Bilbo

The trouble with finding your sound is in the recognising that you already have it. I have always operated with the idea that one's sound is achieved very quickly and then tweaked as things develop. Being blunt, in my experience, too much tweaking is a fool's errand and, yes, a waste of time. All the noodling in the world will do nothing to counter a hollow wooden stage, a high ceiling or a thrashy ride cymbal. If you cannot get a sound in a few seconds, you are probably fighting the room, not your gear.

I would add the G as, to my mind, it is where the sus sound comes from 1 4 5 7 b9 D - G - A - C - Eb

11.11% of the vote!! I am doing better than the Lib Dems!!

Eeew!

The BBC thing was great, what I saw of it. Nice to see the Jazz getting an increased profile in these establishment circles.

I got a vote, I got a vote

[quote name='BetaFunk' timestamp='1401197966' post='2461014'] Bilbo, did you do Caravan with a drum solo? [/quote] No.

Did a piano trio gig with Jason Rebello who has toured with Jeff Beck and replaced Kenny Kirkland in Sting's band. I have played with some great pianists in my time but .... OMFG!!!

When I was a kid, I remember my Mum used to have a few LPs that were pretty tragic and they were all what I call mismatched artist/repertoire things. James Galways plays the Beatles, London Philharmoinic plays John Denver - you get the idea. We still see them on Britain's Got Talent - guitar player performing 'Wind Beneath My WIngs' kind of thing. When I think of Beck, I think of some great LPs from the Wired/Blow By Blow era etc but these 'Beck plays 101 well-loved Methodist Hymns' things strike me as a bit 'odd'! NB It is important to acknowledge that I don't really give a s*** what Jeff Beck plays; I was just thinking out loud. PS - I did a gig with his old Keyboard player Jason Rebello last Sunday. We did Danny Boy.

Fashion is now so fickle that, in the end, NOTHING is fashionable. It is all a matter of perception. A guitarist bloke in Cardiff once warned me fretless was dead. In 1988. On electric gigs, I play fretless exclusively and have done pretty much since 1986. No-one ever said it was a problem. Then again, I wasn't fashionable in 1988 either.

Voted. Getting stronger all the time.

Vienne Jazz Festival in around 1994. [url="http://s283.photobucket.com/user/bilbo230763/media/0b2f6b86-f760-46f1-b39c-d4b26daff162_zps4332cec4.jpg.html"][/url]

If you think about it, the whole tribute thing has to be post radio/recording. Prior to that, the only time you would hear things played would be live so, to all intents and purposes, for most people, the first time you heard anything, particularly art music, may have been the last. I think the originals thing was always one fo the defining characteristics of pop music post Beatles and became a badge of honour accordingly. Some have bought into that ethos, others haven't. It has never been an exclusive prerequisite of success in pop or rock, just an aspect of the content which some gravitate towards. No more definitive than guitar bands vs. synth bands. You either like them or you don't. For me, composing and listening to original music has been the main attraction; I don't even like Jazz standards really and regularly don't buy recordings of 'standards' albums by players I otherwise like. Horses for courses. If I hear a cover, I rarely (but not never) think 'Wow' and usually dismiss it as pointless. Not a universal truth, just my perspective on the thing..

Danny Boy, FFS!

Whilst in no real sense a fan, I have always admired Beck's expressiveness as a guitarist but, lately, everytime I see him on a video etc, he is playing some lame mainstream crap like Jerusalem or You'll Never Walk Alone. The arrangements aren't even interesting. It all sounds like James Galway play The Beatles to me, Dreadful. What is he playing at?

Everyone I know who tried the tribute band route has failed to make any money at it (too much money spent on production, booking rehearsal rooms etc). Includes 2 Floyd acts tribute who subsequenlty split. Life's too short

Another convert here. Just finished reading the text cover to cover. Now I just need to get to the exercises and start to put the bits together!!

