TrevorR

Never felt the need to go full Nashville Numbers… I tend to think I’d chord sequences in terms of the harmonised major and minor scales (which is the theory which NN is based on anyway) so I think of the relationships between the chords rather than just trying to follow a random sequence of chord names. That helps a lot with key changes or on the fly transposition as I’ll be thinking of the shape of the chord sequence as well as the chords themselves. To be honest most of the time, unless it’s a brand new song, the iPad is more of a security blanket than anything. I don’t look at it much. Singing helps but most of all it’s the many years in my teens and 20s I spent singing in choirs. I was trained when singing from music only to glance down occasionally and scan the information needed in no more than a second or so and then eyes back up and forward. It’s a discipline I’ve carried with me ever since. To be honest the place my eyes are likely to be most glued to are my left hand - a bad habit I’ve tried to unlearn over the years. Where the iPad really comes into its own is managing the music, home practice and random songs being thrown in at the last minute or even during the service if the pastor suddenly says, “Can we just sing…” We never went the whole way with IEMs - tracks and robot voices yelling out “Bridge 2 3 4…”. Our pastor, who spent his pre-church career in the music industry hates that stuff and wants music played by a bunch of musicians following the WL and playing more organically. And besides only half of us ever went IEM and amp free anyway, so with one guitarist and all the vocalists still having monitors and the new WL not encouraging or enforcing it that was never going to work. Also, losing our good sound techs and having to rely on a caretaker tech who really didn’t understand the system or sound, it was never going to fly the longer term…

I own basses I love playing so those are the only criteria wherever I’m playing, in church or elsewhere. So that’s the basis of my choice. I’ll caveat that various circumstances mean I’ve not played in church or pretty much anywhere else since lockdown - it may mean that we will need to move church when we get back in the pews, but that’s another story… However, the bass I play most will be my 1985 Wal Custom bass… just because it’s great . That’s probably 60 or 70% of the time. Another big chunk would be my 1979 Wal Pro bass, but I’d be happy playing my Aria Pro 2 SB700 or Frankenjazz and have on occasion when the fancy took me. All great basses. I didn’t use any pedals for many decades except maybe a touch of chorus sometime. Since 2014, when we briefly tried going IEM and amp free (it never stuck when WL changed, fantastic sound guy moved on and guitarist/singers revolted/refused), I’ve built a modest pedalboard… Charts are all on OnSong in transposable form. I took the approach that each pedal would be there for a particular result that I wanted to achieve and it has developed to the board attached below... Here's how I use them... PolyTune Tuner - obvs but this is also my mute for unplugging between sets since I use active basses. Little Lehle Loop Switcher. Places the effects in a loop between the tuner and Sansamp so I can have a straight through sound when not using any particular effects (most of the time to be honest). Then when switched on, the signal goes out of the Lehle into the... EHX Bass Soul Food O/D - specifically a low gain structure OD to add a small amount of "hair" and mild crunchy break up to rockier tunes. I'm not a fan of distortion on bass. But it's also used in conjunction with... CaliforniWah Envelope Filter - there are a few soulful/nu-gospel songs we do which benefit from a little funk/wah on them (or at least one of the occasional W/Ls who chooses those songs likes a few of them with it - to be used sparingly). Also use it on our version of Hezekiah Walker's "Every Praise" for a similar funky sound. But this is mostly used in conjunction with the OD for some synth-bass type tones on more EDM influenced tunes such as Let It Be So, Alive, Let Praise Awaken. Personally I'd rather approximate the tone this way than get a bass synth keyboard. But this is a niche effect for this sort of song. Tremolo - fair enough, this one is an indulgence but a useful one. I got this because I'm a sucker for Chris Squire's sound on tracks like Starship Trooper. However, it gets used in worship a fair bit. Mostly on moody sounding songs like More Love More Power or My Soul Longs For You but also on more up-beat ones where it drops down to a "down bridge" as an additional texture. Chorus - never been a fan of the wibbly-wobbly, underwater 90s indie/grunge chorus sounds so this is used to add some gentle 80s pop-style shimmer on some ballad-type choruses or when I'm plucking my bass over the end of the neck to sort of emulate a more double bass tone - the chorus helps to accentuate the effect. ...and finally the signal goes back into the Little Lehle and out to... Tech 21 VTBassDI (Sansamp) - this feeds an amp/speaker sim'd signal to the PA. It's set for a lowish gain Ampeg B-15/SVT hybrid sound which just gives a little bit of crunch when I really dig in on the bass. The pedal feeds an amp/speaker simulated DI output straight to the PA via a balanced XLR cable and also goes to a stage monitor amp (if I’m using one) via the 1/4 inch jack output and a standard guitar cable. Hope that gives you an indication on why I use the various pedals I use and in what worship situations and why they’re in that order. Used to bring my MarkBass LM2 and Traveller 2x10 as a bass monitor but over the years we’ve had some church bass amp combos… GK, Hartke and now a Rumble which all serve their purpose.

