Pugz

[url="http://www.myspace.com/band3way"]http://www.myspace.com/band3way[/url] I recommend checking out Sec first. Thats the most bass heavy song and it has a bass solo. Then check out Stoner and Paper Planes Comments and feedback much appreciated.

Well, Marcus is regarded as a solo artist but if you are looking for only bass with no backing band then perhaps I was wrong to say Marcus. Though MM stuff is fun to play by yourself still.

My original instrument was piano. I started when I was very young and towards about the age of 10 or 11 I lost some of my interest and I ended up stopping at the age of about 12. At 15 I remember seeing a talented friend of mine playing bass. He did a slap improvisation and I thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen in my life. Immediately I thought "Oh my f*ing god I HAVE to learn to do that!". I pestered my parents to let me get a bass. My parents were a little reluctant as they thought I might lose interest like I did on piano. However after much pestering I eventually got my bass. A bit over 3 years later, now, I am still playing on average about 3 or 4 hours a day and I have found a real direction in my life which I really love and want to pursue as a career. I never had any lessons and I figured things out for myself. I had some of my knowledge of theory from piano playing still up there somewhere and that has stayed with me since then so my theory is pretty good. In the 3 years I've played, I've managed to play live on Red Dragon FM, play at the Big Weekend Festival in cardiff, have paid for sessions in the studio working with great musicians and producer Danny Chang and have made something of a name for myself around South Wales especially over the last few months. I'm currently in 3 bands (including SEX if anyones ever heard of them) and over the past month I've had to decline about 6 offers to join bands. Not only has playing bass made me realize a passion for performing music but it has also revitalized my enjoyment of playing piano. I restarted up piano and bought myself an electric piano to practice on. I retaught myself to play the piano and I am doing pretty well. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ0ehB6pYyw heres a video of my playing clair de lune. I taught myself this piece after 6 months of restarting the piano after about 6 years of not playing. It is one of my proudest accomplishments learning that piece.) Playing bass really taught me to appreciate music of different styles and has really made me open up to learning the piano again and more recently I have started the electric guitar too. I don't want to say, do this or do that but I hope by reading my experience you can come to a decision yourself with knowledge of others experiences. I am a self taught player and where as many people seem to think that it is a handicap having no teacher, I am personally very glad that I did teach myself and I actually consider it a learning advantage. Learning by yourself allows you to learn in your own way, in your own time and will allow you to develop your own style as to what is comfortable for you. A great explanation I heard from Victor Wooten from one of his bass clinics when he was talking about learning techniques I use frequently: When you learn a technique, if you are taught how to do it, the teacher will show you exactly how you 'should' be doing it. So you basically cut straight to the technique and learn it quick. However if you try and figure it out for yourself, the chances are at first, you are going to go wrong. But in that trial and error testing phase of learning, you learn a whole load of other things that you wouldn't have learned say for example if a teacher had just said "do it like this." The way victor wooten put it was like, when you are driving, and you are trying to find a specific place you've never been to before.. if you are searching on your own and you get really lost, when you eventually find the place, you will know a whole load of other roads you wouldn't have otherwise known if you had directions showing you exactly where to go. That to me, for the most part sums up why I think self-teaching is an advantage. At the same time my heart really was in learning the bass and I have a genuine love of music and I think that is pretty crucial. I followed my heart and it has taken me a long way. Though I will stress again that this is just my experience and things could turn out differently for your son but I hope that my account of my experience of become a bass player can help you make a better decision.

I'm shocked the name Marcus Miller has not been mentioned Marcus Miller is one of the greatest solo bassists out there. That man can groove like no other. Also Larry Graham. Not exactly solo bass but fronted by bass. And not just any bass... Larry Graham has such incredible feel. If you haven't already listened to him, it would do you a lot of good to listen to him. Check out POW on youtube

Not much high end stuff as Mark said this year but far more than there was last year. Actually. Last year I don't recall there being any.. at all. The bass direct stand was amazing. I must have spent a combined 5 hours over 2 days just in that one stand playing the Roscoe's, Nordy's and the amazing Wood and Tronics basses. I've never ever been fortunate enough to previously have played a true high end bass. Pre-music live 07 my best experience of a bass was an american deluxe fender jazz. That was nice, but it doesn't even come close to what these basses were like. And you basically pay the same sort of price too. The Fender MIA Deluxe Jazz in my local store is priced £2000. Seems like you are paying 50% of that cash for a brand name. Kudos to Mark too, great service at the bass direct stand. Really went out of his way to help So thanks again Mark

I'm going back tomorrow to play that bass and perhaps make a purchase

I'm this close-- to buying one of those very W&Ts. Played one earlier today.. well yesterday...early morning hours now ^^ Incredible basses.

