TrevorR

Off to the Royal Albert Hall tomorrow evening to see Public Service Broadcasting doing a new album length piece with the BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrating the Centenary of the BBC. Should be an interesting show. Their 2019 Prom celebrating Apollo moon landings was fabulous. My fave PSB tune… The complete 2019 “Race For Space” Proms performance…

…and I learned a new acronym today. Courtesy of @Stub Mandrel http://www.stubmandrel.co.uk/workshop/18-reference-information/246-what-is-a-tlrt

That anecdote puts me in mind of an incident with a former worship leader who, how shall we put it, could have done well brushing up his person management, team leading and tech skills… We were rehearsing for a service and our usual very very good sound tech (as in ‘having engineered for artists like Queen, Steve’s Hackett & Howe, Gary Moore and OMD’ good) was away. The very junior sound guy was running sound. Anyway, we started having this huge low end resonance on certain songs and chords. The WL turned to me and said, “Trevor, your bass is way too loud. Can you turn it down.” I said, “I don’t think it’s the bass is the issue, I think it’s the acoustic guitar getting close to feeding back.” “Just turn it down!” “OK.” So I turned down my amp a bit even though I knew it was nothing to do with the problem. Next song… huge blooming notes. He turned round. “Trevor, I said turn down.” “I really think you should check out if the guitar monitors and check they’re not too loud.” He watched me turn down and then it happened again. He turned back round visibly annoyed now and hissed “I said turn your amp down!!!” I could barely hear the bass now and knew what would happen next so while he fussed with his keyboard and grumbled to the singers I very calmly and quietly switched off my amp, unplugged the amp from the extension socket, unplugged my bass, put it on the stand, coiled up my lead and put it on the floor in front of the bass. All the time the drummer was looking at me like “What on earth’s going on?” I just smiled back, put my hands in my pockets and stepped away from my gear. The song resumed. Lo and behold, big low end bloom… the WL spun round, furious, and yelled, “FOR GOODNESS SAKE TREVOR WILL YOU JUST TURN DOWN LIKE I TOL…” I smiled sweetly at him and said, “You really want to check that the acoustic guitar monitor isn’t too loud, that there isn’t too much gain on the channel input and that the EQ isn’t messed up…” I was in no way sad when he moved on a number of months later to inflict his manifold talents to another church!

I enjoyed the video as a whole but was disappointed that they stuck squarely with discussing flame top vintage burst Les Pauls from ‘59 etc… chances are they will be still be mega bucks in the future. Your question is the much more interesting question. Will your ‘78 Jazz or Strat still be pulling in 4 figures (equivalent adjusted for inflation) in 20 years time. Back in the 80s when I was starting out these were universally scorned and characterised as rubbish instruments with poor QC, over heavy bodies, shonky 3 screw neck joints, weak electronics, over thick varnish… and barely worth throwing away when you could get a nice 80s Japanese instrument instead… …now they’re “vintage” and “highly desirable”. Will that last? THAT’S the conversation I’d love to hear those guys having!

Oooh, you’re starting a Terraplane covers/tribute band, then? Sorry… 🙁

@BlueMoon @Piers_Williamson Chap called Vic Young…

And then continuing treading the boards playing jazz… http://www.deirdrecartwright.com

Ben Miller on drums and Ron Weasley’s dad on keys (great outfit, suits you sir!).

That is very pleasing as you say!

Maybe your browser just really hates reggae? 🤔🙄 #dadjoke

Well, of my top whatever of bassists Chris Squire, Geddy, ‘Nard and a few others have been namechecked already so I’ll nominate the leader of my joint fave band ever. Philip Lynott.

Yours for just shy of £12k! So John ‘Rhino’ Edward’s from Status Quo is selling off a load of his bass collection. Including his Wal. Quite a special Wal… Wal MK1 (ex-Rhino) Live AID bass: https://thebassgallery.com/collections/all/products/wal-mk1-ex-rhino-live-aids-bass Why special? It’s the Wal played on the Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas” video by John Taylor of Duran Duran!!! A quick look at the distinctive flaming on the upper horn pretty much seals it! Wow!! Just WOW!!!

Yup, so many different sounds hiding in a Wal if you care to look. My personal Wal Custom faves are “Every Day I Write The Book” with Bruce Thomas on his Wal, Dave Paton on the Elton John Live In Australia video/album, Walking On The Clouds by Polish rock band Eleanor Gray (video below), Laurence Cottle on the Alan Parsons Project album Gaudi, Failure’s Stuck On You and Flea on Give It Away. All very different (but still somehow Wal-y to a greater or lesser extent).

Yes, I worked out the way to get a nice Wal at a reasonable price… buy second hand but do it 30 years ago when they were rather unfashionable and un-sought after.

My number 1 ever since I bought it second hand in about 1991 or 1992! 1985 Mk 1 Custom Series Wal.

It would be my 85 Wal Custom Mk 1. Done almost every gig with me since I got it back in around 91-92… Usually paired with this fella…

Just weird light reflection…

Managed to secure tickets to see Public Service Broadcasting (one of my new fave bands over the last 10 years) premiering a new album length piece at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms - so chuffed and excited! Not Proms but still a flavour if you've not come across them before...

Sounds like you need a conciliatory banana! When they came on I thought, “Oh, this is going to be some sort of super cool Daft Punky thing… oh how I laughed!

Insert profound thought here: [… …]

A look at the public vote from Saturday suggests probably not… Spain : 228 Sweden: 180 UK: 183 Suggests that, if the 439 votes which went to Ukraine were pro-rata divided along the distribution of the other overall televotes, Sweden would have more or less maintained its 30 point gap to the UK and Spain would have drawn closer but probably not have had enough votes to make up the 50 vote deficit…

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…