zbd1960

Someone spotted one today. It's remarkable for its candour and honesty, it includes this: "ADHD drummer with slightly better temperament than the nut job off the commitments might be available but we're waiting to see...."

I've spent some time teaching a few people over the years to read music. One was a complete novice in their 30s, the other was a guitarist. In both cases, I split the pitch and rhythm into separate activities and I focused mostly on getting them to understand rhythm notation and being able to clap or tap it out (people seem reluctant to 'lah' it ). We did the pitch notation separately and I probably spent 2/3 on rhythm and 1/3 on pitch in the first few sessions.

Not my favourite, but +1 to the banana idea. A friend of mine is a young professional cellist and they get taught about this use of bananas (!) at conservatoire

Unfortunate YAS 23 is a good instrument. I'd quite like a YTS23 or 25 (T = tenor)

The instruments which I take out of the house on a regular basis are with Allianz. The others are covered by the 'all risks' element of the household insurance.

I don't play DB (yet) but I do play two instruments that use gut strings - the tenor and bass viola da gamba, the large bass version of which, the violone, is the ancestor of (viol shaped) DBs. You have to use gut strings on viols as they cannot take the tension of metal strings. There are several issues with gut strings. The sound is good and has a silvery sound which blends very well and which you do not get with metal strings. The key point is that as a natural fibre, it breathes - it absorbs and releases water vapour as the humidity changes. During this time, the mass of the string is changing, which means the tuning is changing. Once equilibrium has been reached, they stabilise. Gut strings are prone to going 'false' more so than metal strings over time. This means that the same fret on adjacent strings may not be in tune with each other. Cost wise, for my bass viol, which is cello sized, strings are cheaper than cello strings - about £6 for the top D and about £50 for the bottom D (it has 6 strings), whereas a set of decent modern cello strings is about £140 - £240 (my bottom C string cost £105). I have no doubt that it is worse for DB players given the extra string size.

I wonder if it's the same issue you get with a lot of modern classical soloists? Technically fantastic with stupendous virtuosity, but somehow lacking in 'musicality'? (I know, I know - defining that is not easy.)

I was listening to it live on R3

I know plenty of people who have started much later, so no worries on that front. Some people can learn just from books, but that can be 'dry' and some support from a music teacher may be worth considering. The AB Guide to Music by Eric Taylor is in two parts, whic are about £6 each. That covers everything, but is on the 'dry' side. There are plenty of other book sand online resources.

I live on my own... so problem solved. The instruments are all in the music room, and there's a ton of music in the study. I do keep them out of the lounge except if I'm practising with the PC and I want the sound through the hi-fi...

The sax playing is also some well-dodgy miming as he seems to have acquired the skill of notes coming out whilst his mouth is open and breathing in... Since I play sax, I probably ought to have a look at it some time... Problem with well-known pieces, is the audience expects to hear them in a particular way, which is not feasible live without all the production stuff in the recording studio.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1471284847' post='3111861'] Yet a quartet for a wedding will cost a fortune, maybe if you book the entire orchestra it will be free? [/quote] Errrm, sorry to disappoint, no. Last concert I organised required a 50 piece small symphony orchestra and cost £8k. I organised and played in a small string group for a friend's brthday party some years ago. There were six of us - it took months of planning and 5 or 6 three-hour rehearsals to pull it together (none of us had played publicly in a string group before). The music was expensive too at around £30 or more for a basic set of parts of some simple string arrangements. We needed several sets of stuff. Most of the rehearsals were at my house, so most people travelled 50 miles round trip per rehearsal, 6 rehearsals is 300 miles, x 5 plus about £100 on music.

Cello outing - end of summer school concert playing a very interesting and tricky) piece of Piazolla - his [url="https://youtu.be/dMXoyJ8P1oE"]Tangazo[/url] It has cellos and basses growling away at the bottom at the start and livens up around 4.5 mins in. This was followed by da Falla's Seven Chansons and all of Haydn's symphony 101 (The Clock). There was plenty of stuff for DB through the week one way or another.

