ambient

That’s something the book mentioned. We tend to learn in segments, even though we can play a particular bar or section perfectly, we sometimes struggle to play it in isolation, and need to play the bar or even a few bars approaching it beforehand.

That was like me at uni. I could remember what I needed to play for the time I needed it, then immediately forgot it.

That’s actually my favourite Rush song too. There’s a nice live version of that on live in Rio.

It’s actually quite at odds with the impression I had from listening to their 1980s music, which was my introduction to them. In that they’re anti-war and pro-environmental. It’s the road of life isn’t it? Full of twists and turns, and wrong turnings.

I was an occasional listener. They were certainly very good musicians. I prefer their roll the bones era music, which is the period when I was introduced to their music. I wasn’t to keen on their more recent music, and never liked their earlier music at all. Apparently their 2112 album was based on the writings of Ayn Rand, who was a pro-ultra right wing writer. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/13/rush-nme-interview-1978-rocks-backpages?fbclid=IwAR0QircyeWOvyTCZpnwoim3CZBpJvSvz6ELVom8xmdUsK4zzEfc4uNPiBHc

I was just reading about an early 20th-century conductor called Arturo Toscanini. Just before the start of a big concert one of the bassoon players hurried up to Toscanini, he was in a highly agitated state, and explained that he’d broken one of the keys on his instrument. Toscanini thought for a few seconds, then said ‘it’s alright, that note does not occur in tonight’s concert’. Apparently he knew every note for every instrument in that concert. That’s about 70 musicians and 2 hours of music. He also knew every note for every instrument in 250 odd other works from their repertoire, plus the words and music for 100 or so operas, and numerous other classical works. We had a class on my BMus course called LPW, which stood for live performance workshop. I hated it. Each week we had to learn a notated part, in my case it was the bass line, then perform it as part of a randomly picked ensemble. Some were quite easy, others were ridiculously hard. I always struggled to remember them, my best mark was in the jazz module, where we improvised and were allowed charts on stage. This is Toscanini destroying the bass section of an orchestra.

I went to one of the original bass days, in a music venue in Manchester. I quite enjoyed it. Janek Gwizdala and Yolanda Charles were both there. That’s got to be at least twelve years ago.

It would be pretty cool to go. They seem to have some amazing jams take place.

Always make sure you buy direct from the venue. There are lots of reseller sites making out they’re either the venue, or official ticket seller. It’s usually best to go via the artist's website. It’s not just concert tickets either. My mom paid about £50 extra for a passport renewal. The site looked like the genuine Gov.UK site. Luckily we managed to get the money back. My uncle had a similar thing with a US visa.

He has indeed. A really beautiful instrument.

Elrick make some beautiful instruments. I was at a Steve Lawson gig the other week, he’s started using them.

It was sad that Mark Hollis died last year. The colour of spring is an amazing album.

I’ve often wondered, do they really like those, or do they just pretend to, to please the band? “Ah god no! Oh well, better get up and make out we’re enjoying it, otherwise they’ll start playing an extended version of smoke on the water or something”.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Geddy-Lees-Beautiful-Book-Bass/dp/0062747835/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=geddy+lee's+big+beautiful+book+of+bass&qid=1578573650&sprefix=geddy&sr=8-1

I’ve taught via Skype. It can be frustrating for me as a teacher, I guess it’s the same for the students. You sometimes get a rather glitchy signal. I’ve recently used FaceTime which works a lot better.

What a fascinating thing to do. I toyed with the idea of a half-size double bass briefly last year; there’s a thread on here somewhere that I started. Lack of time prevented me from following through with it.

I think you did the best thing. Something as heavy as that is a two man lift, would guys working in the courier depot wait for someone to give them a hand, or simply roll it over, and over?

What would worry me, is who’d be responsible if it got damaged? How much is it to ship, fully insured?

I wouldn’t risk it tbh.