peteb

That my friend, depends on how good you are! That's one of the big differences between the not bad bass player you hear in a pub on a Saturday night and the really good pro...

That isn't going to happen, just as it is unlikely that you will be able to play many Beatles songs after one listen. However, there are loads of great songs that you definitely can!

Know your audience! Some friends of mine played in a pretty successful Rush tribute band for a few years. Not really my thing, but there is certainly an audience out there. In some pubs, Mustang Sally will be the highlight of the set, but in others you will hear an audible groan and see everybody heading for the bar!

Y'know what it was like back in those days? You would go out for a quiet pint on a Friday and then...

Absolutely. How do people think all the Nashville session guys work? They all listen to a demo of the track once and make a lead chart, play it through once so that the producer can make comments and the second time they play it, the red light is on! The guys who get the work are those who can come up with the right parts from scratch and get them down in the first couple of takes! I think that some people here would be shocked about how most pros work on lower profile / paying gigs. If you learn enough songs, you start to recognise the patterns and chord progressions. I once did a last minute dep with no preparation at all (I got the call mid-afternoon when I was halfway up a hill on a MTB). I just told the BL to make charts for all the songs and I would busk it. It was all simple stuff (Rocky Mountain Way, Boys of Summer, I Love Rock n’Roll, etc) and I had heard all of the songs, even if I hadn’t played most of them. I just hid the sheets on a chair behind the PA (note, no visible music stand)! It went well – the only real mistakes were one song where he had forgotten to put the bridge on the lead sheet and another (that I actually knew) when I stomped on a chorus pedal that had been set to stun, which was quite an interesting take on the original part! Now, if even I can get away with doing that, then imagine what the real titans of the bass world can do – y’know, guys like Sklar, Pino & TimR…

I think that people just have different approaches, but I think that some just get enamoured with new technology and it can become (like you said in a previous post) a solution desperately looking for a problem. I essentially have one sound that (with minor tweaks) I use for every gig I do, which range from AOR originals to blues bands to a Led Zeppelin tribute. I’m sill getting decent gigs, so it must be working to some extent. Virtually all of my peers / acquaintances still use amps, even the guys who are proper pros. The only reason I could see for someone like me to have a Helix would be if I had to get to gigs on the train. I am unlikely to ever be offered a gig where I would have to have a Helix or whatever, but there are plenty where I would be expected to bring an amp.

Led Zep tribute gig at the Victoria in Swindon last night. Great little venue (albeit with a 'challenging' sound onstage) and a decent turnout who were a very appreciative audience, so all-in-all a good night. Long drive home to West Yorkshire in the early hours of the morning, not helped by three diversions on the M5/ M6 and then leaving my mobile in the drummer's car…!

I believe that Guy has something similar, which does a 'reasonable facsimile' of the effects that he uses, but not something that he is going to take out on the road. Anyway, gotta chip - got to get down to Swindon for a gig (from West Yorkshire)...

That’s essentially true. Gear is just a part of how you sound, but it all starts with your fingers and if you haven’t got that bit right then it doesn’t matter what gear you have. I would always suggest that people get as good a bass as they can afford that feels right in their hands and is credible for the genres that they are going to play. As far as amps go, a lot of pros use gear like Hartke, nothing esoteric at all, because its reliable / does a job and the company give deals to pros like them. Audiences only care what the band as a whole sounds like (and what instruments look like to an extent). They will compare your band to the one they saw a couple of weeks ago, as well as the major acts they’ve seen over the years. No one comes up to me after a gig to say they liked how I subtly used compression to get the bass to sit in the mix – to them if it sounds good then job done, they don’t care about why it sounds like that. If you’re not playing Muse covers, then its pretty safe to say they don’t care what effects you’re using, just if it sounds right. Having said that, Guy Pratt has just posted pictures of his current live pedalboard on Facebook. I counted 17 pedals and not a MFX among them…!

