julietgreen

Can anyone help me out with the basics of what the bassist is doing on this (not the pedal but the rest). Band have given me chords that don't seem to fit. Is that an F motif to start or a C? Am I hearing the kettle drum instead of bass? I'm not great at extracting basslines and I bet some of you are excellent at it. (Yes, I know, practise etc. etc.).

Quite

We could. If we pursued an elimination strategy as recommended by the Independent Sage group and as some countries have done. But that would require people not going to gigs now.

And calling it in the wrong key because they think an A-7 chord at the start means it's in A-!

Nope. It's very different in my mind because the sax can noodle wherever. If I play a 'bum' note, it's quickly resolved into something less bum. But I feel the bass player needs to lay down the correct chords for the rest of the band. From the answers in this thread, it seems that it's something that comes with practice playing with and to other musicians without having the sheets available. I need to just work up the nerve.

I have great admiration for rhythm section musicians who can jam. As a sax player, I can usually join in because it's melody and improvisation and I can hear the tonality but the actual chords are not crucial. I don't have the nerve to do that as a bassist. How do you do it? Have you played so much you know the repertoire? Do you know standard chord sequences? Do you hear the chords when you hear a piece of music? Are you really clever? All of the above? Obviously, I can do it with things like the blues, but otherwise, do I just have a lot of homework to do?

I've told mine the criterion. I've said when the official new infection figure (and that is just the tip of the iceberg) is <100. That's it. They can't hassle. Current official new infection number is hovering around 500 - 600 and not going down. Today masks were mandated, which is a good thing because otherwise the projection looks like this https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

So much good sense on this thread. I think bass players should be in government.

Jamulus is a reasonable way to continue to interact with fellow musicians and actually broaden the network. I've been using it to play with the jazz band that I had recently joined just before Covid-19. It's kept some of us going - learning new stuff, even. Last week, I had a jam on sax, blowing through some standards with a bunch of complete strangers and we all said we would do that again this week. A couple of us (kb and sax) started it off in a 'room' and when other people saw that there was something going on, they joined us so that we ended up with a full band. Delay and sound quality issues could put some people off. I found on occasions, playing busier riffs, that the sound coming back to my ears late made it almost impossible. The drummer in our jazz band doesn't listen to himself through the system, for this reason, though that is not advised. I've noticed that he tends to slow down through a number, because we're coming through late in his ears. Apparently the brain does eventually adjust as long as the delay isn't too high. My set-up operates at between 40 - 50ms which isn't great but it's not terrible. 20ms is good. If you lower the buffer size, you get a lower delay, but the sound quality goes, so it's a juggling act. Every week, there's a group who hold an online streamed 'WorldJam' which is often excellent and involves random musicians from all over. I joined last week briefly on sax and again this week. Because they had technical hitches this week, they were pushed for time and didn't talk to each of the jammers. That's why I was called by the wrong name and missed the start of my solo and also why I hadn't noticed I had my 'mute myself' box checked and therefore couldn't be heard anyway! What an idiot! Still, I noticed that the eminent professors in the iSage conference kept forgetting to turn on their mics, so I'm not alone. It's worth a try if you're missing playing with others. There is a preponderance of bassists, apparently. I wonder why that is.

Are they fit to show us yet?

😂Is there a thread called 'bass guitars I have owned'?

Well lockdown has forced me to play my first bass solos - jamming on Jamulus and not having enough soloists to give the keyboard player a break. Hilarious but no pressure. It made me think of the other first times for bass, like the first ever gig. I'd been playing a couple of months when Chris Gibbons (guitar) told me I was going to play with him at a charity gig. Parts of it were ok! I described my first ever sit in on a jazz gig not so long ago. That was kind of breakthrough. One day I'll do my first gig on the DB! That one might be a good while in the future. What about you?

This on the request of the guitarist who is doing jamulus with us this pm.

No but found myself going the wrong way up the motorway when my phone satnav died. No junctions for long enough for me to start panicking. I was glad I'd left early.

I found that when I tried to play them yesterday, if I didn't think about it, muscle memory did pretty well. But then there were complete blanks. I probably remembered about 80%

Funnily enough, that's my other instrument! I can remember stuff on sax if I never saw it as dots. I struggle much more if I ever played it from the music.

Exactly so. It's very bad of me to not keep the stuff I used to know, fresh in my head.

It's been a few years since my band Semillon folded and I haven't played the repertoire since. It was a nice mix of hard rock and old rock covers. It occurred to me recently that if I were to find myself in a jam (online or otherwise) where one of the tunes I used to know were being played, I probably wouldn't be able to join in because I've forgotten them! So I ran through some of our old numbers and I have remembered them only in part. Sometimes I'll get to a section and go blank. It shows me how much I need to keep things fresh. I bet some of you have perfect memories for things you once learned. That's never been me on any of my instruments.

Ooh. That's delightful. And educational.

Yep. It's a thought. Or anywhere but UK/USA.

He's probably wise.

I'm happy with the proliferation of online bands and some great communities have sprung up. I've enjoyed using jamming software to play with people I haven't met. As a bassist, that works fairly well and, yeah, we can do some jazz that way quite effectively. But as a horn player in a soul band the gigs are the thing more than the music (it's not my first choice of music but the band are great people) and so playing live is essential. It's one of those bands - pubs, parties, weddings etc. I do wonder if we'll ever be back to playing. How can those events be safe?

Almost snap. A good friend caught it at his last gig before lockdown. Has not come off the ventilator yet. There will be damage.

The impact of climate change and the 'ramping up' of authoritarianism?

I don't want to undermine my electric bass playing. I'm presuming from what I've seen of bass players who double that it's possible to do both without negatively impacting on either?