zbd1960

As a complete newcomer, really looking forward to this.

Hi Looking for a tutor, I'm near Whitchurch but happy to travel within about 25 miles - so Chester, Crewe, Shrewsbury etc are managable.

I didn't post, but I read a thread last week, and ordered on the basis of that - all done and dusted in 24 hours.

If you look through the F holes with a torch, there ought to be a label on the inside of the back which may have a maker and if you're lucky a date. There were a lot of workshops turning out instruments in the Germany/Czech/Hungary area. Although most will be 'workshop' instruments i.e. made by the staff and supervised by the master luthier, they tend to be well made instruments. I bought cello made by a German maker around 1900 (and the family still exists and are still making instruments). A visit to a good luthier to have a new bridge made, repositioned with sound-post, glue a joint, new end-pin and end-pin unit, new tailpiece and tail-gut, plus a clean and new strings, end result is a very nice instrument. The total bill for the work was £500 (the cleaning was £200) plus the stirngs. I did have the work done in three phases though: glue, bridge, end-pin was one lot. The clean was a separate task done a few months later and the tailpiece work I have only just had a done a year later.

Sorry I can't offer strap suggestions (if it was a bari sax I'd recommend a harness) but I would suggest seeing a sports physio - and take your bass/strap with you. Probably cost you around £30 ish for an hour. You may have posture or other things making life harder than is needed or muscles that need easing off.

I get it in my left elbow playing cello... one of the causes in my case is gripping the back of the neck with the thumb. Find yourself a sports physio - probably cost you about £30 for an hour. A common cause is muscle fibres 'shortening' which puts tension on the tendon which attaches to the bone. There are some simple exercises which will stretch and lengthen the muscle fibres which reduces the tension, which is causing the inflamation. Anti-inflamatory gels may help - but I have very mixed results with them. The physio treatment does work and in my case gave immediate relief and doing the simple stretches myself fixed it pretty quickly. Obviously, there may be other causes, but a physio will be able to advise..

Can't comment about guitar per se, but no, it's never too old. I was over 50 before I picked up cello and sax (and now pickuing up bass). I joined a community orchestra and found loads of people - returning adults in their 50/60/70s, absolute beginners, people taking up 2nd or 3rd instrument. General consensus being, "Wish I'd done this 20 years ago...". So no, not too late by decades! But adults suffer from two general issues: one is they tend to be busier than youngsters, so you can't necessarily devote the time you'd like, and another is that as adults our brains get in the way as we tend to think 'Why can't I do that, I've tried it twice?'. We tend to forget how long it takes to acquire fine motor control (e.g. writing). Good luck.

Well done. I'm brand new to bass - first lesson due on Tuesday - but I'm experienced on other instruments and other genres. Much good avice above. I strongly advocate getting to play with a group/band/community orchestra whatever as early as possible. It provides encouragement and better players pull you along (especially good for timing and getting past "oh-it's-hard slowdownitis"). A useful lesson I learnt from my singing teacher many years ago is if you are faced with a passage of lots of notes that you're goign to struggle with, just put the key notes in - the rest are decoration. It is much more important to be in time than anything else - no one will notice the odd bum note, but wrong timing really stcks out. I'm hoping to do something similar to you as soon as I can, fortunatley I play cello so I have no problems reading bass clef, so that's one challenge avoided, just need to learn to play

I perform with a number of much bigger groups. When younger I put up with a lot of dross. At 56 I don't want to waste my time on clueless organisations that suck the pleasure out of what we do for fun and enjoyment. I quit a 25 piece last night that I've been with for 7 months as they want new members then don't look after them. They're too cliquey.