Hi welcome. I am very Wales adjacent - the border is 1 mile away - but it's Flintshire

something to ponder. In the classical world, in the UK 90% of all classical concerts (and it may be more than that) are performed by amateurs, mostly for no pay at all. Most groups in fact have to subsidise the costs of performing through subscriptions and fund-raising etc. I've run a number of amateur choirs. We employ pros as solosists and sometimes instrumentalists as well when orchestras are required. Almost all of the choirs associated with the big orchestras are in fact amateur - it's only groups like the Tallis Scholars which are pro. I've spoken with many pro musicians who've perfomred at gigs I've been the organiser of. They love making music and make their living from it. Most have to supplement their income by teaching etc as well. We're amateurs, but we perform to the highest standard that we can and take a very professional approach to running our concerts. I don't see that big a difference - we're all musicians playing for the love of it (definition of amateur). The pro-world is small. I don't have the capability, or the time to become either a pro-singer or a pro-cellist. As a singer I've performed in a few pro gigs at major concert venues, but mostly it's been amateur gigs organised by my choirs. As a cellist, I regularly play in concerts. I've spent a lot of time involved with the administration of amateur music. I've run two choirs and an early music group. I'm currently a trustee of an orchestra and trustee of a music education charity that runs (at present) two major courses. I would have a very low opinion of anyone who thought 'less' of amateurs just becasue they're not paid, Equally, I would think it silly to 'deride' a pro, who will have dedicated much time and money to their career. My tutor at a recent summer school is a lovely young lady who had spent 3 years at a conservatoire doing a performance degree, 2 years doing a post-graduate performance diploma and next month starts a 2 years masters degree in performance at the Royal Academy (which will cost her £12k per year). At the end of that with a mega-bill there is no guarantee she will have a career at the end of it.

As you know I'm new to bass and it will be a while before I'm up to speed and joining a group... I've just been asked if I could play the bass in a swing band - which I'd really like to and it's not the kind of hting that comes up very often. In the short term, it has struck me that I could stick a pick-up on the bridge of my cello and go electric cello (maybe with an octaver pedal?) as an interim measure until my bass playing is a bit better? So, I know nothing about pick-ups, but thought there's bound to be knowledge and info lurking in here! A quick internet hunt has shown pick-ups running from around £30 to about £400. I'm guessing cheap = poor sound/reproduction, but I coudl be wrong. Thanks

Yep, but like playing the piano - left and right hand doing different things in different rhythms. Practise separately then practise together. Initially slowly...

Pic links not working for me in either Firefox or IE

No point me commenting in the repertoire as such since I haven't a clue - wrong genre for me. But, I suspect the reason they're getting decent gigs that pay is that it's the right material for the target audience. As suggested, that's the income generator, sounds like a good networking opportuity, and kick off other projects where you can strut your stuff...

I have to agree - maybe becasue I'm a cellist but it doesn't take much of a knock to put instruments out of alignment or worse

If anyone thinks a bass hard case is hard work, try a cello in a Hiscox case (which being a cello will set you back £300 or so rather than the £100 ish for a BG case). I play another stringed instrument which is relatively delicate - the bass is cello sized and the tenor guitar sized. Because they are non-stadard instruments, the only way to get a hard case is to have one custom made (e.g. Kingham) for about £400. Needless to say I can't afford that

[quote name='ras52' timestamp='1469515840' post='3098849'] Joe is correct... zbd is an octave out! [/quote] Mea culpa. Yes, because I was thinking wrong instrument... The top string of the cello is A...

The bass is described as a transposing instrument since the note that you hear is an octave lower than the note that is written. As written, middle C is the one on the leger line that is between the A of the 5th line of the bass clef and the E of the first line of the treble clef. Seeing that, you would finger the 3rd fret of the A string (for example). The note that you would hear if you compared it to a piano is actually the C in the 2nd space on the bass clef, i.e. an octave lower. [color=#0000cd][EDIT][/color] OK MEA CULPA - I wrote the original reply here thinking cello and not BG. Cello's top string is the A belo middle C and that is what I described. If you want to play the note that sounds middle C, then you need to go an octave higher than written, which will be way up the G string..

Bottom line with me is I don't care what someone else thinks about how/if I stand sit on stage (OK, full disclosure, I've not had to do it with BG yet). The most important things are posture, stance and comfort. I've sung in probably several hundred gigs, and played cello and sax in dozens. Unless you want long-term health issues, getting posture and stance right are important and you should go with what works for you whether that is standing, sitting, or both. I'm a relative newcomer to BG but my understanding was that the 'correct' approach was to set the strap length so that it doesn't move between standing/sitting thereby ensuring consistent technique and positon? (Yes, I know thee are those who like it slung low, but I fail to understand why as the ergonomics of that are dreadful and probably building problems for the future.)

Hi