teej

Thanks guys, but no that's not it. I think I'm going to have to draw it...

So, if that's a standard bass bridge on the left, my impression of what I saw is on the right:



I guess the idea is that the strings slide across the bridge easier, and are therefore less likely to break at the bridge or warp the bridge.

I took my bass for a set-up this week and the luthier (Godfrey Shepherd in Lancing) showed me a bass he'd made - it had a very interesting bridge style that I've never seen before, a French technique apparently. Instead of resting in grooves cut into the top of the bridge, the strings were held in place by raised 'castellations' on the sloping side, a bit like stylised waves. I'm not sure if that's a clear enough description and I can't find any pics on the net, but if you can picture that, has anyone seen this anywhere, know anything about it?

Nothing to do with fancy headwear, the 'hat' in question is the one passed around by buskers to collect tips. Now in its 35th year, this is one of the most important festivals in the realm of Street Theatre. For 3 days The Lord of Misrule reigns supreme in Winchester and brings with him a vast court of highly skilled performers from all over the world. With small scale circle shows in the street, large scale shows in open spaces, crazy colourful walkabout, markets, wild revelling in a big street party on Saturday night, and a chilled out picnic on Sunday, this is well worth coming along for. And - IT'S ALL FREE! (but don't forget to bring a bag of pound coins to pay the acts with).

[url="http://www.hatfair.co.uk"]www.hatfair.co.uk[/url]

And we're on the Main Stage, Saturday Night (4th July), 9.15pm - [url="http://www.redjackson.com"]Red Jackson[/url]

[quote name='BarnacleBob' post='525385' date='Jun 26 2009, 09:49 PM']1 Why dont one of you take up the Bass?
2. Are their any particular reasons for staying a two-piece


Nothing against backing tracks but you could be two thirds of the way to a full live band.

BB[/quote]

I'd go further - what's wrong with a duo (without backing tracks)? I do plenty of duo gigs (guitar, upright bass) without needing to resort to that kind of shenanigans. If you've got to add some percussion play a stomp-box or a tambourine with your foot. A small suitcase makes a great bass drum. People will remember that kind of thing and tell their mates. No one goes away remembering the great backing tapes some act uses. Plus you don't have to sacrifice your flexibility. I'd hate to be tied down to a backing track.

Pro upright player here

I've been trying to figure out what to add here, because it seems to me that there are very many different ways in which to make a living out of music, and so far most of the replies are coming from a particular angle - the session player - and eminently sensible those replies seem to be, if that's the direction you're going in (and it probably is).

However, I'm not. Much of my career is based around being a street performer, so the most important skill not directly related to playing ability is being able to get up in the morning - if I don't have a pitch because they're all taken, then I don't have a day's work. All the other non-music stuff already mentioned: people-skills, networking, appearance (ie one that's appropriate to the genre) etc are absolutely essential too.

But Oscar's looking at musical skills - and here for me they're almost all performance related, since that's how we make our money, through tips and CD sales and how we get our bookings. Simply put, we've got to be able to put on a great show, anytime, anywhere. Reading is a big no-no, everything has to be learned off by heart or (as we do), understood and improvised. Flexibility here is not about being able to switch genres, but working on the fly, being able to extend numbers that are working, adding new directions, new areas of light and shade, even new segues, and cutting short the ones that are making no money. We work with no set-list and no arrangements, probably because we're that kind of people, but also it really helps when performing in a highly fluid and random setting, like a busy shopping centre. We work set-piece musical/theatrical gags into our performances, much like busking jugglers/escapologists do, specifically to loosen up the crowd and remind them that we want their money.

None of the recommendations previously made are going to hurt, but may carry less weight if you're not a session-player. For instance, I've never been handed a sheet of music to play - on the contrary I have been asked at a West End audition if I can play without music. I suspect many BCers' favourite bass players work in a relatively small range of related genres: eg jazz/soul/funk, or blues/country/rockabilly (please insert similar rock example here ) - so diversity is very handy, but it needn't include stuff very far from your core genre.

