TrevorR

Have a look at Silvia's photo blog of the day and you'll get an idea of it. Very relaxed, chilled out time. Bunch of bass geeks getting together to bass geek... Last year: https://silviabluejay.blog/2018/10/26/basschat-south-east-bash-2018/ The year before: https://silviabluejay.blog/2017/12/08/basschat-se-bash-2017/ And Gary forgot to mention that any excess door money and the raffle money goes straight to a selection of worthy causes. Usually all winds down about 4ish/4:30ish...

Long time since I used PDFs but I’m 99.9% that it will move straight to the next page straight away. It does the same with OnSong format docs. One tap on the switch places the line below what’s visible at the top on the screen - just like “page turning”. With PDFs the pages are defined by the document on the OnSong format by what’s visible on screen. I’m sure that buried in the mode options somewhere there is a slow scroll or autocue type option but the mode I use is page up and down... You can check out the manual here... https://www.airturn.com/support/product-support/product-manuals/bt200manual —————————————— Here you go... Mode 2 is scroll up and down. Mode 3 is page up and down If you cue up a playlist of songs the switches take you up and down pages within the song. At the start of a song left/switch 1 takes you to the start of the previous song in the playlist. At the end of the song right/switch 2 takes you to the start of the next tune in the playlist. Easier to do than to type.

As a stop gap you could take the individual pages and create a playlist to scroll through for each song. But it may still be a bit clunky.

Scan the A4 pages as a 4 page document rather than as separate files. OnSong will read it that way and treat it as one song you can scroll up and down through. Quite simple...

Just looking at Mobile Sheets advanced options... even more flexibility to format like you like it IF you’re using a transposable file format!

@SICbass, not used MobileSheets much - other than a trial version on my phone which I downloaded to test for a chum who only has an Android tablet. I'm presuming that you're using PDFs for your chord sheets rather than one of the native, transposable formats? The problem with a PDF is that in this context it's a pretty dumb medium - it's a photo with pretensions of grandeur. The only option is to increase the page magnification and you're at the mercy of where the app lands you on a page when you scroll. With OnSong I transferred ALL of my charts into OnSong and ChordPro transposable format - it was a pain but doing it a chunk at a time it got done over a few weeks of here and there . It really opens up the functionality. You can not only do the transposing stuff but change font sizes while maintaining song flow or add highlight colours to chords etc. Once I got the transposable format rules it was a straightforward (if a bit laborious) to do. Basically you insert the chord in square brackets in the lyric line where it is supposed to be. The programme then links that chord to the next letter and displays it above it. So in the photos below the display you see is produced by the following text in the file - if that makes sense - pretty straightforward format but to get the full functionality you doo need to convert or re-do your charts. It's worth it though IMHO... [Bm7]The One who made the [F#m]blind to see Is [G2]moving here in front of me, moving here in front of me In the chorus, the word with the A chord above the "c" of "miracles" would be notated as "... mira[A]cles ..." It allows you to be very specific/precise with chord placement. 13 font: Text display drop down: Font size increased to 18 (and highlights added in second photo):

Being able to scroll hands free really is great with OnSong - so much more convenient and your hands never leave the bass. Once you’ve got it paired it’s pretty effortless and when setting up the only potential hassle is making sure it’s in the right mode so the buttons do the right command. However, it’s easy with the manual - all of which are downloadable from the AirTurn website...

I first got an AirTurn several years ago the soft pedal Duo model. 2013? Maybe 2014? Took a bit of setting up at first as it was early Blu implementation plus the only vis aid was an led that flashed red/green - I am, of course, red green colour blind so that was a pain. The key was ensuring that it was in the right mode. From then it did many years of sterling, no problem service apart from the odd Bluetooth disconnection/reconnection issue when I closed the iPad during use or wandered out of range. Just needed reconnecting the Bluetooth and I put that down to normal usage/user error. I’d still be using it now if it hadn’t had a mishap that damaged the connections. I could have fixed it/got replacement bits and carried on with it but it would have been hassle and cost as much as the BT unit which had just come out. Just checked, got the BT just over a year ago. It was easier to set up, and uses Bluetooth 4, (so is even more stable). Feels nice and firm under the feet with the conventional switches, small footprint, good battery life and does everything I need for chart navigation with OnSong - Fwd/Back, Top/Bottom of song, Next/Previous song. Charges (or runs on power) with a USB charger (I have one which powers both iPad and BT for gigs. Very happy with it. I had been tempted by this page turner which looked really cool: https://www.codamusictech.com/products/bluetooth-page-turner-music-pedal-for-tablets but they didn’t supply to the UK then. I was wondering if I could finagle it via some American chums or something but then the BT came out and it seemed to give exactly the same functionality at half the cost (and hassle) - decision made!

