zbd1960

Nope - that's used for barristers....

Agree - Hercules stands are well engineered. I have one, and my sax stands (including the one for the very heavy bari sax), and my orchestral music stand are all Hercules stands.

Already there too

Best wishes for this - hope it works out for you.

No, you're not going mad - but I thought I'd separate the 'build' from me thinking about it... so this thread is in the build folder. If mods think that's pointless, then they can merge them.

A profundity

I tried several and found it to be very comfortable when seated

As promised, here is the thread to document the building of my bass. It is being built by Alan at ACG. https://www.acguitars.co.uk The basics: it will be a 4 string bass with a 32" scale length. The model is a Krell, and I am really looking forward to saying: the awesome power of the Krell... 🙄 I will talk more about it as it progresses. Last weekend I chose the various woods and settled after much chewing of the cud on: body - Spanish Cedar; accent layer - Purple Heart; top - Tasmanian Blackwood. The neck will be a 5 piece of Ash and Purple Heart, with Purple Heart fingerboard. Deposit paid and so build is underway. Alan did say that initial progress will seem rapid, but with builds as with IT the 80/20 rule applies: 80% of the work requires 20% of the time; last 20% takes 80% of the time... So pic has been received today of the body which has been laminated and cut out. Finished item is going to be around April next year or so...

It depends where you land in the production cycle, but he was saying roughly 10 - 12 months. Most viol/cello luthiers I've talked to in the past have said 3 years...

I'll set-up a thread to record progress and more details... 🙂 I opted for a 32" 4 string Krell (I am going to love being able to say "The awesome power of the Krell...." 👽) Spanish Cedar body with Purple Heart accent and Tasmanian Blackwood top. Five piece Ash and Purple Heart neck, with PH finger board. Pic is the wood selection

Thank you for the various comments and feedback. My current instruments are a Fender 4 string J and a Sire Marcus Miller V7 5 string J. After a lot of internet digging, reading this site, YT videos etc. I had a lengthy e-mail discussion with Alan at ACG and this weekend I took a trip up to Scotland to visit him. I am pleased to say that a 4 string has been commissioned and I spent a challenging, but enjoyable, hour or two working out my choice of woods...

There is some (unsubstantiated) debate as to whether Bach might have had a 7 string bass viol (i.e. french style) in mind for #6... As I said, baroque composers tended to use open strings, later composers didn't (I outlined in previous post possible explanations, but as ever, unknowable really).

Possibly Tim Toft in Stone? http://www.timtoftviolins.com

Cello's tuning is in fifths CGDA rather than the bass's fourths. Generally playing cello you avoid open strings... but it's a complex subject... In baroque era it was more acceptable to use open strings, but that was partly because they played on gut strings which do not ring the way metal strings do, and the bow and bowing technique were different...

A friend of mine is a sound engineer. He has an M.Sc in it. In most countries you can only use the title engineer if suitably qualified/accredited and it s a protected title. Not in the uk... we should respect the title of engineer more and reserve it for those with appropriate qualifications/accreditations but unlikely to change

The joy of transposing instruments - I play both Bb ad Eb saxes... Sometimes, baritone sax only has a bass part to read from, in which case they have to read it as if it was treble clef instead of bass and add three sharps to the key signature... Makes accidentals entertaining

Yep, they're big beasts - the hard cases are ridiculous

My primary instrument is cello, but my primary skill is as a choral singer singing the bass/baritone line. Because of the instruments I play, I read all four standard clefs (bass tenor alto, treble) and you need three of those to play cello (bass, tenor, and treble). Sight-reading comes with practice. My singing teacher would just shove something in front of me and say 'sing this'... Later in my early 50s starting on cello, I immediately joined a community orchestra and got thrown in the deep end. Over time your ability to play improves and the complexity of what you can play at sight increases. Sure, you can't play everything and you have to do things like reduce a mountain of semi-quavers to quavers, or perhaps even just crotchets, but over time you improve. With the exception of some jazz, all the groups I play in on cello and sax involve playing music that's part of a large score / arrangement. Improvising on that is not an option and you would not be expected to play it from memory. Obviously, if you are playing a solo then there is an option to learn that from memory. I find playing from memory - because it's something I've rarely done - extremely difficult. I've been doing it for some of the stuff I do on sax and in my bass lessons, but I find it extremely difficult to do and I struggle to remember something even half an hour later. Is that something that can be improved? Yes, bu tI find reading music much easier. When you're an experienced 'reader', it's like reading a book - you're not reading the individual letters (or notes), you see the shape and respond to it. Which skill-set is important to you depends to some extent on the genre you're performing and the nature of the group you are performing with. If you're in a covers or a jazz band playing a core repertoire then learning all of that from memory and improvising it is feasible. If I'm playing in an orchestra or singing in a choir and we've got a handful of rehearsals then a concert to perform two hours' worth of music that you might never see ever again (or not for some years anyway) then you need to be able to read.

