josie

Manchester has of course been mentioned, but don't overlook Stockport, 8 miles away - which has a decent and very welcoming music scene of its own. Lots of good musicians who play together in shifting and unpredictable combinations, and are happy to bring in incomers. Housing &c cheaper than Mcr, but close enough that you can easily do anything you want there as well.

OT, but can't resist: do you know the album "Grayfolded"? "Grayfolded is a two-CD album produced by John Oswald featuring the Grateful Dead song "Dark Star". Using over a hundred different performances of the song, recorded live between 1968 and 1993, Oswald, using a process he calls "plunderphonics", built, layered, and "folded" all of them to produce two large, recomposed versions, each about one hour long." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps you could buy the book to get started with in the meantime? Then you'd have a nice head start when the course comes round again.

That's the one song where I get to totally unleash my fretless slide bass - love playing it the rare times I get the chance. Never listen to the original though! This thread is sort of mixing up "hate to play" with "hate to listen to"...

If you look closely you can also see this 2002 Jazz Aerodyne in the background of my avatar :-)

Welcome! I'm also in Mcr and would be happy to meet up in the bass corner of Johnny Roadhouse sometime for some shared gear appreciation if you fancy it :-)

Agree - it's well laid out with a good progression. However if you can't read music, consider Bob Magnusson's book, also very good and includes tab: https://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=695168

A folk duo once turned up at my local om and played guitar and saw duets. The sound was strikingly, hauntingly beautiful. I've heard similar effects in some electronic music, but with nothing like the resonance and impact of a real physical instrument in a small room. Must be harder to do than it looks, though.

Following from the "London rehearsal rooms" thread, if you're in a band, how close together do you all live, and how far do you travel to practice? My band started as a workshop project at Band on the Wall in Manchester, working with two of the best local blues musicians (Mat Walklate and Paulo Fuschi) so it was worth us all coming in to central Manchester once a week, from different directions and distances. Stockport, Bury, north Mcr, Bolton, and even Southport (50 miles away). Now that's ended, we really want to stay together, and we're trying to find practice spaces and gigs that everyone can sensibly travel to. Ok so far but I have a bad feeling that the distance and travel time may wear us down. Anywhere we go, at least one of us is going to spend at least an hour and a half each way getting there and back. Traveling to play gigs is a different question, but for regular practice sessions?

Yes. I left my ex-band partly because the drummer refused to admit that she couldn't play in time. They did find another bass player, but soon afterwards disappeared completely, possibly for the same reason. Not that they would have admitted it.

Just to put the very impressive stuff above into humble perspective: Got to join the late jam at Carlisle Blues Festival last September with Kaz Hawkins, Connie Lush, and Matt Long of Catfish - three of the very best musicians on the current UK blues scene. Well out of my depth but got away with it :-)

D'Addario chrome flats, same as on my electric fretless. If you're after a UB sort of sound, tape-wounds are generally agreed to be best, but I'm trying for a slide/shimmer bassline (inspired by the slide guitar in some of my favourite blues bands, including the one I play in :-) and the silvery sound they give is exactly what I want.

"Fairy Tale of New York". My first ever sort-of-band (just some mates who get together after work now and then over several bottles of wine when we know no-one can hear us) love it - somehow at that point in the evening I always need 10 minutes in the loo :-)

No, I was tempted but decided it would just be greedy. It went for £287 in the end - hopefully to someone who will fully appreciate it. Do look out for the Michael Kellys though, it's not a well known name, so they tend to go second hand for a lot less than a similar quality from a better known maker. Vintage make nice acoustic basses too, easier to find in your price range, but not as nice as the MKs.

I don't mind compliments, but I'd rather they were on how I play! You're right, the context is quite a competitive fast-paced environment with little sympathy for anyone who isn't feeling completely confident. And I've never seen another woman there with any instrument (and very seldom a woman singer), I've definitely been made to feel unwanted by some peeps there (not all). Now that my band has started to get a few gigs, I probably won't go back.

This is about to sell for a completely stupid price - currently £134, closing at 21:01 tonight: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RRP-840-Michael-Kelly-Dragonfly-Electro-Acoustic-Bass-Guitar-Gig-Bag-NEW-Superb/312123539045?hash=item48ac033e65:g:IGMAAOSwH~ta6eDH I have the fretless 5 version, great build quality and tone, Fishman electronics, visually gorgeous (if it's not too ornate for your taste). Worth the £800+ list price.

