lozkerr

Same here. I neck far more than is good for me, but I have a golden rule of no booze or pharmaceuticals before or during a rehearsal or gig. It's disrespectful both to the punters and my bandmates.

Well, he certainly sounds like someone who's feeling himself. It is possible to play by feel - I've done it in marching bands as a side drummer when marking the beat and as a trad jazz trumpeter a long time back. But playing by feel doesn't mean you expect the others to read your mind and throw toys out the pram when they don't - you lock in with the beat, count on autopilot and if you're taking a improvised solo, you know exactly when to cue the rest of the band back in. Our normal MO was to turn towards the next player for one-two-three-four while making eye contact so they'd hear the solo getting louder and have enough time to take over. It came together after a lot of practice. And crucially, you need enough humility to recognise when you've f**ked up and work on what needs to addressed. Your approach to learning songs is absolutely fine. That's exactly what we all do in both the bands I'm in - agree the version to learn, put it on a Spotify playlist and work on our parts. If either singer is struggling with the key, we change it. If anyone has some changes they'd like to try, we run through them at rehearsal and decide yes/no. Seriously, do not blame yourself for Ego Guitard's attitude. This guy is an insecure arrogant cretin who has no idea how to play ensemble. You shouldn't have to cope with his impromptu adaptations, just as he shouldn't be adding them unless he can count bars properly and agree cues with the rest of the band. From what you've said on here I think you've shown commendable patience in dealing with this fool. Walk away and find better people to play with. At the very least, you've learnt to spot warning signs! Onwards and upwards.

It was the tantrums that raised the red flag for me. Unless you gave him a gobful of abuse for not being able to eclipse Gary Moore - something I don't for a moment believe - toddler tantrums seem a gross over-reaction that suggests either deep-rooted insecurity or a belief that that's how proper rock 'n' roll people behave. The whole point about rehearsals is to tighten songs up, and to work on things that people may be having problems with. Couple of cases in point - our drummer was having problems with the Cure's In Between Days so I spent ages running through a piddly wee bassline with him so he could identify what to take away for homework. The bassline's a doddle but it never occurred to me to get stroppy about playing it over and over again - a band is supposed to be a team, not Ego Guitard And His Band. And on the flip side, I needed a lot of help with the bass solo in Atomic last week so I got him to run through it with me for about twenty minutes. He didn't complain about playing four on the floor all that time and I wouldn't have expected him to, just as he was happy to work out a cue for coming back in if I got lost. It's the overall performance that's important and if this eejit thinks he's a cut above the rest, you're doing the right thing by walking away.

Which makes the visual side that more important. If you can communicate the vibe that the guy's an utter tool, you'll have salvaged your rep. If he's loud enough to drown the rhythm section, the audience will react to that as they won't like being bombarded with 500 decibels of screechy widdling.

Backing tracks don't get narky when you make mistakes. That tells me that you need to put your rep first. If you decide to go ahead with the gig, make sure you can stay locked in with the drummer at rehearsals between now and the gig. Forget about the guitarist's widdling. When you set up at the gig, make sure that (a) you're standing upstage of this tool and (b) ensure that no-one's masking you. Then, when the guitarist goes off-piste, stay with the drummer so the rhythm's consistent and deploy every venomous glare, tightened lips, eye roll and head shake you can when he screws up the song. He won't see it because he'll have his back to you, but the audience will. Keep it subtle, though. If you have a volume pedal, you could try cranking it slightly so that the audience can hear you're trying to hold it together. Then quit after the gig, citing the guitarist's reply as the reason. If you're concerned about being badmouthed by this fool, get someone to video the gig. Then, if they start slating you on social media, just reply with some clips showing the biggest howlers.

Bought an Eden all-valve head from Vin. Great transaction, he met me for the handover, gear exactly as described. Really chuffed with my new amp. I'd deffo buy from him again. Top bloke.

Excellent! The first time's always the worst. Well done!

Far too easy for you - maybe start with Won't Get Fooled Again or Jerry Was A Race Car Driver 😉 But aye, all joking apart, ease yourself into it. You could also try singing songs your band plays - you'll have the basslines nailed and if the vox sounds off but stays in time, that's 90% of the work done.

