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Sometimes good things come from bad auditions. I've been trying to find a band desperate enough to want me, and had some ...interesting... experiences. Audition 1: answered an ad on JMB for a blues group. I tell them how long I've been playing - not all that long - as I want to be honest up front. I do a bit of recruiting in the day job, and know how narked I get when confronted with bovine manure. Better to be straight with them from the off. Anyway, he replies, telling me that there's a drummer lined up, plus someone on blues harp and maybe keys too. Could I learn a couple of songs and pop round for a twang? Rightio. I turn up at the BL's house and am treated to half an hour's talking about his guitar collection before we get down to business. He's provided an amp - an ancient Vox gee-tar amp that didn't look much younger than me. Hm. I'd have brought the Eden if I'd known. But I crank the low end and off we go. He's hunched over his chord chart and doesn't look up. With no drummer to lock in with, some eye contact might have been helpful. He then chases me out of the house before his wife gets back. Hmmmm. Then about a week later, I get a 'thanks but no thanks' email. Meh. Think I dodged a bullet there. Audition 2: answered an ad on JMB for a rock covers band. Again, I'm up front about my level of experience. I get their set list - wow! Fabulous! - and learn half a dozen songs, as requested. Then the audition's brought forward a week. Great. But I rock up at the appointed time - to a studio this time - to find that the BL was struggling with one of the songs I'd learnt and had to teach the singer one of the others. Oh dear. But the rest sounded good, although at the end of the evening, they said they thought it was beyond me to learn everything on the list before their next gig. They were quite decent about it though, so fair enough. Audition 3: answered an ad on JMB for another rock covers band. As before, I make it clear how much I do and don't know. I learn the requested songs and turn up to a slightly less-than-ideal studio - bare wooden floor, no sound insulation and a PA that didn't look much more powerful than my home stereo. As I'm getting set up, a guitarist walks in; he's being auditioned too. He sets up his backline - a lovely Marshall valve amp. Then the BL arrives and sets up his backline. Then off we go. The PA just about copes, but after the first song, the BL says to me, 'it needs much more bass'. Well, I was standing in front of the amp and I could hear it OK, which meant he certainly could from the other side of the room. But no sweat, up went the volume to just under half and we launched into the next song. Jesus. My amp was making the room shake. I went to turn it down and the BL said ‘no, leave it, it’s just right’. The guitarist turned up his amp as it was being drowned by mine. Not wanting to be left out, the BL did the same and we went into song number three. This time, the weedy studio PA was completely overwhelmed; all I could do was lock in with the drummer and hope for the best. Then things started to go south when the BL started playing something a bit different before stopping to tell us that we needed to follow him. By now the volume was up well past 11 and the only way to follow him was by lip-reading. The next song fell apart when he missed out an eight-bar sequence from the intro. By now, the negative vibes were starting to creep in. At the end of the evening, the BL thanked us for coming and said ‘we’ll have a chat and we'll let you know’ in a sarky voice. So much for that, then. The guitarist and I compared notes outside and we both reckoned we wouldn’t hear from them again. We swapped numbers though, and decided we’d look at doing something together if it didn’t go anywhere. After a week of radio silence, I pinged the guitarist a text and as expected, he hadn’t heard anything either. He then asked me if I was still up for getting together, as he had another guitarist and a singer who were interested. Oh, was I ever. So a few days later, the three of us (the singer couldn’t make it) assembled in a very nice studio in Cranfield. What a difference! No attitude, a lot of fun and some great songs to play. The Stooges, Black Sabbath, the Undertones, Tears For Fears, the Cult… all good stuff. Plus some originals that the guitarist had written that needed basslines added. I had a whale of a time, and when we decided to make a go of it at the end of the evening, I was on cloud nine. So I did join a band from a terrible audition. Just not the one I originally went for!

I have several spare ones. If you PM me name and address I'll pop one in the post.

With this potential project, there’s obviously an element of ‘walk before you can run’, professional quality audio etc etc probably isn’t an absolute prerequisite at this stage. As long as things aren’t too messy, and everyone is audible and understandable, it’s more about interesting content, everything else is learned along the way. I’m always happy to edit audio, that’s easy enough. Skype is just an easy way of getting started, means you’re not restricted to people who are able...and willing...to record audio via a mic into a DAW themselves.....but maybe that’s a good thing at this point?! Don’t know. Si

RE: getting sponsorship. Don't approach any potential sponsors until after all the snags have been ironed out, the podcasts have been running successfully for a while, there's some firm audience stats, a planned 'broadcast' schedule for the next 3-6 months and some quality material available to be cut down for inclusion in a sales pack. One blows one's best chance if one goes to the market too early or unprepared

Oh, what a shame. It was my elder brother the expert on these matters, but I'm afraid he left us just over a year ago. He had some remarkable pieces of rolling stock and specialised in sub-miniature mining shunter locomotives, similar to this ... Twenty minutes wouldn't have been long enough, of course, except for the briefest of overviews. There's still time to get the lowdown on armchairs, though (but don't delay too long; I'm not getting any younger ...).