I use an AirTurn pedal. The BT200/S2 is small, neat and works really ell. I prefer the feel of the conventional stomp box switched rather than the soft touch pedals on some of their other models (which also work perfectly, though). These are going for about 60 quid on Thomann which seems pretty good value to me! https://www.thomann.de/gb/airturn_bt200s_2.htm

The bass choice in the shop came down to the Aria and an Overwater Classic Bass. In those circumstances I couldn’t have lost! A win whichever way I’d plumped (the Overwater was sparkly pink so Aria it was). And yes, I count myself as super-lucky!

Back in the day...

This Aria Pro II SB700 (still got it, still play it) and a 75W 1x15 Laney Combo. In 1982...

So Andy, this bass. It’s not in Billy Boy Blue colour by any chance? Your probably waaaaay too young to get the reference, Manolito!

I like Talk and of all the Rabin era ones I probably listen to that most. Some lovely tunes and vocal harmonies on that album.

He does play a groovy bass, though. Used to be in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, you know!

Heres the full piece in easier to read on a phone form... IT STARTED WITH A DISC: CLOSE TO THE EDGE - YES Some would call it the pinnacle of an entire genre. Others might say it’s the moment its creators attained the perfect expression of their muse. Many would claim it represents the jewel in the crown of progressive rock’s Year Zero. Audacious! Virtuosic! Majestic! Perfect! Personally, I hated it. Couldn’t get it at all. Well, there was that bit at the start which just seemed to be random noise. Then it seemed to ramble on for ages, never getting anywhere. And what the heck was a “Khatru” and why were they so popular in Siberia? What a complete waste of three pounds and twenty-nine pence. It even had the single most boring mud brown album cover I’d ever seen. A cassette-tape was unceremoniously flung to the back of a bedroom cabinet and forgotten. Not the most auspicious start for a candidate for It Started With A Disc. How could this be my initial reaction to an album which I now count as pivotal to my personal and musical development? Well, perhaps there is a little more to the story. In the period from 1976 to 1979 I never bought into the punk ideal. That type of music wasn’t really for me. No, I was a heavy rock fan. Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple were my listening staples. These sat uneasily alongside an unhealthy (I presumed then) interest in Abba, The Electric Light Orchestra and other chart pop. But we didn’t talk about those. If there was any other genre that I was likely to listen to it would be rock and roll or rockabilly - influenced by the kids I hung around with at youth club. If we were going to play ‘C’mon Everybody’ it would be Eddie Cochran’s original, not some crappy punk cover. So my reaction to Close To The Edge wasn’t some clichéd knee-jerk “Load of rock dinosaurs” rant. I had genuinely expected to enjoy it. The fact that I didn’t get it at all was a bitter disappointment. My rock tastes were already starting to branch out in a more prog direction and I had heard the odd Yes tune that I really liked. A compilation album contained the squelchy synths and wah guitar of ‘Don’t Kill The Whale’. ‘Wondrous Stories’ was regularly heard on the radio. Yes was a band I was determined to check out. Yes was a band I fully expected to love. So one afternoon in 1979 I found myself upstairs in Truro’s Saffron Records, rifling through the LP racks, pocket money jangling temptingly in my trouser pocket. There were so many exotically designed covers tempting me in. Was today the day to buy some Yes? Or perhaps I should finally plump for a copy of Brain Salad Surgery, scary looking cover or not? The triple album glory of the live album, Yessongs, was further than my pocket money could reach. Similarly some of the newer LPs. But then I spied a drab little cassette sitting forlornly in the racks with a sticker proclaiming, £3.99 £3.29. Done! When I got it home I slipped the cassette into my tiny hand-me-down cassette player. There seemed to be some louder than usual hiss coming from the speaker which suddenly exploded into an unintelligible noise. Little was I to know that the minuscule mono speaker was in no way equipped to deal with the subtleties of the rainforest sounds which coalesce into a free-jazz influenced intro section on ‘Close To The Edge’. For the remaining twenty minutes of side one the cassette player struggled manfully on, signally failing to deliver anything near the high fidelity sound which the music demanded. Side two didn’t fare any better and so the cassette was unceremoniously chucked in a cupboard. Fast forward six months and my birthday present meant I was finally freed from the vagaries of hand-me-down audio equipment. Resplendent in my bedroom sat a brand new Sharp music centre... Record player, cassette deck, AM/FM radio and three glorious watts per channel of stereo sound. As I consigned my cassette player to the cupboard a dusty cassette fell out and bonked me on the head. “Oh, that! Well, I suppose I should give it more than just one listen. It can’t sound any worse on the new hi fi.” That said, I wasn’t holding up much hope as I slipped it into the cassette deck and pressed “play”. What a revelation. A torrent of sound cascaded from the speakers; chaotic but yet revealing of a subtle structure. Chris Squire’s bass wrestled with Steve Howe’s spiky guitar lines until suddenly punctuated by a complex vocal harmony. Gradually a compelling melody emerged, driven by the bass and underpinned by Rick Wakeman’s Hammond organ and Morse code Moog synth. Forty short minutes later the cassette mechanism clicked off as side two finished. I was hooked. A lifetime love of prog and Yes was underway. Looking back, though, thank heavens that, on that fateful day in Saffron Records, I hadn’t plumped for Tales From Topographic Oceans. There are some musical traumas from which you could never have recovered!

