Huge Hands

6 hours ago, fretmeister said:

 

Surely the bass player in a big band type arrangement is the very definition of a sideman who has to play what is on the sheet?

 

If I thought of something that I thought worked better I always asked the MD so it could be tried at a rehearsal and then either officially changed or not. The last thing the rest of the band needs is for 1 person to improv unexpectedly and have them all second guessing whether they have lost their place in the tune!

I do my best to read and play classical and traditional stuff verbatim, its just the more modern/poppy stuff that he lets me let loose on. 

What I've noticed is that a lot of the conductor scores don't appear to go as far down as the bass parts, or are so big, he's not really looking down there too much, so I get away with more.  

I don't do anything crazy, just a few added root/5th extra bumps to change the feel or some adjoining runs or fills.  He has occasionally come to me and said "this is a bit of a boring arrangement, can you do your thing on it?"

Most of it I try in rehearsal first to see if I get a reaction or not.   If I don't, or it is a good reaction, I'll keep it in. 

I do always listen to Euphonium/Bass Trombone/Bari Sax/Bass Clarinet as best I can to make sure I am not trampling or screwing up someone else's part.  I am quite lucky in one way that they always struggle to get/keep tuba players, so most of the time I'm kind of on my own at the very bottom lot of the time.   Having said that, I do enjoy playing along with a tuba when we do get them as you can split parts/solos/chordy bits and get different feels etc.

 They also have an amazing drummer who will go with me/take me with him and still be able to sight read the various drum parts for all the little percussion hits etc across multiple scores. If he ever left I would have to think long and hard about staying or not.

18 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

Some of them are just crap even with the same publisher. The recommended HL version of "Sir Duke" is awful - the main run is barely there at all.

Agreed.  I remember doing a Queen medley (may have been HL arrangement) thinking I'm about to play the classic bassline to Another One Bites The Dust, and I'm resting - it had been given to bari-sax and bass clarinet!

Luckily, our MD, who is really hot on flutes and clarinets playing the exact rhythms "....It's a dotted quaver!!" lets me have a bit more free reign and encourages me to funk things up or make basslines sound more like the original.    

Although that could be because he realises I'll never get it perfectly as written lol!

We did a Michael Jackson medley and he let me add the Billie Jean bassline by ear as again it was on Bari Sax.

To the OP - as others have said, you will be massively out of your comfort zone at times but it is great to get your reading up to speed.  

I play in a concert band (brass, woodwind) and like you, joined as a reading novice 11 years ago.

I found it is the norm for the band to hardly ever play in the original key of a modern piece - I would guestimate the majority of our pieces are usually played in F, Bb and Eb keys (1-3 flats). 

WIth the concert band, if you want to play along, the easiest way is to find a video of another concert band playing the same arrangement.  

I am guessing that your arranger may be trying to be clever and make their own arrangements for an orchestra, which means there likely won't be any other recordings, unless your orchestra has played it elsewhere before and been filmed/posted?

I wonder how that works with copyright?   As far as I understood it, bands like ours have to buy scores and with that comes some performance rights? 

I always I assumed that was why whenever you get a famous group medley (ie Abba, The Beatles. Elton John etc)  you either get one really famous one and a load of less famous songs, or the arrangements are so butchered they don't sound anywhere near the original.   I thought this was because it was too expensive for the publishers to secure the copyright from the original artists....?

I could be very wrong and overthinking it all of course....

Another one to watch out for with these kind of bands/orchestras - if original scores, you may get "tuba" or "basses" parts which can be written an octave lower than bass guitar parts.   Although I know what the notes are - I often struggle if sight reading faster parts and trying to transpose up an octave at the same time!

On 14/01/2025 at 09:37, Steve Browning said:

Thanks for the link. Do you add the blob of clear nail varnish too? I didn't use these when I was looking, fearing that they'd just come off over time.

I bought some last year.

The ones on the fretboard are all still there, but the side dots have all gone apart from the 12th fret.

I think it was mainly down to the way I pick the guitar up when in a stand/taking it from the gigbag by the neck, my (probably greasy) paws were sliding them off.