I'm finally in a band with a great drummer AND a guitarist who can play quietly and I'm very grateful for that. Those who say they have to play loudly 'to get my sound' are talking crap, basically. Even rock bands can sound 'heavy' without being really loud. My view is that some people like to be loud to direct attention away from their playing, paradoxically.

Commenting on and discussing music and bass related stuff is surely what the entire forum consists of, isn’t that what we are all doing here? Perhaps we should rename the site Basschtum.

Totally off topic, but Rietveld does a beautiful solo here:

Thats some great question/answer playing with Miles and Foley on the first vid at 4.00. his playing is just wow onwards. really enjoyed that . cheers.

Yeah, some lovely stuff.

It looks like this might be a thing folks, I'm going to try and put decent pilot together with @SpondonBassed by the end of the month, so we'll see where it goes from there. I'll PM people individually to sort out the specifics. Thanks to everyone for showing an interest in this and feel free to keep posting any ideas in the mean time, but it's not the end of the world if this thread sinks, I'll be sure to bump it once the episodes out! 😁

Music for musicians. Yeeeuch. I wonder if the bass player dresses in stage gear when he's out sweeping the streets during his 9-5?

The guitarist in my country band was ousted, due to being a bit of a git (and having atrocious BO). The replacement is not as good a guitarist as the guy he replaced but a much nicer person. Harmony has replaced discord and the band is in a happy place.

The best recording session I ever did on DB was a couple of years ago now. I was (and remain) far too inexperienced to modify my technique as between live and studio work, so I just played the bass. The professional sound engineer knew exactly what he was doing, and my playing has never sounded so good. He close-mic'd my Andreas Zeller with a microphone which cost roughly twice as much as my bass. It all seemed to turn out alright.

Done, as best as I can.

Practice practice practice. It always pays off. Heeheehee

Ah fair enough, I think I'm just defining slickness with a different threshold but I totally agree with that. I'm a freelance audio engineer on-top of my part-time day job, I'm not just a hobbyist, the last job I did was for the "The 8th Asian Awards" and I've done a tone of audio restoration work and production on different podcasts. Plus I'm a fairly eloquent and charismatic fellow too on the sly, 😜🤣 so i'm up for putting a pilot together if folk are cool with that? Personally I think https://appear.in/ is the way to go for the first punt, it's like Skype or google hangouts but with less delay and better audio. That's if everyone's cool with me capturing all the audio at my end to minimize fuss for this first pop at it. If we want to go for better audio after then; we could use something like http://www.pamela.biz/ and everyone capture audio at their ends and we comp it afterwords but that means we'd have to use Skype. If no one objects to me kinda taking the rains for the pilot would you @SpondonBassed be up for co-hosting? We could do a few segments and then interview @Chownybass? Providing your still up for it Chowny? Then once its all recorded I'll do a rough edit and possibly pass it to you @project_c to do a QC listen through to catch anything I've missed? Then if you'd pass it back to me I'll master the audio and bosh; post it up here and see what folk reckon, get some feedback on if we should/how to proceed with it? If it get's "green lit" then figure out who's going to run the Libsyn and the admin side of things. What do folk think? I by no means wish to dictate what should happen to everyone, I want it to be BC's podcast not mine. You just posted this after I'd typed up my previous gambit so for the record I'm up for traveling too if in-person would be a preference but it's definitely less doable if we'd like to make it regular. I'm in Manchester not sure where everyone else is?

You should update your above-avatar job description to full time!!

Took the TKP to band practice last night, it plays like a dream and the pickup sounds terrific. A P bass with tone that looks stunning - what more could you ask for.

A lot of gigs I play these days (and for the last dozen or so years) are under the cosh with neighbours complaining about excessive noise. My solution would be that if the neighbours complain about the noise, the band causing the nuisance would have their gear impounded. Sold for charity, crushed or just set on fire, I don't care but IMO inconsiderate bands should be the ones suffering rather than another gig losing its licence and everyone else suffering as a result.

I once discussed joining a band with someone - their precise requirements were that I play exactly the lines they told me to and also drive him and the singer to and from gigs as neither of them drove. That was a tough gig to turn down!

It would really be quite amusing if any profanties were overdubbed with the same swear filter as here

Have you come over from GuitarChat to insult us, or what..?

Negativity on a gig night. beaching about various gripes with the band is fine, do it at rehearsal or a meeting, don't do it while I'm out trying to have a good time and DEFINITELY not while we're on stage you massive grumpy "£$£&%^*%&^

morning all, after years and years of looking for that fantastic smooth, warm, well rounded rich bass tone ............ ive found it was a pointless task...... the actual best tone for me is exactly the opposite to what i was looking for - its a rough, edgy, overdriven valve sound .......... which only becomes that rich warm bass sound i was looking for when in the mix of the rest of the band. has anyone else ever come round to this conclusion? Its amazing how that overdrive just blends in when in with the rest of the band, and how it fills any space without being obtrusive, really helping the sound of the band. i only came to it when i started listening to isolated bass tracks of my bass heroes (and the bass sounded terrible), then i copied it and played to backing tracks and it sounded glorious! then i put it in our band live and it had the same effect. so for me, its ampeg svt, or svt emulators (via my markbass evo), or similar all the way from now on. ive been playing 20 years and ive only just worked it out!