Hey Blue, Good to see you back. I rarely reply to your posts but I'm very interested in what you have to say. I'm not quite in the senior years. although they're approaching more rapidly than I'd like, but to answer your questions: What do you want to do and accomplish at 65 plus years as opposed to when you were 21 When I was 21, I was a complete mess. My 21st birthday was spent alone walking the streets at night; the only clear memory I have of it is standing on a motorway bridge trying to persuade myself not to jump off. I prefer not to think about it. But after fast-forwarding thirty-odd years, I just want to catch up. I've played several different instruments over the years and when I finally landed on the bass guitar, I knew I'd found where I should have been all along. By the time I'm 65, I hope to have caught up to where I should have been ages ago. You can't turn back the clock, but you can shape the future. I now know where I want to be. What is your focus at 65 plus,writing, performance, recording , self study Well, at 57 plus, it's on performance, singing while playing bass, boosting my theory knowledge, improving my ear, strengthening my voice and building the confidence to front a band. I might never get there but knowing I can if I have to will boost my happiness and confidence no end. What are your thoughts on gigging at 65 plus as opposed to 21. In my (later) twenties, theatre lighting design was my thing. I'd take any gig going as I felt it boosted my experience and put up with a lot of shite along the way. It taught me a lot, but if I was in the same line of work today, anyone demanding I put myself out by doing solo get-ins, fit-ups, technical rehearsals, running the desk at every show and doing the strike alone afterwards would get a two-word reply, the second of which would be 'off'. These days, I think quality needs to take priority over quantity. Having said that, I have a day job so I don't need the money - I think that puts you and me in different places. I do it because I enjoy it. I don't mind the odd weekend gig where I have to set up the PA and lights, pack it down afterwards and put it in storage, but I think I'd baulk at doing that on my tod several nights a week. What type of folks do you want to work with at 65 plus People who aren't divas, and who recognise that a band is a team consisting of individuals who all have something to contribute and who can each need help with different things. I've been very lucky in that respect - our six-piece post-punk band have all outgrown the toddler tantrums and we work well together. I'm really pushing it and I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Mate, take it easy and don't beat yourself up. I know what the pressure to perform feels like - the one time I've worn an adult nappy was when I was suffering from food poisoning and had to run the lights that evening - but your health must always come first. Look after yourself, Blue.

This^^^. Some songs are very much harder to sing and play bass on than others. If the bassline's got a lot of syncopation in it, you have to remember the notes, count correctly, hit the right note at the right time and remember the melody and lyrics. Not easy. What might help in building confidence is to start with some easy three-chord songs that have simple basslines that don't need you to jump all over the neck to find the notes. You could maybe try ear plugs or if you use IEMs, turn down the vox in the mix so that the note you hear in your head sounds louder than that coming through the PA. The two can sound very different - like everyone else who's posted on this thread, I hate the sound of my recorded voice and I'm still trying to get used to it. If you want some suggestions for easy songs to try, Heaven by the Psychedelic Furs, Tina Turner's cover of The Best, ZZ Top's Gimme All Your Loving or Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself might be good ones to start off with. Little if any syncopation, chords change on the one and the vocal lines don't have too wide a range. Heaven is straight eighths all the way through - the only thing you need to work on is where the passing notes fall on the vocal line. Dancing With Myself is too, but it has a couple of small variations in the bridge and a tacet bit in the last verse, neither of which are particularly taxing. The Best has a slightly wider vocal range - the line 'oh baby, you're my soul' might cross your break and go a bit Pete Tong, but if you can keep it in time, you can work on that phrase separately. I can still royally f**k it up after practising it for months. Gimme All Your Loving has a syncopated bit in the third verse ('You got to move it up...') but it's easier than it sounds at first. A custom karaoke backing track might help - karaoke-version.co.uk lets you buy a track once and then download as many different mixes as you like for no additional charge. I've found it a godsend. Once you've got some simple songs under your belt, you could try some trickier ones. Teenage Kicks might be a next baby step - easy bassline but the vocal line isn't as closely tied to it as the songs I've mentioned. The key thing is to learn the two parts separately and get the bassline hammered into your muscle memory. Once that's done, it's much easier to put the parts together. Just a few things that have worked for me. Keep at it, you'll get there.

On the flip side of that: Guitar players get students. Bass players get gigs.

Shirley that depends on how people approach using the B string? I switched to a five a few years ago and I'd have to relearn a ton of stuff if I went back to a four. We played fifteen songs at our last gig - it was a two-band affair - and none of them had basslines that went below bottom E. Yet the way I'd learnt them had ten of them dropping down to the B string - they were just easier to play that way. On reflection, that might have been because I hadn't been playing for all that long before making the switch so I didn't have a huge amount to unlearn. I couldn't go back, though. We have a few more songs we're working up - All Together Now in C, Another Girl Another Planet, where the bottom C and D adds a lot of fullness to the sound, plus others where I have to sing BVs - not having to jump up and down the neck makes it easier to get the bassline under my fingers. And it definitely makes it easier when trying to sing lead. Horses for courses, I guess.