[quote name='urb' post='82079' date='Nov 1 2007, 08:56 AM']Hey Pugz - good job - I see you've discovered and mastered the joys of double-plucking - as opposed to double thumbing - you demonstarted how it can make things sound more complex but is actually easier to execute than double thumbing and actually (especially live) jumps out more. I also liked the way you do the tricky counterpoit part - I've learnt this tune in the past and I could play all the right notes on that bit as Vic always hammers the bass line below the 'tremelo' part on top my hand ended up hurting because of the stretches - your soluiton worked great. Anyway - well done and I'm sure if you keep at it you are going to turn into a truly great bassist by the time you are as old and cynical as me - you're already kicking some serious butt! Keep at it... Cheers Mike[/quote] Thanks very much I want to play music as a career and I am doing a music course in college. Yep many teenagers dream I guess and it's a business that very few become successful in regardless of playing ability. But learning to perform and after 3 years of playing and gigging experience I feel I've finally found some direction which I know I want to go in. The double plucking technique its an excellent technique to really gain some slap speed with little effort. Learning that technique has really opened up lots of possibilities for me within my playing, it's used in me and my bass guitar too and a lot of other wooten stuff. The rhythm on that double plucked part is really odd. If you listen to the timing and count along with it, it seems to go out after the first beat and come back in time on the fourth beat. Actually after just listening to it myself I noticed my timings a little bit off. Slightly rushed I saw a demonstration of how Wooten plays this part. He cuts the two parts up individually. The bass notes are hammered and the melody line is actually not just double plucked but played: strum down, pluck, pluck. I swear that guy is just an endless source of new techniques and ideas. I really can't imagine how anyone could advance technique as far as Victor Wooten has. As for double thumbing, I'm still working on it. My slap technique isn't the best for incorporating double thumbing stuff because of the way i position my hand so transitioning from the two techniques is tricky. At the moment i've been working on the combination of double thumbing and double popping, so Thump down, thumb up, pop 1 , pop 2. Thats some real tricky stuff especially when doing all hits on the same string. Trying to get it up to speed, consistent and clear.

[quote name='cetera' post='82157' date='Nov 1 2007, 10:59 AM']Lovely bass... congrats! I see you were playing The Point in Cardiff.... great venue eh?!? [/quote] Yea, the point is an amazing venue Great sound crew there.

Thanks for the good feedback all

A friend of mine took these photos and he seems to really do a lot of justice for this bass.

[quote name='craigjf1969' post='80420' date='Oct 28 2007, 02:00 PM']Excellent,how do you(and other people)learn these parts,did you practice for hours rewinding the clip or maybe slow it down using a bass trainer[/quote] I went about learning this piece in stages. I guess the first thing you should probably do is get the score for it. I bought Victor Wooten's tab book, which is tabbed by the man himself afaik so its very accurate. Then it was a matter of learning the basic tab not 100% accurately just enough to get the jist of what was going on and then I listened to the song and try to reproduce it. I find that its a good idea not to be too worried about getting things perfect with almost any victor wooten song because his technique is so immaculate that even if you do more or less manage to play exactly what he's doing the chances are when you listen to him play it, it will still sound better on his version My approach is to just play it in my own style and not get frustrated if it's not EXACTLY the same. Take the song piece by piece and get the main chunks done first. Don't worry about the fills and stuff until you have the main parts down. I first learned the song a while ago now but I kept improving it over time up till what it is now. The middle 8 part was the toughest part for me to crack, I think it is for most people. I still haven't got the rhythm exactly right but hey, like I said, it doesn't really matter

Victor Wooten's version of Amazing Grace was written to be played on his tenor bass though it doesn't really matter how you play it as long as you still get it sounding good.

Hey, I'm a newcomer here. Thought I'd start off here with a video to introduce myself. Here I am about a month or 2 ago playing Victor Wooten's - You can't hold no groove. [url="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gsG5wiWit7g"]http://youtube.com/watch?v=gsG5wiWit7g[/url] See what you think. Comments much appreciated