musophilr

try googling soundproofing a cellar. I got so many sites that I couldn't possibly list them all for you here BTW suggest you pay careful attention to the access (how will you get a bass rig down the steps?) and the damp-proofing

The Schrödinger solution: At any point in time there is a small but finite probability that the right opportunity will present itself. The relaxed corollary: spliff up while you wait

[quote name='BottomE' timestamp='1330447298' post='1557645'] Don't give up unless you don't get anything from it. Most of us can probably relate to your experiences. Sometimes living in a small/rural town can restrict your opportunities. [/quote] I'm beginning to realise that if I want to play, and if I want to hear the sounds in my head coming out of speakers, then recording myself on a multitracker is the most likely way it's going to happen. It has meant getting instruments other than my "first" instrument and learning to play them - or at least use them as a credible backing to my "first" instrument. The exercise has over a few years helped my understanding of music - writing it, recording it, mixing it etc. That's a good reason not to give up. Alternatively if you live in Suffolk and have similar interests to me - I need a bass player! Check out [url="http://www.dasbarockorchester.co.,uk"]www.dasbarockorchester.co.,uk[/url] and [url="http://www.musica-electrica.co.uk"]www.musica-electrica.co.uk[/url]

Picato Stainless Flatwound Long Scale 45 65 85 105 130

Most of the published tabs I looked at didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and failed to tell me what I was trying to find out. Tab is crap anyway, just like painting by numbers. I can't read it like dots. When you work out what notes it's asking you to play you can usually find a far more efficient fingering anyway. If you could download proper dots (at eg 99p a throw) like you can download songs one at a time with iTunes it would be worth paying for so long as they were accurate.

I've made a point of always wearing black. Usually T-shirt & jeans, but could be vest & jogging pants, or cords with collarless shirt & waistcoat - but always black. I never wear a tie, and I hate playing with sleeves around my wrists so long sleeves get pushed up to my elbows.

Does it still work if your cab has castors?

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1330193406' post='1554044'] Our horn section, who are reprobates and alcoholics. But they can play, so that's OK. The waistcoats?? ...I know. That particular sartorial experiment was deemed a failure. Thank God. [/quote] Surely that could have been predicted without actually having to do it?

FWIW I've also found that mids help the bass more than bass does.

Teamwork. The engineering director of a software house said he'd hired me because (i) being a lead guitarist I had the discipline to hone my skills to a high level of competence (ii) being in a band meant I could do teamwork and cooperate. I think he also liked the blues/rock we were playing Plus, being able to count to up to 12 ...

[quote name='shizznit' timestamp='1330089726' post='1552546'] Nice one Phil! Love the phrasing in the verses! [/quote] You're too kind! I was wondering what bassline to put to it when on Radio4 there came a program about how reggae gained a presence in British pop culture during the 1960s after people from the Carribean came to live here. Thoughts of their music helped. I think I owe them

[url="http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/alt_carol"]http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/alt_carol[/url]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1330008846' post='1551338'] The best pub gigs round here have a very good selection policy..in that they police their line-up carefully. That way, you find many turn up every week and they know the criteria and standard is good enough. In that sense, the venue has the audience already..the bands bring along theirs..and you get a rammed pub. It works. [/quote] I totally agree that a venue ought to have a reputation for putting on acts of a known quality, therefore punters could turn up whenever a gig is onb and be guaranteed a good night. However this is almost impossible to achieve in practice. I used to do the Saturday night jazz/blues gigs for the local arts centre, helping the bands set up on the stage, putting the chairs & tables out, running the sound system, clearing up afterwards etc. The number of people who would turn up for a band they knew. saying things like "I love blues" but you wouldn't see them for any other equally good blues band ... same with jazz acts. I did those shows for nearly 10 years, during which time the incidence of duff acts dropped from an initial few-in-a-season to negligible-in-a-year after 4 years so that quality was consistently good during the latter half of my time doing those gigs. Yet the common perception in the town was that the arts centre only put on arty-farty stuff of no relevance to ordinary punters (this was probably not helped by the consistently anti- stance of the local press, even though most of the people I knew in the town reckoned the local press "had no idea" and rarely printed a sane or balanced viewpoint on anything). Most of the ticket sales were to well-heeled addresses outside of the town, even though to this day I believe that the acts we put on would have been enjoyed by people in the town had they been bothered to try them. Where I live now, most of the pubs with live music can be guaranteed to put on acts of acceptable quality and it's up to you whether you like that style of music. Its the distance between where I live and those venues that limits the frequency at which I would visit such places. If I lived within walking distance I would probably be there more often. Limitations like that often don;t apply in towns.

Colin Fulton [email="[email protected]"][email protected][/email] thoroughly recommended

[quote name='MacDaddy' timestamp='1329991401' post='1550809'] I wish Old Git was here to comment on this [/quote] I was Old Git in someone else's chat room but I'm sure you're not referring to me! I read the original spiel a little while ago. He makes perfect sense.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1329234654' post='1539268'] We program our drums for this very reason [/quote] Yeah, SR-16s don't forget the rhythmn and always play in time! You can also fit one in your gig box and you don't have to buy it drinks which is more than you can say for a drummer

IMO The guitar that does what an LP can do (+ a bit more), which also offers good high fret access, is the Yamaha SG2000. It's not a lightweight but it is well balanced so you don't notice the weight when strapped on.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1329839358' post='1548267'] I find if I can play it without a bass and without the music then I've learnt it. That probably sounds ridiculous but I genuinely try to learn sometimes without a bass in my hands. I know where the frets are in relation to my body so I can still "play" along as it were. [/quote] No it's not ridiculous when you've heard of concert pianists who "practice" on the train sitting at a table which acts as a "dummy keyboard". I'm sure it would also guarantee you get all 4 seats to yourself Going over the manoevres in your minds eye while "playing back" the music in your memory was something Alan Limbrick recommended at the Guitar Institute a long time ago.

