Leonard Smalls

Here's our album... https://choked.bandcamp.com/album/choked Edit: bear in mind the album was recorded 6 months ago... Our dual bass approach has evolved since then!

It's true! I play 5 and 5/9 times better on my Wal than on the Kawai I paid £90 for. But only play 1.25 times better on the Wal than on my Sandberg, but on my ACG I play 1.9 times better than on the Wal. I'm best of all on the Lightwave fretless, which I can play exactly 12x as well as the Kawai on! But that's because, being a fretless it only does jazz.

Us too! Raph does the standard bass stuff and I go widdley woo everywhere else... I use a splitter in my helix so it puts reverb and envelope filter, plus loads of overdrive and distortion on the higher frequencies. However, much to Rap's chagrin, being an E/A string never higher than the fifth fret type punk bassplayer, we've now got a song where he plays chukkachukka damped chords on 3 strings well above the 12th fret.

To my ears it has no disco or funk vibe, but plenty of 80s MoR hair metal/rock vibe! This has a disco vibe... 😁

You was lucky! When I was a lad we'd work 23 hours59 minutes every day, then we'd have to go and fell a tree and make our instruments, mine some iron to make wire for strings and and fashion a large His Master's Voice type cone to make it louder, then we'd have to pay double our daily wage to go and play in a dark cellar stood up to our necks in raw sewage with no-one watching, and we were only allowed to play one song, Mustang Sally!

I've managed to give myself a painful slap injury!

Not sure why, it fits the song which is meant to be a bit getupanddancey! Meanwhile, Remco's band:

Some lovely bass!

But it's a classic and fun to play!

It's been cancelled! Venue probs, apparently... However, we're doing our very first battle of the bands in Hereford on 13th April at the Jam Factory.

Youse lot were all proper lucky! Me and my mates Swamp and Sgav attempted to record our "band" live (me on terrible sounding Farfisa copy organ, Swamp on Kays Cataloge bass through Winfield 25w amp and Sgav hitting Swamp's mum's pots'n'pans) using one of these: Results were poor... But then that's not surprising with the lyrics of one song beginning: I wish I was a paramecium Life would be so very eacium (nick it if you want 😁)

Disco is after all just Funk-Lite!

And don't forget these!

You want rock and you want funk? Don't mess about, look at the works of Mother's Finest!

Strangely, I read that as "Jim Division", and thought what an entertainingly bizarre thing a Joy Division tribute with Jim Davidson-alike singer would be! At least for about 2 minutes...

I usually use D'Addario NYXL rounds. They give a good growl! I never use flats because I've never found any that sound right with my slap'n'tickle playing style... A "pop" on flats doesn't quite do it for me, and I'm too mean to experiment on the off chance!

Lovin' a bit of Tribal Tech with Mr Gary Willis himself on bass(ball cap). Proper rockin' wig out from 6'30ish...

That's why I've got a 1500w amp! But even playing lightly, callouses are an occupational hazard... The only solution I've discovered is to play no more than half an hour at a time, which is difficult if you rehearse every weekend and practice as well!

I've been playing for a little while now, and have callouses on my right thumb joint (where I slap), on my right index, second and third fingers (from plucking), my right thumb just by the nail (where I use it as a pick) and on left hand first, second and third fingers, with a little one on the left pinkie... Perhaps I'm doing it all wrong - should I have one on my left thumb as well from the reach-around technique? I found that if it's too tender to play, and I had a gig coming up a bit of superglue carefully applied worked wonders. Though I did stick my fingers together once!

Had a good one today... Bit too loud, as usual but I can't get the drummer to be quieter! Still, polished up some endings in our existing set, And worked out structures for 3 new songs - one of which is my offering in this month's Composition Challenge (though the singer has completely jettisoned all my lyrics, so it's only the "music" wot I wrote). Need to be tight as for our Rebellion debut!

Loving this!

The Friday night headline is yet to be announced!

Next for Choked is Wolverhampton... 3 new songs to debut!

I've got one strap that's prone to doing this (only ever at the end of a song, luckily), but my Gruvgear Duo is rock solid. So I only use that now...