jonnythenotes

One that sounds easy is Riders on the storm by the doors..... Very similar to Billy Jean, but a lot more tricky....

Hi Horizontal....... White one.....

A boxer only knows how good he is when he fights outside his own town. My personal opinion is it is very easy to set up a circuit of pubs in your own back yard, but it can become a bit of a chore as you seem to exist in a time warpy / Ground Day environment. Also, unless the band constantly updates the set, the audience get over familiar with the same thing as they saw you do a mile down the road yhe previous weekend. Try and bang in a few new venues, and it is much more satisfying to have a new audience applauding for what you have done.... Just what I think....

I know I am really lucky on that one.....helps make up for all the stuff I did lose out on...which is quite a bit....

I bought it new last year from PMT in Birmingham..... I paid £980 for it. It had been hanging around in the shop for two years... They had forgotten to put it on there web site and never noticed... Know one new it was there, and over time, as the lack of perceived interest continued, they kept lowering the price on it, thinking they had a lemon on their hands..when I first realised it was there, and what it was, the deal was done in 2 minutes..... The original price they had it up for when they got it was £2300. It was literally pushed to the back of the shop, believe it or not with a BB2025X (again not on the web site) which was marked up £1200... (negotiable) I went back a couple of weeks later and the 2025X was sold, awaiting collection. Luckiest bass buy of my life...

I posted this thread 4,weeks ago when I was just getting used to my BB2024X. In that 4 weeks, I have absolutely fallen head over heels for this bass. Yes it's expensive, and for that kind of cash, you really can start being picky about a lot of super quality basses. But this is a the top of my heap at the moment. To put it in context, my 'heap' consists of a Trace Elliot 5 string T bass, Mike Lull 5 string, Wood and Tronics J4. First run Music Man Sabre...and the Yamaha, and it's the only one that's passive, yet at the moment it's getting much more use than the others..... It really is an incredible piece of kit....

Another way of looking at this..... A good quality band....(agent fodder,) as individuals will have invested countless hours learning their instrument, and thousands of pounds over the years on their kit. Multiply this by four or five band members, and you are looking at a huge investment of time and money. Agents who operate sometimes at home, whose investment is a phone, a wall planner, a glittery web site and whose idea of a hard days work is cruising around looking for bands at showcase nights and Friday night pub or club gigs,in my opinion should fall to their knees in the presence of a hard working band. The words 'money' and 'old rope' spring to mind. An 'agent' or a bloke with a phone, can send a band out, where they have to slog their guts out for a whole day and night sometimes, to earn the bloke with the phone more than they will recieve as individuals. And the best bit is, some bands get worried if the bloke with the phone stops ringing for a week or two... There really is some inverted logic there that I don't quite understand....

Hi Dan. I used to work with a few agencies, but I became pretty resentful of there... %age,...greed, ...holding on to money past their 30 days,.... " I'm doing you a favour" attitude,...etc. I found most of them to be obnoxious, money grabbing, grubby people who had no interest in either the bands, or the client, only their own interests. I am not saying this about all agents, just my bad luck with the ones I had dealings with. Now we have a band member who handles all gigs, from small venues, right up to corporate events. We deal directly with the client, get all requirements first hand, and usually on first name terms. The fees have changed in that we now take all of the agreed fee, without the agents cut of what he ' told you' was the fee for the gig in the first place. There is nothing a band cannot do that they pay an agent for, and usually when a band do take on, and run their own bookings properly, everything is completely visible, above board and 100% in the bands control, instead of this game piggy in the middle agents play. This obviously only applies to bands and artistes operating at a certain level, and I would not expect Muse or U2 to cut out their agent.

Don't forget ..... At a wedding or a landmark birthday, people will quite happily spend more on a fancy 3 tiered cake, or a table full of Iceland processed whale sticks and deep fried chicken entrails than they want to pay a 5 or 6 piece band,( who will be at the venue for 12 hours sometimes.) 5 people at a pathetic 7 quid an hour for a 10 hour gig is £700. ( this excludes travel time and fuel.) 7 quid an hour is less than the minimum wage yet these folks nearly faint when you tell them £700, but are quite prepared to pay a DJ £300 to stand there next to his kit all night and mumble the odd word between songs... That's £30 an hour... Next time someone offers you £400 for an all day wedding, tell them to cram there wedding cake and bread sticks up the best mans kilt...