Looking at the original post, Oscar writes about transcribing and analysing pieces, and I'm sure that would be very useful: I'm about to do just that with a bunch of jazz standards that fit with my repertoire and I'm sure I'll learn a lot from the exercise, I'll certainly improve my reading (wouldn't be difficult!). So I'd say this: look at the history of the core genre that you're interested in and head back into it. Hopefully as a result you'll gain a really solid grounding and 'own' your genre.

I only gig acoustic upright (well, amplified acoustic upright).

But I really want an Ashbory.

Aaaaargh! You should have told me about this when I called about the EUB - I'd have snapped it up!
Too late...

[quote name='bartelby' post='518722' date='Jun 19 2009, 06:43 PM']but remember the funny thing about regret is,
It's better to regret something you have done,
Than to regret something you haven't done.[/quote]

Nothing itches like a temptation resisted, eh?

But maybe I shouldn't have commissioned that fretted/fretless twin-neck all those years ago...

[quote name='XB26354' post='517624' date='Jun 18 2009, 05:35 PM']That's true when talking about forming chords, but the 5th is one of the strongest notes a bass player can play on (non flat 5/sharp 11) chords. It is the 2nd harmonic in the overtone series (I think after the fundamental and the octave) and also implies V-I root movement, giving a line movement as well as tension and release. Most experienced walking bassists prefer to play smoother linear lines (think of a bouncing rubber ball!) without too many intervallic leaps, though this is sometimes good to break up or build an idea collectively.[/quote]

Yeah, I getcha... and, thinking about how I play, there's a very liberal sprinkling of fifths in there. Just felt like joining in the conversation

[quote name='dlloyd' post='516416' date='Jun 17 2009, 02:07 PM']The most useful notes to use to outline the chords are the basic triads...

Obvious choices for the Cm7 would be the root, m3 and 5 of the chord (C, Eb, G).
Obvious choices for the F7 would be the root, 3 and 5 of the chord (F, A, C)
Obvious choices for the Bbmaj7 would be the root, 3, and 5 of the chord (Bb, D, F)
Obvious choices for the Ebmaj7 would be the root, 3 and 5 of the chord (Eb, G, Bb)
Obvious choices for the Am7b5 would be the root, m3 and b5 of the chord (A, C, Eb)
Obvious choices for the D7#9 would be the root, 3 and 5 of the chord (D, F#, A)
Obvious choices for the Gm would be the root, m3 and 5 of the chord (G, Bb, D)[/quote]

Might I suggest (somewhat tentatively) that root, third and seventh are better choices than root, third and fifth? As the fifth is mostly the same interval, it's not getting us as near to the full chord as the seventh? Or is there another, better reason for choosing fifth? (I say this because I would use root third seventh if I'm forming a chord).

[quote name='hubrad' post='517517' date='Jun 18 2009, 04:16 PM']After a bungee-luggage-strap-in-the-eye incident resulting in an extreme detached-retina-eye-operation episode, I won't go near the things these days.
The eye consultant at Leeds told me 1) if I'd left my visit to him another couple of days I'd have lost the sight in that eye and 2)He'd ban bungee straps if he could, as they were his most common cause of eye trauma.
Ratchet straps are much more secure anyway. [/quote]

omigod

Right thumb bitten by a rat trap I was setting for my chicken-run. That smarts.

I wondered about the [url="http://www.alesis.com/protrack"]Alesis Protrack[/url] , but I don't think it'll let you jam along to existing tracks, just record new ones. However, I could be wrong...

[url="http://www.fairplayreplication.co.uk/"]Fairplay Replication[/url]

Used them for at least 10 years, I should think. Excellent service.
Tell them I sent you!

Just bought an NS CR4M electric upright from Kev, who was kind enough to pick me up from Birmingham New Street and drop me off after. Friendly and interesting chap, we chatted about bass but soon moved on to books and stuff (including chickens!). Never felt any pressure or rush. Instrument was in as near perfect condition as anyone could expect. All in all a happy experience.

Curiously I can't get my head round Garageband, but use Logic Express which makes more sense to me. I'll get Logic Studio soon, it's now almost half price compared to a couple of years ago, isn't it?

I've used a Tascam US144 to record the whole band live in stereo ('room' recording with 2 mics - a pair of matched Rode NT5s), or a Presonus Firepod (gives me 8 xlr inputs, and feeds them to my Powerbook as separate channels) for close-mic'ing.