Over the last couple of decades very few jazzes but bassists playing… Me - Wal, Wal, Aria Pro2 or Frankenjazz Japanese Fender PJ Wal or Goodfellow Westone Thunder 2 Lakland 5 string (strictly a Jazz, I suppose) Peavey Cirrus Fender P-bass

Yup, about half my fave tunes of theirs are actually 200 year old traditional English folk ballads. The other half are about the last 700 years of British History/culture…

Completely agree. There’s a good article on the Beeb about how the attitude to EV was very different to previous years - Eurovision 2022: How Sam Ryder turned things around for the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61450874 The voting was interesting… apart from some minor “voting for your best chum next door neighbour country” stuff (that’s always been a feature of the competition) PANEL voting seemed to pretty consistent and coherent. UK, Spain and Sweden were all consistently scoring 8+ across the board, picking up regular 12s and by the end of the National panel votes (where panel members sign contractually to say they will consider song merit rather than politics) the UK was healthily in the lead over the others. Ukraine was pulling in 2s, 3, and 4s on the whole and sitting about 2/3rds up the right hand side of the board. It was purely the public phone vote that decided it with Ukraine getting 2-3 times the score which any other country got (over 400 points vs 100-200 for any other leading song - and many tail enders scoring 10 or less - Germany was on 0 and got about 6 on the phone vote). But this year we all knew that was what would happen, so no big surprise there. Does beg the question of whether the panel vote is in any way relevant these days or of either the (lucrative, no doubt) phone vote should be scrapped or, more likely, ditch the National panels?

I used to try so hard NOT to sing “I am afraid of God, I am afraid of God, I am afraid of God, He calls me ‘Fred’!”

I’m really hoping that the UK makes a decent fist of the contest this year. It’s the first time in years when we’ve actually had a decent song. Though I must confess some bias as I know one of the co-writers of the song and she’s 1) a properly good songwriter (with some well deserved Grammys under her belt over the last few years!), 2) a properly good singer/performer and 3) a properly lovely person too. Sam Ryder is a talented singer too so it adds up to a good combination for a change! Good to have a combination which Should be in with a fighting chance this year. Notwithstanding the fact that, of course, Ukraine could enter a Duracell monkey banging some tiny cymbals together for three minutes and they’d probably still walk the voting process!

Ooooooh, I managed to miss that thread somehow! Some happy reading ahead!

Funny, I always thought this was the publication He had a subscription to… I’m reliably informed by my son’s primary school assembly that He danced in the morning (when the world was begun). He danced for the moon and the stars and the sun and so on and so forth…

You know, they say that great minds think alike. This Zoot Basses custom build just popped up on the Zoot Facebook page…

Oooooh, I remember watching that when it was first shown on TV - I was entranced and fascinated, my mum and dad, not so much!