I suppose it depends on what type of band and what type of player you are. I've got a Pedaltrain Jr for live work that holds my power supply, wireless receiver, compressor and tuner. It has also got a drive and a chorus pedal that I use (very occasionally) for some gigs as well as octave and filter pedals that I never use*...! * I say never, but I sometimes use the octave pedal for playing 'I Wanna Tear Your Playhouse Down' and the filter pedal for the Rhubarb & Custard theme that I sometimes muck about in soundchecks 🙂

I would think that most bass players who play a variety of gigs will still want to keep a decent amp that they can use if needed. Certainly, I am expected to turn up with an amp / rig for all the gigs that I do and I can’t see that changing while I’m still active. Funnily enough, the only time that I thought that I might need to get an IEM system was when I was asked to join a band by a BL who had used them a lot in the past. However, a five minute discussion at the first rehearsal showed that the musos he had assembled for the new band all wanted to use amps and he was happy to go along with that (although he used IEMs for his own personal monitoring).

He did indeed, as well as many others (Wishbone Ash, Kinks, etc). I believe that he is semi-retired now, but still occasionally plays in a band with some family members (or at least he was a few years ago).

But you do have to appreciate that a lot (most?) of players take a different approach. Personally, I rarely use effects and I've always gone for a sound that, although not extreme in any way, is identifiable as being "my sound". While I'm not precious about it, amps and cabs are part of that.

I suppose that I could, but why would I want to? If I play pubs then I will still need an amp for the whole room and when I do bigger gigs then I can take a relatively lightweight rig and benefit from having a consistent sound onstage (as WoT says above).

That describes my approach. Unless you are going to commit to in-ears 100%, then I would have thought that some sort of amp on stage is necessary (who wants that much bass guitar in a monitor). Personally, I would prefer that a sound engineer has some reference of what I want the bass to sound like.

Try this if you ant some fusion with a rock element to it

I think that people over-emphasise the difference between fingers and pick. Personally, I started playing with fingers, then moved to pick in the 80s, then back to fingers. These days I play fingerstyle pretty much exclusively, purely because I am a much better player using my fingers. I tend to go for a pretty consistent sound, but occasionally I will work out how I would play a part with a pick and then work out how to play it in that way with my fingers

Has the landlord finally got rid of the contents of an old second hand music shop that he used to keep at the back of the stage??

Maybe, I remember there being an ELO tribute on several years ago but could have been your mates (the venue is in Helmsley).

You also have to take into consideration what the strength and weaknesses of the band are. How good are the BVs, can the guitar player convincingly fill the space in a three piece, can the rhythm section create this space for him to work with, etc?? There is definitely a knack to playing in a three piece...

I keep suggesting that my classic rock covers band (3 piece plus lead vocals) just gets a setlist made up of Phil X band YouTube covers...!

@casapete did you play the Farmyard Party (big outdoor biker event in North Yorkshire) a few years ago?

I came to Jaco (and the Bruford album that I couldn't listen to) as a rock fan (I had already been through my stint as a Yes / prog fan) who also liked blues / blues influenced music and was open to funk influences after listening to guys like Pat Travers, etc. I suppose that the funk influence was what attracted me more to Jaco, who also had a more soulful (not to mention damaged) personality that came across in his music, compared to the more bombastic Jeff Berlin. One thing about the more ‘lick’ based approach was that as a young bass player, there was always some little thing to take from Jaco and try and incorporate in my playing. Even though I usually ended up not getting it quite right, it opened up new ideas that I could use and influenced how I play to a small extent. Of course, I never had any intention of trying to transcribe a whole piece from either Jaco or Jeff!

Funnily enough , I had this discussion with a drummer at the last rehearsal we had. He always rated JB, putting him in the same league as Jaco. Personally, as good as Jeff Berlin is technically, I find him to be unlistenable whereas Jaco is often sublime (if you only listen to his best / least self indulgent / most iconic recordings of course)! I once bought a Bruford album featuring Berlin - just couldn't get into it at all...

I actually had an email conversation with Billy Sheehan about this very point and he advised me on how to get around it. The reason that the string comes back off pitch after you have flicked the switch back to the starting position to bring the string back up to the E, is because it will get slightly caught in the slot in the nut. All you have to do is get in the habit of lifting the string slightly out of the nut slot once you have returned to the higher pitch and the problem disappears. There you have it, a tip straight from King Billy! Of course it also helps if you have the D tuner properly set-up / installed and ensure that there is plenty of graphite / nut sauce or whatever in the E string slot on the nut.