TimR

I know of at least 3 rehearsal rooms who have storage space. You only pay a nominal monthly fee think it was £5 a few years back. They make their money because they know you will rehearse there. Just need to work on a bit of logistics when you have a gig and need to pick up gear and return gear.

I would crop that shot square. Taking off the top 4 visible frets and half of the bottom chair cushion.

I find that when I struggle to get the tone I want from my bass its usually time to change the strings. Its not possible to AB strings to see if they are dead yet, they just slowly die and that creeps up on you, all of a sudden you're playing one day and you just think "I need some new gear this just sounds so awful".

Absolutely. Ham and Cabbage or Ham and Sprout Pizzas for me from now on then.

Ultimately there are only two catagories of people who listen to the bass tone at a gig. 1) The Bass player. 2) A Bass player in the audience. To most people we're the big guitar at the back. Other players have complemented me on my tone. I assume my playing sucks, but the piece of wood and other expensive hardware I bought to smash those notes out sounds good.

There's always another option. Keep the Hawkwind tribute band going but become the 'leader' and get a new musician to fill his place. He's the one who wants to change direction. I assume you have gigs and the rest of you already know the tunes. Join his band and play his lines (and ask for some pay if your that way inclined and see how long he insists you play them, or play for free for a bit of fun with a mental note to play until it is not fun or you start getting paid) Why only play in one band? I can't see that you will suddenly get lots of paying gigs in a start up originals band.

I still have one in white. I paid £350 for it in 1987. Not much bottom end, I used to boost with a Boss graphic EQ. Apart from that very low action and very nice tone. I took it to get valued and I was quoted £50 for resale. BUT for insurance purposes the shop owner said that to get a new bass of the equivalent quality I would be looking at paying £1600. I occasionally look on ebay to see if any come up, just out of interest, but have never seen one sell. I've seen a couple not make the reserve bidding stopping at £50.

I asked my wife earlier if she would ever give me an ultimatum like that. She replied "What band? What basses?" Then went back to facebook, MSN, and texting someone..... all while watching Eastenders.

Very sad news indeed. As if things couldn't be any worse, on BBC London yesterday his father was interviewed saying they had no travel insurance and they are looking at bill for £10,000+ each to repatriate to the UK. That's just terrible.

[quote name='Stylon Pilson' post='721431' date='Jan 22 2010, 05:35 PM']Indeed, it isn't. But it might be a problem for the band leader, he might be upset about it, and I want to exercise a little sensitivity to that. S.P.[/quote] It depends on your reason for leaving. Maybe explaining why you are leaving to the band leader would force him to sort the problem?

One issue I had with the drummer in my last band was that he thought to make anything sound better we had to play it faster. (I believe this is known is most pro circles as "the amateurs disease" or similar) It came to a head one night when we ended up listening to the original of Walking on Sunshine because I was fed up with playing it so fast, and him saying it was still not fast enough. A quick trick is to count the number of beats in 6 seconds and multiply by 10. So after a couple of bars I said it was somewhere between 100 and 110. I didn't really care whether we played it at 100, 110 or even 120 I just wanted a definitive tempo rather than his attempts at playing it faster each time to try to get it sounding 'good', to the point that singer couldn't get the words out and people couldn't dance to it. He disagreed with 110 straight away and said it had to be much faster, then continually speeded up his metronome to try to get it to match. Eventually he got it up to 180 before giving up and trying again from 100, finding something close and giving one of those looks people give when they've been proved completely wrong and still can't admit it. Another thing he used to do was go with the bass, so if I played behind the beat he slowed and if I played ahead he speeded up. He would then complain I was rushing or dragging. His background was marching band where everyone plays on the beat! But he was solid, start it fast and keep it fast regardless, which meant that there was no lift for the chorus and then drop back for the verse or any other subtleties like that, certainly no slowing, even if it was obviously too fast to start with. Once the tempo was set, it was set. In the latest band the drummer sings some numbers and has a habit of slowing during the songs he sings if there is a syncopated bass drum, and he also has a habit of compensating for the guitar solos that slow down and speed up. We've sort of got round the singing by getting him to play straight bass drum and let me worry about the syncopation on the bass. The guitarist needs to practice his solos, I'll find away of broaching that subject soon.

The Circle of fifths is easy to learn because its already mapped out on your bass. Imagine a six string bass with top string as C, next one down G, then D, A, E and B. That's the major # keys starting with C no sharps and ending on B with 5 sharps. Now up one semitone but this time ascending the strings. C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db. Gives you all the major b keys. C no flats up to Db with 5 flats. All you need to do now is learn which sharps and flats are present in each key. If you look closely this is pretty simple to do as well. Clearer? If you ever see a piece of music in F# or Gb run!