For me it’s Close To The Edge which I still love, closely followed by The Yes Album and Going For The One. Definitely “soundtrack of my youth stuff”. I do some writing for Rock and Reel (now RnR) magazine and featured CTTE in an article on their “It Started With A Disc” column about a record which was fundamental in your musical or listening history... still love it...

You have to remember the market/demographic for this programme... the retiree heritage crafts nostalgia brigade. The opportunity to show someone using a spoke shave for 10 seconds is much more important than any work the neck might have actually needed. Similarly, the ability to say “This is restored to how it would have originally looked” to the oohs and aaaahs of a clueless punter with a daytime TV friendly back story is more important than the archaic ergonomic irrelevance of metal bridge and pickup covers...

I recall an interview at the time in Guitarist with Alex and Geddy where they were referring to ESL as their liveish album. As I recall they said that ASoH was 90+% the Birmingham show (and the other show on one track, can’t remember which) but they recorded a lot of shows on the tourand dropped in short samples of segments from other shows where there was a tech or other (presumably playing) glitch. So it was still all “live” in their eyes. They did spend a chunk of time extolling the virtues of the new Akai S1000 Series samplers they were using...

I recall at university being repeatedly asked by a couple of American students what it had been like growing up in oppression under martial law as a child... like I’d gone to school in a mixture of Colditz and 1950s Leningrad! I left it as “Life in Northern Ireland really isn’t quite like that!” and “The situation really isn’t as black and white as Noraid and co paint it.” I didn’t have the heart to mention that (despite coming from a thoroughly non-sectarian and apolitical family) I was “from the other side” and therefore “an enemy of freedom and justice” (their words), if you know what I mean!

Well... The way they hang against the body when on a strap The way they sit against the body when resting on the knee The profile of the neck The width of the neck The string spacing The feel of the varnished fingerboard (on rosewood... why?) The size and mass of the pickups and surrounds is uncomfortable and inconvenient for how I pluck... Reckon that covers it and apart from that they’re my perfect bass ergonomically! 👍🤣 All that said, I’ll never actually own one but I still love the way they sound and they still look absolutely gorgeous and are still one of my fave basses (just not for me)!

I sang in choirs a lot as a kid but when my voice broke I discovered that I really loved singing the bass lines. Fast forward a year or so and my brother, who was in his 20s, played drums in a local covers band. Somehow I managed to convince him to let me come along to one of their practices (so long as I just sat in a corner and didn’t say anything). The bass player had a black, checkerboard binding Ricky and it was the most amazing looking and sounding thing I had ever seen or heard. It looked like it had fallen out of an episode of Flash Gordon. I fell in love with it and knew from that moment on that bass was the instrument for me. It took 3 years of badgering my mum and dad until they bought me a bass and amp - my 18th birthday present (not a Ricky but an Aria SB which I still own). I still love the look and sound of Ricky basses. Sadly I soon found out that I hate pretty much everything about actually playing them!

Possibly my all time fave Rush track!

Indeed, perhaps I should have said "previously unreleased". My inner (and outer) Civil Servant language and grammar pedant hands his head in shame. And you should be envious, it a blooming great collection - esp the tracks of Rory backing Lonnie Donegan, Muddy Waters and Albert King!

Birthday presents... And got the 3 CD box set of unreleased blues tracks by Rory Gallagher...