Bilbo

I think its that losing direction you talk about that makes me think the self-taught route has done me no favours. If I had had someone who could say 'try this', 'do that'' etc, I may have made faster progress.

I was just reading a piece about a student of a US saxophonist and he mentioned that he went for lessons with a certain teacher for 7 years. I know Jeff Berlin was having lessons with Carlie Banacos right up to his death as, I believer, did Mike Stern. My own approach (which I don't really advocate) was to teach myself with occasional lessons - I had a half dozen lessons with a guy called Dan Quinton in Plaistow who played with Otis Grand and the Dance Kings, two sessiosn with Dudley Phillips (John Paricelli, John Etheridge, Perfect Houseplants, Womak and Womak) and one double bass session with our very own Jake Newman (Jakesbass) but that was it. The thing is, whilst I can readily see the value of lessons, I have never felt that I have been in a position to pay out £30+ a time. I think I could have advanced more quickly and still keep thinking about having lessons to plug some gaps in my learning but it always seems to get put to the bottom of the list of essential purchases. But it got me thinking. How do/did others learn? How many had weekly lessons like classical playing kids do at school? Was it money well spent? Just curious. PS the world I grew up in didn't have colleges doing popular music type training and electric bass was off the curriculum until I was well past that as an option.

Mark Levine's 'Jazz Theory', even if you are not a jazz fan, covers everything and I recommend it to everyone who asks this question. There are others, though, so please wait for other responses before you commit to buying anything.

Doug Watkins - Sonny Rollins, Blakey's Jazz MEssengers and a shed load of other hard bop horn players Marc Johsnon - why do people not talk about him? He is top drawer. His own Bass Instincts cds are exceptional but his work with Bill Evans and John Abercrombie is sublime. Charles Mingus - my man. Eric Reevis - monster player with Branford Marsalis. If you get a chance, go see him live. The other Marsalis stablemates; Reginald Veal and Robert Hurst. RV with WYnton MArsalis and RH with Branford's trio are both double bass 'must hears'. Mike Richmond - did a stint with Mingus Dynasty but has a much wider discography. Great technique. Gary Karr - potentially the top solo classical player Jimmy Garrison - lots of great work away from Coltrane that rarely gets heard and what about the free players: Buell Neidlinger, George Duvivier, Barry Guy, Barre Phillips, Gary Peacock (and with the Keith Jarrett 'standards' trio)...

Personally, I think a good player is a good player and a bad one is a bad one. Whether you are slapping or playing through a distortion, you can only fool some of the people some of the time. The whole punk movement was based on some pretty bad players but it didn't matter as the audience were not looking for instrumental virtuosity. But, in the cold light of day, raggy timing is raggy timing and most people will feel it even if they can't hear it. I think most mature adults on here will be able to acknowledge great players whose music they don't like but most of us can also recognise those youtube cowboys who think they can rip s*** out of something but can't. I don't hink slapping or distortion will hide anything.

If it wasn't photographed, it never happened.

Anyone who undewrstands the idiom would recognise the difference between real players and this kit quite quickly. Where it is concerning is when you realise that people playing computer games or watching movies (where a lot of this stiff gets heard) would not notice or, even if they did, they woudln't care. That's a tragedy. Whoever created this software can go to their grave in the knowledge that they created a musical version of 'Sunny D' I hope they are happy.

If I am honest, my passion for instrumental music came from the frustration of not being able to find any decent singers. It depends what genre you are working in and rock singers that are good are like gold dust (that was what I was looking for in the mid 1980s). I have been lucky occasionally to work with great singers but think that finding them is a bit of a lottery.

[quote name='tleebass11' timestamp='1345063463' post='1773169'] Hey Bilbo I went to Berklee and got a degree in performance. I know my theory very well. [/quote] Marvellous;. I really enjoyed your playing and would love to hear some of your own stuff. Will check out your site when I get a chance.

&$£*%$!!