Thanks Essex..... The ability to not enjoy your music is about as bad a thing as anyone can go through.....If my experience of this problem, and a porential remedy can help other folks, that's great.....

Les...... I have had problems for years with hearing loss and seemingly random bouts of deafness.... particularly first thing in the morning. It got to the stage where I could not put my head underwater as water would get in, but not get out, become almost stagnant, and cause infection. I lost all of my high frequency hearing, could only hold the phone to my left ear, as the right one was so bad, and had to ask people to repeat almost everything they said, unless it was spoken loudly in the first place. The worst thing though was all the sounds I was hearing seemed to mix up into one jumbled drone with no definition. A busy pub, or playing in the band was awful, some times worse than others as my ability to focus in on, or filter things out vanished. I had them syringed a couple of times over the last 5 years, but each time I developed a severe infection as the force of the water actually damaged my ear drum, and only removed some of the wax, which very quickly clogged up again. Three months ago, it got so bad I became permanently deaf in my right ear, and went to my local GP. This doctor said instead of syringing again as it is so invasive, and carried out by a busy practice nurse, he made me an appointment at my local hospital for micro suction. Six weeks later I had this done under controlled conditions, by an audiologist, and registered nurse, and the difference,( which was instant,) was absolutely amazing. After 15 minutes of what I will call a minor and painless op, the problem was fixed. The amount of compacted wax that came out of both ears was incredible. The cure but was immediate, and has been a permanent fix. It is a system whereby the wax is removed by a tiny high pressure vacuum, like a drinking straw, and a small spoon to fetch bigger lumps out. When they had finished, I could hear so well, it became a bit confusing, as I got so dizzy, (which is normal,) I had to sit down while my ears, and balance system re adjusted to normality. I know I have gone on a bit, but unless you experience this wax compaction, and what it does to you, people have no conception of how it can ruin your life.... My advice Les....get back to the doctor, and get on the list for audio micro suction.... Hearing loss creeps up on you so slowly, you get used to it, it becomes normal, and you don't even realise you are dealing with it until it really becomes unbearable.... Hope this helps... And DON'T accept syringing as an option...

Well done, and stick with it...

Any band who suffers a loose cannon as part of the band, is asking for trouble..... It's ok playing in front of a few mates, or a very partisan crowd, what's the worst that can happen if it goes a bit sideways...? everyone has a laugh about it, and you might not get a return gig... No big deal really.. Now attatch a contract to a gig, or play at a wedding, or maybe a corporate event. Pull off a few stunts like being drunk, bad language, being un unprofessional, and you really are in big trouble.. Muck up a wedding or a 40th birthday party, not only will you get sued for ruining a day that only happens once in a lifetime,, but there is a chance you might get a good pasting for your trouble....I have seen it happen. With unreliable or suspect band members, don't even think about planning ahead,as a future does not exist for you, or if it does, it will be very short lived.... unless your happy in front of your mates and in your own back yard..

Jump ship.....

If you Google 100 Greatest Northern Soul Songs, it will bring you the list up of that 100. With Northern Soul, obscurity was everything, and once a song started to bleed through into the main stream, or even ' the charts' it went out of favour. To pick 3 of the most popular, that would be familiar to a lot of folks would be Gloria Jones, Tainted Love.... Tami Lynn, I'm Gonna Runaway From You, And Al Wilson....The Snake. The Snake in particular has a terrific bass line that moves up a semitone 2 or 3 times to great effect, raising the excitement in the song as it does this, but that might be one you might want to park up for a while as it can be a little tricky to get a quick result from.. Learning this type of stuff is a must for getting into funk, as it requires speed and dexterity with both hands,which is what Funk is all about... All the best...

I've got an Orange terror SP 2x12 combo and a matching extension cab for sale in the 'amps and cabs for sale' section. That would do the trick... Either a 2x12 or a 4x12 combination.. And it's very portable....

