Oscar South

[quote name='OldGit' post='365392' date='Dec 29 2008, 11:56 AM']Oscar, What tunes are on your jam session play list now? OG[/quote] Currently: An arrangement of 'Yesterday' (very basic, I wrote it 2.5 years ago now and havn't revised it since) An arrangement of 'Mad World', I didn't write this one 'Vanishing' by Jean Baudin 'Frosy Acres' by Jean Baudin I'm currently finishing off arrangements for 'Ziggy Stardust' and 'In My Life'. I'm generally just sticking to arrangments of well known songs at the moment, goes down better at open mic nights etc., which are where I mainly play this stuff atm.

The best two slap tones I've heard are from a Jazz or a Stingray, very different sounds though, the Fender has a really nice mid heavy sound which has a punchy attack and good presence in the mix while the Stingray has really well defined treble and bass for a nice clean percussive attack with lots of warm low end, very Hi-Fi sounding.

I agree about the strings thing, I personally prefer playing 4 strings but I play 5 (tenor) for solo bass as while its not essential (and more rhythmic based players such as Michael Manring really thrive with 4), it really lifts the upper limit of whats harmonically, melodically and timbrally possible. Interestingly, you can almost guarentee (heard it in 95% of my performances) that someone in the audience will observe "6 string bass!" when I walk on stage... even though I play a 5 string .

I've been a fan of solo bass for years, used to listen to a bunch of solo bass artists CDs, always practiced solo techniques on top of any 'regular' bass playing. For a few years I went off it but over the last year I started playing solo bass arangements of popular songs at gigs and open mic nights, nothing incredible.. just tapping and occasionally artificial harmonics type stuff. On message boards solo bass seems to take a lot of stick, you always get a big crowd of Fender players (ok, this is a generalisation, take it with a pinch of salt) who are adamant that it 'isn't actually bass playing', that 'nobody other than bassists wants to hear it', that 'its pointless and boring' etc. etc.. Well I've never come across this; without fail EVERY time I've played it I've had members of the public come up to me, tell me its incredible, tell me I should be famous, tell me they've never seen anything like it. Last week I went to an open mic night which has always been a 'Britpop covers, heavy drinking drinking and fights at closing time' type night, I went on earlyish to a moderate non-crowd that was scattered around the pub not really paying attention to the music, by the time I finished I had 90% of the people in the pub around the stage area watching me, it took me 20 minutes to leave the pub later on because people kept stopping me to tell me they thought it was great and to chat. I've gotten multiple paid gigs and been asked to record bass (solo techniques and 'regular' bass playing) for some really good and interresting music on the back of playing solo bass at open mic nights. The picture in my avatar is actually a sketch someone at a recent open mic made of me while I was playing. I think this post sounds more arrogant than I intended, I'm by no means the be-all-end-all of solo bass, what I do is very basic and most people could do it with a week or so of working on it, one day when I've got more free time and less 'regular bass playing' commitments I'm going to try and take it further. The point of this post is to say that I hope in the future solo bass can continue to develop as a viable musical form, I think its stagnated a lot in recent years, there were a few reletively high profile and incredibly talented solo bassists a few years ago most of whom seem to have stopped pushing the genre forwards with so much momentum or given up on being a 'solo artist' in favour of more conventional bass playing (got to make a living huh?), I think this has taken some of the steam out of it temporarily until some fresh faces appear on the scene or old ones kick back into action. Even more than this though, I hope that it develops as an artform in local music performing scenes, which I find infinately more enjoyable to just hearing about artists who I'll likely never meet or see play. Finally, the actual original point of this post until I got sidetracked was to ask if there are any other performing (or aspiring) solo bassists posting here, and to ask about their own experiances. Also, I'd be happy to pool arrangements, compositions and transcriptions if anyone else would like to; one of the biggest limiting factors in the genre is that there is basically no established repetoire so its very hard for beginners to get into it. If we could set up some kind of resource with a bunch of solo bass pieces it might encourage some more players to explore it. Thanks for reading this essay if you made it this far, Oscar.

[quote name='budget bassist' post='361597' date='Dec 23 2008, 12:27 AM']Haha, wow, that's not bad for £7.50! As for the little metal things, they're called ferrules, and you should be able to get them, and just about anything else from [url="http://www.allparts.uk.com/"]www.allparts.uk.com[/url] As for a fendery sound, get some fender pickups, doesn't get much more fendery than that. I've also heard wizard pickups sound good.[/quote] Ok cool, I had a look for generic 'Fender pickups' but couldn't find anything labeled specifically that, but will any 'replacement' type set of pickups have the same kind of sound? Also, P/J sets seem to be uncommon, can I just wire up a seperate P and J pickup if it comes down to that? Or do I need a specific set. [quote name='budget bassist' post='361597' date='Dec 23 2008, 12:27 AM']As for the bridge... looks like a strange screw arrangement, i'm not sure what you could get for that unless you were confident enough to drill your own holes. A badass II might fit it with another two screw holes needed. But it might not.[/quote] I'm ok putting some new holes in, I'm just concerned about buying a bridge that has holes in the bottom for the strings to feed into string-though holes in the body. [quote name='budget bassist' post='361597' date='Dec 23 2008, 12:27 AM']You know... that would look really nice if you sanded it down, stained it red and clearcoated it again...[/quote] Interresting.. I'll ask someone to have a mess around in photoshop and see what it looks like. Thanks for the help.

