fretmeister

The Office of National Statistics have confirmed that the govt figures are wrong because thye exclude care home deaths and when they are included the deaths are 41% higher. (reported today on Sky news website) There is increasing evidence that people can get it more than once and that the level of antibodies in those who have recovered are insufficient to provide protection. There is also no agreed and tested evidence that those with antibodies cannot spread. Cannot assume they are not spreaders as that would be a very dangerous assumption to make. And today it's been announced that over 30 different strains of the virus have been identified, some far more dangerous than others. This further reduces the chance of finding an effective vaccine quickly, if at all. Herd immunity only comes in 2 ways - vaccination, or that the virus kills enough of those genetically at high risk BEFORE they reach breeding age so as to remove that weakness from the next generation's DNA structure. In other words, a genuine selection pressure.

The Dingwall Super J and P are 35 inches with a shorter G and D.

Are they open at all at the moment?

The benefits of having a scientist as leader, perhaps.

Now I'm interested in one!

Economic activity will have to resume even with some life cost (I hate that, but I'm also a realist), but entertainment will be low on the list. It's very difficult - I work a lot of hours, and my Saturday big band is really the only stress relief / escape from work I have. Now that has gone. It's run by a local charitable trust and I have no idea if they will survive. I miss it, and just as importantly, the people there very much. It was only 3 hours per week but it is / was massively important to my mental state. I do some other things of course - enjoy films, do low and slow BBQ etc but nothing compares to the music gang. There's just something special about playing with a load of musicians - not that I have to explain that to anyone on this forum!

I get that. But I can't see anyone building or converting to close quarter housing while the virus is around. Too risky, surely?

Quite. We are nearly at this point..

The venues, or more likely the companies that own the venues will cease trading. However, if / when there is a vaccine or an effective treatment available then those venue buildings will still be there. They might need a bit of spit and polish, but they will be there. Nobody is going to start knocking them down. There's no benefit to that from either an economic or health point of view. Until that time - get a good DAW and write the best music you can to be ready. What else have we got to do?

It's not really my analysis. Fauci (and backed up by Imperial College in a separate report) has stated that point on vaccines. Don't assume we'll get one. Personal friends - one an epidemiologist and the other a pharmacologist - both researchers at Oxford Uni - agree and wished for a far earlier lockdown and would be against non-essential large gatherings such as gigs and sport being allowed to take place again until a vaccine is available irrespective of how long that takes.... and that might be decades as has occurred on other vaccines research. WHO have stated it is now endemic to humanity. It is now part of the normal ecosystem just like the common cold and regular 'flu. It will come in waves like those conditions. I've also seen some early reports by actuaries lowering expected average life expectancy due to the virus. I really want to be wrong. I really want the WHO and other world leading epidemiologists to be wrong. But I see no reason to be hopeful on the current evidence.

I expect the lockdown for entertainment and sports venues to be the very last things to end. So sometime in 2021 at the earliest. I expect the lockdown for other work places to end earlier, but then for other intermittent lockdown periods to take place whenever there is a peak in the numbers of people in hospital. There are 3 or 4 different coronavirus types that humans get - such as the common cold. Attempts to find a vaccine for those have failed for over 100 years. I don't expect any quick success, if at all. The virus is now in the population enough for it not to go away on it's own. It is now endemic. I expect what we have now - but with intermittent lockdown periods - is the new normal.

This would be a great way for me to get fired from my big band... "What in the ar$e is he doing now...?

The MXR only goes in 1 way. It is very good... but it's now been bumped off my board for the Source Audio Spectrum. And the Spectrum can be set anyway you like and saved and the little toggle can have 3 completely different settings at the flick of that switch (and another 3 if you want to faff about with the Alternate mode too). It sounds soooooo good. Don't even need the app to get proper funky sounds out of it.

Stevie Wonder - Natural Wonder (live) Amazing album.

@Al Krow Forgot the link! - https://www.jeffberlinmusicgroup.com/bass-lessons?category=Jeff+Berlin+Bass+Ed

I discovered this when I was given a Tuba part to play and was playing it in the wrong register!

Yes. No hint of tab or other "cheats" anywhere. All proper notation throughout. And as any good music teacher will tell you - 5 minutes per day is far better than 1 hour on a weekend. 5 mins per day and you'll be reading Grade 1 quite happily in a couple of months. As it happens I also have the ABRSM Double Bass Specimen Sight Reading Tests book (Grade 1 to 5) that I use to test myself. It makes sure I'm not just playing from memory and that I'm really reading what is in front of me. It is for Double Bass, but I just ignore the bowing instructions and play normally. I've been trying to play dots for a couple of years only, but now I can use proper transcription of pieces that have not been available as a tab, or only available as a really bad quality tab. Or even make stuff up from a piano part if I have to. This has been very useful for my big band when most of the players can sight read at least Grade 5. I have to work damn hard in that band, just to keep up!

I've got a Strat with a variety of fully assembled scratchplates that have a quick swap plug and socket system so I don't have to solder anything when swapping them. 1: Lollar Blackface single coils 2: Dimarzio Injectors for neck and bridge and an Area 67 in the middle (stacked buckers, high output noiseless) 3: SD Pearly Gates at the bridge and a Dimarzio Chopper at the neck And I've got an ancient and really battered first run Epiphone Zakk Wylde Les Paul. From when they had passive EMG Hi-Z pickups - which I've replaced with a real ZW set. I wasn't going to get one, but the neck profile is the best I've ever found on any guitar ever. Unfortunately Gibson / Epiphone only have that neck profile on the ZW models and not on any other. At some point I might get another one that is in good condition and get it repainted to be a bit more subtle!

You give me too much credit. My piano lessons were 35 years ago!!

I've done the beginner to intermediate reading one. $99 gets you access to 24 lessons of various sight reading etudes totaling 102 pages and access to video on Vimeo showing how they should be played properly. The lessons are emailed to you by PDF. They start with whole notes on E string, then the A string etc then across the neck to learn where all the notes are and then gets harder with each lesson. Lesson 24 is everything that has gone before thrown into various exercises including semi-quavers, rests, triplets, ledger lines a fair way above the regular stave etc. Pack 1 is all in C major. Very traditional! There are a total of 5 lesson packs in increasing difficulty. They are $99 each but there is a deal if you want all 5 at once. 1: Basic to intermediate 2: Flats and Sharps 3: Scales 4: Chord Tones 5: Approach notes It's a really good tool to learn to read proper dots. There is no tab, other than a hint in the first 3 bars of the simplest exercises. After that you work out each from there so it sinks in. Use your favourite mnemonic. There's no "technique" or "genre" or example famous tunes based anything - it's all about learning to read the dots so the student can then go and play whatever they like. I could imagine that some might find it a bit boring, but it is the proper academic process of learning the dots rather than a learn a famous riff thing. Having had the benefit of classical lessons on piano and sax in the past I fully agree with Jeff on separating the academic part from the art part. I like it a lot. As I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment I might get lesson 2 as well. I actually think I'll find that one easier - In my big band I haven't played an open E or A string for years!!! Too many transposing instruments in the band!

Jeff Berlin's one. Concentrates on reading proper dots. It's good.

Here you go. The lesser spotted stack knob PJ-Ray 5.

Alas I think I'd keep the original neck so I can re-assemble it for sale in future if I needed to.

I'd like to assemble a parts bass at some point, but I'd rather make my first attempt on something really really cheap and not a bass that I love!