11 minutes ago, dudewheresmybass said:

It must be just me but I find the keyboard sound really grating

Loving both the playing and tone of the bass though

Keyboards played by Kirk's MD and grammy award winner Shaun Martin, who sadly passed earlier this year after suffering a stroke in his 40s.   Such a talent....RIP.

Most stuff nowadays is 220v to align with Europe.  

Although UK used to be quoted as 240V, once you get a few yards from a substation, it is usually dropped to 220 - 230 anyway.   The average nowadays seems to be around 230v from what I have seen. 

The only time I have ever seen stuff suffer with over-voltage in the UK where a local substation on private land had been boosted to 250v to try and  maintain supply to buildings much further along the road, and computerised stuff near it was crashing, but nothing dangerous.

PS I am not a qualified electrician but have dealt with it a lot over the years.  I'm sure others on here know the regs better tan me.

I was a huge fan when they first started and saw them in a large venue, then arena after the first and second albums.   I still listen to them occasionally but it was just never the same for me after Stuart Zender left. 

I am not knocking Nick Ffyfe or Paul Turner, both amazing players, but it is just not the same for me.  There was just that something extra with SZ.

I don't think I could go and see them without him, and especially now Toby has gone too (RIP). it would feel like cheating to me. 

My best purchase this year?

Forscore app on the iPad.  Dusted off my boy's iPad which he doesn't use any more and paid £19.99 for the app.  Has allowed me to scan all of my local concert band sheet music into the iPad.  I also bought a cheap Joyo footpedal to turn the pages.

It is dead easy to use and has transformed rehearsals as I am not spending ages frantically trying to find that one piece stuck to the back of another while the band starts playing.  Playing my first actual concert with it on Saturday.   Was dead easy to set up a playlist for the night and drag and drop the various scores into it.  It now all clicks through the concert in order.

Worst purchase?   I guess the Joyo MA-10 practice amp.  I can't complain too much as it was under £40 on offer on Amazon and it works as a practice amp in my home office, but it buzzes like mad unless you earth yourself on the strings and the sound is not to my liking. but I kept it and it does a job, so no major biggie.

I have both a Sire V7 (1st gen) and a 2001 ish 5 string Squier P5.  

I love them both, but I keep going back to the Squier due to the wider string spacing and it just feeling right in my hands.   

However, I had originally bought the P5 to strip and mod.  Once I upgraded the pickups in it, I realised it was amazing and didn't want to spoil it, so bought a second one.  Even before I stripped it, the neck was really unstable and has been a bit of a pig, resulting in an unhappy personal project bass.   If you asked me based on the first one, I would say go for a a Squier.  If the second one, I would say don't touch with a bargepole.  

I guess trying before committing is the best advice others have already given.

....and I have argued this point on other threads - although the Sire hardware on mine have always looked a bit toy-town and painted Halfords silver, they do the job and the guitar usually stays in tune, even in the gigbag.  I've never felt to need to swap them out.  

I've seen it happen with a few bands over the years - everyone is psyched up to rehearse and then someone pulls out at the last minute - do you all cancel (and potentially lose a rehearsal room booking deposit) or do you ask someone you know to sit in to save the time?    For those that say "I don't rehearse" - not everyone has constant gigs lined up all the time and the getting together is part of the fun.

In the cases I have seen this happen, it is usually because the rest of the band are disgruntled with an unreliable member, and hope the threat of this happening will get said member worried about their position in the band and sort themselves out, or as others have said, if they find someone gels while depping, they may just sack their current band member and go with the dep.

I seem to remember this happening with a drummer once, but the dep was not so good and the plan backfired as it gave the original drummer more leeway to take the p*ss once he knew he was the best they had so far.  Didn't take us much longer to find an even better one though....

1 minute ago, ezbass said:

Lee Rocker takes issue with the premise of this thread...

I was about to say I have seen a few rockabilly guys do that over the years.

However, I feel if I tried it with mine, with my weight, it would be an Ikea flatpack in seconds......

