zbd1960

About 40 miles away...

The majority of the music-making I do is in genres / styles that require me to read the music. I have done some jazz workshops where you need to be able to read for the ensemble parts of works, but then you get say an 8 or 16 bar improv to do within the harmonic context of the lead sheet. I can sight-read reasonably well, but I find improv difficult. That is down to the simple fact I have done lots of sight-reading and very little improv.

Living in the Border Marches one has to be prepared for invasion at any time...

Shropshire it seems is a barren hinterland bereft of bassists...

Yep, that's about right. My cello cost me £1,800 back in 2011 and the bow was £450.

I have one (BG250 208) as my practice amp. It had an outing to summer school recently and was fine for the big hall I played in.

Do not underestimate the forces involved with the bridge. A few years ago I was in an orchestra rehearsal and my cello was on its side on the floor next to me. Suddenly there was loud 'ping' and the cello was on its front. What I think happened is one of the strings suddenly lost tension. There was enough twisting force to cause the cello to roll onto its front. The bridge snapped in two, the fingerboard becomes a big lever and it just peeled off the neck. The front of the cello was now a mess. The luthier made a new bridge for me - repairs came to about £350, which the insurance paid for.

As a cellist I'd say make sure you don't skimp on the bow. Cheap bows are useless and will hinder your progress.

Today was a camera day - I was covering a touch rugby competition end of season finals day in Chester. Now have a mountain of photos to process

The C string on my cello would cost £125 to replace.... fortunately they last a long time

I know a husband and wife who perform as a duo (both play classical guitar and are opera singers) on cruises. They tend to get engagements for specific cruises, so will do 2 or 3 week stints periodically. I knew a sax player that did it - he was expected to double sax/clarinet for the onboard band and play several sizes of sax.

OK a bass playing post for a change! I've missed the last couple of jam session with the local rock school due to it conflicting with my holidays. The adult sessions are fortnightly, so it's been 6 weeks since I was there. One of the tutors there is my bass teacher. He's 25 and a music grad - he plays bass, guitar, keys, and drums. He also lives near the southern end of the county so he's nearly 50 miles away. The franchise is opening a new one somewhere much nearer to him so he's dropping my local one. It's understandable as a 50 miles rural drive is going to be around 90 minutes and not cheap with fuel costs. So last night was the last session there with him. It also means I've lost my bass teacher. For our 121 sessions, he see me either before or after the local sessions. Of the four bass teachers I've had, he's the only one I've made any progress with. The first one I never met as he kept cancelling. The second one I did meet a few times, but he quickly realised I was more qualified than he was..... The third one was strange - he'd run three students in separate rooms at the same time... Trouble was, I only found this local teacher as Covid hit, so we've had protracted periods of not being able to meet. Anyway, I'm now back to having no teacher. I can't imagine the local bass teacher scene has changed much since I last looked. All rather frustrating.

I only started playing just before my 60th.... In 1972 I could read music...

Agree with you. I think I'm a competent choral singer, but I never do solo as I don't think I'm good enough.

I posted in the thread about the questionable singer... and said I'd post more about the gig I had a few years ago. I used to play in an amateur orchestra in the Midlands. A well-known nightclub brand wanted to do an orchestral concert version of 90s/00s dance music. Now this is well outside of the comfort zone of your typical amateur orchestra and it required a lot of preparation, with months of rehearsals. First, the conductor had to engage an orchestrator to arrange the music for our forces, which were going to be augmented to make us a 60 piece orchestra (we're about 40 usually), which meant paid deps. In addition we needed a 5 piece horn section, a band (synths, guitars, bass, drum kit), gospel choir... So that the orchestra could rehearse, the orchestrator created a playable file with click track for rehearsals. The music was arranged as two continuous 1 hour sets. We spent months rehearsing. The last three rehearsals were with the extra players and the gospel choir. The final rehearsal was with the 4 vocal soloists. These are I believe 'well-known' performers of this music. Two were decent, two seemed to be more ego than ability. The gig was a sell out in a major concert hall (2,200). In addition to the musicians, there was a whole light and effects show, aerialists, dancers... The conductor had issues with one of the singers in the rehearsal. The singer didn't seem to understand that when you have about 80 musicians playing from a score, there is no way of looping back because you missed your entry. Trouble is he got lost in the performance as well and the conductor ended up making huge extravagant gestures and singing his part to cue the twit. The other singers were at least in the right place, although tuning was definitely a novelty for some of them. I have sung in choirs and performed in hundreds of concerts over the years. If we sang that badly we'd be embarrassed and we'd never hear the end of it.

