Owen

Lots of people play with French bows. Lots of people play with German bows. People play 124, people play 1234. People sit down to play, people stand up to play. People use really sticky rosin. People use violin rosin. People use gut strings. People use Spiro Weichs. The Double Bass is quite young in terms of pedagogy compared to Vln/Vla/cello. Do what works for you.

Hilarious!

In the last century I used to "teach" singing on a Performing Arts course. One end of year show was Fame and I got all the local players in to be a pit band with me. There are some good numbers in the show and some not so good numbers. There is a ballet scene in 3/4 which has some lame music on the piano. I leant over to the pianist and said "play me something nice in 3". He proceeded to play theme and variations on Favourite Things. Bear in mind that the cast were 18 year olds hearing something unexpected coming up from the pit while they were live on stage in front of an audience. He weighted it perfectly and played the most sublime coda as the lights dimmed for the end of the scene. It was as if we had rehearsed the timing down to the last detail. Everyone in the pit knew that there was something beautiful happening. No one else batted an eyelid. The band were cooking and the written parts were becoming more and more optional, just using them for the changes and the stabs, and by the time we got to "LA" we turned it into a beautiful groove and the 20 piece band were totally off-piste. No one played what was on the page (other than the skeleton), I was conducting and playing bass so basically my dynamics were everyone else's dynamics. We were breathing as one organism and it was sublime. Even the singer sounded superb - and she really was not. At the time I did not appreciate it for what it was. Of course, moments can be bad as well as good. We also did West Side Story and I conducted that. There was one number (I honestly cannot remember which) which was a really slow 3. In the band call I gave the option of beating it in 3 or 6. The band chose one of those and I wrote it down because the potential for disaster was epic. Come the first show half had remembered what we had arranged and half had not (to be fair, if I was playing I would have forgotten). We all played the first note together and then there was a hilarious half time/double time at the same time for 4 bars while my brain melted as I tried to work out what happened. The fact that our first child was 3 months old and I was pretty sleep deprived did not help. I had to stop and start again. Much later on we had established a music course in the college and we used the students as a pit band. We did West Side Story again so I tabbed it all out and we did it in a rock style. I would not recommend it, but it had a certain vibe and the students got an awful lot out of it. Obviously there were bits which needed support so we had a piano part on CD for quite a few of the numbers. Everyone in the pit was on cans and one student was running the CD player and the monitor mix. The number before the first half finale ran into the finale on the CD but there was a gap of about 5 seconds before the actual finale started. There was a significant rall at the end of the song before the finale and he turned the CD off because he thought it was over. Bear in mind this was at about 3 minutes and 23 seconds into the track so there is no way we could have queued it up again. After getting my head around what had happened I hissed at the girl behind the pit piano "give me a G". She looked surprised so I had to ask again. I then started singing "The Jets are going to have their way tonight" (or whatever it was) really loudly on my own and the whole cast joined in and did the whole number unaccompanied - moves and all. How we all laughed a few years later.

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This thread is making me miss that good exchange rate. Just as well that everything else about the present situation in the UK is so ace.

But the days when there was a decent exchange rate!!!!!!!

I always hate insuring. But i would have hated paying the £800 repair cost on the last bass I shipped even more. Make sure your packing fits their criteria. They will use ANY excuse to wriggle out of liability.

It was REALLY nice!

I am not sure where CITIES is at at the moment, but factor it in. Having customs tell me they might destroy the bass I was sending was not a great moment.

Face on they are fine. Side on they lose a bit of vim.

I have a bass with one LED and optical fibre. The light is very small. But not unpleasant.

Everything was smooth

I had forgotten about this! I have no reason to believe that the perf board is not functioning as it should. It should be an Fdeck. If anyone wants it then shoot me an address and it is yours for nothing.

Uh oh!

I am not wanting to disagree in any contentious way, but am keen to not see things become internet folklore. I think one finger per fret is entirely plausible both on Bass Guitar and (per semitone) on DB. Obviously everyone one is different and no one size fits all.

This concept makes an awful lot of sense.

Talk me through expression pedal options..........

I did the whole two bridges one bass thing some time ago. The difference - for me - was negligible when I was in a room on my own. The difference with a band? Infinitess........infinatess.........infinti.....so small as to be not there - for me. For the record, going from 9v to 18v on my EMG pre-amp was equally underwhelming. There - I said it.

I have way too many basses. I cannot justify them. I like trying different flavours. I could have many much worse pastimes. I actually like the idea of going down to one but could not choose so I do not sweat it.

I have gone in to get a price on the grown up Vong. I shall report back.