[quote name='noelk27' timestamp='1329832524' post='1548059'] That, and there's also the argument that the electric bass guitar created by CLF is more closely related to the bass viol aka viol da gamba (itself a fretted instrument, and a member of the same family as the vihuela, the predecessor of the guitar) than to the double bass aka bass violin aka contrabass. [/quote] Thank you for a patient explanation. You have exposed my ignorance of country music, not that I consider it a great loss though. Yep, I guess I do look at the electric bass from the standpoint of someone who sees what the EB has become rather than someone who wasn't there when Leo first developed it. Point about the DB. The Penguin dictionary of music described it as having more kinship with viols than violins, while the Observer's book of music describes it as a hybrid between the violone and the violin family, retaining the body shape, the tuning in fourths, and the bowing methods of the viols. I remember being told once that the DB doesn't have much to do with violins at all but the aforementioned references would suggest a marriage into the family tree a few generations back. BTW I [i]lurve[/i] the sound of a violone. It's a bit like a Jazz bass - plenty of mid-range honk

Your method "kind of" works, sir. I just played [i]Wonderful Land[/i] 3 times without looking at the dots. FWIW I looked at it this way: The outro = the into (all bar one note) In between are 3 sections: Section 2 = section 3 (it includes the bum titty bum bum titty bum bum bum bit). Section 1 begins like sections 2 & 3 but there's some other crap before you get to section 2 involving a C maj arpeggio interspersed with root & fifth on E, root & fifth on F ... Once you've got the structure, you've got some hooks to hang little reminders on. OK, celebratory coffee is now consumed, let's go back & see if I can still do it

IMO if you can play DB as well that's extra gigs you could do. If you've got enough EB work to keep you happy, well & good, but I've been told that around here a decent DB player is hard to find so possibly you could have the skills to satisfy a need as well as earn a bit ... BTW I'm a guitarist who can handle an EB, I think that playing other instruments (even if not as well as you play your "first" instrument) enhances your appreciation of music and is therefore to be recommended

FWIW may I warn folks about what happened to me. I lived in a flat and would often get neighbour complaints about my stereo as well as personal music making activities. I invested in headphones. I was only gigging once a week on guitar plus a band practice and my day job was a quiet office-y environment, but had to go to the quack 'cos I couldn't hear other people in a busy environment and I had this permanent ringing in my ears (still got it now 20 years later). Turns out that the headphones were a lot louder than they seemed to be. I'd been using them several hours a day (well, evening) every day and that's what did the damage.

You are Pete Townshend in disguise and I claim my £5

[quote name='noelk27' timestamp='1329792332' post='1547551'] Well, yes, you do misunderstand. Because, in an interview in the 80s, CLF explained the genesis of the idea for the electric bass guitar, and the inspiration. That he credits to musician friends of his, guitarists, playing country and western, et al, who would be asked to double as bassists, but who struggled with the physicality of playing an upright bass. It was from there that he formulated the concept of the electric bass guitar, by adapting the form and function of the solid body electric guitars he had already created, and that many of these guitarists had already adopted, and therein the interview he directly states that it was his intention to take the four lowest strings on the guitar and orient these with the same tuning intervals and note positions, so as to be familiar to, and instantly recognisable for, guitarists. What he wanted to do was provide his friends with a way of earning extra money from the gigs they could get, with the other points you highlight being byproducts of that key motivation. So, when you say "It annoys me when people claim that a bass is a guitar with thicker (and usually fewer) strings", that, in CLF's mind, when he was developing the idea, was exactly what the electric bass guitar was, and when you go on to say "The visual similarity to the electric guitar is just that and no more" you show that you fundamental misunderstand what it was CLF intended to create. [/quote] OK, I put my hand up to misunderstanding Leo's intentions. But don't you think that this: "guitarists ... who would be asked to double as bassists" gives the game away? He was replacing the DB with alternative technology; the instrument is intended to do what the DB was doing beforehand. You're supposed to approach it from the mindset of a bassman, not that of a guitarist who happens to be operating an instrument in the lower register. Edit: To clarify that. We all know that guitarists can play chords, or single-note stuff. If you try playing chords on a bass you realise that things get muddy because bass notes close together don't sound that good - plus it's physically difficult. Hence most bass lines are single-note stuff. Bass notes are also quite "thuddy" (especially by comparison with the dusty end of a guitar) which makes them an ideal part of the rhythm section. Lastly, in a lot of the music that the public likes, roots feature a lot - it's as if our ears like to hear chords underpinned by their roots (although not exclusively so, and some very good bass lines are either counterpoint to a melody or rhythmic arpeggiations of harmony). So this is what I mean when I say thinking like a bassman not like a guitarist, recognising the function of the instrument is not the same as that of a guitar.

[quote name='noelk27' timestamp='1329780053' post='1547410'] Saying that, you totally ignore CLF's, and GF's, reasons for designing an electric "bass guitar", and the end user the product was intended for. [/quote] Do I? I thought he intended to make an instrument that was easier to carry about than a double bass, easier to amplify, and easier to play in tune (hence its frets, and its name, the Precision). He succeeded on all counts. Some end users were converted DB players and still others came to the instrument from other routes including guitars. Either way they ended up as electric bass players.