Burns-bass

Good luck! There were a set of new Spirocores on here for £100. That’s amazing value.

Personally, I’d avoid it. I know double bass strings are expensive but you don’t want it to break on you. Why not stick a wanted add here? Strings would attract no import duty in the EU and postage won’t be much…

The old “unnamed source”. More to do with Tesla’s poor sales figures, Tesla being over taken by BYD as the world biggest electric car manufacturer and the slide of its shares. But maybe his principles of cutting waste and reshaping the US economy go beyond the shallow ambition of accumulating wealth. I’m sure they do…

Still going. I practice about an hour a day following a proper structure and am currently playing at grade 4 level. Still lacking dynamics and expression, but that will come with more practice. Lessons every two weeks is about right and a lot of fun. Some weeks you make no progress and on some days you climb a mountain.

Could happen, but more likely this is a temporary move to get trading partners to offer concessions to the USA. Isn’t it interesting how Elon Musk, an entrepreneur with a huge global manufacturing operation, has stepped back today? Always assumed the US was effectively the winner in globalisation, but free markets have accelerated the growth of China and others threatening the US hegemony. It’s not a show of strength but of weakness. Anyway, I’m going to avoid looking at my SIPP for a few months…

This is crazy. I’m so sorry to all the people this happened to.

Lovely pre amp. Great purchase!

I had this discussion with my daughter. If you do something as a profession (I write things, for example) and someone asked me to do a job I would expect them to pay for it. If I choose to do it for free, that’s on me. But the *assumption* I would do it for free is where the problem begins. You and your friend have a lovely arrangement, but I understand what our headless friend was saying. My friend fixed a split seam in a double bass. I offered to pay, he refused. We settled on a charity donation and a crate of artisan beer. We were all happy.

Stunning work and a wonderful gesture.

You’ve dodged a huge bullet there. We’re playing in a lovely arts centre. Good crowd, good veggie food and we can basically do what we want. Sort of the opposite of the gig you’re describing.

We’ve just been offered £250, a free meal and three free drinks to play at what will be a crowded venue that I’ve always wanted to play at it with people I like and music that makes me smile. This, to me, is success.

Yes, I get all that. It's why a songwriting credit is worth more than a performance one. The thing is, I don't really get much enjoyment from songwriting. On my own, at least. When I was playing in originals bands, I loved the collective songwriting process. But it's not something I really fancy doing myself. And that's OK. I'm happy working through the last 4 centuries of music. I'm currently playing baroque double bass pieces for nothing more than the enjoyment of doing so. Which leads me on to the next point. There's often antipathy to people who play covers, as if it's somehow artistically less valuable than playing "originals". It's an interesting one. Most of jazz is (or was, if you're looking at the classics) technically covers, because they're reusing melodies and chord structures that someone else has written. In my band, we play new versions of old songs. They bear little relevance to the original (and we have a lot of fun). In some cases, it's much more artistically rewarding than playing in indie bands (or any other musical idiom where people expect you to conform).