Sing the tune, sing the bass lines, scat some solos, just get used to hearing it. If you can, play your scatting on the bass. Just get used to hearing how each note works against the harmony. Don't force it, just enjoy it. And don't turn it into a monster you are afraid of. It's just a tune like any other.

There are levels of expressing yourself, though, aren't there? It is not a case of you do or you don't but that, whilst you can, to a degree, do so in many situations, some ways of expressing yourself are more 'comprehensive'!! And, for some, that expressing of oneself comes not in the playing or the music but in the so called 'stage-craft'. So, for some, they can get their needs met in different ways to me. For me, it's improvisation that floats my boat and that makes tribute bands a no go area by definition. I am the opposite of Jus Lukin. I cannot just play anything. Most 'popular' music bores me rigid and, if I am bored, the audience knows I am bored (suffice to say, I couldn't play poker).

I guess it's about what you use music for. I have no use for tribute bands. I can see that others do and can see why. Good luck to them. I am working on something else.

I know the tune we'll be playing, I've learnt learn the melody and I can walk around the tune relatively ok, and I'm also in the process of transcribing a few basslines to add a bit of colour to my slightly sketchy improvised lines. Learning some lines will have value in helping you learn to find your way around the changes but try not to 'reproduce' your learned lines. It won't work and you won't know why. I'm at a stage where I can comfortably take a solo, so I may well take a backseat but if there's time, I'm also going to find a good solo and learn that, and if I feel brave on the day I might play it Learning other people's solos has enormous value but playing someone elses solo in a live performance also never works and for exactly the same reasons - I'm also studying walking around minor II-V-I's because the tune is in C minor, and my knowledge on minor keys is pretty basic at the moment Spend some time with it. It is important that you 'hear 'it' rather than you 'know it'. - Apart from that, I have a regular routine of playing the jazz blues in all keys as part of my practice so I should be ok with that if it comes up Absolutely - you will be doing this for the next 30 years. And it will some up pretty much every Jazz gig you do forever. - I'm practicing with iRealB, as well as with a few versions of the actual tune Time well spent. Does this sound about right? Am I missing anything, and is there anything else I should be preparing for? Any general words of advice or things I should avoid? You are overpreparing. What you need to try to do is to internalise (not learn) all of the above and to let it come out when you 'hear it' as opposed to when you 'think it'. The only way I can explain it is to say if you were going to have a conversation about The Beatles Sgt. Pepper Lp this afternoon, you may read up on the album, learn what tracks are on it, who produced it, what year it came out etc. You would prepare. You would not go to a book on the suject and learn everything by rote so you could regurgitate it in one great big diatribe at what you felt to be 'the right moment'. If you did that, you would end up looking like a nut-job Get it all in there and let it filter our in real time as part of the organic debate, do not throw it out there as a 'set piece'. And it will help to learn the changes of the tune and then practices your lines without the chart in front of you. Play the changes with your eyes closed and let you ears guide you. Listen to what everyone else is doing. That is where the Jazz is. Play the time straight. Don't over play and try to put it monster fills, just stick to straight quarter-notes all the way. When you have that mastered, you can start to think about the fiddling about. It is all a LOT easier and a LOT harder than you think but, at this stage, just enjoy it. It will show.

Here is mine. It doesn't sound like I want it to because I cannot play any of the instruments I 'heard' performing it. I wanted it to sound like the Dave Holland band with Chris Potter, Robin Eubanks, Steve Nelson and Billy Kilson. But I cannot play any of those instruments remotely well enough and haven't got the right VSTs either so this is a kind of bastard version of the piece I had in mind!! The only instruments that are not VSTs are the guitars and they are only an approximation of my developing idea. Everything else, including the basses, is programmed. It is, I guess, a demo of a tune rather than a performance of it. https://soundcloud.com/robert-palmer-1/springheel-jack

Strangely, this doesn't work for me

That's always my problem, Skol. I, once again, have something that has some great elements to it but, in order for it to work properly, I need something else added that I cannot do myself. There is no-one I can call to do it for me so I have no idea how to get it covered without giving up my day job and spending weeks on it