diskwave

Just to add to my above post of semi doom and gloom. My P bass resides in the corner of the living room, plugged into my BA110 and ready for what I euphomistically call 'The Lunchtime Recital' where I open up any old random playlist and have a blast...No complaints from the neighbours so maybe they enjoy it too...haha, tho with them being old I make sure I do some Sinatra, or old time jazz etc.....I bet none of us can actually quit for good.

Im a failed classical musican (did violin up to 19) So in my late teens started bass and I played it consistently for 40 years, however the last 10 I started getting increasingly bored with it. The straw that broke the camels back 6 yrs ago was a round trip of 300 miles depping a private party outside in the rain, (covered stage) Rich dude, good money...... but we end up sat around all day just to play to a handful of tiny tots and their mums...in the rain.! That was it, finished. Im done. Up shot is Ive got back into the classics and started studying Cello and I couldn't be happier... Hard work. Hard study and maybe in a couple yrs I may just be good enough to join the local community orchestra...Ok I'm only 63 but to me now pop and rock just seems so dull, even the old stuff I love...Ive played it all, loved it all....But its time to move on..do something totally new.

Might as well fess up. I can't play to a click track, there I said it. It just gets in the way of the groove for my liking, messes with my clock, and my clock is always pushing an pulling, as it should be imo, its how music breathes ....How those guys on the ships do it with guest artists is extraordinary. Some sound like they've got a full percussion thing going on in the cans.....clicks, bongs, half time, double time.....speed up, take it down....Its all rather clever.

Not for me but a guy I knew bk in the 70's used one though an old Marshall stack...massive sound...sounded like an orchestra, kinda boomy but clear to and in a three peice with a Tele it worked so well......Always impressed me.

Back in ye days of olde we would sack the offending musician who couldn't keep time......That way the band can play any time, anyway, anywhere and still be tight as a ducks whatsit. Oh and time shifts in a tune is good. Ha.. the modern world and its technical perfection....its all a flippin mystery to me.

Not im my world. Low grindy mids and that Ampeg honk cannot be beat in my book. People dont like them cause theres just to much bass eq, which yes can get bloated...dial it back push the mids....heaven.

Overated. Stingrays, (thin and to Jacoish for my liking). Rumbles (not enough low mid range grind for my liking, too smooth and why I play Ampeg) Underated. The latest Squire range.....old Peavey gear (superb generic bass tone but so flippin heavy)

As long as Ive still got access to 70's Prog, old folk music, Bach and all those incredible 60's 70's 80's pop/soul masterpieces I dont have to give a fig....and I dont.

Technically, yes the very best of all time, quite incredible....but my go to female hero is Gladys....warmth, depth and hutspah. But yes WH was an extraordinary talent.

Some people on here really do have some funny ideas. So all the worlds great orchestras playing the great classics are parasites? And all our pop heroes really thought their material wouldn't be played/honoured by us lesser mortals? Id be absolutely flattered if some young band wanted to have a go at a tune I wrote years ago.....Imagine Mick and Keef (hypothetically of course) walking down the road and hearing the distant sound of one of their tunes wafting up the street....id imagine it would be kinda exciting.

Apart from a couple of grainy and totally embarrassing photos, Ive got one single set list on a tatty sheet of coffee stained note paper from a summer hotel residency in 1987. Fascinating to look at the tunes now...Pointer Sisters, Sting, Crusaders, Tina, all the old disco classics. Me, a Fender Rhodes, drums and a bird who was older than us and who could really belt it out....Dance floor packed every night....ahh the good ole days.

I kid you not just get a set of real cheap chinese no names off ebay...30 quid or so. Got some in a P bass sounds grt and Ive owned a lot of fenders over the yrs. But yes those hi fi PU's have all the mids scooped out....no good at all.

Nobody cares what I think but hey this is a forum and I like it here, so.......There is absolutely no point in the OP's question. People do what they do and that's fine. But I will say this. I detect an insidious tone whenever this subject is brought up, in that if you play a five then you are somehow musicaly superior and cleverer than those of us who don't, and to those greats in the past who didn't. Beyond ridiculous and in a peculiar way brings this forum into disrepute...

Nope 4 strings is not enough. All those Motown tunes and gazillions of 70's chart hits sound awful without that fifth string....he said.

All that wil change if you read about poor poor old Debbie Harry. Shes got acute tinnitus now thanks to Clems incessant cymbal smashing. I know of two other cases of peeps who's tinnitus was so bad they ended it all.

I depped in a hubby and wifey lead, 60's tribute outfit couple yrs back, they were all in their 70's and kinda decrepit but very good. Four part harmonies, the works and he and the singer/guitarist were both playing small classic Fender Combos. Jeez what a flippin piercing racket...It isnt just the heavy stuff that can do you for, Thank goodness I had my plugs with me.

The main reason Ive packed it all in. Dr's will tell u never ever "squirt" noise into ur ears and Im including in ears too. If I do a gig now its with those purple, industrial 30 dec plugs with a spare set in a top pocket and I care not a jot if I cant really hear the all of the frequencys. My hearing is way more important than the show.

Very nice bassy tape system in a Mk1 Scirrocco (beautiful stubby little thing, shifted too) and at the time doing hotel lounge/club residency stuff. Twas all Al Jarreau, George Benson, Sting (Set Them Free...loved doing that one) and Quincy Jones....and playin a flippin grt heavy Mk1 Stingray which I eventually grew to loathe.

True. And you'll be surprised how many famous names met each other from the classifieds back then too.

Back in the late 70's when I was a very young fellow it was all word of mouth...it had to be, no internet, phones etc. You'd pop in the local guitar shop store on a Sat and see what the latest happening was, he might have a board but gigs back then were always full of local musicians on the look out for each other etc....But a couple of years ago I used JMB and it was ok. The only weird bit was sitting in a corridor with two other bassists....like waiting outside the headmasters office for a whack!...haha.

Threads got me thinking and remembering a lot of stuff. That thing when you've setup but the male bog door is on ur side of the stage, and this can be the case in the nicest of places and that wiff of toilet cleaner hits u every now and again.....I can remember it now looking out onto a packed floor, me killing Boogie Oogie Oogie or similiar and then that pong hits you. Haha, the life of a pro musician. You either love the circus life and grease paint or you don't. To be fair I did for a few years and then it wained, and once it starts to go there's no stopping it.

This. If you were to isolate the bass in all those brilliant classic 70's chart tunes it will be ever so slightly distorted, usually a P bass run direct into a valve pre amp on the board......and yes it kinda places it perfectly in the mix. Even Jamersons P bass on the Motown stuff is purposely distorted.

Seems there's two aspects here. "Making it" ie fame and fortune (good luck with that as a bass player) and then simply becoming a working musician earning good money. The guys I still admire are the ones who stuck at it and then become first call for say a touring act or a TV show...That kind of thing....real work, real money, and to some extent some sort of celebrity what ever that means.

Well as a naive sprog, twas 1980 in a real good Prog Rock outfit....but we just could not find a good enough singer so I quit. Then a completely different situation in 1984. Prolonged summer season on the Isle of Wight. 5 nights per week. Start at 5pm for the tiny tots, 4 sets per night. Three months of that and I was done with the entire thing. Went off to college and studied photography which I did for the next 30 odd years, retired last year and having a blast now studying cello. I still have a bass in the house plugged in and I'll fill in if needed tho its very rare nowdays. But that moment in that holiday camp all those yrs ago playing that fun, old school disco stuff but at the same time gazing outta the window wishing I was somewhere else cause I've remembered the chart?... That's the moment when I realised my dream of a life being a successful working musician was dead.