Sean

We rehearsed Sultans last week and it was so fast that I was blown away by the dexterity of nailing the solos note for note. I believe that a lot of songs "breathe" better at the right tempo or within a certain tolerance. With Sultans I found that my bass line sounded too busy at the tempo we played it whereas playing it at the "Alchemy tempo" sounds fine. I've found that vocalists struggle too when songs are rushed, their breath control goes completely and then their performance drops off. In a previous band I used to nag about playing songs too fast all the time and was ignored, not even a conversation. I clocked Living on a Prayer at 151 bpm off one gig recording (it's 123bpm on the record), others were similarly fast, then one gig we had a dep drummer who played everything absolutely on the money and afterwards the other three wouldn't shut up about how well we played and how much a great groove we had, how we didn't make any mistakes etc.

A friend of mine gave me some reduced to clear mince that was just on the sell by date the other day. I said, "thank you very much, I never look a gift house in the mouth". [Boom, tish and long tom full that doesn't come back on the beat...]

One thing I've done as a result of all this is to chart out the songs as the band plays them with notes to explain. One day they might need a dep or a replacement and having this reference material is going to save some bassist a lot of time. It could well be a fellow Basschatter. You're welcome. 😀

I'm the newbie and there's quite a few things above that on the list of things to be having chats about that will refine the set. Things are really positive and moving forward, I need to be selective and focus.

I'm currently getting my head around playing "those sections" of Times Like These in 4/4 time instead of 7/4. I can see the logic in making the decision but it's not difficult to count 3 / 4 then 4/4 to get to 7. That one is a lazy shortcut and and is now 15 years ingrained into 4 people so I'm "re-learning" it.

That post applies to pretty much exactly my situation in a previous band.

We grow our own apples, pears, plums, strawberries, rasberries and gooseberries and we also go blackberry picking. Most of it gets preserved as chutneys, relishes and jam except the strawberries which get eaten immediately. Other than that I don't think we ever buy or eat commercially available fruit.

We drop the 30 second organ intro to Faith but otherwise it's exactly like the record.

My current covers band and previous covers band made changes to songs that I don't really understand and I don't know the origins of. I'm not talking key changes or replacing a sax solo with a guitar part, I'm talking about structural changes. These changes include chord sequence changes, complete rewrites of sections, changing the way a song ends, changing the intro, etc Now, these aren't avant guarde bands, or artists doing reinterpretations. They're pub/club/function/festival covers bands. Some of it is so subtle it hardly seems worth it, some of it is just plain wrong, some of it seems like someone was just trying to be creative and add their own twist. I'm yet to come across one that is either an improvement or that is easier to reproduce than what is on the original. This must be a more common occurrence than I previously thought. I can't really remember dealing with it in the past. What's your experience of this sort of thing? A few I've experienced recently to get the ball rolling: 1. Mr Blue Sky (reprise at the end). Instead of 12 bars of Db then C then B etc there's a completely different ending that uses G A Bb with a riff. 2. Long Train Running. It goes G///|G///|Eb///|Eb/D/| at the end of the verses instead of G///|G///|Eb///|D///| I have to concentrate to not play it like the Doobies. 3. Message in a Bottle. Has a different ending that you'd never guess. 4. Other songs: the chord sequence for the guitar solo is simplified. I see some logic but knowing the skills of the guitarists, I just can't see why they needed it simplifying. 5. Summer of '69. After the guitar intro the band comes in on the A not the D.

Last Wednesday was my first rehearsal with the covers band I joined recently. They've been busy gigging for over 15 years and are keen to get me integrated. We went to Firebird Studios in Bristol, which I think is top notch. It's very well appointed. We got through 20 songs and other than a couple of bits where they deviate from the original recordings, I felt that we were pretty much giggable. A great bunch that have really welcomed me and gave me free reign to run the rehearsal as I wanted. They feel that as I'm new to the band but definitely not new to bands, that the best way was for me to drive the bus. I started us off with some easier songs to get warmed up then did what I considered to be the ones that might have needed some detailed attention and then went on to some of the more fun ones to play so that we would end on a high. Other than having to restart one song because I inadvertently trod on my FX power supply and disconnected it, everything went smoothly. We're back in this week doing the rest of the set and running through a few that are new to them too, so I'm really looking forward to us all being in the same boat from that respect rather than me playing catch up. Recording the rehearsal seemed to be a new concept and got a few questions. I explained that I intended to build a library of play-along tracks for home practise that will be better than using the original artist recordings. I also mentioned that it's just good practice for any band to record and listen back to gigs and rehearsals as QA/QC. I use a Zoom H2n and then slice up the file in Logic and use the generic mastering. It's pretty good and more than fit for purpose. Edit: The "deviations"? 1. Mr Blue Sky (reprise at the end). Instead of 12 bars of Db then C then B there's a completely different ending that uses G A Bb with a riff. 2. Long Train Running. It goes G///|G///|Eb///|Eb/D/| at the end of the verses instead of G///|G///|Eb///|D///| I have to concentrate to not play it like the Doobies. I don't know why or what the origins of these are, I'm just playing 'em "wrong" so it fits in. There were a lot more of these anomalies in my previous band and didn't understand any of them. It's almost like they've been put in there to trip up deps/newbies 😃 It's probably worth a thread of its own...

Yes, that's it. I played in a band with a chap that owned one and he had a Fender Strat sprayed to match. He'd play the first set with the Fender and then switch to the Bender later on. I think as many as 10 audience members noticed the switch over the years.

Tesco? Is that the place that used to secretly put horsemeat in its products and not tell the customers?

I hope it works out well. All the best.

I've played one of the Stratocasters and it was a very nice guitar to play.

Another sign of the times I guess. Tariffs are mentioned. Remember the politics guidelines we have. https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2026/01/17/harley-benton-to-close-u-s-reverb-store-ending-direct-u-s-distribution/