OldGit

[quote name='dood' post='273300' date='Aug 30 2008, 07:11 PM']One of my all time fave bass solos, for making me smile and dance, was actually more of a 'bass and drums' solo by Jerry Best and Johnny Haro, from when they were playing in a band called 'Freak Of Nature'. Halfway through the set, they would get introduced as 'the rhythm section'.. the rest of the band would nip off stage whilst they did a medley of famous basslines. Maybe you guys could do the same? Obviously you would need to pick songs that suit your set, but I would go for 'Good Times' by Chic.. 'Another One Bites The Dust' or 'Dragon Attack' by Queen.. maybe 'Moby Dick' by Led Zeppellin - I've played Rage Against The Machine and Muse lines in sections... and a bit of Cyprus Hill even!! 'Insane in the brain!!!' gets everyone dancing! ummm... what else? - Hmmm.. don't play any White Stripes!! :oD[/quote] Oh I'm stealing that idea .. We already play a game of spot the bassline with our audiences during dance setups but actually making a set piece solo is a great idea .. Here's a few very well known bass parts that usually get guessed fast: Grapevine How Long South Bank (Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff) Liquidator Hey Joe I predict a Riot Hold Your Head Up Mission Impossible Take 5 Living in the past Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet: Montagues and Capulets - also use in The Apprentice) [Aside: A quite nice keys and bass arrangement here by Pär Lindh The Bass gets to play the counter melody [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKSoRId6iZU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKSoRId6iZU[/url] ] Superstition Play That Funky Music Keep on Running Gimme Some of Your lovin’ Substitute Shaking All Over Gloria River Deep Mountain High Money x 2 (Beatles/Floyd) Ticket to ride Shaft The Chain My girl Peaches Copperhead Rd Werewolves/Alabama/That crap thing Walk Wild side Wild Thing Wind Cries Mary Purple Haze La Bamba Voodoo Chile (with Fuzz - and Wah, of course ...)

Oh that looks nice ... Lovely touch with the ebony headstock veneer and Lizzie thang.. ... Blue basses seem to be taking over

Welcome! You are not the only sax playing bass player around here OG

you could do that thing like in Brown Eyed Girl where it just sounds like Van forgot to come in and the bass just plays the bass line, more or less.. Or .... Get a recording of the band playing the bit of the track where they want your bass solo (but without it) then sing or hum or whistle or lah lah along to it a few dozen times 'til you get an idea of a solo to play in the gap. Record that over the track and then learn it on your bass. .. That frees your fingers and mind from your bass playing fingers' patterns and constraints. Generally you'll sing in tune without knowing if you are playing the right arpeggios, scales, modes or whatever ...

[quote name='sticker' post='261264' date='Aug 12 2008, 11:35 PM']where did you find them in stock?? everywhere I've tried have been sold out I'd really like a wine red one ...[/quote] Tried here? [url="http://www.playrecord.net/bowed-instruments/electric-double-bass-with-gigbag-34-model-transparent-red.p1027051.html"]Playrecord.net[/url]

[quote name='GSjaarda' post='261010' date='Aug 12 2008, 05:01 PM']My stagg arrived yesterday and to my disappointment it had been damaged during shipping. I was greeted with a nice gouge in the neck and a large crack in the body. A quick phone call has another one on the way (after being inspected before leaving the warehouse) and a RMA # for the broken one. Hopefully the next one will be a winner.[/quote] Very frustrating! Mine was just a lttle damanged so a bit of refund and everyone was happy ...

There's another thread on custom luthiers going on and this post lists the Uk based ones [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?s=&showtopic=25239&view=findpost&p=258455"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?s=&sho...st&p=258455[/url] I'd start there and find one near you that you like ..