Cheers Martin, I've been experimenting at home with it but i realize that isn't best idea but it will give me a starting point. I'll give that a try as i've always ran the pre-amp side up to clipping and back a notch typically 12:00 on most amps using my Jazz bass.Then control my volume using the master volume (woofer in this case) The boost is the control that confuses me thru all of this but seems best around 2:00 or 3:00 no matter what i try. I've tried presence at 12:00 with varying levels of Contour and that's given quite a change in tones too. Its turning out to be quite an interesting amp now that i need to use it. The more i use it the more i like it thru my Berg HT322 Dave

Yep, no problem. I think a rough & ready pilot is a good way to go, it can be refined as it evolves.

God only knows... Why!?

Just played that to my wife who really doesn't get jazz at the best of times and as expected she was not impressed. My 3 year old son however started dancing and was really getting into it. Can't say it did it for me either but goes to show that taste remains as subjective as ever. Not keen on that high-vis hoodie either for what's its worth though.

Just play. You'll play worse if you worry too much about technique. Let the engineer worry about miking. The only thing I can recommend is to be mindful of your breathing. I don't know how many acoustic instrument takes have been trashed by a sniffle or someone who holds their breath through one section only to breathe out really loudly once they've nailed the passage. It's really bad with acoustic guitar and violin, not as much with bass, but just be mindful that you aren't huffing and puffing, coughing and groaning behind your bass. Most important though is to practice beforehand, know your parts, come prepared, be nice to the studio staff, have fun, and tune often!

I'm a great believer in making the best of a bad gig and just doing your best (you know 'those gigs' that you didn't really rehearse enough for an you know its bombing 1/2 way through the set). I make as many mistakes as the next guy so I don't like to point out other peoples faults. Still we should learn from bad gigs, poor song choices and being unprepared, Otherwise the band never gets better and you make the same mistakes gig after gig....Now that's really annoying. (this should never be discussed on the night of the gig though)

SR505?

@FuNkShUi this old thread might also be of interest to you. @Dad3353 any chance of 'refreshing' the contents of this thread so that the links to the websites posted are easily accessible as links again, please?

One song we play is Radar Love. It nearly always gets people dancing. In the middle section we play as quiet as possible (ppp for you theorists) and get gradually louder (crescendo) over about 32 bars. The audience doesn't ever stop dancing. The dynamics add tension and the audience can feel it building until we hit the chorus with full force. It's a bit like the long drum roll in dance music before the "release" when the theme comes back in. That's not the only song where we use dynamics. There are several where we'll drop the volume for a section of guitar solo before coming back up to normal volume. It adds interest and certainly doesn't stop people dancing. On most songs it sounds better to back off slightly for the vocals, get louder for the solo or chorus, and then drop back down for the verse. It doesn't have to be quite so dramatic as my earlier example, just switching between mf and f (medium-loud and loud). The audience may not notice what we are doing but do know it sounds good. Playing too loud is a different subject entirely.

Or maybe it's just further away..?

If you are capable of playing right handed then you it would be a good idea to learn this way for no other reason then there is a lot more choice of instruments for the right handed player.

It's good to keep one's finger on the pulse.

Surely, playing with dynamics is sometimes a BIG THING and sometimes a little thing?

I play with dynamics, then I see our soundman fiddling with the tablet(desk) in a quiet bit to bring me up to level. Yes we've had words

I find that the 'best' gigs are the rowdier ones where people have a few and want to dance, sing, jump about etc.. That means that I don't much like taking my best gear out and generally use my perfectly adequate other stuff. Then I find that I don't take the quality stuff to the other gigs because it feels like overkill when there's only a few punters who aren't listening.

I’m a big Joe Rogan podcast fan, love the style, content and resultantly; I’m a regular listener. I’ve searched for bass related podcasts, and the closest thing that’s grabbed my attention is the Scotts Bass Lesson podcasts. Though I must admit, I don’t really follow them closely, and haven’t listened to one for a long while. I’d be interested in listening to a BassChat podcast.

Not bothered in the slightest, that’s the beauty in roadworn basses. Very liberating. (Though I always take extra care of the neck).

Because we are converting a 4 string to a 5 string which happens to have a rosewood bridge (that, once again, isn't an off the shelf buy), Simon had to make a new bridge. He just happened to have a block of left over rosewood that was the exact right size. Because we couldn't find a piece of plastic/graphtech or bone long enough for the saddle, brass was used.

I nipped in to toolstation on the way back from shopping and picked up some 600 and 1200 paper. Now I have done the body in 1200 I can see what you mean. It felt smooth before I started, but after doing the back with the 1200, the other side suddenly felt as rough as old boots

32” is medium scale.

I used to use them, but found them a bit too rough. They were good, but not great. Bargain though. Think I was paying about £11 a pack (bulk buy from Thomann). Switched to Fender 7350M's.

Nope. Everything I buy is to be gigged, as often as possible.

After you made that huge list giving your opinion on the show.