josie

Welcome! Good looking bass 🙂

My 2014 BTB1406 Premium has Nordstrands. A very wide (and shallow) neck, and fairly wide string spacing even at the nut, with a lot of taper outward to the bridge. I find it very playable, but I have big hands and long fingers, it wouldn't suit everyone. It's a thing of pure beauty. I don't know how they make a neck that shallow that takes the strain of six strings, but that's what makes it playable - any deeper and it would be a tree trunk.

Welcome! My grandson is a bit younger than yours, but loves my basses and is doing well on ukulele. Lovely to be able to nurture that.

Different strings to experiment with your sound. My band just asked what I want for my birthday next week and I went for a set of 5 D'Addario black tape-wounds for my acoustic. I'd put chrome or nickel flats on my 5 and probably also my 6 if I could afford them. For a really portable combo I'd love a Markbass Micro 801. Do you ever play with a pick? There's some serious fun and luxury to be had from Timbertones. If I had stupid money I'd have a few of these.

I only ever wanted to play bass partly because I understood and wanted that almost-backstage, inconspicuous, unrespected, but utterly essential role. The same in other lives - I've been secretary for several local community organisations for many years. When I do get respect, I know it's real. That's probably part of why I love black basses. Nobody is going to notice them unless they know and care. That said I do make eye contact with the punters - and I'm not a total statue when I'm playing - but I'd never "make moves" to attract attention. That's for our excellent lead singer and she's very good at it.

No, but I should and I now will, possibly not so detailed. My two least-loved basses (Fender Jazz+V and Warwick Thumb 6) are up for sale in my local guitar shop and I was impressed by their security precautions - they took a photograph of me holding each bass, and wrote a full page of description including serial number and any distinguishing features, so there's proof that they're mine (and theirs).

We're cooler the less we try imho. Just get up and play bass. Coolest thing in the world 🙂

That's why I do it.

Our first Real Gig - as in, advertised on Facebook, and we had to set up for ourselves and got to do a soundcheck! (As opposed to om slots where we just had to walk up and plug in to the house band's rig.) Preparation a bit fraught, as the duo who were supposed to open for us had split up a few days before over the attitude of one of them to the venue organiser, so we had to make a well-rehearsed one-hour setlist last for two hours. It went well though. The Old Abbey Taphouse in south Mcr is a tiny place and most of the space is given to the band, so 15-20 people were a crowd! We don't have our own full rig yet, so the mics went through the house PA, and keys, two guitars, and bass each through our own amp. The drums were the drums... Despite that, the sound quality and balance were pretty good. First time I've taken my little Markbass 500 combo out to a proper venue, and it held its own really well in the mix 🙂 We were all nervous before, but as soon as we started playing we just remembered how much we love playing together, and it really flew. The "crowd" were obviously really into it too, and we've been asked back. Venue looked after us really well, an excellent night and looking forward to more to come.

I wasn't in anyway, as I'm planning some experiments with strings this year, but my band (after last night's gig) seem to be heading for the collective purchase of at least a small mixer and some monitors. The good thing about that is that we've reached a level where we need them 🙂

5 - 4 - 0 - 0 "Friends" being peeps I would go out of my way to spend time with outside of music and (mutually) trust with serious life stuff.

I know they're inanimate objects, but I'm down to a stable (I hope) core of four very different electric basses* that all look and feel and sound very different, are right for different styles or situations, and all feel like detachable body parts. I'm in love with them, and to me they have what I would call "personalities". I respond to them differently when I play them. I tried to call my first bass (the 5) Chrissie after Chrissie Hynde, who I hugely admire, because it?/she? has the same sort of ballsy but musical sound. But it didn't stick. Then another bass player said admiringly "It looks like a bird!" so I called her The Bird for a while, but that didn't stick either. So they don't have human-like names, but if a strong enough connection comes up they could. See my .sig 🙂 * Ibanez BTB1406, GMR Bassforce 5, Jack Casady Epiphone 4 strung EADG, Fender Jazz Aerodyne 4 strung BEAD

Welcome! It's your music that matters, not your English spelling 🙂 🙂

Welcome!

The OP and thread title is "good", not "big worldwide". I've been lucky enough to spend some time in Santa Cruz de Tenerife over a few years and the standard of street and small club music is awesome. I don't even know the name of some of the bands I've spent hours on a park bench entranced by.

There's a story that Joe Bonamassa went out and busked the queue to get in for a big sold-out gig and no-one recognised him.

Without them - you can play all the root notes and you'll basically be doing what the bass needs to do in the mix. And I guess if you're doing strict covers you can just memorise the original bassline without really understanding it. But there's so much more. If you want to develop an original bassline (imho) you need to understand the scale for the key of the song, so you know which notes will work as passing notes or fills or runs up or down to the roots. That's even more true when you're improvising on the fly, there's no time to think about whether F or F# is the right thing, but if the scale is under your fingers the right thing will happen. As for practice, I've discovered very recently that picking up my favourite bass very first thing in the morning seems to kick some good brain circuits into action - I have some favourite Baroque-inspired ornamented scale exercises that I start every day with and they set me up for the day. My intended routine is 5-10 min scales/arpeggios - 20-30 min songs for band setlist - 15-20 min new songs - 15-20 min improv with drum machine. But that varies with how soon the next gig is and how much other stuff is eating my life, it doesn't all happen any day. i wish it did.

Merkins are worse than Brits for that imho. I've seen excruciatingly loud arrogance from Merkins far too many times. I especially remember standing in a check-in queue in a little provincial airport in Germany, 20+ years ago, behind a very large man with a USA passport who alternated shouting at the check-in woman with loudly telling the rest of his party that it was a disgrace she didn't speak "English". This was before I had my UK passport - when she saw my USA passport I could see her heart sink. The change in her face when I started the conversation by apologising in German for my poor German I still treasure. To get back on topic, there's some lovely stuff in Welsh. I love a folk/electronica duo, Solarference, they sing a few in Welsh but none of the ones on YouTube. Well worth checking out if you like that sort of thing though. https://www.youtube.com/user/solarference

We have our first paid gig this Thursday. I set it up, and invited a duo who both used to play with us to open for us, and jam with us for the third set. Saturday we all got together for the keys player's 60th birthday party and agreed that we'd play exactly what we were planning for the gig. All seemed to go well and everyone seemed to be happy. Then this morning the harp/vox in the duo sent a stinking email to the venue organiser claiming that he had arranged the gig, they were going to headline, and did she know if any other bands were going to be there? Followed this up by complaining to us that I had suddenly taken over organising it and even written their setlist - when what I had done was to send them our setlist and a suggestion for the third shared set. The guitarist in the duo was so angry that he's broken up the duo. Leaving us with three days (and one practice) to put together 2+ hours of material rather than the one hour we've prepared. It's a real shame, because the two of them sounded really good together. I'm sorry they've split, I was thinking about ways to help them get gigs. And I'm worried about Harpo, he's not usually like that afaIk. I'm also having trouble calming down. Luckily everyone else involved agrees that he's behaved badly and I've done no wrong. The guitarist is going to come and sit in with us. It will still be an "interesting" gig. 😞 Please excuse me ranting, I trust you guys to understand.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!