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Bilbo

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Everything posted by Bilbo

  1. Bilbo
    Apparently this is currently being mastered for release early in the New Year and my sole contribution is going to be the first track on the album.
  2. Bilbo
    It is not fair to compare a fretless you play regularly with a fretted you don't. They both have challenges and both have strengths. The more time you spend with each instrument the better.
  3. Bilbo
    Lots of Jazz protest material which, because it has no lyrics, works on a different level. This one references the Killing of young children following the racist bombing of an Alabama Church by White Supremacists.
  4. Bilbo
    Walk away on the day of the gig 😃
  5. Bilbo
    It stays at the venue but is packed away and stored (i.e. not left set up).
  6. Bilbo
    I am looking at the Yamaha 400 and 600 which both have things going for them. Thanks, guys. This has been really helpful.
  7. Bilbo
    Thanks, Pete. have you heard that kit in the flesh? It looks good and the youtube reviews seem ok. I basically need to mic up singers and horn players pretty much one at a time so I don't need a 3K rig with crossovers!
  8. Bilbo
    I run a weekly Jazz gig called Jazz East at the Alex in Felixstowe (www.jazzeast.vpweb.co.uk). We need a PA for announcements, front line and singers (i.e. usually front line OR singers and not miking up the full band) and currently have a limited budget of around £500. I am not at all adverse to buying secondhand. Has anyone got any ideas for what we reasonably expect to get for that kind of money?
  9. Bilbo
    Steve Hackett: Genesis Revisited doing the Seconds Out LPs: Cardiff 2/11/20. I am hoping that I will get the bass gig before the tour starts so can do the gig rather than watch it.
  10. Bilbo
    Have you ever shaved collies in the Outer Hebrides?
  11. Bilbo
    Plus one for making sure you are properly hydrated. I do find that, after double bass gigs, I am often 'sore' but I have always put this down to basic fatigue and not being particularly match fit. It is always less of a problem when I gig regularly but I am finding, as I get older, that I am not playing as much and so get increased problems of this kind when I do gig. The hydration thing is often spoken about on double bass forums.
  12. Bilbo
    As a 12 year old, I was given a guitar by an older cousin who I looked up to but who, with hindsight, I now realise had no idea what he was talking about (he cannot play anything). It was a piece of crap (strung with nylon AND steel strings). He lived a long way away and I rarely saw him or his brothers so I was on my own and had to figure the thing out myself. As a had no-one to help me, I found could not figure out guitar chords but could figure out bass parts. The earliest bassline I can recall playing (on the low strings on the nasty guitar I had) is a children's tv theme that I cannot name (although I can still play it). By the time I had control of my own destiny, I wanted a bass guitar and, when I started work in September 1980, bought a Hondo II Precision copy from my Mum's catalogue (I remember it being £125) and the rest is history. I was playing in a NWOBHM band and recording a Friday Rock Show session for Radio One in March 1981 so I must have taken to it reasonably quickly! After that, my first bass heroes were Squire and Steve Harris and then, in quick succession and as I became more 'woke', Jaco, Jeff Berlin, Jimmy Johnson and Percy Jones. The double bass players came later and their influence was less all-consuming. I do remember early efforts at transcribing lines by Roger Glover, Geezer Butler, Phil Lynott, Geddy Lee and others I cannot recall. I miss that period of discovery, when our lack of experience means that everything is new and exciting.
  13. Bilbo
    Sometimes, we try too hard. With faster passages, we need muscle memory not knowledge. When we think about it, we fail. When we just 'do', we just do.
  14. Bilbo
    Interesting microphone placement, Bassace. I put mine in front of the strings but your approach give better access to the strings. I will try that next time I do a gig (Gypsy Jazz quartet next Sunday) and let you know how I get on. I would imagine that, in theory, I would get a stronger signal and have more to work with. We shall see.
  15. Bilbo
    He was a game changer. Redefined the rubric. Pushed the envelope. One of the greatest.
  16. Bilbo
    I use an Audio Technica ATM 350 for exactly the scenario you are describing. It sounds great and no feedback issues. I blend it with a David Gage Realist through my Acoustic Image Clarus https://www.amazon.co.uk/ATM350U-Universal-Mounting-Cardioid-Condenser/dp/B01K1WU2H2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=audio+technica+atm350&qid=1573406534&sr=8-1
  17. Bilbo
    Where are you working, BB?
  18. Bilbo
    I recorded the bass part for this in my home studio (Bag End). I roadied and did the lights for this band in the 1980s and always wanted the gig but it never happened (the bass player they had was perfectly competent and I moved on long before he did ;)). In these days of email and home recording, it became a possibility. An old dream come true. It is off Multi Story's forthcoming album CBF10 (I am only on this one track). The whole track is recorded on my Wal Custon Fretless 4 string.
  19. Bilbo
    Big Big Train on Friday in Newport. Night out with old friends.
  20. Bilbo
    Alain Caron's bass part for Cross Checking from his Septentrion CD (notes only; no chords) Cross Checking - Alain Caron.pdf
  21. Bilbo
    Best of both worlds.
  22. Bilbo
    For the record, all readers also play by ear. It's not either or.
  23. Bilbo
    The fundamental question is why do we want to learn to read. For me, it is not just about reading gigs, it is primarily about study and learning. Since I started learning to read in earnest, I have found the hundreds of books I have full of notes have become massively more useful to me. I am not reading Al Di Meola guitar parts with a view to performing them live, I am just getting deeper and deeper into the music and increasing my knowledge of the art form and the instruments I play. It takes me places in the neck I would probably otherwise wouldn't know and forces me to examine phrases and passages that challenge me. I now do a regular big band gig again and read for that. The number of passages where I get caught out are fewer and fewer which feels good and, frankly, makes me less of a liability for the rest of the band. I just think it gives you the potential to be a better musician that simply playing by ear.
  24. Bilbo
    This is where you HAVE to start just DOING it. Every day. 20 - 30 minutes reading anything and everything. Start with something easy in C then F, G etc, adding one accidental every so often. It's a grind but it's the only way.
  25. Bilbo
    There is only really one way to learn to read. Do it. A little each day. Start on single quarter notes, easy pieces, move to eights the sixteenths, add rests as you go along. One bar, then two then fifty. Then just do it. A lot. It is not difficult to learn the principles of how to do it but it is something you have to keep doing and doing and doing again. It is also something that you will lose if you neglect it. I am working on reading guitar parts at the moment as well as improving my bass clef sight reading. Luckily, I have just landed a big band gig so I am already seeing improvements just by needing to do it. You will see great progress simply by doing it for 20 minutes a day every day.
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