So if we agree that music is a language. Most of us can understand by listening and most of us can speak it. Some of us can read and write and get good jobs because of that. Some of us understand the rules of its grammar and can use that to create our own music, and get even better jobs.

[quote name='thunderbird13' post='698250' date='Jan 1 2010, 06:53 PM']I'm the total opposite I trained myself to think in terms of notes . I thought this was more "correct" to do until I had an audition last year and the guitarist changed the key just before we started playing, If I had just learnt patterns I would have been ok but instead I ended up trying to tranpose the notes and them play then. Suffice to say Iot totally lost and didnt get the gig [/quote] This is why you should be thinking in terms of intervals.

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='698187' date='Jan 1 2010, 06:00 PM']Here's something else. When I learn a song I don't think about what the chords are. ie, I don't think, 'Right, this is A to G to C etc.' I think in patterns on the fretboard. I look at the fretboard as a grid and remember the changes as almost geometrical patterns. I'm sure other players must do this. Am I right?[/quote] I used to do this and have been trying to get away from it. You can try to move away from it by thinking in intervals and 'hearing' these intervals and learning what they are called. ie one fret jump is minor 2nd, 3 frets is minor 3rd, learn others as you jump across strings etc.

I would hazard a guess you know more theory than you think you do. You know the names of the notes. I've played with people who only go by fret and string numbers. You probably even know where most/all of those notes are on the fretboard. You know that there is a difference between a major and minor, and I would guess you know what the difference is. I've played with guitarists who only play major chords and had to look up a minor one in their chord chart, let alone anything else. If you know what notes are in a Dm7 you're even further down the road.

[quote name='Marvin' post='697300' date='Dec 31 2009, 04:20 PM']I was trawling through the for sale section on the forum and saw and Peavey tvx410. To get an idea of spec I visited a website the name of which evades me but it put the output of the cab in these terms. 350watts continuous 700watts programme. Can someone explain what this means please as I have never seen this before. Cheers Rich[/quote] Not a lot soundwise. Look at the dB figure for loudness, even then it can be misleading. 350w continuous means that the cab can handle 350w electrically for a long period without bursting into flames. 700w programme means that for short periods the cabinet can handle much larger peaks. You can use these figures to make sure that you won't overpower the cab with your amp.

[quote name='merello' post='695425' date='Dec 29 2009, 10:26 AM']When I was young, my uncle turned up at the door and said, 'Heard you play bass - jump in!' Linwood Bowling Club and 2 hours of gigging later I got a tenner! Stil don't have a clue what I played![/quote] A similar thing happened to me about 7 years ago. A bass playing friend reccomended me to dep for him without telling me. I got a call from the band leader telling me when the gig was. I asked what tunes they played and was told all the standards. I asked if we would have a practice beofrehand, he said no I would be fine. We played for 3 hours, I spent all night playing tunes I'd never heard before! Never got called back.

[quote name='thepurpleblob' post='695263' date='Dec 28 2009, 11:27 PM']I think there's probably several!![/quote] Which one is the proper one then?

The first sense that alcohol dulls is the hearing. [url="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6815/7/4"]Alcohol induced hearing loss[/url] There's a proper bass line to Mustang Sally? I never knew that!

Not quite what you are asking for but from a drummers perspective and works for bass as well.

First gig must have been in '85, I was 16. I remember we played One Vision, Money For Nothing, a Status Quo Medley, Sunday Bloody Sunday, a long blues jam, Paranoid, She Sells Sanctuary and probably that was it. We had no singer and it was at a friends 16th in his house. The second gig was the funny one. Again at a house for a party a few months later. By then we had decided to play rock so added The Trooper and a whole host of songs we had written ourselves. We set up and sound checked but no sign of the singer. The room was full of guys a few years older than us waiting to hear some Metal. eventually we got hold of the singer - days before mobile phones - he had to go to his Nan's for tea and couldn't come. We played without him. Don't ever remember being nervous for a gig.

A looper?

When you read a passage from a book out loud, how do you know what emphasis to put on what words and phrases? You could read the words in a foreign language because you know the letters, but it would be very hard to pronounce the words and phrases. Can you 'speak' Funk, Jazz, swing, death metal, pop? Would you like to be multi-lingual in music or would you just listen and play classical music?

[quote name='51m0n' post='656571' date='Nov 16 2009, 11:37 PM']... They neednt be local, just stuff that appeals, the fact is that you'll see why this is a good plan as soon as you start, its the friends of friends of friends that are the resource you need to appeal to. Its quite a strange thing....[/quote] That's an extremely good point, thanks. I hadn't thought about that. I could friend someone in Manchester who could be seen by someone in London. The web is so much more powerful than it first seems. On Facebook it is frightening how may mutual freinds I have with people. Most I never even knew each other. It makes for some interesting conversations when I meet up with them in real life.