peteb

Not really. It might help you to enjoy 'just doing pub gigs' a little bit more and, possibly, increase your options for other gigs that you might be able to do.

My question would be, why wouldn't you? I'm guessing that you could afford it and if you had a better instrument then it might make you play better / sound better / enjoy the experience more. Add to that, other musos might take note of your improved sound and more professional quality gear and start to consider you for other projects when they need a bass player, some of which might possibly be a step up from only playing pubs.

Well, yes and no! The guy that I mentioned makes a living from playing bass and decided that he needs a P bass that was completely bulletproof, complete with a quarter sawn neck / CS pickups, etc to handle every pro gig that he gets called for. I seriously considered getting something similar, but decided that I couldn't justify the extra cash as I already have a really nice 70s P bass that is always going to be my main bass, so paying the extra £1.5k wasn't worth it when I could get a really nice AVRI with a pretty similar spec, but without the quarter sawn neck! As I said in another post, you can pick up an American Std for £1k or so, which makes it difficult to justify the extra cash. But, for guys that are going to get that boutique P bass as the one that they use all the time, then it's certainly worth it for them!

The BL of the first regular gigging band with a following that I played with, once said to me 'buy right and pay a little more in the first place and it will save you a lot of money in the long run'. He was quite right and I've followed his advice (in the main part) ever since. Whenever I haven't, I've always regretted it! You don't need to spend big on a bass that will cover every gig that you are likely to get called for. If people were to ask me for advice, I would say these days to buy a s/h Fender American Std Jazz Bass if you need a 4 string bass. You can pick them up for a grand (give or take) these days, and no BL or sound engineer is going to be less than happy if you turn up on a gig with one. You will still be gigging it in 30 year's time and it will justify the additional money if you we originally looking to spend a bit less, many times over. You should note that things change over time - ten years ago I would have advised people to pick up a s/h Stingray, which were really good value at the time and look at what they go for these days!

A guy I know is a pro bass player, who paid £3k for a CS P bass. For him, the requirement was for the best possible bass that will work for any gigs that he is going to get called for and that meant a high spec P bass. I've played it and it is a great bass and his reasons for buying it make complete sense. A mate of mine did pick up an Alembic for a very reasonable price and that's great as well. But a P bass is probably going to be more suitable for more gigs for a jobbing pro bass player.

Pretty much my take, except that I've paid from £900 to £1,650 for a gigging bass. I recently was looking for a new bass with a budget of £3k, but ended up getting something that did everything that I needed for half that amount.

Dunno about the punk thing, but I know that he put together a Thin Lizzy tribute for just a (I think) single gig!

I've always thought that the Sunday afternoon / teatime gigs made a lot of sense, even before I reached a 'certain age'! I remember doing a few places back in the 80s, playing to bikers in places like Burnley on a Sunday teatime, and it always made sense, then as it does now. A punter can go out and have a few beers, see a band and still get to bed home at a reasonable time to get up for work on Monday morning. From a muso's point of view, a two hour drive home at eight o'clock is better than driving home at midnight, especially for semi-pros who have work the next morning.

Has anyone seen the videos that Tom Bukovac (a Nashville session guitar player) puts out? He did a behind the scenes one of a session he was on, where literally everyone in the room does exactly the same as Mohini did. Then they go back to joking around, quickly compare the charts they have just done, then go for a take. To be fair, I think that most people here will do something similar when learning new material. The difference is for people like me is that I will stop the playback a few times to give me chance to get each section, then listen to it again to check that I've got it right. If you are a top studio player then you're expected to be able to get it right first time (like she did)!

Dunno, ask Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor about that...

All you can do is the obvious - play it slowly with a metronome and then build up speed. As I said before, I play it with hammer-ons live, I can't play fast enough to pick every note! If you have to play it with a band, just play the pentatonics - no one will know the difference! I played it this way when a band got me up at a gig a few months ago. A mate in the audience who plays in a very well known band, came up to me afterwards to say how great I sounded - obviously, I didn't tell him that I had played the 'cheat' version! 😉 Next ones to learn are 'Ramble On' and 'Good Times Bad Times', both of which are a pretty decent workout for any bass player!

Th only difficult thing with the studio version is the 'Our only goal will be the western shore' bit, where you have to play ascending major scales at a brutal tempo. I can only get the speed by playing it with hammer-ons, so all credit if you can play it at tempo picking every note! There is a very effective cheat that you can use that sounds great, playing major pentatonics rather than the full scales. I first saw Michael Anthony (of Van Halen) doing that on a video from some jam at a party, where he was playing the bass part and singing lead. That's a very difficult thing to do, hence simplifying the bass part slightly. I tend to play it like that with drummers who perhaps haven't quite nailed the part, or are playing it at too fast a tempo (it's surprising how many people want to play this when they ask you to sit in at pub gigs or at jams). If you want to challenge yourself, have a listen to some of the live versions where there is an extended guitar solo, that have a lot of bass playing going on! The secret there is to play lots of runs using the F# blues scale, but targeting the flat fifth as much as you can get away with! Funnily enough, Kashmir is a pretty easy song to play, once you get the hang of the groove.

You might well think that he talks bollocks, but he certainly is not a 'shite player'!

I know Danny a bit. He used to live above a bar that I used to go to occasionally and now he's moved to the next town, I bump into him every now and again in the supermarket. Funnily enough, the last time I saw him, he was asking me about the tribute band I'm in, rather than talking about his more illustrious online career! He's actually a nice guy, even shorter in real life than you might imagine and a very good bass player! I don't really bother with online bass influencer types as a rule, but his clips are OK / mildly amusing. I do agree with some of the things he gets on his high horse about, especially the Mohini Dey / AI thing.

We're finding this big time on the tribute circuit. There are certain parts of the country where we can pull 250 plus and make pretty decent money, but there are other towns where we struggle to get 50 punters through the doors and are playing for not that much more than pub rock gig money. It's not just us by any means, I've got mates who run venues and they are struggling to make putting on live music cover the bills.

I would have thought that the latter Roxy albums with Alan Spenner would have been the ones to go for, if your interest is in great bass performances that are generally under-rated...!

I was led to believe that the motivation for AI generated songs was to make recommendations to fill up playlists of subscribers with songs that they don't need to pay any royalties at all. If AI generated songs continue to be successful in their own right, then expect to see significant lobbying to allow Spotify et al collect royalties on them!

This is probably the most famous 1 6 2 5 in a blues tune that I can think of, except that it isn't in the turnaround. It is actually in bars 5-8, followed by a 1 4 1 5 turnaround, i.e. bars 9-12. The trouble that you will have trying to use 1 6 2 5 as a turnaround, is that it doesn't really resolve naturally enough for a blues progression. Someone like @chris_b might be able to explain it better. Anyway, see what you think...

I'm pretty sure that Bobby is still with us!

I'm not so sure about that. It is kinda like 'Need Your Love So Bad' (for example), but not quite. You would need to finesse it a bit from the way the OP describes to get it to work (of course, that might be what he means, but didn't quite express it correctly / how I understood it).

I think it depends on exactly what you mean. I've just tried to play through what your suggesting and I'm not entirely convinced. I'm sure that if you are playing as a three piece with the guitarist playing a solo, then you could probably make it work. If you have a keys player or another guitar player, then you would most likely need to tip them the wink on what you are intending to do, to ensure that they can follow.

The reason I signed up to Basschat in the first place, was to enquire over the value of a cab that I did eventually buy! Initially, that was the whole point of BC for me, as it is to many members to this day!

Prices from £265 from London...