The baroque era saw the theorbo. It's in various forms, a bass lute with 7 to 10 courses plus 7 diapason strings (i.e. they're not fretted).

Within reason, range can be extended up or down with some suitable vocal exercises, but there are limits... A good teacher can help to free up the voice. Most people should be able to cover 2 octaves. What causes problems is that some well-known singers, and therefore well-known tunes that they performed, have an exceptional range. For example, Bing Crosby had a range of about 3 octaves.

Yes, vocal range is very important. A low bass will be able to sing the C below the bass clef. A top tenor should be able to hit the C an octave above middle C. If you try to sing outside of your range, you can do damage to your voice. Range can be increased to some extent with suitable training.

Sounds like the strings are ringing on and you're not muting? There'll be YT videos about how to do it

OK I’ve been triggered to write this by the recent posts regarding problematic singers… On the back of that I said I’d write about my background and experience, and I hope that some of it will help others who might be thinking about singing… My experience of singing as a youngster was minimal and limited to the odd sea shanty in music lessons at school and the inevitable hymns in church. I had the frequent bad experience that many have of being told not to sing in the school choir… To avoid this being a very long story, I was exposed to hearing a lot of very good choral music from a cathedral choir. That led me to want to sing. In my 30s I found a good singing teacher and after a trial session he suggested that my voice was probably light baritone (upper bass). I had weekly lessons with him for 8 or 9 years. Within a few months I was singing with his choir and going to choral workshops, singing weekends, summer school… I really enjoyed it and found out I was OK. I’ve sung a huge repertoire of material over the years, mostly classical, performed with small chamber choirs and very large choral groups everywhere from local village hall to cathedrals and concert halls (including the Royal Albert Hall). I’ve been accompanied by everything from a church organ, piano, small amateur ensembles, professional groups to full professional symphony orchestras. At 33 I couldn’t sing a note. We can all sing, but certainly British culture doesn’t encourage communal or group singing the way some cultures do. There is technique to singing, to how you breath, how you vocalise and phonate… My range as a baritone was roughly the two octaves from low F# to the one above middle C. I had a lot of power in the upper register, but very little low down, and I couldn’t sing anything below F, unlike second (low) basses who usually sing down to C. Going to workshops as a baritone, I’d often get asked to cover the second (low) tenor line, but my voice would tire very quickly doing that. A couple of years ago a friend who is a highly respected vocal coach suggested I have an assessment from an expert vocal coach who was attending a workshop she was running. I had a session with him, and it was a revelation. Men’s voices don’t fully settle until mid-30s and his assessment had me singing top Cs (octave above middle C) which means I’m a 1st tenor… He thinks that when I was assessed at 33 my voice hadn't fully settled. So why was my voice tiring trying to sing the lower 2nd tenor part in workshops etc which was mostly within my range? Because I have a whole pile of learnt behaviours to sing baritone and basically putting too much effort into ‘pushing’ to reach the high notes. So, after a 20 year break, I looked for a teacher and eventually found an opera singer whose experience is very similar – he trained at RNCM as a baritone but struggled until he found the right teacher and retrained as a tenor. So, I have been having lessons with him and ‘unlearning’ stuff which is mostly about relaxing and not letting ‘automatic’ things get hold and 'grab' the voice. There are different styles of singing and some of the techniques / methods are different for those different genres. Singing say baroque oratorio, or Romantic era art songs/lieder, is different to musical theatre, which is different to American Song Book etc. Like learning any instrument, it is worthwhile having a suitable teacher to get you into good habits. It is extremely easy with singing to mess up breathing for example. With lessons things like tone and vocal range will develop. One of the common issues that untrained singers have is that their voice tires after 20 or 30 minutes. This is due to tension and leads to too much effort, in essence 'tuned shouting' rather than singing. Over a protracted period, this can do damage to the voice. There’s a lot more I could say, but that’s enough for one post! I hope the information is of use/interest to people. Happy to discuss in more detail if people wish me to.

Yes, unfortunately for most people we don't seem to take singing very seriously in the UK so it's not encouraged in youngsters and too many youngsters get told they can't sing. The solution is some decent music/singing lessons... I hadn't sung a note until I was in my 30s and I started lessons. The late start explains why I'm reluctant to sing solo... After a break from lessons for 20 years, I resumed a year or so again and retraining from baritone to tenor (if there's interest, I will start a thread about why/what etc)

I'm an experienced choral singer (not solo) and I don't get how people get to sing and to be so unaware to not realise that they're out-of-tune. If nothing has been done by the band to flag it up, query it, try to work out what the problem is then it's unlikely to change. The reasons vary, but could be poor key choice as some singers - especially 1st sops - get all 'ego' about having to sing top As or whatever. There is also the common issue of 'anyone can sing'. Well, that's true up to a point, but singing, like playing, requires practice and there is technique involved in doing it properly as well.