Staggering on

Last night was another concert with my teacher's Young Artists Orchestra, as usual augmented by a few adults in the bass and cello sections since a lot of the kids are too small to play the larger instruments. For some of the easier pieces about 7 of the youngest players aged 5, 6 and 7 joined us on stage for a total more than 35 musicians and as usual it was a great evening with a nice mixture of Christmas songs and the audience of about 300 loved it. Most of the kids started in my teacher's program at age 3 or 4 and so the oldest at 19 are very skilled musicians. For the fourth time my teacher asked me to add to the bass section and this year there were three bassists, two of them play better than I do and they are 9 and 16! I have learned a lot in two and a half years of lessons but these kids are fantastic, the younger one was a prize winning violinist until September when she decided to play bass and she is amazing on it, very smart and very dedicated. I wish I had started with the bow when they did at age 4 instead of 75, I am by far the oldest in the orchestra (78) and get immense pleasure from being a part of the group and as a side benefit my playing has improved and carries over into my jazz and bluegrass gigs. Here's the bass section after the concert.

I have one of the Stagg stands and it worked well with the Stagg EUB that I had, solid and secure. When I sold the Stagg I kept the stand to use with my Yamaha SLB 200 and have had no problems. Lots of things to adjust including the endpin support and the top of the stand although you might have to add or modify some parts.

...not to mention the vibration of the warm wood against your body makes it seem like the bass is alive and loves to make music. Hmmm, I guess that sounds a bit weird and some might be wondering what I'm really thinking about when I'm playing, but it's all good clean fun, although I do enjoy "dancing" with her when I play. 😊

Looks great and you will have a lot of fun with "Lilly". In your other thread it was suggested that it was a Czech bass, just like my '70's Czech bass "Peaches" but I like your fingerboard and tailpiece better than the plain ebony on mine. As others have said it is real workhorse and I use it for bluegrass and some jazz and folk, photo from earlier this week below, I put it in the "How Was Your Gig " thread a couple of days ago. Fun to play and loud, I use Spiro Mittels, I changed from the Obligatos that came with it and it totally transformed the sound. Enjoy!

A bit of an odd one, just three of us from our five person bluegrass band played a dinner gig (6-8) at a restaurant/pub in downtown North Bay. It is very long narrow room, not very good for live music and the owners are just wanting to see if music at that time would be a good idea. We played a couple of "bluegrassyish" sets with mostly standard bluegrass songs but some Gordon Lightfoot, Everly Brothers and a couple of other country or pop tunes and it went down well with the fairly small crowd. We kept the volume down so we could be heard but not disturb conversations and it worked out well, a number of compliments and even the staff seemed to enjoy it. We all know that being at the end of a long narrow room is about the worst way to set up but the people who wanted to hear better had tables closer to us and all the diners and drinkers seemed happy with the set up. This was our first gig as a trio and we were a bit worried about how it would go but now we are hoping to get a return gig and maybe gigs at other venues too. We don't take up much room and we aren't too loud and play an unusual mix of music and we are cheaper than bigger bands. Bluegrass is a summer festival type of music here so it's good to have a few gigs in the quiet time of the year. Edit: just got word we are invited back for next Tuesday.👍

Lucky you, I would love to land a gig like that! Are you using any type of amplification? Your choice of mic/pickup/amp may have some bearing on the strings that you use, some pickups make all strings sound more or less the same.

Decent crowd last night for a Restoration Jazz Band gig at a rented hall. This time we had a guest vocalist and she was fabulous, only had three rehearsals with her but she's a real find, she has done lots of musical theatre stuff but had never sung with a band and the audience loved it. Odd set up, we will move the drummer in next time, he couldn't hear us very well and at times we couldn't hear him, he's usually between me and the keys. A few flubs on my part but several compliments on the sound of my Shen SB100. As usual I used a Schatten Design pre amp mounted on my music stand, it has a volume control and I use the Bose to EQ my sound. First gig using my NUX wireless from bass to pre amp and very happy with it, after several years my Boss wireless started making strange noises so I replaced it with the NUX. All in all a good gig.😊

As a double bassist you become the coolest guy on stage by default, it's the bass. I must admit I have actually twirled the bass on its endpin at a gig about three times in the last nine years, I save it for very special moments.😊

Same thing in Ontario, there is a festival somewhere almost every weekend in the summer and then nothing except a few jams and the odd touring band concert from September to June. You nailed it with "subculture", I have only played festivals for the last two years and at first I was surprised when I saw hundreds of trailers and motorhomes at various festivals and then noticed that everyone knows everyone else and they migrate around on weekends almost as a group. Lots of jams for those who play and enthusiastic audiences for jams and shows. The thing that struck me most was how incredibly friendly everyone is, and unlike some other types of music, no ego issues. All the musicians, including the touring pros, will chat with you and discuss music, instruments and anything else. Great fun and I'm looking forward to next summer.

