Oscar South

Hey guys, thanks for the help, its all been really useful. Two lessons in now and my student is doing pretty well, getting the basic technique down and develop a good internal rhythm.

[quote name='pete.young' post='241377' date='Jul 16 2008, 11:23 PM']Get yourself a copy of 20 Golden Tie-Slackeners by the Oyster Band, from www.oysterband.co.uk . This is a master-class in ceilidh bass playing by the legendary Iain Kearey, and in English ceilidh music in general. There's a lot more to it than just following the guitarist. And by god does it make you want to get up and dance! For something more current, Rick Kemp (yes, him of Steeleye fame) is currently playing with Whapweasel, who are my favourite current band. They have a number of CDs and are excellent live. Bellowhead also have some great bass lines, played on Tuba rather than bass guitar.[/quote] Cool, I'll get hold of that and have a look at it sometime soon, I've also got some CD by Whapweasel which I quite like, will be seeing them at Bromyard Folk festival too which I'm stewarding at for free tickets . Has anyone heard of Ben and Joe Broughton by the way? Joe is a great violin player and has played with various big folk names such as the Albion band, Ben is a really good guitarist/bassist and is my main instrumental tutor at university. [url="http://www.benandjoebroughton.co.uk/"]http://www.benandjoebroughton.co.uk/[/url]

I occasionally sub as bassist for a local Ceilidh band (gig coming up actually), the way this band operates is that the Melodeon player just plays tunes and everyone else plays along by ear, its not too difficult and the only real challenge is making sure you play the same as the guitarist (as the tunes can often be harmonised in a few different ways). I'm not sure how the regular bassist plays really as I've not been to any of their gigs that I didn't play at. The style doesn't really invite a very 'busy' bass role, my personnel approach consists of keeping a pretty even beat most of the time without much variation, broken up occasionally with a bit of Mccartney-Mingus-esque hybrid double time style walking (if you can imagine it ) on the more 'intense' parts and sometimes joining the melody in unison/parallel octaves. It just struck my however that apart from taking a little from Dave Pegg, I've really never looked at any reference point, what approach does anyone else who plays in the style take?

Heh, we play Summertime and Fever in my Jazz band, we do pretty unique and entertaining versions of them though and our singer does such a good job of those two that even with a midi backing track they'd probably still be amazing. One Jazz song that I don't specifically hate but do find quite boring to play is 'Fly Me To The Moon', a lot of singers seem to like it but to me it just feels very average.. generic chords, generic melody, generic lyrics etc. plus you always end up playing it in 4/4 because thats the time sig that all the singers learn it in.

When I practice at home I disconnect the multi band EQ circuit and nail my tone like that, the EQ sliders are only used live for acoustic correction. I usually try to memorise the effect of each individual slider of whatever amp I'm using, that way I can recognise and easily adjust whatever frequency is causing problems.

[quote name='steve-norris' post='233380' date='Jul 5 2008, 11:13 PM']I have had the same problem, only to find that the cable plugged into my bass is not the same one plugged into my amp [/quote] Haha, done that millions of times.

I agree about basses not needing to cost more than £5-600. My main bass is a TRB1005 and I've never played any instrument that feels or sounds so perfect, the only upgrade I'll ever make is to a different TRB (be it 4 or 6 strings or a higher end model), and I'd still be cautious. On the other hand though, any decent 410 with 7+band EQ, possibly compression and enough headroom to play loud with a really light touch will keep me more than happy.

Bass, its more about how intuitive to play and how much it draws you in to practice than how good it sounds personally.

I always get some chairs or a table or something and lift my cabs up for gigs with stages like this.

I want to try a short scale, but I doubt I'd like it more than 35", extreme low setup and extra heavy steels. Sweeeet tone and amazing to play.

Lets all move to Canada.

Theres nothing specifically wrong with academic approaches to improvising, apart from in a lot of cases people end up sounding almost the same as every other academically trained improviser.

I personally don't like the idea of academic approaches to learning improvisation (aside from more technical Jazz improvisation which is really psudo-improv), out of interrest what kind of approach does this book take?

[quote name='Faithless' post='237690' date='Jul 11 2008, 11:01 PM']What the hell 'double' compressing is needed for, huh?.. [/quote] They describe a setup like that in the manual, when I had a PodXT I tried it out and it actually sounds really good with a little tweaking.. it wasn't really overcompressed like you'd imagine, the PodXT compressors are quite transparent (maybe too transparent) and I managed to get a really nice clean sound from it.

I hate this recent elitist-regressive attitude towards bass gear. The people who enjoy building elaborate rigs, buying expensive basses and setting up complex pedal chains don't harass the people who choose not to about not doing it, so why can't you be content with not buying gear and let the people who do enjoy it get on with enjoying it?

I spotted a local furniture shop and asked there, got a big clear plastic bag that seems though enough.

I found an old cassette recorder with a mic that belongs to my dad and is about 10 years older than I am, but it actually sounds pretty decent (well a lot of background noise, but it picks up the sound well). I'll put some excerpts up soon.

Try looking at using 1-2-4 technique up to around the 5th or 7th fret, one finger per fret all over the neck is imo an unsuitable technique for bass thats been inherited from guitar playing whereas electric bassists would be better drawing from double bass technique. When I changed to 1-2-4 I could play longer, cleaner, faster, better etc. etc.

Its not specifically targeted at just you, theres been a few comments that I thought were just taking a morale high ground for the sake of it. I do disagree with your post in some respects too though, I think you got the wrong end of the stick.. I wasn't insulting the great bassists I was talking about (in fact I gave them a lot of praise), I was just talking about how other players have taken their styles off in the wrong directions to perhaps less great results. Ok so theres a bit of moaning involved but I think its a lot more interesting then the many 'favourate [thing]' threads where you just get 10 pages of people posting the same old names with very little discussion. Also I don't think that playing the same instrument as someone grants immunity from criticism, and in fact I would certainly not want that for myself.

I go for a 'blank slate' style sound, active bass tuned EADGC with extra heavy gauge strings and set up as low as physically possible, 80% bridge pickup, 20% neck, relatively flat EQs with adjustments based on acoustics and the state of my strings. I usually over-amplify but play very gently so it isn't too loud and use light compression, so I get a very even and full sound and can still get some kick out of accents. I also use MXR-M80 distortion when appropriate. Not amazingly unique, but I like it a lot and it suits my style, I play entirely different (and imo not as good) playing a Jazz Bass with a medium setup or similar basses.

Enough with the moral high ground, its just an excuse for discussion.

Tom Sawyer... because for most of the song he just sings the bassline 2 octaves higher I think the bassline for Ziggy Startdust works well with the song, the basslines to Circumstances and I'm Only Sleeping (that Em triad fill before the guitar comes back in.. <3) are a few personal favourates. Any Pinback bassline/lyric combo.