TimR

Only some people can cut them though. It's the same with anything that takes people's time. You decide how much you want to do something and charge for your time appropriately. If someone wants me to play a wedding its going to cost them a lot of money. I have to set aside a day a long time in advance and turn down any work that I'm offered for that day. Same with making a bass. Someone can only make one bass at a time. If hundreds of people are willing to pay £1600 for it, then you increase your price until only one person wants to buy it. If you have a factory churning out one every 40 seconds then people are willing to pay a lot less for something that has several copies and is not unique.

No one is objecting to expensive basses.

If I was touring or even playing twice a week, I'd happily spend more money. But I can't justify £1600 for a bass when £400 gets me something very good and durable enough to last long enough. At work we size our generators to do the job and to last for the expected duty. I've never heard of anyone stealing a generator from the boot of a car, generally because they weigh several tons and are bolted into the concrete. Regards professional orchestra players, they're playing several hours a day. I've heard professionals play beginner instruments and instruments worth thousands of pounds. They sound no different, they always sound like 'John the trumpet player.' However, they can instantly value your instrument and say what needs attention and whether you need a more expensive one because you're fighting to play the one you have. (Brass players and flute players will spend hundreds/thousands on a solid silver mouth piece.) We have lots of threads here about set-ups and other adjustments and changes. So at least some of us can tell when we have outgrown our instruments or they've drifted out.

There's definitely a law of diminishing returns. It also depends on your level of experience. You'll be able to tell the difference between a beginner bass and an intermediate bass, when you are at an intermediate level, and the next level up and so on. Can you financially justify paying for that difference, its all down to the individual. I stopped noticing any difference after £1600, but couldn't justify gigging a bass that cost £1600, so £400 did for me. The machineheads were rubbish and the pots have died. New machineheads were £50. Pots I changed myself for pennies. I also had issues with screws coming out of the strap buttons. But matchsticks and wood glue sorted that. Rough edges on the frets also needed a bit of attention.

Wonder if this happened in Brazil somehow and caused a boost. This is what happens with Celebrity deaths suddenly happening again. The BBC publish something related with a link, people click on the link and it becomes most read, even though its an old story. You may have picked a particular tag somehow that's being picked up. That's how YouTube works, not sure about Spotify as I've never added music. Edit: yes you can add metadata tags to your tracks when uploading on the desktop version.

My great aunt and uncle had an outside toilet, no central heating, no telephone and round pin electrical sockets in the 90s. In North London.

Something they do to bass guitars at the factory.

Worked fine for me for years on small gigs. Tuner in line out. Turn to amp. Hit mute button. Tune bass. Hit mute button. Only presents a problem if you are DIing to the PA.

I think you are both confusing the bass volume control and the amp volume control. If you have a line out tuner, you need to mute the amp somehow. If it doesn't have a mute button then you have to turn the amp volume down, tune, and reset the amp volume. If you're using a DI out of the amp then a tuner pedal that mutes is essential as the amp volume won't affect the DI out. There's a few different configurations we all use. The mute tuner pedal simplifies everything by working in all scenarios.

Can never be too sure round these parts.

Clapping works better for people who don't like to sing and doesn't rely on any pitching.

Surely he's famous as a bass player who acts a bit.

It should mute the signal by grounding it. So you should get no noise. Or at least no more noise, and probably less, than you'd get from you amp when you've muted the strings. It's electrically the same as turning the volume knob on your bass to 0.

Keanu Reeves.

The short bloke from Top Gear.

Yes. It's a fine art to play one as well.

Especially if you're not going to last the full distance.

Went to see Richard Bona at the jazz cafe mid-week about 10 years ago. Doors opened at 7. We arrived at 8. Usually bands start at 9. He eventually appeared at 10pm. At 10:30 large numbers of people started to leave to catch the last train home, so they could get up in the morning for work.

OK. We'll maybe I'll concede, obviously if you've paid loads of money to get into a Richard Bona gig, I would suggest you go to the box office and complain to them and try and get your money back.

The option is not to go and see Richard Bona live. And if a band starts doing something you're not enjoying, leave. I think we've covered- "I don't play solos". Would be good to hear from some more bass players on how they approach playing solos.

I think the great thing about a solo is it can be improvised and anything can happen. It's why I enjoy playing and listening to live music. Anything can, and usually does, happen. Wrong notes, going into the wrong sections, starting in the wrong key, drum kits gaining a life of their own and wandering down stage, amps catching fire, dodgy sound mixes. It's all part of the live experience. A lot of that has become very sterile and clinical now. I think a lack of real live music on TV, multitrack recording on protools and auto tune have spoiled people somewhat.

Is that not the purpose of entertaining and performing. It's all a show.

It's showing appreciation. The performers are there to perform to you, you are there to enjoy the performance. I've noticed this with City vs Village audiences. City audiences seem to think its your job to make them enjoy themselves. Village audiences are there to enjoy whatever you do. YMMV. I was at a dance competition once where the judge said (roughly) "Remember, you are there to entertain and the audience wants to be entertained, they want you to perform well. Enjoy yourself and it will show and make people happy. And remember there will always be some critics in the crowd looking for you to make mistakes and who like to criticise. So even if you perform badly, you're still making someone happy. So enjoy yourselves and show you're enjoying yourselves." Got a chuckle from me anyway.

Drum Solo: usually band stops and drummer hits everything in sight that doesn't move quick enough to get out of the way. Can be any number of bars or any time signature, poly-rhythms with different time signatures on each limb gain extra applause. Everyone is pleased when it ends. Choral solo: singer sings with all other instruments still playing. At end of solo, rest of choir join in. Acapella solo: see also Freddie Mercury. Guitar solo: usually rest of band play verse while guitarist plays as many notes as possible in the given time. Except for Eric Clapton, David Gilmour and some other notable exceptions. In rare cases band gets bored, put down instruments and go for a beer. Keys solo: always playing solos even when not supposed to. Difficult to determine when solo starts and when it ends. Bass solo: usually, drums continue, guitar comps and bass plays something melodic rather than bass and harmony, except when the bass plays just the bass groove. Except notable exceptions where the band stops and the bass player pretends to be a drummer. See above. If the band has keys player, someone unplugs them at this point.

A solo can be whatever you want. I suspect the binary true false nature of Internet forums leads people to imagine all kinds of best case/worst case scenarios. Looking at some of these replies, it's almost as if no one has ever played a siong with a basss intro. Hence why I asked an open ended question with an opportunity to discuss various approaches.