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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 "£$£&%^*%&^

Just heard that Aretha Franklin is the latest artist to have her classic recordings re-done with new string parts. Think she is the first artist to have this done who is still around, probably due to recent successful sales of albums by Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. Only heard a couple of tracks of the Aretha stuff so far, but despite it being the RPO playing on it, I just can't understand why it seems okay to meddle with something that was pretty damn perfect all those years ago. The Elvis stuff was to me pretty dreadful too ( anybody hear 'Burning Love'? ), and although Orbison's material lends itself to the more orchestral approach, the originals were just sublime as they were. Some things just need leaving alone......rant over.

I've just gigged a set & found them just as good as more expensive makes .

I am no better at maths, I am just the messenger boy...Lol....

Not sure what the thread is about anymore lol Si

Your name is Jeremy Corbyn and I claim my £5..!

Oh yeah! I remember doing a gig where we had a young support band. The guitarist turned up with a little amp and a well beaten up zoom pedal from yesteryear. He plugged everything in and took his first chugs on the guitar in soundcheck. Me and my keyboard player just stood there with our jaws on the floor. This teenager, rocks up with his kit that he has saved like mad to buy and decimates everyone with a guitar tone to die for.

IMO that puts a whole different perspective on the feasibility and attractiveness of the Basschat Podcast. Someone with your abilities at the helm makes the finished product far more likely to be of a quality that will appeal. IME of listening to podcasts, poor audio quality overshadows interesting content every time. Make your podcast sound professional and you you'll have far more success persuading people who have interesting things to say to take part.

Hello missis sumner - fancy seeing you here 😃

IME working with just speech requires a whole different set of skills and techniques to working with vocals for a song. With spoken work the most important thing to aim for is clarity and comprehensibility. Not necessarily something that most music producers are going to be worried about when they are capturing a "performance". And all those extraneous noises on the vocal track that disappear in the mix will be out there in all their unwanted glory for all to hear and get very irritated by if they occur with any great regularity.

Serious suggestion (no, really)... Play air guitar along to a lot of your favourite songs. Don't even think about it. Which hand is strumming? That's a quick way to know of you're left or right handed for bass/ guitar. If someone gives you a guitar to tickle how do you hold it? I'm only left handed for a few things: writing and playing guitar, but completely right hand dominant for sports like golf and cricket. It's weird but I suggest you do what feels natural for guitar. There's no way I could play guitar right handed at all. Then again if you can't decide go right handed. More choice of instruments and far less smashing headstocks with other guitarists on stage.

Yes but make sure to wash your hands before you go for a wee. Your red bass will not save you from an embarrassing chilli burn in a delicate area.

NO WAY!!! His playing on Barbara Thompson's Paraphenalia is great. A notable mention for Dil Katz and Dave Ball on bass.

Wow. If anyone in my band treated me as ‘the help’ they’d be on Join My Band looking for a new ‘helper’...

I think the issues you raise are valid but remember that the membership, by and large, are not exactly virgins when it comes to working with audio. Similarly with recording which implies an appreciation of the need to edit in a way that highlights the good content and limits the fluff, as it were. Field recordings can sound good too.

I can't comment on the Clarett but i do own the first gen Scarlett 18i8 and am very pleased with the results (using reaper as our preferred DAW), the only negative that i can come up with (and it's a very minor point) is that there isn't a simple way to rack mount it, i sorted it with a rack shelf and some home-made adapters but if there had been an off the shelf option i would have certainly bought it. i've got mine mounted in a 4U rack with an octopre mk2 and a headphone amp and it's great, i have bought a 2i4 to have permanently setup on my desk for overdubs and mixing as the rack tends to live at our favoured recording venue (guitarists kitchen/dining room) Matt

Yep, I was amazed at when hearing John Deacon, John Taylor, James Jamerson, at how driven and gnarly their isolated sounds were, yet how well that sat in the mix as warm and rounded.

Well, this bad boy just appeared on my radar this morning. A very dear friend of mine introduced me to Alex who I understand has played a big part in the design of this drive pedal. On a personal note, he's a experienced musician who knows his stuff about bass gear as well as being a thoroughly nice guy. For the drive, I'm looking forward to getting my paws on one as I am very particular about the drives I choose, especially as I am a massive fan of having separate levels for both dirt and clean signals rather than just a limiting pan knob. Here's the Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/zoomukdistribution/videos/1918442288369070/ and one for YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erPxrCG9RHU I wanna get hold of that treble control!

OK, will do that. I don't mind the colour variation - I love the organic look of it, and the fact you can see the grain. The only bit I am not so keen on is you can see the line on the back, but it certainly isn't a major issue, just an observation. Considering by now I expected to have a pile of sawdust and to have given up and gone back to doing something I know, but instead I have something that looks increasing like a musical instrument astounds me

Would a re-finish involve stripping back to wood, re-painting, then applying the orbital sander for a while..?

Rearranging pieces for strings like the Joni/Mendoza thing is totally different to adding strings to an existing recording.

I've got an '84 Hardpuncher. It's one of the best precisions I've ever played. and heard. A lot of basses have come, and gone through the years. This one has stayed... It has a lovely neck, 70's style narrower (B width) than the standard width neck, though not as narrow as a Jazz bass, and a deeper profile though not a bassball bat. The standard pickups are not much cop IME. I've put a vintage Dimarzio in mine, plus CTS pots, PIO tone cap & switchcraft jack. I've slso swapped the original b/w/b pickguard for a nice tort one. Here it is: [url="http://s1087.photobucket.com/user/nickonbass69/media/84Tokai_zps73b20dc5.jpg.html"][/url]