The Firepod has better mic preamps and has given us some great results, but the live tracks recorded on the cheaper, lower quality Tascam have come out superbly too: we took some time positioning the band relative to the mics to create the stereo image and get the correct levels, and just went for the take.

We released the result as a CD (Walking After Midnight) which we sell for £10: 'Blues Matters' magazine just reviewed it, saying that it '...opens with a sublime version of Mississippi Fred McDowell's A Few Short Lines.' And that was one of the Tascam recordings.

[quote name='6stringbassist' post='497516' date='May 25 2009, 08:17 PM']I've had a few PM's about selling this too. I guess that's probably my best option, that'll give me some cash to buy something, possibly a Clifton mini EUB.

I'd like about £900 For a cash sale.[/quote]

PM'ed

My trusty '69 B&H Excelsior never fully recovered from 3 years of rockabilly with a volume-crazed guitard. Problem is, I can never send it off for the tlc it deserves as I need it to gig with. I'm having an incredible month work-wise and it looks like I could maybe afford to get a 2nd bass to fill in for a couple of gigs. Could probably go to a grand.

I'm struggling with my priorities here, and I'd like to see what you think, (writing them down always helps me anyway). First, I'm a hard-working professional in the blues/swing/rockabilly field; busking and working a mixture of venues, and often using public transport and/or squeezing into a Sierra with 2 other guys, pa, guitars and amp, and small drum kit. I live in a maisonette with a moany downstairs neighbour.

My Excelsior is really the ideal instrument for me to perform with, and so I'm looking for something to complement it rather than replace it.

So, maybe something that would record better? But at just a grand would I really get a significant improvement? (difficult question for anyone to answer, since you haven't seen/heard my bass, I know).

How about a 5-string? Never wanted one before, but just recorded a Townes van Zandt number, originally in D flat, transposed to G, where I couldn't go down to C, and the appeal hit me straightaway.

The 5-string option was number one on my list, until this morning, when I started thinking about something like the NS Wav 4 - offering the advantage of size and the possibility of practice/writing/recording at home. But, I can see a problem for the couple of gigs I'd use it on during the Excelsior's repair/setup: I don't think they can be convincingly slapped - and that's a significant and money-spinning part of our show! Anyone know better?

Any other thoughts?

Cheers...

Yamaha Stagepas 500 - 2 cabinets with recesses built into the back: one contains the amp, the other has a lid and can contain all the cables. Small enough and light enough to carry one in each hand, and loud enough for us - but we're not loud. We put vocals, double bass, and sometimes a feed from the guitar amp into it. You might want to add monitors, but we just position it behind us, never had any feedback.

[quote name='teej' post='493096' date='May 20 2009, 11:13 AM']Hmmm. Think guerilla - location recording in a good cheap room. 2nd hand mac g5 or powerbook, firewire interface, external drive, mics etc. Not dirt cheap, but doable.[/quote]

Come to think of it, even better might be find a good engineer with a mobile set-up. If you're in the south, how about Dave 'Chops' Wallace, top man:
[url="http://www.musicandwords.co.uk/"]http://www.musicandwords.co.uk/[/url]

[quote]It depends on what you want to achieve. "Many thousands" is I reckon a minimum start-up cost, unless you're planning to start a so-called bedroom label and only handle production and distribution, in which case a few hundred, a telephone, a good internet connection and a lot of time is sufficient to begin with. But the minute you want to start paying to record bands, you're looking at big costs for studio time.[/quote]

Hmmm. Think guerilla - location recording in a good cheap room. 2nd hand mac g5 or powerbook, firewire interface, external drive, mics etc. Not dirt cheap, but doable. Call in favours, barter, swap. But equipment is only a part of it. Maybe the least important. Branding will be essential - consistent name/logo/cover art that matches the genre(s) and intended audience. And the bands - we're back to square one, but now you're the hard-nosed industry guy seeking out the acts with good marketing skills themselves.

The task is to get started. And grow. You'll be 'underground' - like '60s garage/trash/rock'n'roll, so part of your appeal would be that you don't have a perfect (over-) produced sound. Gradually you'll get better kit.

