long, complex pieces can take months to learn and to get to grips with. I recall a Jaco video where he said it took him nine years to learn Donna Lee. All of this has made me realise that I have come to expect to get things under my fingers in minutes or hours instead of weeks, months or even years. Bass parts are easier to read and easier to play as they are mostly monophonic and repetitious. Guitar parts can be three four or five notes with two or three distinct themes progressing simultaneously. My question is, does anyone have any thoughts on learning long and difficult pieces that are that much harder to remember?

I respect the spirit of this position but I have a caveat to it. Jazz is whatever you want it to be unless it is something else. The problem I have with the idea that 'anything goes' is that this is OK to a point but, put simply, some things are not Jazz not because they 'don' t swing' or some other genre specific details or whatever. They are not Jazz because they are Funk or Torch Songs or Blues or Pop. Rod Stewart doesn't become a Jazz singer just because he puts on a beret.

News coming out that trumpeter Roy Hargrove has died of a heart attack aged 49. He is a kid, Ffs.

I loved Waterfall by Wendy and Lisa. I really coveted Wendy Melvoin's white Gibson ES335. Great song too.

It did remind me how important Bill Bruford was to the early Yes sound. Imagine what another drummer would have done with that opening riff.

I got 4 minutes in and then realised I had heard it before somewhere. Life is too short.

Fcuk off 😀

I have seen this somewhere but can't find it.

Definite improvement with the new pick up. Early days but very promising.

There are always variables. At some point, you just have to commit.

Took delivery of the Kna today. Have a gig next Sunday so will report back.

I had the same dilemma with a Gibson. ES175. it was in its case 363 days a year. Sold it to buy an Ovation Custom Legend which I pretty much play every day. The Gibson was a nice guitar but I don't regret getting rid.

Billy Jenkins Voice of God Collective.

I love pit work but can rarely do the full sequence of shows so rarely get to do it nowadays.