Bilbo

I have a basic setting that I use as a starting point but I often tweak it to compensate for odd sounding rooms. The Wal Custom has a lift facility on the tone controls that improves the presence and enhances the frequencies that each control covers. I find I use that quite frequently during gigs. Its also sometimes easier to use the bass pots to control tone rather than the amp when you are playing in small, dark venues etc and you need to make adjustments in real time. So, the straight answer to our question is, yes.

Ignorance is ignorance. Fun is overated. Do some work, you waster!

Leave it near a naked flame!!!

Sounds great. Can't get there as I have a gig in Suffolk but good luck anyway.

Absolutely! Its all about intent vs chaos. I think a lot of developing players thrash about hoping to get something good to happen wihtout understanding the creative process. Guitarists are particularly adept at wiggling their fingers without any real idea of what they are doing but a lot of bassists are the same and the problem is getting worse. I was looking at a Youtube clip recently where the player was 'noodling' and, although there was some technique on show, the results lacked focus and form whereas an improvisation by, say, Dave Holland or Steve Swallow is a little piece of art. The difference is in the knowing, and the results, consequently, have their own internal integrity.

Have you ever actually heard any jazz? I think the point is best illustrated by the 'playing ahead of the beat' concept. You need to know where the beat IS before you can play ahead or behind it. If you don't, you will just drag or rush. You need to be able to play 'inside' before you can play 'outside'. If you can't hear diatonic harmony, 'outside' playing will be just wrong notes. I don't think it is common sense, cheddatom. I think the misunderstanding that many lay people have about jazz/improvised music is based on the fact that they don't understand that you have to be able have a comprehensive, even encyclopeadic, undersatnding of harmony, melody and rhythm before you can 'make it up as you go along'. People like John Scofield, Pat Metheny and Scott Henderson have all achieved a level of technical proficiency and then built upon it by throwing in some dirt. The results are exquisite.

I have a confession to make! The quote that opened this thread wasn’t complete. It carries on as follows: [i]'The variation from the exact which is due to incapacity for rendering the exact is, on the whole, ugly. The artist who is to vary effectively from the exact must know the exact and must have mastered its attainment before his emotion can express itself adequately through a sort of flirtation with it’[/i] In a nutshell, the writers argument is that you need to move away from perfection in order to express emotion in music but, in order to do that effectively, you need to know where perfection is. The argument is not without its flaws where some popular music forms are concerned but, for the developing musician, it is compelling.

I am in Felixstowe if you want to come over one day/evening to chew the bass fat. PM me if you are interested. I promise not to talk about jazz all night

I'm a convert! I got this one for my birthday in July and have listened to it almost every day (on my cd player in work) - it makes me feel good. I also find my own voice sits comfortably in the same register as JTs so I can sing along without regrets!

James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim & the Blue Horizon. Purdy!

I have a 205,000 word manuscript I am working on. The back-up is backed-up with copies on 3 different computers and a falsh drive. I lost 8,000 words of an MA dissertation once; fortunately I had origianlly hand written it but it still took hours of typing to recover it. You'll never make THAT mistake twice!

You can sell some things to ANYONE!

[quote name='Josh' post='274477' date='Sep 1 2008, 01:33 PM']Bilbo you are the inspiration to the notion Maybe you just to love to hate him alone, you may dislike some others but hating Jeff Berlin is just so much more fun because you've been following him for so long.[/quote] And what's worse is that, as a 10 year old, I liked Gary Glitter (I still have a few of his singles somewhere). Why do these people keep letting me down?

[quote name='Josh' post='273821' date='Aug 31 2008, 04:53 PM']Wals: The bass for a Druid. Killer tone though.[/quote] Works for me! Haven't read the whole topic but I want to go off at a tangent. I have grown to hate Jeff Berlin; everything he says and EVERYTHING he plays. There is a trio version of his 'Bach' thing on YouTube - it is so lame it is unreal. He plays with his head and not his heart and the results are emotionally dead. His MySpace posts are excruciating. His dress sense is worse than mine and that is saying something but, hey, I am not out there in public like he is. His moustache makes him look like an ex-70s porn star and his signature basses are pitiful. His Norah Jones duets are so cringeworthy it is astonishing and his efforts at self promotion are so transparent he wouldn't be out of place on Celebrity Big Brother. I am even getting worrried that I feel this strongly about a dork! I have no strong feelings about ANY other players but he is really getting on my t**s lately. Or is it just me?