[quote name='bnt' post='258347' date='Aug 8 2008, 05:37 PM']Maybe I should have been clearer: by [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing"]keyword stuffing[/url]. I was referring to the way some sites blatantly try to manipulate Google by overloading [i]meta keyword[/i] tags with anything they think might grab results. Google is on to that now, of course, and ignores [i]meta keyword[/i] tags altogether, because they are open to abuse in this way. So, yes, "keyword stuffing" is a pejorative, but you're referring to sensible use of [i]meta description[/i] tags, which Google [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264"]does use[/url], as you say. According to the Wordpress [url="http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/why-isnt-my-blog-in-google/"]FAQ[/url]: Which is not quite correct, since Google does use [i]meta description[/i] and others as noted. It just won't improve your page rank, which is what I thought you were after. I've had a look at various wordpress.com forum questions, and the answer in every case is "we don't like meta tags". It's still under discussion, and I'll look into it further and might ask again, about description tags specifically. wordpress.com (the hosted service, as opposed to using their software on your own site) does let you enter a blog "tagline" field, which would serve as a description, if the makers of the site templates actually included it in the HTML. It's possible that some templates are doing this already. I'll look in to that and see what I can find. If you were to use the wordpress.org software on a site you host yourself (requires PHP and MySQL), that's different: you'd have full control over all tags, by editing templates. These restrictions I'm referring to are specific to wordpress.com, the free hosting service, which is very wary of spam blogs and other abuses. I think we're talking at cross purposes a little here - I would call a [i]meta description[/i] tag a normal thing to have, not the aggressive SEO that some try to use to boost their sites artificially, which Google is [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769"]at war with[/url]. I do understand your position, and I was thinking in business terms e.g. if you were to go to a bank and ask for a business development loan, they would ask you about your unique selling points, or market differentiators. That's all I meant: how does your band stand out from the others in your market? If pointing that out on the website is what you mean by SEO, then of course I have no argument with that .[/quote] We are agreeing That all sounds pretty good. Back to the Op, is it easy to do, with good SEO? A band's USP's are another thing. There's a million shoegazing indi guitar bands and a million wedding bands and a million pub covers bands, and that just in Hammersmith. Fortunately the things people looking to book a band are interesting in are fairly predictable and are determined by the venue and audience. So as long as you know what your market wants and can present it in your content on the site then things should be OK. Photos, Youube clips and sound clips all make this a lot easier these days, and Myspace makes presenting though things easy for a novice website builder. You still have to do all the off line marketing ad slogging, of course, (and draw an audience by being entertaining) but having a good site or myspace helps a lot.

[quote name='noirpunk' post='258378' date='Aug 8 2008, 06:23 PM']Yike, the American guy quoted me a third of that[/quote] Worth a go then .. You have to add shipping and tax onto that , and you can't try it or his work first .. I looked at a US luthier before plumping for a Uk one. Also there's loads of UK luthiers where you will be paying them themoney rather than the US Post office and UK/US taxation system. Ever tried a Shuker?

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='260036' date='Aug 11 2008, 03:19 PM']Sounds like you're in a better position now, Sarah. I hate playing in bands with two guitarists. Means you can now put in more as a bass player, too. Play more and shine like the star you are [/quote] +1 Well done for not panicking. Keep the gig, see how it goes and use the space for yourself ..

I hope the couple are checking with their mothers before banning Mustang Sally ..

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='258155' date='Aug 8 2008, 02:29 PM']Slight off-topic, but staying with the classics, we were rehearsing [i]Wonderful World[/i] by Sam Cooke the other night. Having two kids still at school, I started one verse with [color="#8B0000"]Don't know much about I.C.T., don't know much sociology ...[/color] It all broke down when I realised that I couldn't get [color="#8B0000"]Media Studies[/color] even to scan, let alone rhyme. [/quote] Don't know much about Mejah Studies Take the facts and spin in some muddy ....ness

[quote name='TheRev' post='259149' date='Aug 10 2008, 10:33 AM']The Welsh bloke's right though,[/quote] Hey Watch it .. I'm a Gloucetershire bloke I just live here