I came to aquire this bass today (ok, well part of a bass, but when the guy I bought it off finds the rest of the parts hes going to post it to me). Obviously its not in perfect condition but it looks nice, I've no idea of what brand it is but I assume its nothing special as any insignia has been covered (you can see 2 thin sheets of wood have been applied to the headstock). Its just a piece of wood at the moment either way though, I'm going to make a project of it. I plan to sand off the finish and reapply it then put some new components in and try and make it into something really nice looking/sounding. I've not decided if I'm going to make it fretless or not, I might well defret it though (depends on the condition of the fretboard and the quality of the fretwork really, I'll see when I take that tape off). To get things rolling I'm trying to put together a list of all the components I need and where I can get hold of them, can anyone help me out with this? Here it is so far: Bridge (its a string-through-body bass, will just any bridge work with this or do I need something specific?) Nut Those little metal hoops on the back that you thread the strings through (what are these called? Where can I get them?) Machine Heads Electronics/pots/knobs As for pickups/electronics I want to get a somewhat Fendery sound out of it, obviously I'm not really going to get a Fender sound out of it but thats the direction that I'm aiming for, can anyone recommend what kind of pickups/electronics I should get for this? I don't really want to spend ages picking out parts so help here is really appreciated, never done this kind of project before. Also, can anyone recommend any good sites to order parts from in the UK? I had a look on google but couldn't really find anywhere decent. Cheers, Oscar.

[quote name='MacDaddy' post='360174' date='Dec 21 2008, 12:44 PM']Sounds dodgy to me. If he(she) is a MU member they have public liability insurance. The area of musical instrument teaching is unregulated though. I wouldn't trust any instrumental teacher who couldn't read music, and didn't know about the Alexander technique.[/quote] Whats this Alexander technique? I'm pretty well educated in bass playing, had a few different teachers, been playing a moderate while and done some teaching of my own, and I've never heard of it.

I'm not much of a Jaco fan, but that was awesome.

Eh, some people just have issues with improvising. I've known a few really good musicians who are otherwise excellent at learning and playing very difficult stuff who have had trouble with it. Maybe some people just let their skill in improvisation fall behind their ability to learn music by rote, and they feel they can't hold themselves to their otherwise high standards when put on the spot, making them feel insecure about doing it. I dunno.

[quote name='Waldo' post='353174' date='Dec 12 2008, 09:42 PM']Rush without Geddy Lee's voice, the best way to listen to it [/quote] Rush [b]is[/b] Geddy's Voice.

Yea, just go to and play at open mics and stuff, chat to people and make new friends. I've gotten a ton of gigs this year just from doing that, through new contacts and from being asked from the open mic venue to play a gig there, plus its great fun in itself. Also your best bet ad wise is to put up and answer ads in music shops. The effort and interpersonal contact involved in putting one up or responding to one seems to filter out most of the idiots.

I didn't really like that, he's a good player but he messes with it too much (messing with that song at all is too much) and it just kills the groove, thus killing the song. If you want to hear a good version of that song come down to Alexander's Jazz Bar in Chester tomorrow (mon 8th) evening

[quote name='OldGit' post='347695' date='Dec 7 2008, 08:20 AM']It's only £3 ... Go on, risk it [/quote] Go on then, as its Christmas.

I'll buy it if I can see a good example of the solo bass stuff.

The Peaches one is a bit rough really, we were messing around a lot and the sound is pretty bad. Such a fun song to play though, we learned the "heres to another great italian" bit with the crazy guitar solo at the end too but didn't play it that time.

Heres another one from the same day of us playing Peaches III by Frank Zappa, unfortunately the recorder was too close to the bass amp for this one: [url="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=47473917"]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...ideoID=47473917[/url]

I'm playing 'background music' at a christmas fair next tuesday and as we've got a lot on gig and uni wise this week already we've decided to take along a stack of lead sheets and a singer who can sight read and work through them. Should be great practice too . Is there anywhere to get hold of a bunch on the net? I wouldn't mind paying a fee for them, it'd just be easier to have them on my computer to print multiple copies off than going round music shops looking for one and then photocopying a bunch of songs off it etc. Cheers, Oscar.

Don't plan it, just have it ready on your pedal board, make sure to give it a good volume boost or you'll just drop out of the mix, you'll know when the moment is right.

We played this at our assessment this week, this is a run through at some point the week before. Timing needed working on in a few places and I forgot a few tapping licks in the middle but it sounds good and I reckon we nailed it in the assessment. [url="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=47471761"]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...ideoID=47471761[/url]

Everyone criticizes every style until they learn to do it themselves.

Bass solos have just gotten a bad name because there are too many bad bassists.

I was at that gig too, Paul Gilbert was pretty damn good, glad he played Scarified. Was the keyboard player his wife or daughter or something? She was pretty good (apart from using a really generic piano sample), drummer was really good too.

I was messing about in Sibelius and had the idea of setting my name (in morse code) to music, I arranged it in the style of a brass band with timp and put it through reason for some decent samples and eq. Enjoy.