All bowed stirng instruments do this: as you apply the pressure to the string and until it 'settles' to normal vibration it usually is sharp for a moment. You can reduce it by not putting too much energy into the string. If you have the bow at the heel and rest it on a stirng, you should find that you can in fact pull the string a fair distance before it overcomes the resistance of the rosin on the hair. Strings are sensitive to temperature - how much so depends on how they are made and to some extend on the quality of the set-up of the instrument. You need the right level of elasticity and tension for your strings for the set-up of the instrument (e.g. neck/finger board angle, bridge height). My cello experience is that some stirngs are extremely stable. The Jargar stirngs on my previous cello were extremely stable. The stirngs on my German cello (Larson and Spirocore) are not as stable. This is because they are more elastic and are more sensitive to temperature change. Taking the cello out of a cold car, they tnd to be sharp because they've shrunk slightly. In warm weather, they go flat as the strings lengthen. Although bass strings are much heavier, they will still exhibit this behaviour to some extent.

New here and I spotted this thread and a few things I thought worth a mention. I'm an experienced cellist about G7 standard and I also play an instrument called the viola da gamba. The latter is played with bow 'underhand' similar to German bass bow technique. With both of these, teachers have always recommended using a mirror when starting as the tendency is to not adjust your angle as you cross and you bow then describes an arc and goes 'up' as you get to the heel on an up bow in particular. There are plenty of community bands/orchestras who will accept players at all levels, including complete beginner. The best thing I did was joining a community orchestra the week I bought my cello 5 years ago. The orchestral parts usually include special 'easy string' parts for complete beginners. Look out for strirg workshops - I am going to one on Saturday on the Wirral. There are plenty of orchestral weekends and courses too - I go to s summer school each year which has everything from a small elementary string group to a full size symphony orchestra as your options. The web site www.amateurorchestras.org.uk lists many groups, also has a FB page.

I'm interested in this - all new to me and an opportunity to meet/socialise etc sounds good. I'm north mids, so a bit of a hike, but looks like it's worth the effort.

Hope you don't mind me adding to this? My main instrument is cello and I play in a number of amateur orchestras. In the hubub at the start of a rehearsal, it's difficult to hear the cello over assorted brass and woodwind, so I tune with a Korg chromatic tuner (which I've found to be reliable - I've had it 10 years now). At the start of the reharsal proper, the oboe provides an A which we all check our tuning against. It's usually more-or-less bang-on (because the oboist generally has a tuner switched on to check that hey are giving a steady A = 440 note. I can tune without it and I can tell if I'm out of tune quite easily too, but he tuner cuts out some faffing around and gets me round the noise. String instruments don't like temperature changes as it effects the length of the strings and they take a while to reach equilibrium.

I don't have trouble reading music as I have to read all 4 standard clefs for the instruments I play. My sight singing is decent, and I'm pretty reasonable on cello and OK on tenor sax. I'm a novice on bass so I can read the dots, butnot necessarily play them! Being a reasonable sight reader has meant that I've been able to dep in some quite good concerts over last year or so (one was show music, the other was film music). Need get my bass playing there

This sounds interesting. I don't have any problems reading music, but I'm a rank novice at playing bass

I'm even more of a beginner on bass than you are, but I'm fairly experienced in other areas. A big lesson I learnt from my singing teacher was to throw wrong notes away - they're in the past. It's very easy to stop, linger, dwell.... and then you've lost it This has provied to be a useful lesson when I moved on to playing other instrument sin recent years and I now regularly play in concerts. The ability to be in the right place is in fact more improtant most of the time than playing the right note: the wrong note at the right time is usually less obvious than the right note at the wrong time....

[quote name='SpondonBassed' timestamp='1459763316' post='3019224'] Hi Zbd and welcome to some new lows in your life. (joking) [/quote] Well, it's an octave lower than I'm used to

Hi - brand new to the world of bass (and guitars for that matter). I already play various instruments, mainly cello and sax. I play them in various orchestras and bands. I went mad and I've now got a Fender Standard Jazz bass. I'm now looking for a teacher and looking forward to learning a new instrument as well as looking forward to getting to know you and the Forum. Eventually, I'd like to be able to play jazz with small (ish) groups and possibly big band. I know almost nothing about rock music, so you will have to put up with some very naive questions and blind non-comprehension from me on that score Thanks.