[quote name='spinynorman' post='258274' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:15 PM']I should have anticipated that one. So, we're one of those despicable cover bands that devalue music by playing in pubs for next to no money. Most pubs that support live music seem to have a queue of bands wanting to play, so I can't imagine landlords trawling the net looking for talent. The most the site has to do is be somewhere they can go and look for more information after we've approached them with CD. Second function is for someone looking up what's on in their area and finding us listed at their local pub, or finding their pub listed in our gig list, can get enough from our site to decide if we're worth coming out for. We don't do weddings, don't go looking for parties or corporate events, but do charity gigs if we're asked and are available. That's telling me we don't need to worry that much about Google, so long as a search on the band name brings us to the top. Which it does (we used to be called Still Crazy - that really sucks as a band name for Google purposes). Myspace actually isn't doing a bad job, but some band egos may still require a "proper" web site. So, Wordpress looks interesting. I downloaded the Joomla manual and frightened myself to death, so probably not going there. This is the first time I've thought about what we need a website for and come up with a coherent answer, so thanks for that. Also some interesting ideas here and some good discussions, several things to go and look at. More ideas welcome and also comments if you think I'm reaching the wrong conclusion.[/quote] Oh that's simple then, Myspace has it all for you. Get the egomaniacs to make their own myspaces and link in as friends, You can show off your bands music pictures and youtubes and promote it to your following. Bookers will need the normal assurances that you'll take in 500 people but no website, real or myspace, will convince them til it happens. So I'd say stick with Myspace. Use a cool theme and make it as good as it can be .. That's it. No need for a real website til you are stars ...

[quote name='mewsie' post='258271' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:13 PM']aye, a few basic sites we've done recently: [url="http://www.satsuma-nlp.co.uk"]satsuma nlp[/url] [url="http://www.jevonsandsiddall.co.uk"]jevons and siddall[/url] [url="http://www.x-ma.co.uk"]xander[/url] [url="http://www.specialbreeds.co.uk"]brambles special breeds[/url] due to the low costs of these sites, its very much a case of client gets what client wants (sometimes works out beautifully, sometimes not so much!!) satsuma is our own site til we get a custom site up, v much a WIP, and has been more twiddled with than the others. x[/quote] Cool, Nice looking sites. PM me if you'd like to chat about how they could be changed a bit to work better (or trawl through the thread linked from my footer) most of the stuff that applies to band sites applies to those too - (like making it clear what part of the world you operate in ...)

[quote name='mewsie' post='258249' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:01 PM']+1 we use Joomla for a lot of our web stuff, its really simple if you want to simply plonk stuff into a template, but you can tinker with it quite a lot if you want to customise it. x[/quote] Any joomla examples?

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='258233' date='Aug 8 2008, 03:54 PM']Thanks - it's still on a masked URL at the mo until I can get it uploaded next week. Will put location in top of page. Need to do more "Google" work on it.[/quote] Cool It does look pretty good though .. Add some real testimonials and quotes from people with names though as you saying you are great is not half as good as other peopel saying you are great .. and "30th birthday party croydon" smacks of bu11sh1t where as "Judy, brithday girl, croydon" rings a little more true. collect a page full from yuor past glories ..

[quote name='noirpunk' post='258131' date='Aug 8 2008, 02:14 PM']How much do you reckon he's charge?[/quote] Hum depends on what you order and how keen he is .. Might get change from £1800 ...

[quote name='Cantdosleepy' post='258074' date='Aug 8 2008, 01:39 PM']The inestimable Jeff made the website of our last project - [url="http://www.goodoldneon.com/"]http://www.goodoldneon.com/[/url] - but that one's a different matter, as we don't do gigs or owt - it's just a funky repository of our (free!) album.[/quote] That's fun ..

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='257865' date='Aug 8 2008, 10:22 AM']Looks really good. I've just redesigned ours using iWeb on the Mac. See what you think: [url="http://wagthedogband.co.uk"]www.wagthedogband.co.uk[/url] It's my first attempt attempt at a proper site. It's currently on the .Mac server which is painfully slow, so will be swapping it out to a proper host soon. Anyone got a good FTP app for Mac to get it from iWeb-->server please?[/quote] As the party band market is largely geographical (and that's reflected in your search terms) , I'd recommend making it clear from your header graphic where you are in the world. Your site also seems be built with Frames. If that's so Google won't read anything ... I tried searching for your text (from the long list of places at the bottom of the home page) and found your myspace page but not this site... It may improve if it's that new but you need to look out for any google friendly fixes that iWeb may offer.