Actually, this reminds me of another comedy single I was given about the same time which I do recall quite fondly, both A-side and B-side. By no means comedy genius but a darned sight better than Bionic Santa! I guess comedy singles were a big thing in the mid 70s, thinking back on it… what with the Python albums, the Barron Knights and The Grumbleweeds, songs like The Streak, Convoy, Convoy GB etc etc… I did enjoy these two…

Mind you, it does have the upside (or rather B side) that it’s about the one song I’ve ever played to my older brother which genuinely scandalised him (until the last 20 seconds of the song, that is…).

The recent resurrection of the Covers thread got my mind thinking… I recall, back in the mid 70s being given a novelty 7 inch single which used little snippets of hit songs in between narration to tell a “funny” story to “comedic” effect (I use “funny” and “comedic” in their loosest possible meanings). It’s been bugging me what it was for weeks now as the single uses three snippets from “The Boys Are Back In Town” - hence the connection as Lizzy are one of my favourite bands and “The Boys Are Back…” is one of my favourite Lizzy songs. Finally worked it out… “Bionic Santa” by club DJ Chris Hill. This is probably the strangest (and most excruciatingly awful) musical compilation you’re going to see/hear in a long time. It’s been bugging me what it was but now, listening back to“Bionic Santa” I’m unsure if I’d have been better off not working it out. A listen confirms that this is probably one of the worst records ever - matched only by its predecessor from the previous year “Renta Santa”. Bear in mind these two singles actually made it to No 10 on the UK singles charts in 1975 and 1976! What were we thinking, especially as back then you needed to shift serious units to hit the top 10! Especially in the Christmas period! Enjoy! …which is unlikely if you actually listen to it!

University folk rock band playing Greenbelt around 1989-ish… 2000s covers/wedding band…

I’d have to agree!

Most people are, to one degree or another, seen as a collection of clichés or easy hooks to hang a label on as far as the people who know them are concerned. Dad, brother, [insert job here], petrolhead, pain in the proverbial, pedant, sports fan, geek etc etc… Certainly for us bass players our chums will probably do that with our musical tastes. But there are probably outliers for all of us which step outside the perception of us. Bands or artists no one would guess we are into. A lot of my uni chums would think of me as a beardy folky because of the folk rock band I formed then and many group trips to see Fairport Convention. Most people know me as a huge ELO fan or an aging rocker who loves Thin Lizzy and Gary Moore. Some guitarist chums refer to me (ironically) as “Progmeister” because I love Yes, Rush and Genesis… But I doubt that anyone would ever guess that my LP and CD collection contains a pretty large amount electronica like Kraftwerk and, in particular, Jean Michel Jarre. Just love a bit of Jarre… And it goes right back to being a teenager, listening to Equinox and Magnetic Fields. When I first heard he was planning a City Concert gig in London it became my “must see” gig for that year. Destination Docklands still ranks as one of my best (and wettest) gig experiences! I wonder what other folks “core listening” and unexpected outliers are.

At least with Tim Hughes tunes when you strip away the production trappings they’re just pretty straightforward indie guitar anthems. Going to be fun to see how the kids cope when all of the cues they’ve been used to listening to just aren’t there - like the Euro-trance keyboards kicking in for the refrain/bridge. What’s the betting they’ve not been tracking their section changes to chorus sequences or lyrics but to production/arrangement/sound changes! Much much better just to play the CD/YouTube video as a backing for them.

…three more from them later…

Treated myself to this - Japanese import CD of the Steven Wilson remix of the Close To The Edge album… very nice!

Don’t Bass Direct do them? Or have they stopped?

Cygnus X-1 - Rush

Baggy Trousers - Madness

Another vote for an Audere preamp. Drop in, lots of good configurations available (including simpler ones than the one I chose), powerful but also very musical (no silly unusable over boosted extremes), very transparent with the EQ controls centred… great little preamp. Love it in my Frankenjazz!

For info, on the laminates, the original Pro necks were (outside-in) laminates of maple - mukulungu - hornbeam. At some point the mukulungu was swapped for mahogany. Some time into the Custom series the hormbeam was swapped for maple. More info here: http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/2016/10/wal-woods-part-1-necks.html