Simple question. Do you know what you are doing (i.e what notes, scales, chords, harmony etc you are using) in these clips or are you just mimicing the originals? I spent a lot of time working of Jeff Berlin parts when I was a kid and nailed them but I had not the slightest idea what it all meant

I am working on writing material, recording a demo and a getting a website up and running. Everything else is not my gig to promote, as it were (other folk have websites already etc). We are also looking at opening a new venue in January with a local landlord who wants to put some jazz in a newly refurbed premises so hopefully the new year will pick up (4 gigs already )

[quote name='skidder652003' timestamp='1345037990' post='1772698'] time for a few more mustang sally cover-type numbers then Bilbo! [/quote] I'd rather eat my own liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti....

I have one on 25th August, then the next one is NEW YEAR'S 'kin EVE!! That is by far the worst it has been since I started gigging in 1980. I will value the time for writing and composing but, 'kin 'ell... So much for 'get a double bass and you'll get loads more gigs'

Nicely done, young man..... Now harmonise it in fourths

They used to have a jam night at The Sandringham Hotel called The Jazz Attic (I started it at The Four Bars Inn with friends when I played around that area). Last time I looked it was still going (Mondays) and a quick web-search confirms it is still going (at least 20 years now - we started in in the early 1990s).

Pretty much but I wouldn't lie awake worrying about it. The main thing is to make sure it won't fall over if knocked. For me, lying it down may be safe in terms of it falling over but everyu time I lie mine down, I can feel another inch come off the veneer i.e. great if you are lying it on a carpet, not so good if the floor is tiled or wooden etc.

The Wal is hung on the wall. Double bass is on a stand. See picture no. 12 http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-30761458.html Narrow hallways militate against leaving basses in the thoroughfare.

One side of the Kind Of Blue LP was originally mastered at the wrong speed so is slightly off pitch. THis has been corrected on later editions so it depends which version you have.

I know, I know, I know......

A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace, And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace And achieve it all with music that came quickly from afar Then taste the fruit of man recorded losing all against the hour Barbie Girl - Aqua

There are all sorts of ways of making a chart a b*gger to read and, trust me, if there is a right way or a wrong way, I will find the wrong way. I am learning a lot about writing charts for sax players a drummers!

I did a gig last night with my own sax - bass - drums - trio called 'trio East' and, after investing over a year on working on the issue, we have reached the point where we can do a whole night of original tunes. We did actually do 5 standards last night ('In a Sentmental Mood', 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat', 'Alfie's Theme' and a deconstructed 'You Don't Know What Love Is') but we worked them in around a dozen or so of my tunes (others are written but not yet gig ready - they are too difficult for the sax player to read without rehearsal due to sixteenth notes in 5:4 or alternating 7:4/9:4 bars etc). It's not the first time I have played my own composition live; I remember doing originals in Cardiff in the late 1980s, but its been a long time and I have never before tried to let my original compositions 'carry' a gig. What, for me, was interesting last night was that, all of a sudden' people's reactions to the material became really important and when mistakes happened (they always do when you are improvising), the stress levels were so much higher. What this tell me is that, for most of my playing life, what I was doing didn't really matter to me and that I ordinarily have much less investment in the outcome than I do when the material had my name on it. I think that I have learned somthing about what drives me to do this and where my efforts should be concentrated, for better or worse. As for audience reaction; it varied from polite to enthusiastic applause or open mouthed disbelief (it wasn't supposed to sound like that ). One regular said he liked most of it but didn't 'get' one of them on one hearing (which was unsurprising as the sax player screwed up the head). What was a relief was that the overall reaction was pretty much the same as it would have been for a set full of the same old same old and no-one walked out. So the 'you can't do originals, do something they know' mantra, on the evidence of last night's gig, is pretty much a myth.

Monster, Phil. Now re-shoot it so we can see your right hand Nice to see BL avoidiing the routine blues phrases and pseudo be bop in favour of some interesting intervals.

Interesting the massive and marked difference between the playing in the first solo vid and the second band vid. One was what we do for each other on bass forums and youtube, the other is what we do for a living Shows the dichotomy we all deal with every day of our professional lives.