Anyone know what set-up Richard Branson started with? If I remember right, he was selling Tubular Bells out of the back of his car. What about Sun/Chess/Stax? And early Jamaican labels? Lots of lessons there I should think.

I've been reading all this with some interest. All sorts of points occur to me and I'm going to have a stab at working through them. Let me say from the outset that I am a dyed-in-the-wool professional DIYer, so I'm hardly unbiased.

Surely the range of genres that is open to this major label approach is severely limited. As a double bass player (which probably counts me out anyway), aged 46 (way over the hill), working in the broadish range of blues/jazz/bluegrass/rock'n'roll/rockabilly it almost certainly isn't open to me. Does that mean I can't be professional or successful? That I can only briefly dabble as a hobby before giving up totally? Not at all, there's a thriving live scene for me to work in, and a public hungry to buy recordings of musicians like me.

There seems to be, in this thread and others, an under-current of misunderstanding concerning the exact nature of a career in music. There are many, many different paths and the signing-to-a-major-label one seems to me to be the hardest. And I don't mean 'it's too difficult, only the best can succeed, so I'm going to give up' - I mean it's probably the most illusory, and least likely to succeed. Whereas, there are plenty of people carving a career for themselves as musicians, with their own personal angle on that, and making their own path to a success that they define for themselves.

I keep reading about 'success' and 'making it' - without any real explanation of what that means. I suspect people are talking about the kind of fabulous wealth and fame that popular media would have us believe is the gold standard of happiness. I've never been fooled by that: I'm paying my mortgage and supporting my kids making music, maybe only having to work 2 days a week to do so. Spare time spent on the allotment growing organic food, reading and learning about stuff that interests me, playing with my kids. The standard of my playing is improving year on year, as are my earnings. I'm not rich, you've never heard of me, but I think I'm successful.

So perhaps I could find a small, independent label to sign to instead. Well, yes, maybe, but it's far more attractive to me to do it myself (or ourselves). We try to record an album a year, usually in a rehearsal room (it has an excellent 'dead' sound, engineers love it), with my own kit. My recordings are then professionally engineered in return for our services as session musicians. I layout the artwork in Quark Xpres and send the lot off for commercial replication. The first 500 are the most expensive, with all the set-up charges, I guess about 80p each, but subsequent runs are about 54p each. We sell them for £10, and we shift a lot, busking in major shopping centres with a generator and a pa. I doubt if a small label could sell more - or if they could, we'd still make less after they've taken their cut.

And of course we get paid properly for our bookings. More than I was offered working in a West End musical earlier this year.

All in all it's not big bucks, but that's not how I'm measuring success. A couple of gigs and a day busking is all I need to live pretty comfortably: we had home-made sushi for lunch, a chilli made with steak for dinner, and once the kids have gone to bed we'll be mixing mojitos and chilling out. And I'm looking forward to going back to work on Saturday.

[quote name='Bridgewood & Neitzert' post='487641' date='May 14 2009, 10:24 AM']Hi Teej,
Many thanks for your purchase of the bass wheel. We usually have all our bass wheels put through our workshops here and have a flat files onto the main shaft - so apologies not sure how yours slipped through. Remind me next time you want to buy something or if you wish to bring your bass in for repair/adjustment and I'll offer some discount as an apology for not filing that flat!
We are soon to be stocking the Gaines bass wheel as well.

All the best and thanks for keeping me posted.

Gary Bridgewood[/quote]

Ha ha - I was just going to reproduce this message (which Gary emailed to me), to continue the thread. I see he beat me to it!

An excellent example of how to turn a problem into a success. Well done Gary, top man!

[quote name='TPJ' post='485785' date='May 12 2009, 11:53 AM']Nice result there.

I wonder if it's worth sending a suggestion to the folks you bought it from to tell them about the flat spot needed on the shaft. They may incorporate that into future production.[/quote]

OK then - done that

[quote name='OldGit' post='486669' date='May 13 2009, 09:55 AM']Sure, but you are not a run of the mill interchangeable wedding band playing the same ol' wedding setlist.
Your's is a rather different specialism[/quote]

True enough, but I think the point still stands: professionalism is more about attitude to the job than playing ability.