Gareth Hughes

None that will match a baritone uke and a mandolin sadly. As small as they may be, those high frequencies are just tough to get heard over - as an acoustic bass guitar simply doesn't have the body size to move the amount of air required to generate the volume you need. That's why an upright bass is the size it is. Apologies if that comes across as a smart a$$ answer. Believe me, I wish there was an answer that would work.

I tried a bent endpin once, from George Vance, and that really helped for removing a lot of weight from the bass when playing. (Still the same weight to carry tho;)

This one's gonna cost you [url="http://www.lucaspickford.com/transbass.htm"]http://www.lucaspickford.com/transbass.htm[/url] Shall we all do a whip round to help James out?

[quote name='steve' post='853321' date='Jun 1 2010, 09:43 AM']Will 15's be enough? will 25s be too much? I could do without splashing out on both tbh.[/quote] I've been using custom molds with 15's for the last ten years. There's only been a few situations where I really wanted to have 25's. For the majority of gigs - 15's are more than an adequate whereas 25's would be overkill. One thing to remember (and I've only just learnt) is that your molds are only good for a couple of years as the silicone degrades and your ear canal changes shape over time. I thought the second point was baloney from an audiologist to get me to buy molds more often, but on getting my new ones back and comparing them to my old ones they look completely different.

Keep it up Faceman - sounds like it's going well. I know it's a gut-wrenching feeling for an MD to stop a song midway and look at you, asking if you're alright - lordy knows I've been there too many times. Best thing is to just own it - hand up, that was my fault. I've found that in reading gigs, it's best to acknowledge your own mistakes before someone points them out. With 'Santa Fe' - I found it was best to learn a hand shape that involved minimal movement, and then to recognize the change in the written patterns to keep moving along. It's all based around an alternating 10th and 9th pattern, so I played that across four strings for both patterns - middle finger on the B, third on the D#, fourth on the F# for the 10th pattern and then middle finger on the B, first finger on the C#, third on the F# for the 9th pattern. Bit of stretch but it eliminates looking at the neck while trying to follow the page. Then when it changes chords for the chorus you just move the 10th pattern up to the D, then the E, and down to the A when relevant. The bugger is fingering the G 10th pattern and the F# 10th pattern at the end of the chorus. After that it's just the same thing over and over (with those very cool fills thrown in)

'Love Cats' by The Cure is a good one to get your head and hands used to the stretch's.

Hello. I'll be your doochess....da da daaaaaaaaa

No, you thought it was pédantic.

And anyway - it's not pedant, it's pedant.

Good thing with RENT is that it doesn't need a large band to make it sound authentic. I did it with bass, drums, guitar, keys and MD on keys - so amateur or professional it should still work. The written bass part for 'Seasons Of Love A' get a bit stupid at 54 and 56. It's a nice line but it drops the groove immediately. Sometimes it's ok to deviate from the written part as long as it sounds authentic and it makes the tune sound better. Oh, one big thing to look out for is the end of the show, 'FINALE B'. That might seem like an obvious thing to say - but do pay heed. The music keeps repeating while the vocals start layering up and interchanging, which lead to a disastrous consequence one night when a dep drummer was 8 bars behind, which meant he would plough thru the humungous downbeat of an ending. He didn't notice, and neither did the MD - and I should have stayed out of it and just played my part. Anyway - just keep counting. That's probably the best advice here - because a lot of the charts become very repetitive while the vocals become very intricate - a popular musical device, combining the main melodies of each character and overlapping them into a fiery climax. 'West Side Story' is great for that. Something I learnt a little too late is that it's ok to mark your chart with reminders, vocal or musical cues - especially if you have a long rest section or have played the same pattern for 62 bars in a row. I used to think it was very un-professional to mark a chart like that - which is nonsense, and far less unprofessional than playing completely the wrong thing or getting wildly lost. Waffle over. [quote name='faceman' post='839922' date='May 17 2010, 05:11 PM']Thanks very much, I'll let you know how I get on. Apart from Santa Fe, the only other ones that need watching out for are La Vie Boheme seems to have some interesting scales and Finale, which has Santa Fe again! Anything else to look for particularly? This is an amateur production but the pianist was telling me how many harmonies and singers there are![/quote]

Hey Faceman - Yes - keep us updated. It's a good book 'RENT'. I did the show for ten weeks for the first Irish run of it. There's precious little downtime between songs, and if it's anything like the production I did - get earplugs!!! I had 18 singers, all close miked, blasting thru my monitor. Watch out for 'Santa Fe' in all it's incarnations throughout the book. For a reason unbeknownst to me it varies in being written in 6/8, 3/4, and 4/4, which makes it look way more confusing than it really is. It's a great bass line tho. Have fun - and if I can be of any help with anything, ask away. I have the book here too if that helps.

I had an Epifani UL112 speaker die after a year of use, and never being overused. Happened to be in New York a month later, and seeing as the speakers weigh so little, I brought the speaker back to Epifani, where it was still covered under their 3-year parts warranty. Nick Epifani took the speaker apart, saw the voice coil was burnt out - suggesting it was overloaded, but then was puzzled as to why the cone area didn't have any relative damage/stress from overloading that would cause a coil to burn out. He then kindly split the cost of a replacement with me as it wasn't clear who or what was at fault. So, point being that it could just be gremlins afoot, tho it did give me cause to be a little skeptical of neo-speakers.

Hey Gareth - Check out the Overwater site - they do flatwounds for a 5. g

Sold my GK MB150S combo to Ialma - had great communication throughout and he was VERY patient and understanding with waiting for me to finish a tour to get the right shipping quotes. Genuine guy all round.

I've flown many times with my GEL Eminence Portable Upright Bass - always with the neck detached and inside it's flight case, except for once when I chanced my arm and brought it onboard a RyanAir flight to London, but that was at least 5/6 years ago when the were less narky than they are now. Best way to cope if you don't want to buy an extra seat each time is to get a flight case made, or look into long golf cases, the light weight molded plastic ones.