Over here most bluegrass festivals happen in small towns and rural areas away from the big cities and are run by local committees who are familiar with the bands available. In some cases I expect they may use agents for the big name touring bands. Our BL is president of the Bluegrass Music Association of Canada so he knows a lot of people involved in festivals and has played at many of them and this is an advantage for us. Canada is a huge place so we play mostly in central or northern Ontario. We have band members who live hours apart and get the set list ahead of time and then we do a few run throughs at the festival before we play our sets. Only three of us live close enough to have regular rehearsals and one of us (BL) heads to Florida for most of the winter, luckily we have enough experience to pull it all together when we need to. At this point we are booked at a big festival in Tottenham (Ontario) in June and will probably play at River Valley and Owen Sound. Sorry for the rambling post, but we are not the typical bluegrass band.

The real rehearsal was yesterday at 4:00 in the afternoon when three of our five piece bluegrass band met to go over some of our material and try a few new songs for festivals we are booked at next summer. With mandolin, guitar and me on DB we worked out some good arrangements of some traditional bluegrass songs and a few bluegrass arrangements of some non bluegrass ones as well, lots of fun and some nice three part vocals. The day started with a jazz jam at 10:00 in the morning with a guitar player and drummer that I have played with in several bands over the years. We are old guys (I'm 78) and the only one still gigging in the bluegrass band and a 7 piece swing/jazz band so we just call out a song and find a chart and have some fun. The guitarist has made some backing tracks with chords so we can jam along with that or just play without the tracks...great fun and always something to learn and work on with no pressure and no egos, we have no plans to play anywhere except in the drummer's basement. In between these two sessions I had my weekly hour long DB lesson and after two years my bowing is getting a lot better. I work on all sorts of music from Bach to jazz and my teacher is more than happy to help me figure out the best ways to play some of the jazz charts for the seven piece band and also work on some Simandl. This week he asked me to help out the bass section of his youth orchestra for their Christmas concert and gave me the music. Most of the 30+ students in the orchestra are too small to play cello and bass so he adds a few adults to fill out the sections, this will be the fourth concert I have played with them and it is fun and challenging for me, really looking forward to the orchestra rehearsals. It's an hour drive to the city where all this takes place and it was a long day but very satisfying and I always come home pumped and ready to start practicing. Next rehearsal is Monday night with the swing band, we have a gig next Friday. I consider myself very lucky to have so much music in my life. 😊

Best purchase was a set of Spirocore Mittel strings for the '70's Czech ply bass I use for bluegrass. It is MUCH louder and clearer with the Spiros and I can hold my own in acoustic jams which was impossible with the Obligatos that were on it and it sounds even better when it is amplified. I played it at four festivals this summer and it stays in tune in all kinds of weather conditions and is a joy to play.

Same thing happens if I try to log in using Chrome but it works OK with Safari (Bing). It's been like this for a few days. I am practically computer illiterate so I have no idea what's going on.

In our swing/jazz/Dixie seven piece (sometimes eight if we have a singer) band we usually play 3x45. Almost all of our music is from charts and the horn players (4) don't get many breaks and we don't waste time between songs so they get a chance to rest their lips at the breaks. The bluegrass band mainly plays at festivals and that usually means anywhere from one to three sets of 45 minutes. We might play an afternoon and evening set on one day or the sets could be spread out over a couple of days, most bluegrass festivals work that way and only the big name bands play longer sets. Over here in Canada back in the '70's when I had full time gigs it was 4x40 sets a night (9,10,11,12) six nights a week but by the '80's it had dropped to weekends only and 2 or 3 sets. Now it is the odd weekend and one nighters or a festival.🙁

Me too but in my case it's my DB and my Yamaha SLB 200 EUB...you never know what might happen with a big fragile wooden box. I also have a spare DB pickup in my gig bag. I'm a belt and suspenders/braces kind of guy.😁