[quote name='bnt' post='257829' date='Aug 8 2008, 09:53 AM']Wordpress aren't using URL masking - I had to tell my domain registrar to use Wordpress' own DNS servers, so they are actually hosting that DNS name as normal. Let me see... if you write a static page or a blog page, you have a title, of course, and an optional excerpt. You have categories for organising things, you can set a parent page (so you can have pages, sub-pages, sub-sub-pages etc.). You have tags, which are used for pinging search engines (which is where you'd put in "wedding band solihull"), and you can put in a trackback URL. You have full control over alt tags on images etc.. You don't get the option of setting arbitrary meta tags full of stuff (the keyword stuffing I was referring to).[/quote] Keyword stuffing is a rather pejorative term. Careful use of key words and phrases to ensure people searching for those things on google are presented with an attractive link to your site in the google search results page is just sensible. Google uses the title and description meta tag content on its results pages. That's what I'm talking about. If you can't edit the description tag what does google present in the results? Normally it substuitutes the first 20 or so words it can read from your page -and that may be a menu or something else unsuitable. How does the rest of the stuff you referred to help specifically with this situation - people looking for a band in google? Blogger is a great tool and the results look great but I'm genuinely interested in how well it performs with Google. [quote]Personally, I think SEO is overrated. I mean; call me naive, but (in my limited experience) if you have a unique selling point, and you reflect that clearly in the web pages, Google etc. will index it and people will find you.[/quote] I don't really understand that. All bands are different but .. what's unique about that? What [b]is[/b] your USP? [quote]I'm still getting dozens of hits a day on a particular FAQ I wrote 2 years ago, because it filled a niche that needed filling.[/quote] Bit different though isn't it? It's unique and it fills a niche .. How many bands do that? and how many of those are new people finding it as a result of a search in google? By now it's probably linked to by thousands of other sites and blogs... [quote]It's only when you're doing the same thing as loads of other people (no unique selling point) that you have to game the search engines, and the effect doesn't last. [/quote] Well bands [b]are[/b] doing just the same as loads of other bands.. Sure, once someone has seen you and knows your name then it's less important .. but I'm mostly talking about the hughly compatative function band market where bands are largely interchangable and being found is key to expanding your market. People only get married a few times in their life so we function bands need a constant stream of new clients. Fortunately most band websites are totally pants at SEO (as well as other things) so that a little tuning and understanding about how Google works goes a long way. and, of course, you have to do a million other things as well to get the best out of your website and band marketing ..

[quote name='bnt' post='257679' date='Aug 7 2008, 11:14 PM']I suppose that depends on what you mean by SEO. It does get indexed by Google, it has categories & tagging, RSS feeds, it will ping Technorati etc. for you. If you mean aggressive SEO methods, googlebombing, tracker scripts, spamming, keyword stuffing, etc., then I don't think so. [/quote] Nah I just mean the standard stuff .. can you control the title , description and ALT tags so you can control the google results page stuff for your site... When mother of the bride searches for "wedding band solihull" will google return your site - That sort of thing. I was asking because of the line about having a real url rather than a wordpress url - sounded like one of those url masking activities Google hates ..

How about that? ESP Ltd AX-104 Bass Guitar £289 [url="http://www.guitarbitz.com/964.htm"]http://www.guitarbitz.com/964.htm[/url] Any good luthier could make you a copy of the original. The amount they'd charge you would depend on teh work involved and how keen they were to do it You don't have to get a US person to do it, with all the problems that would bring (not least the shipping and duty costs) There's loads in the UK My mate Jon Shuker will always look at a challenge and interesting bass project .. [url="http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk/"]http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk/[/url] (Other luthiers are available - I have to say that or [i]they[/i] get annoyed)

[quote name='Rich' post='257124' date='Aug 7 2008, 12:38 PM']Oh bog off, Taff [/quote] Ha ha Thanks. So how [b]are[/b] the music shops in Nailsea?

[quote name='Absolute-beginner' post='257048' date='Aug 7 2008, 11:22 AM']youre missing the point, what we want is honesty and a decent amount of info. Granted, the shops are there, what we want is decent bloody service, and whats more CHOICE! kids yerself, im too bloody old to put up with sh*t from meatheads after my hard earned cash! matt[/quote] Oh sorry ... Well we all want that and it does seem to be a bit hard to get that kind of service the first time you go into any music store, judging by the post on this forum. What choices are you looking for? I think we have to be realistic and be grateful we have those three bass specialists in the UK. Times is 'ard in music retail ...