Mine all have bumps and chips in the top edge of the headstock, where I keep bumping it into things!  On my Fender style basses, the farthest peg is usually bent in some way too. 

It is not through wanton-style rage rampages, I am just really clumsy! 

The first time I bent a peg was when I was a teenager - on a bus doorway through the gig-bag on my back...

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Back in the day most of the band were in the back with no seats, just lying on top of the cabs...

That wasn't so bad if we were in our usual roadie's hand painted black transit cos at least you could see out of the windscreen and the cabs were a handy flat surface to roll up on...

But we once had a gig in Bournemouth and had to hire a van. The only one available was a Transit Luton so being in the back was a bit rubbish, especially as it took 3 hours from London with absolutely no clue where we were or ability to speak to the two lucky souls in the front!

Ha ha, I actually meant we wouldn't get away with sitting in those positions for a journey now in terms of cramp and DVT, but I know what you mean!

9 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

 

The old transit was fine. This "upgrade" has all sorts of tech under the front seats. If you sit in the back, you can't get your feet under the front seat. If you sit in the front and there's no-one next to you, you can just about fit on an angle. Unfortunately I have either the bassist or the front man sat in the tiny middle seat to my right. My shoulders touch the window and my fellow passengers' shoulder. My feet are jammed against the bulkhead and my left knee is crushed against a cup holder. I am quite a big guy. It only takes 45 minutes for my knees to start hurting, then it's my hips, then my upper back cramps up. Stockton on Friday was 4.5 hours on the motorway. with one stop. This is why I call it Vantanamo

As a teenager I remember doing a gig in Stockton in the early 90's (we only lived in Gateshead so it wasn't that far).  We borrowed a Sherpa van (the smallest one).   I was in the middle seat, but even at 15 I was already my current 6'3".   I think my Dad was our roadie on that gig so drove the van, but for him to change gear I had to sit diagonally with my feet in the passenger footwell and the bass player sat in the passenger seat next to me with his feet on the dashboard all the way.  He was about 15 years older than me and a serving police officer, so I figured we'd be ok with that configuration if stopped, (but not so good if in a wreck).  Thankfully we didn't but it was a challenge even for that short distance.....  

Wouldn't get away with it now. 

I have Labella Deep Talkin' flats on most of my basses, but as other have alluded to, they are getting very expensive these days.  As a DB player, you may be used to expensive string prices though!

If you want to dip your toe into the flatwound world, I did buy some really cheap Harley Benton Flats from Thomann last year (about £13) and they seem quite good for what they are.  I put a 4 string set on my HB 51 Precision copy and they seem fine, although feel a lighter gauge than the Labellas.  (That could equally be me just being used to playing 5 strings nowadays)  I did buy a 5 string set too, but they are still in the packet at the moment.

Even with Thomann's £10 delivery charge from Germany, they still worked out quite cheap (although I had bought the guitar and strings together, so I passed the free delivery threshold).

Just a thought if you are not sure you want to fork out that much as a trial.

i used to do pro sound in multiple venues in the late 90s/early noughties.  We used a lot of Behringer outboard gear, such as quad gates and quad compressors.  The running joke back then was everything seemed to cost £99, no matter the model!

A lot of visiting engineers sniffed at the name, but they worked for our needs.  We didn't need to hear noiseless perfection in a venue with 1500 drunk punters in it.  We would get the occasional failure just out of warranty, but at £99 we were happy to chuck them in the bin and buy another one - which would have been a bigger issue if we had been using top of the range gear.

20 years on I now own a BD121 and a UMC-22 interface and am very happy with them, thank you very much.

4 hours ago, police squad said:

Hi Ian

my wife put these on her Precision, 11 years ago

https://fretfx.com/

 

I just checked that out myself.   If you click "order form" it mentions no orders being taken due to the pandemic/ensuing backlog, so wonder if they are still active, or just bad at updating their website?

I guess as the price is in US dollars, they are a US company?  Did you have to pay import on them?

Sorry for all the questions!

2 hours ago, spongebob said:

@Huge Hands Got them yesterday! Going to apply them before tomorrow’s gig.