Hi Alex....It seems a lot of the focus is on new speakers or cab design, volume, bottom end, top end, mixing and matching different speakers etc. The thing I would like to see resolved more than anything is a speaker that allows me to control where I hear it.. A lot of venues we as bass players are involved with are small, with space being pretty limited to say the least. This invariably leads to us standing so close to the cab, we can't hear it, as the sound cant manifest itself in the space we have been shoe horned into. So the old ' Ill turn it up a bit nightmare begins' which you will understand better than anyone. I would like to see a similar system to a cars air vent being applied to the grill of a cab, so you can in effect point some , or all of the sound at an angle up from the grill face of the front of the cab. In other words, whatever size the front of the cab is, the top half, or a portion of this should be adjustable so you can achieve a monitor type set up, but without having to tilt the cab back, which fires all the sound up in the air.. The closer you are to the cab, the more 'up' adjustment you would apply....There ya go.....it's in print,and if you make million, I want my free Barefaced cab...

Dead on Discreet..... If the offer is made to get with him on a one to one basis, and he starts to squirm and try and wriggle out of it, then you will know it's time to give him the bullet.... Figuratively of course, not a real one made of lead....

Early Supremes, any Tamla Motown or Stax. The really early stuff was much simpler in its construction, so I would give that a listen first before you move into the 70's where it became more produced... Also Northern Soul is a fantastic place to start, as the time signatures are almost always on the beat, and every beat. They are also very predictable patterns to follow.. Think of Tainted Love.... It sounds odd, but if you can't pick a specific song up straight away, don't spend ages over it, find another 'quick hit' to learn and get a few in the bag that way, but ALWAYS return to the ones you have parked up, and finish them as your understanding and competence grows.

He is a passenger.... He is putting nothing in, that's why he is asking you, or his phone, or his music stand, (complete with bits of scribbled paper placed on it)what the hell to do. A band relies totally on everybody's faith in their fellow band members to get it right all of the time. If you have got a member who can't provide this guarantee, then you have a gig where all you seem to do is live with the fear and stress of something going wrong, and when it does, band confidence hits the deck. Things will always go wrong in live music, but a good band recognises what has gone wtong and fixes it there and then, mid song.This ability to fix it comes from knowing the songs well. This bloke must finish rehearsing with you, pack his stuff away, and his gear doesn't see the light of day again until your next rehearsal, when out comes the phone, the music stand, the ' how does this one go' questions again. Good bands are not put together in rehearsal rooms, they are put together by musicians putting in unseen hours at home, to learn and iron out problems before hand. They then turn up at the rehearsal and put together all the pieces they have learnt, which in itself is sometimes better than gigging it... A first band run thru of a song that is 90% there is a great feeling. If you and the other band members are putting all the work in, and he is letting you do it, and then cannibalising what you have done because he can't be bothered, he does not deserve you or the band, unless of course you are prepared to work with a lazy, noncommittal user.... Even mates can't get away with that..

I reckon we have all had those moments when we have heard a song on the radio, and it changed everything that you thought was good before that... Not necessarily what made you pick up the bass for the first time, and you don't even have to like them now. Either a full album or a single, and go for 5 of them. Mine as follows.. Master Of Reality, Black Sabbath..full album....got me into metal.... Virginia Plain...single....Roxy Music...got me out of metal and into sax and synth.... Judy Teen....single... Cockney Rebel....got me into, and made me take up playing violin, which eventually led to playing bass.... A Wizard A True Star..full album..Todd Rundgren...got me into listening to how music can be layered, and the importance of structure. Sex Machine...single..James Brown...got me into what is still my main passion in music..Funk... There, my 5 life changing songs that happened in the length of time it takes to listen to a single or a 12" album, between 3 and 40 minutes. These were real stop me in my tracks and kick me in the spuds moments, and have collectively changed my life completely, and without them I would have led a totally different, and none musical life...

The thing with being a Bass player, is as a rule you are the most continually loud thing on stage, people can feel you in the car park 200yds from the venue. When you stop playing, most of what people are hearing vanishes...It's ok having the power to move the air around you, and have people 'feel' what you are doing in their stomachs, but all this power is pointless without the ability to control it... You can't just pull the trigger and hope for the best, it needs to be focused and used where it is most effective. The best players are aware of this, and use there ability not to just play the right notes in the right order, but to support and enhance the rest of the band by providing the perfect framework for everything else to work around. I have said it before, but volume does not equate to skill or audience enjoyment, control is what does this..

Just turn up with your gear in the car....check out what's on stage, and make a decision on what to use there and then. If you are not happy with what's already provided, go to plan B...your gear in the back of the car....

Lay down that funk...... Do you spell it with a 'k' or an 'N'..