leftybassman392

Apologies if this has been raised before.

I have a cherry 335 dot '84 and it's a fabulous instrument.I bought it from Blues guitarist Michael Roach around 10 years ago for £1000. Now beginning to look a bit of a bargain. It's an incredibly versatile guitar too; I've used it for Blues, Jazz and a bit of lightweight Rock too. Can't imagine ever wanting to sell it.

Had a try out on a 339 a few years ago in a shop in Exeter (Mansons?). Lovely instrument; all the best bits of a 335 in a compact body.

Oi! There's a thread for that kind of thing.

Que? I have no wish to fall out with anybody here (certainly not over a cheesy but perfectly acceptable cover song), so I'll just say that one of the joyous things about being a musician is that it's such a broad church that is well able to cater for all tastes. One man's enigma is another's good night out with his mates indulging his passion.

Not to be overweening and such, but I do sometimes wish people wouldn't get so precious over this song. Or Mustang Sally for that matter. Not to mention... If it's in your set and audiences like it, then what's the problem? Life would be great if we could all afford to only play songs we liked all the time (and if it's in your set then I'm guessing you play in either a covers band or a function band) but given the brief your band is likely to be working to, it's there for a reason. You're not there to express an opinion on the musical taste of your audience. By all means have one, but telling punters they are musical philistines for liking it probably won't get you a return booking. Back to the OP, I've never played it as a bass player, but in my guitarist days I seem to remember playing it in standard tuning and don't recall the bass player retuning to play it either. Depends how faithfully you want to reproduce the original I guess.

Don't knock it. I was making quite a decent living with it at one time. Still do the (very) occasional gig. Guitar, amp, chorus pedal (very important, that), quiet corner, nobody really paying any attention so you can play pretty much whatever you like for as long as you like provided it sounds vaguely 'jazzy': you can even have a music stand and nobody so much as raises an eyebrow. Decent money AND you don't have to share it with anybody. Where's the downside?

Good advice above. If your gear was ok before you played the venue and then wasn't when you did, I'd be extremely suspicious of the venue's electrics. I always had an RCD device in the circuit when gigging. Fortunately I don't remember it ever tripping, but if it does then you know where the problem is...

As many others have said, it depends what work is done and what sort of charges the tech feels he can get away with justify locally. I used to offer it as an add-on service for my students. It was a fairly basic setup that normally didn't involve any work on the electrics, or frets beyond a clean & polish. I would typically charge around £30 at today's prices (plus strings), so yeah, for the work that was done it does sound a bit steep (though not outrageously so). Best advice from me would be learn to do it yourself and save the tech visits for the properly technical stuff. It really isn't that hard and (again IMHO) can give you some valuable insights into how your gear works.

To some degree it's what speaks to you. A working musician should be open to any and all music that passes their ears IMHO (although if you've played for the last 30 years in a Bill Haley tribute band I can see how there might be an issue...). Example: the young African/Caribbean family (early thirties or thereabouts with a couple of very small kids) who live in the house just the other side of our back fence had a barbie the other day. 4 hours or so of Rap. Not my style, but I didn't have a problem with it - in fact it provided an interestingly different backdrop while mowing the lawn, which is normally a pretty tedious affair. I could hear that it was well executed and well produced: it just didn't speak to me is all. I'm 65 in case it's important for anybody to know.

I dunno... sounds pretty good to me. Then I wouldn't have to live with it so whaddoi know?

At the risk of being unnecessarily picky... Frying pan Predates the model shown by around 5 years. I've done a bit of admittedly superficial digging but haven't been able to come up with a value, although I rather suspect it might be a bit more than the $7.5m paid for the one shown.

Been mentioned already, but SRV would be most peoples' choice in that category. Also been mentioned but KWS would be up there somewhere too.

Fair point. Make that one and a 'maybe'.

'Frolicking' comes across more as a triplet, don't you think? I've heard that some people think us bass players are a bit weird. Can't imagine why. Edit: Douglas beat me to it. See, that's two of us think it's a triplet so we must be right.

1+1+3+1+1 doesn't count. 'Breakfast orbital delay' is definitely better. Yes. Definitely better. Yes. Definitely better. Yes. Definitely.

If you liked Terry and Magee then there's a good chance you'll like Cephas and Wiggins

Indeed. 8 bars and 16 bars are allowed too.

[Pedant alert]: strictly speaking that's folk I think. Don't get me wrong, I like Renbourn and Simpson is an immensely talented player IMHO, but to me the term Folk Blues speaks more of Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, John Jackson et al. In that vein you could do worse than listen to Stefan Grossman. John Jackson is a more direct route to the early players, but you pays yer money... I only say this because I spent a number of years working with the European Blues Association . The term would be contrasted with the harder Delta Blues tradition of Robert Johnson and others (which of course gave rise to the Chigago Blues tradition, which in turn gave us the electric Blues most of us are familiar with today). [/Pedant alert]

Maybe this is a good time to point out (or remind as appropriate) that I'm vegetarian. And that I would be shrinking my genes rather than my jeans.

Maybe so, but my mum used to like him and she was in her 70s at the time and knew nothing about music beyond liking Richard f***ing Clayderman. I'll pick the songs that aren't Blues if it makes you feel any better.

Weird time signatures tend to get split into manageable chunks. For example, a bar of 7:4 might get split into 4:4+3:4 or vice versa. If you're playing from a chart it would most likely be like this. Depends how freely you're improvising I guess, but improv sessions would generally follow this type of pattern as well, but be aware that somebody might decide that it's a good idea to swap it around a bit mid-song. Learn to trust your ears. Oh, and (with apologies if it sounds a bit too obvious, but) it takes practice so don't expect to be good at it straight away. Not much I know, but hopefully it will help.

Well excuse me! I did think he'd been mentioned but didn't find the reference when I checked through. No excuses though. I shall now go and spend the next two hours forcing myself to listen to the collected works of Richard Clayderman while sitting in a bath of cold oxtail soup.

+1 for Robbin Ford. Plenty of very worthy musicians to look at here, but I'm a bit surprised nobody's mentioned Jonny Lang yet. His first two albums (produced when he was a scrawny teenager but sound anything but) are well worth a listen imho. What about Kenny Wayne Shepherd too?