Hi everyone, Many thanks for all your suggestions. I decided to bunk off work early today and spend some time working through them all and I think I've worked out where it's going wrong - I'm playing the A octave jump too high up (B10 and A12 frets) and my fingers are getting tangled when going across the fretboard. That's happened so often that I seem to be subconsciously expecting it now. I tried the suggestions of thumb and index fingers and index and little fingers and it felt a bit odd - I'll explore it more, though. Index and middle fingers seem to work well for me most of the time. I take the point about double time, but the tempo on the chart, which I transcribed from Songsterr, is 69 rather than 138. It has helped me to remind myself that sixteenth notes don't automatically have to be played fast and that notation has let me keep everything to two pages with room for the lyrics too - not that they're particularly complex 🙂 After trying different fingerings, I think the root cause was my automatically thinking that ascending patterns = going up the fretboard. Which isn't always the best way to approach it. What seems to be working best is this: F# - B7 and A9 frets A - E5 and D7 frets (up one, back two) C# - A4 and G6 frets (up one, back one) E - A7 and G9 frets (up two) F# - A9 and G11 frets (up two) A - A0 and A12 frets C# - E9 and D11 frets followed by the top E on the G9 fret. So I think the plan will have to be - put the chart away so I'm not trying to follow it closely - I don't think that was helping - and replace the muscle memory for that bar with the amended fingering with some intensive practice. Thanks again, everyone. With a bit of luck I should be able to crack it now.

Friends, Romans, Basschatters, lend me your ears. Actually, don't. The fist I'm making of the octave jumps in the second bar of the verse in this song is painful and it's really getting to me that I keep cocking it up. This is Blondie's Atomic - a fabulous song that ticks all the right boxes - it's loud, powerful, completely in-your-face and suits our female singer down to the ground. I've just about nailed every part of it, including a slightly simplified bass solo. Still have to work out the comms between me and the drummer so that we come back together properly if I go off-piste. But that's a bunfight for another day. Thing is, after practising it constantly for several months I'm 100% certain that this is a psychological block - I've buggered it up so often that I subconsciously expect to do it again. And inevitably I do, after playing it OK several times. It's incredibly frustrating - I can pick up my bass from doing something else and play it faultlessly. I can play along with the recording just fine until I start overthinking it and screw it up. We tried it at rehearsal last week after putting it aside for a few months and the recording is toe-curlingly bad; the only good bit is that I'm landing on the top E on time so it's not throwing everyone else. I've tried different fingerings, and they don't seem to help. My weapon of choice is a five-string, so I start the bar on fret 7 of the B string. All good in the hood until I mess it up. Same thing happens if I start on fret 2 of the E string. So - does any kind soul out there have any suggestions for dealing with this psychological block? ('Play something else' isn't an option 😊) I'm sure I can't be the only person who's encountered something like this. Many thanks.

From last Saturday. Depressing lyrics, but I love this song. Love Will Tear Us Apart LQ.mp4

I've only bought one this year - Ellen Foley's new album Fighting Words. She's still got what it takes: https://ellenfoley.bandcamp.com/album/fighting-words I bought an autographed CD rather than a digital copy as I figured she'd make a bit more from that.

Last night - charity fundraiser gig for armed forces veterans. Unpaid, but it was just so good to get out there again after 20 months!

Just bought a Behringer lighting desk from them. It turned up on time today but it looks like an ex-display unit as the rack ears were fitted, there was no internal packaging and the mains cable and manual were missing. If I didn't need it for a gig on Saturday, I'd have already sent it back. Not overly impressed.

If it's a first dance, this might fit the bill:

Just bought an Eden 210 cab from Paddy. Great guy, easy to deal with and I'm dead chuffed with it. It'll likely be used in anger next week. Also a big thanks to his daughter Jennie for holding it for a day before I could collect it. Would definitely buy from him again!

This ^^^^ During lockdown, we picked another fifteen songs to add to the repertoire and diligently beavered away learning our parts. We all found some parts dead easy and others a tad more challenging. My own doddle was the Cure's In Between Days - easy peasy bass part but a toughie for the drummer. But when we were able to get together again, everything that was as tight as a gnat's chuff against the original recordings fell apart when we tried to put it all together. We sorted it all out of course, but there was no way we could have gigged those songs without ensemble rehearsal. Getting to know each other's idiosyncrasies helped to iron out and anticipate problems, plus having regular rehearsals - we rehearse every fortnight with the expectation that everyone will put in the necessary effort outwith those evenings - has planted the band in everyone's mind as a regular commitment.

Can't you just play the notes on the lower strings and drop down the octave for those wee fills higher up? I've had a crack at it and it sounds OK, but it's definitely easier on the five-string, especially those octave jumps from low C#