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Second two gigs out of 4 for me this week. Saturday night the duo played for a small birthday party in York city centre. The venue was an upmarket restaurant’s first floor function room. Combined with restricted vehicle access, no lift in the venue and the area teaming with people out for the evening , this made for quite a challenging load in and out. Still, we got set up early and then had a drink or two sitting outside watching the endless amount of people going by, including many hen parties in various states of intoxication. Fortunately we had a bar tab ( and a meal )supplied by the booker, as the prices were quite hefty. The gig went well, played a number of requests and even had a guest clarinetist! The grandson of the birthday boy asked if he could play ‘Stranger on the shore’, so we backed him. He was only around 9 years old, and played well. Of course he went down better than us…. 😆 Used my little Ibanez short scale electro acoustic, perfect for the job. Home by around 1 am, absolutely knackered. Sunday night was our regular monthly gig at The Sun Inn, Beverley. Pretty full for most of the gig, and some great requests including ‘I guess that’s why they call it the blues’ and ‘Friday I’m in love’. We drew the line at doing a Beautiful South song though, as one of the band’s original singers was in the audience! I used a Sire U5 short scale into my Rumble 500, and was happy with how it fared. A guy came up and gave us each a decent tip at the end too, really unexpected. Next gig this coming Wednesday, and then a week or so off.

Good point. Chromatic passing notes usually fit well.

I'll experiment with some junk wood first and see how it goes. Rather nervous of wrecking a lovely neck

I bought a stomp on here and was expecting the slim one that breaks easily and got sent one of them - I figured it was a mistake and ild been sent the wrong one - but maybe not! Massive ferrite bead ring thing

Afromosia dust is no fun. Woodworking pal of my dad's was careless with the sander and was hospitalised. Teak is toxic too.

Not familiar with that style of music at all, but chromatics add a lot of movement to a bass part without necessarily impacting the harmony too much.

Good Day to Have a Great Dane - Russell Dickerson

Difficult to say without hearing what's on offer... But I find runs and widdles involving diminished second and diminished fifth work well in many situations ( see Phrygian and Locrian modes). And octaves work in everything from disco to punk, perhaps with fifth to make a chord. Talking of which, a chord higher up with root, major third and diminished seventh works well in many situations as a sort of jagged punctuation... Also recommend the Jonas Hellborg chord book - I found I couldn't reach half of them but the notes contained in 'em inspired lots of bass lines.

I've never had anyone question me playing a Jazz bass. It'd be tough if they did because I'll play what I feel comfortable playing. I can get a tone that works but also, as I get older my hands don't stretch as much as they used to. One finger per fret is very difficult and I find the extra nut width on a Precision harder work. As others have said, you have to tweak a Jazz more, but that also gives more options, especially with the bridge pick up. As for live sound, that's a real bug bear. Not so much for me, but as an audience member. Sound engineers seem to think the optimal mix is to sound like a car fitted with a huge sub in the boot, with windows wound up, parked 100m away.

I've been sent some tracks by a new band, I'm writing bass parts for them and it's quite different to my previous, riff heavy, Sabbath influenced bands. I know what Im doing with that style and it just comes to me with a couple listens through a track. With this music, It seems I'm following the chord root quite a lot and I'm wanting to add some interest but it's not going well. The odd octave and fifth is going in here and there and some rhythmic variations but everything else I try just seems to sound worse than following the chord roots. The music is metal, but a very different style to my usual. It's post hardcore, borderline metalcore with rhythm and lead guitars (heavily overdriven) plus synth, drums and vocals. Can anyone give me some tips? Here's an example of something similar And a bit of this

Chihuahua - Bow Wow Wow

If you want any more UAD plugins... 10 for $99.00. 😬 https://vi-control.net/community/threads/99-uad-summer-mixtape-bundle-ends-jun-30.163788/#post-5732600

As I provide a decent PA I now say we all arrive at an agreed time to set up and no one goes home till everyone is packed……unless they’d like to provide the PA of course.

Hi Guys, This was our second outside gig and the weather was great. Bad news, before we played I tripped walking down two flights of stairs and I fell. All I remember after that was people trying to help me up. I twisted my ankle really bad. I played the gig sitting down. I'm hoping it's not serious. My goal is to be able to leave the house by this Wednesday. I don't want to have to go to the clinic. We played well but I was disappointed in the turn out. For all you seniors and pensioners, don't fall. Daryl

I'd wondered about re-finishing the cab also. It is made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or ABS. This is a really tough plastic which can be made with various formulations but all designed to be hard wearing. Lego bricks are made of ABS Anyway it can be sprayed with enamel paint or acrylic paints. Tough Cab is the brand most commonly used for painting cabs in this country and is an acrylic paint. You can also get acrylic paints in rattle cans from artists supplies and most of the 'kitchen' and 'bathroom' paints and low VOC gloss paints are acrylic. My Cabs are also ABS and I've been looking at them gradually accumulating little bumps and scrapes and wondering if I could touch them up. At the moment under stage lighting they look fine so I've left well enough alone and bought some covers to stop them getting worse. Anyway here's probably more than anyone needs to know about spraying ABS paintexplained.com/how-to-spray-paint-abs-plastic/

A Gen 1 Sire M2 and one of the new Squier Sonic Broncos.