bass_dinger

A free Hiscox 4-unit rack case, to whoever can pick it up from Swanley (Junction 3 M25), and do so with a smile and a friendly wave.

We have a white-majority band, and a perhaps 30 per cent of the congregation is black. So, it would have felt inauthentic to do a reggae version of anything in the service. However, we did mess about one rehearsal and came up with a pretty convincing version of "Your Love Never Fails". I would like to try it in the service one day - perhaps during Black History Month, play songs in the style of reggae, or Motown. Oooh - and, and for Fathers Day, some AOR-style songs. We do try to mix it up - a lot of the Rend Collective songs end up sound like bad bluegrass music, so, we try to use different styles. The only thing that we fail on is old hymns - it always has to have some funky beat under it, even though the people for whom we are playing it do not necessarily want that.

On the day, I was okay. In fact, it went rather well. No midweek rehearsal, just three musicians (drums, bass and keys or guitar) and three vocalists. Some songs were different in the service than in the pre-service run through, but we seemed to adapt to the new style very quickly (after one bar of hearing the guitarist's strumming pattern). Listening back to a recording of one of the songs, I found myself rather liking the riff that ran through the chorus (and then realising that it was me who had played it...). Onto next week, and we have been asked to play this by someone in the congregation who seems to quite like it . . . It feels pretty much driven by the bass (double-stopped with some 10ths and minor 10ths) and the drums - high-hat especially plus Hammond organ, minimal acoustic guitar, and a huge drum and bass sound for the chorus. I know what I will be practicing tonight (and in the 80 minutes prior to the Sunday service)! Any advice? In particular, is there any chorus effect on the bass?

They were on the face of the previous bass guitarist, knocked unconscious and left on the floor during an earlier set.

I have an SWR Workingman's 12 with a similar "front shelf" on it. I had no idea that it was designed to hold drinks. . .

The weekend approaches, as does our traditional Sunday Morning (afternoon?) time for playing. Are we all still playing? Have we seen an increase in the size of the band, and congregation, as lockdown draws to an end? For me, I am feeling a little burnt out. However, we have been blessed by a new guitarist with huge experience and I am hopeful that this will reboot my enthusiasm and drive. However, I have reached the point where I no longer feel that I can play at funerals and memorial services - I find the emotion too great, and it is a difficult way to spend a day off of work. I nevertheless want to support those who have suffered loss, and am struggling to reconcile my own needs (for a nice day off), with the desire to support friends.

I am told that he was known to lay on the floor of the studio while he played - clearly, he took his back care seriously!

yes - I often ask myself "Am I good enough to play a bass recorder?" Thomann do a bass recorder for £85. That's bass guitar territory!

Your teacher was probably waiting for you to get the notes right. Then, lesson two would have been "creating a good tone"! If Primary School Assemblies had sounded like Fushan Elementary School Recorder Ensemble, then more of us would be playing recorder now - there is even a bass recorder (played here by the tall people at the back - so, just like a bass guitar in that respect). Rossini : L'italiana in Algeri / Fushan Elementary School Recorder Ensemble And here, one of the better recorder channels - Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/SarahJefferyMusic

I was wrong - it seems that Ian Anderson did play the recorder (according to the Wiki page on the recorder). Paul McCartney did so too, on Fool on the Hill.

Ian Anderson, of the group Jethro Tull, is a self-taught flautist of huge ability. The recorder is a wonderful instrument, whose reputation has been sadly ruined by a million awful School Assembly recitals, and hundreds of thousands of cheap sub-standard instruments. Indeed, when I found that my synth had a recorder patch, the first thing that I did was to play "London's Burning", using the pitch bend function to play it out of tune, with a different error for each note. The video that was shared shows how versatile the recorder can be.

Good advice! I took a while to look at the possibilities, and it seems to the inside of a tuning peg, rattling in sympathy with the notes. I will try the other options too, when time allows. Thank you so much for your clear advice.

My Washburn XB500 has a rattling truss rod - or at least, something inside the neck is rattling, whether it be the rod, or the channel that supports the rod It does it mainly when I play a B flat on the G string - so, a sympathetic vibration. It may instead be a rattling fret, or a loose tuning peg. Is there anything that I can try at home - say, a quarter turn on the truss rod, or gently hammer down the frets - before I take it to a luthier, or source a new neck?

£500 would buy a lot of lessons. For me, that would be the preference - but, I probably need £500 of lessons! A case? Better cables?

Oh, go on then!! Do please share it.

Good thinking! I will try this. I find that a lot of the material is very busy, and the bassline, too simple, or too buried in the mix, to be of any musical use. I also play other songs, to increase my dexterity and technique. Last Sunday, the bassline to "Let Your Yeah be Yeah", by the Pioneers, found its way in some new song (the title of which escapes me. As do the lyrics...).

I am learning to learn better . . . . Most recently, I am trying to play by ear. Put on a track, and play along. Last week, Let Your Yeah be Yeah by the Pioneers. I was chuffed to get the chord changes, and the bassline too (although I lack the nuance and feel). I have also found my two notebooks and music folder. In these, I list the songs I worked on for a each day, and each page has an entry for the songs themselves. All this allows me to return to make notes about my shortcomings and learning needs for each song, and to return to my previous learning later than week. This stops repetitive noodling of the same half dozen favourites, and allows me to stretch my ability.

It is good that you can laugh at this. Because the alternative (rage, and frustration) would damage your own wellbeing, and not change the Learner's attitude. Thanks for sharing . . .

Someone in the audience tried to set fire to it, after hearing the introduction to Mustang Sally once too often?

I did too.

I am in for 2022. I realised how useful the 2021 challenge was, in that I focused on using what I had, and worked to improve my skill levels. I also see that the upgrades that I want, are so difficult to source, that I may as well not bother looking!

Nowadays, I am a veritable riff machine, able to churn out musically appropriate basslines spontaneously. I can happily throw away melodic basslines that Bach would have turned into a fugue. Either that, or I manage to cram the bass riff from Fontella Bass's "Rescue Me" into every single song, and not care who notices it. Actually, I am much closer to the latter. One week, our young singer was at home, isolating. So, I deliberately inserted every cliché and standard line I could think of into the songs, to reach out to her as she watched us YouTube. When I next saw her, I asked her if she spotted it. "Yes! I was saying to my sister, 'listen, he is doing the riff again!', but she could not hear it." It was at that moment that I realised that musicians hear, but the rest of the congregation don't really notice what I do. So, that is the real reason why I am happy to throw stuff away. I used to very much enjoy inserting the descending octave bassline from Bach's Air on a G String, into the chorus of Jared Cooper's King of Kings, Majesty. It worked in A, but I could not transpose it to G on the fly - so, I decided to create a new bassline, which fitted better with what the others were playing that morning. Nobody noticed. Nobody complained.

I can recommend a book "the Heart of the Artist" by Rory Nolan. Read it, then give it to your leaders to read, so that they can better understand how us "creatives" work! It allowed me to be a little less precious about what I have been working on - a bassline that I have been working on for a few days is now more easily binned, when I see that it does not fit.

Fixed it for you . . . .

Indeed - literally, in receipt of a gift. Of course, I could not have done this gear abstinence without my family, my car, the rising cost of petrol, and of course my mortgage. All were there for me, every time I considered some new gear.