 

Do you remember what you cleaned the neck with before application? Yours appeared to be now staying on? 👍

I have to be honest, I was being a bit lazy so just gave the dot locations a good hard rub with a dry cloth.   I probably should have used something more liquid but couldn't think of anything I had that I was confident wouldn't dissolve the neck or something 🤣

24 minutes ago, SimonK said:

...I normally thank the punter and adjust a fader on a channel with nothing plugged into it to show I've done something!

Aaaaah - the classic "DFA" button or fader (Does F**k All).

It is a classic often used control in the pro sound engineer's toolkit!

29 minutes ago, spongebob said:

Do you remember what colour they were before lit up? I’d be a bit put off if they were bright green ‘cold’, especially on a Vintage style bass! 🫣

I don't know if this helps?  

The strip that comes looks like a bog standard yellowy set of stickers you would get with any crafting pack.  It does advise, and you will need, a pin (like a safety pin)  to pick them up and lay them on. 

To my eyes, once on they are fairly inconspicuous unless you are looking closely for them, which is when you notice they can be a bit cock eyed, especially on the 12th fret double markers. When not glowing the colour is not too far away from an ebony fret dot (my bass has a rosewood fretboard).   

Put it this way, neither of my bands have so far noticed them as I have only so far been rehearsing in well lit spaces.  I did buy the optional UV torch with mine and tried them in the dark when I first put them on - they do glow up well.

I can't help but feel though that that there is probably a crafting shop that sells these for other purposes and they are a lot cheaper!  I reckon there is enough in the pack for 2 basses but I think I will just keep these for replacing any ones that fall off. 

I think if you don't like them they would come off again fairly easily - as my 3rd fret neck marker can attest to.....

4 hours ago, SuperSeagull said:

Yes, the question of how much do we value someone else doing all the heavy lifting of supply and install, in some cases literally heavy lifting, is a good one. Is it worth £3k? It’s close I think but would mean sacrificing spend in other areas but it’s always about choices I guess. 

In my experience. a lot of these companies will use freelance installers costing them up to (and beyond) £500 a day to do things like specialist hanging and termination - which they will pass straight on to your bill.  My experience is old and before a lot of the CAT5 stuff, but even so, if doing that properly it would be cut to length and crimped cables behind a wall plate, not just an off the shelf lead with a load of spare length left coiled behind your speaker.    In the more extreme cases, it's all very well clipping a couple of speakers to a roof girder, but can it actually handle that weight with everything else it is holding up, secondary safety points etc etc..?

When you factor in stuff like this and working at 4m height needing footed ladders or scaff towers, I can see how the labour charges are in that ballpark very quickly. 

However, if it was just to supply a couple of speakers on poles, a mixer and a few cables, I can see how that would be excessive.   

Hi all,

Just my 10p - that quote you have been given doesn't sound too different to a lot of professional install companies I have worked with, when you consider the potential labour in professionally (and safely) hanging speakers, running cables, termination etc.  Obviously I'm reading between the lines here of what they have quoted you for.

It may not be an issue in your old (but not that old) church, but I remember the conundrum of trying to find cable routes in centuries old churches without upsetting the historical purists!  I would imagine they may have added some contingency for this kind of thing.

Having said that, if you can only get cheaper kit for £6K, then the labour doesn't seem too much after all.  I am just trying to give a balanced view here, not criticising. 

If you do go down the route of doing it yourself, hope it all goes well.

I bought some Glowtech ones after seeing them mentioned on another thread.

The tiny side one on the 3rd fret fell off quite quickly, but the rest are solid.  It was probably me not doing a proper cleaning job on the surfaces before applying.

You need to have steady hands to get them spot on in the middle of a fret dot (mine on the fretboard were bigger than the Glowtech stickers) with out them looking cock-eyed.  

Can I just say thanks to the OP for posting that vid, I don't think I would have seen it otherwise.    I really like Kelsey's playing and enjoyed all 45 mins of it.  Sure, he looked a bit mellow, but he was engaging and gave some good insight into his basses and stuff.

I didn't think the interviewer had to try that hard?

I enjoyed it, anyway....