I always wanted a fretless, my son rightly talked me out of getting one as my first bass. I now have a stunning GMR 4 (£350 2nd hand) and Michael Kelly acoustic 5 (£425 new but half list price). Chrome flats on both. I've gigged them both occasionally when a particular song really needed it ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with all the sitar-like shimmer and slide in the bass is a stand-out). However atm I mostly use them for practice at home to develop really precise fingering and ear training. You're probably well beyond needing that, but where I am, they force me to struggle to reach the standard I'm aiming for. Looking forward to the day when I can take one out with the band and be able to play crisply when that's wanted with the option of smooth slide when it sounds good. Returning to the OP, I definitely agree with much of the above, with a budget of £2k, I'd get something good 2nd hand for up to say £500. It might be all you want. Or you might decide fretless is not for you after all and sell it on. Or you might decide to sell it on so as to then still have £2k for your dream fretless, confident that you'd love it and use it. There's advice on other threads here to go for a purpose-built fretless rather than de-fretting, you need to think about the height of the action and the durability of the fretboard surface which will both vary.

The related problem I've had with the most high-profile local jam which I play from time to time is that the stage lights bounce off my strings so brightly that I can't see the frets. I know I shouldn't need to, but it's a noisy intimidating environment, and not being able to check visually that my left hand fingers are in the right place makes it harder. I tried to fix it by turning away from the lights and was accused (by another bass player!) of showing off that I had a nice ar5e. (1) I'm not sure that's true and more importantly (2) it's not exactly a supportive comment from a fellow musician :-(

Imho it's not so much about making mistakes as about recovering from them. My teacher has a regular technique of playing his guitar part just a bit too fast for me, so I fall behind or drop into mistakes and have to recover quickly. I want to hate him for it, but it's the best possible practice for playing live, especially in a jam, and I've thanked him for it many times. The keys player in my band has a habit of speeding everything up (we don't have a drummer atm), and if he doesn't hear me shouting at him to slow down I just give up on my nice walking lines and drop back to root notes so I can keep up accurately. I b0ll0ck him later :-) A virtuoso harmonica player friend told me that when he's learning a new song, he figures out what mistakes he's most likely to make and practices recovering from them.

Yes, a purpose-made B - G set and see if you know someone who just needs a new G string :-) But don't take a file to the nut until you've tried it and made sure you need to. It's not just the top nut that might need widening but all of them. And then if you want to go back to EADG they might be too loose. Won't need to on my Aerodyne. I guess it depends a bit on the exact shape of the slots - if they're properly rounded then each string will sit where it fits.

This is interesting, it's got me wondering about my Encore P. There's some history here: Including the comment on headstock shape that "Fender style ones were the earliest, made in India. They had another typical feature - square, boxy string trees instead of the disc shaped ones." That seems to nail yours as 1980s.

Good point, and we might do in future. It's not a commercial pub, but run as a non-profit social enterprise community centre (and an excellent pub too), which was why were were there in the first place, and were happy to play to support them. I don't think we'd want to ask for free time at a time when they could otherwise have another band there paying for it, but we might try to negotiate something off-peak next time we play there.

Southport Marina festival 7 July unless something else comes up sooner :-)

Here's a representative selection. The abalone is too thin to use with a bass, but too pretty not to keep in the tin :-)

The Plastic Mojo Band played our first real gig this afternoon, and I thought it might be interesting to compare stories. (It's probably been done here before...) We came together as a workshop project a while back, which led to a friends-and-family gig in March with a few peeps drifting in off the street. Decided to stay together as a band, using a practice room over a local pub. The landlady overheard us and asked us to play this afternoon, clear that we would just be background noise - which suited us, as it took some pressure off. Apologised that she could only give us beer and food and not money - we weren't expecting even that! This a completely acoustic gig. (Yes, acoustic bass.) We started inside the pub, which has a decent piano, but the very few customers were all outside in the good weather, so she asked us to play outside, which meant that the keys player had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon but drink with his friends. (We did drag him up to play hand percussion for a couple of songs.) A new (very good) guitar player who we'd barely met. Our excellent lead singer couldn't be there. Luckily we're a blues band, and can jam most of the standards. We played for three hours (well I did, the others drifted in and out) making up most of it as we went along. We got a bit of applause, and we've been asked back, so we must have been ok. I've been playing om's and jams for a few years now, but it's still sinking in that for the first time I've played a gig that was booked by someone I didn't know, and thanked with food and beer. After 45 years of believing I'd never be able to play at all. I realise this will seem pretty pathetic to many of you, but we all have to start somewhere... So how was the first time for you? :-)