hmmm... OK it's not a genre I normally sing (I'm a classical guy) but I have a lot of experience as a singer and I've had a lot of singing lessons. Basically, the guy does not know how to sing - end of story. Well done for getting him through it. Trouble is he'll probably think he can wing it next time as well. An orchestra I used to play in did a 90s/00s dance music gig - I'll put a more detailed post in my thread - but long story short: the 'name' artist didn't have a clue about how to sing with an orchestra. He was obviously used to being carried by the gig band. You cannot do that with 60 piece symphony orchestra. He didn't even know where to come in with his own songs...

Oops... I posted this in the wrong thread...

OK - very long day today of sight reading as I was playing cello in an all day workshop near Malvern. The work was Mahler Symphony #5. It needs a big orchestra e.g. 6 horns, 4 trumpets 4 trombones... I've attached a PDF of the cello part... Where there are multiple staves, it's because the cellos have to split. Usually the 'outside' player takes the top, and 'inside' the lower.

The musical world is small, and the early music world even smaller... I used ot go to early music summer schools and he'd often come along with a set of viols for people to play. Renaissance viols come in different shapes and pitches. The baroque viols from 1600s settled into a more standard shape and tunings. This is what Richard makes This is an original Henry Jaye viol This is a modern copy of a Jaye viol form 1624

Mine's a Czech instrument - nothing special. I've met Richard and played some of his viols - he mostly makes Renaissance ones rather than Baroque I think? You'd struggle to commission a tenor viol for less than £6k

The shape is reminiscent of a viola da gamba, which is what attracted me to it. My own tenor viol is rather more prosaic and commissioning a bass is a lot cheaper than a viol.

I've done the odd sax workshop where there's been an expectation of some improv and i'm not much good at it - purely because it's not something I do on a regular basis. It's another skill that can be learnt

Some classical musicians do improvise, it's just that in many of the genres they play, it is not a requirement. For example, organists are trained to improvise from day 1 and it's a fundamental part of getting your ARCO or FRCO (Associate/Fellow of Royal College of Organists). Baroque soloists are also expected to improvise, but it's mostly decorative improvisation. The cadenzas in classical concertos were originally improvised, and some players do, but often they learn a cadenza created by another soloist from the past.

I've seen several posts here about the difficulties of reading music and of sight-reading. As adults we tend to think we can do things 'straight away' once we've had something explained. This is generally not a realistic position. It's certainly not true of playing an instrument. Reading notation is akin to learning to read, only it's less complex as there are fewer symbols to learn: there are only 7 note names (A to G). What frustrates many adult learners is that their reading ability is out-of-step with their playing ability. That is purely down to practice. You don't go from Enid Blyton to Tolstoy quickly when learning to read and music is no different. Sight-reading is similar - you have to do it to improve and you have to start with simpler pieces. When I was in my 30s and I started singing lessons (never having sung a note, nor at that stage having really played an instrument). Each week my teacher would stick some random thing in front of me and say 'sing that'. He was making me sight read. At first it was hopeless/impossible. Over time you recognise intervals and you find you're doing it. You do more complex pieces, you get better at it. To improve sight reading you have to do it. My summer school last week was filled with sight reading since most pieces I'd never played before. Something I've suggested to others in the past is go to IMSLP.ORG and download something like a cello / bass / bassoon part (e.g. a concerto grosso by Handel) and use it to work on both reading bass and sight reading. The most important thing with sight reading is staying in time - wrong notes don't matter, but staying in rhythm does.

That's a weird paper saving device used by lead sheets - that's not how standard notation works, which puts the key signature on every line. First time I encountered a lead sheet that confused me