As awful as it sounds, I actually don't practice on the bass at all. With 97 gigs so far this year, I don't really have to worry about my 'chops'. My 'thing' is composing (badly as it happens but I am learning) and, in order to progress in this I study other stuff; transcriptions, scores, chord sequences, orchestration etc. There are a million things out there to get your juices flowing. I can NEVER find the time I wish I had to study all of this stuff properly. Get out there and LEARN!!!! This music stuff is just BRILLIANT!!

[quote name='mcgraham' post='274395' date='Sep 1 2008, 12:28 PM']and others where I'm working on my ear without any instrument other than my voice and my mind (if that can be called an instrument).[/quote] Its everyone's first and main one!!

A Remark You Made - Weather Report

I like tents

[quote name='The Funk' post='273271' date='Aug 30 2008, 06:24 PM']If it's a 34" scale, then all the notes should be in the same place as on your fretted.[/quote] Not quite. On a fretted bass you fret the note by placing your finger BETWEEN the frets. On a fretless, you place your finger where the frets would be. There is a marginal difference.

How is your reading? That is a skill that is particularly rare and VERY marketable. Needs hours a day to get it up to professional speed. If you can get to the point of sight reading stuff, you can access 1,000s of pieces of music that will stretch you and help you find that spark. Try transcribing some solos by other instruments: baritone sax and trombone are generally easy to start with but sax/trumpet can be demanding. Look closely at the phrasing; I was transcribing a Steve Swallow solo last night ('Wrong Together' off his 'Real Book' cd). Simple little solo until you try to write it down. His phrasing is sublime. Look beyond the notes and examine the music. Get a book on orchestration and learn some stuff. Get some orchestral scores (libraries often have them) and read them along with a performance. Buy some world music compilations; nuevo flamenco, Astor Piazolla, Cuban, African, - broaden you horizons. There is a lovely quote from Death in Terry Pratchetts 'Hogfather'; 'HUman beings are remarkable creatures. All the fascinating things in the world and they still manage to invent boredom'. You have just reached a plateau and need to look beyond it.

You'll need to play without looking if you get a reading gig! Its like anything else. Practise makes perfect. 10,000,000 orchestral string players can't be wrong!

Bilbo has entered the building....(sorry, am away at the moment and the net is hard to find where I am) Kind of Blue is a must - best selling Miles LP/VCD and the most influential jazz cd of all time. Others must haves: Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead are all Gil Evans collaborations - orchestral/big band jazz at its best - all Paul Chambers Milestones, Cookin' Relaxin' Steamin' and the other one - similar line up to KoB etc Birth of the Cool - created the West Coast sound in one hit (the band only ever did two weeks of gigs but still managed to change the world), Al McKibbon on bass Miles Smiles - Wayne SHorter/Herbie HAncock/Tony WIlliams/Ron Carter line-up - great band I am not a great fan of the electric stuff (there is better stuff out there). Tutu is not a players cd its a producers. Its a Marcus Miller CD not a Miles Davis one! Decoy, Star People, You're Under Arrest etc are ok/fun but not as dewfinitive and historically important as the ones I have listed.

'Trio Music' by Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes. How blinking marvelous is that? Just got hold of 'Damaged In Transit' by Steve Swallow with Chris Potter and Adam Nussbaum. Flippin' brillo pads. And 'Mud Slide Slim' by James Taylor - not even jazz but it gets an honourable mention for just being lovely and for influencing Pat Metheny's tune 'James'. 'And His Mother Called Him Bill' - Duke Ellington from 1967 - dedicated to the recently deceased Billy Strayhorn. If you have one Ellington CD, make it that sucker! Loose Tubes, how cool were they? Dave DeFries arrangement of his own 'Hermetos Giant Breakfast' - made the hairs on the back of my teeth stand up! I played with Iain Ballamy once (its always once with me....?) - what a gent!

A stylophone!!!!!!! PS Why did you use my picture in the first post on this thread?

A (slightly) simplistic way of looking at things is to say 'every scale has to have one of every note in it' So C major has C D E F G A B C So F major has F G A Bb C D E F - one note of each of the seven letters available. If you go to an F sharp major, however, you would get F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B, C sharp, D sharp, E sharp, F. E sharp is enharmonically F but F is sharp. Its actually to do with the written score. If a key signature on a piece of music has six sharps (the key of F sharp) whenever an E appears on the score, you play F but whenever and F appears you play F sharp. So a Gb scale has a Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, E, F, Gb - the Cb is enharmonically a B but if the score has six flats, Gb major, you play Bs as Bb and Cs as B. Its actually not nearly as complicated as it reads