Breakfast

I've trodden on my lead before jumping in the air and unplugging myself.

Also started gigs with the volume right down.

Also started songs without checking which fret I'm on and turned out to be a semitone flat ( such a small difference, yet so noticeable )

The worst one was half way through a song suddenly thinking "hang on a minute, is this how I normally play this" - obviously I immediately forgot how I played the song - I knew the notes but couldn't recall the fingering - and had to work it out again over the next week from first principles. Probably the audience never even noticed but it did my head in.

One of the guys off my Philosophy degree went on to teach bass at the ACM, funnily enough. He was an amazing bassist though. I always felt ever so mortal when I heard him play.

I think if you do a degree in something you care about you'll come out with a better degree. I also think that if you have a solid foundation of theoretical knowledge and practical skill it will give you a really good basis for applying whatever talents you have in a more refined and creative way.

To my mind the real metric for the success of any degree course is having students doing something they care about enough to really put the work in on their own time. If courses in bass give you that then great. And if they include the basics of working for yourself and dealing with the music industry then that will be handy if they give up on their degree subject and get a regular job instead.

It's no worse than the average degree that's available now. If it helps people get a leg-up into working in music then great- there will be some more outstanding music for us to listen to. If not, then at least they've been able to really enjoy their university course, which is- after all - the point of university.

If you're finding it hard to get decent comment on your set, it's maybe worth videoing a performance and sitting down together and watching them, all noting down things you feel worked and things you feel didn't.

[quote name='Russ' post='111092' date='Dec 30 2007, 07:27 PM']Being good works best. Then word of mouth takes care of much of the rest. That's 75% of the battle, right there.[/quote]
This is only too accurate. Of course, we [i]all[/i] think we're good and our mates say we are so it can actually be hard to judge...
[quote name='Russ' post='111092' date='Dec 30 2007, 07:27 PM']Having your own website is also a definite plus, especially if you have forums, etc - helps build a sense of community around the band.[/quote]
Can cut both ways though, if you have a forum and it's totally dead or only has three users...

Once you have got your set down and you're playing somewhere you are happy with don't play too often in any one place.

As a guideline, occasional really well hyped gigs no less than six weeks apart in any one town (or area if you're in a city ) will do a much better job of bringing people in than playing more often. If you're playing three days a week and getting five people in each time that will do far less for your reputation than if you play from time to time but sell out every time. The first sounds workaday, the second sounds like a buzz.

Also it gives you a chance to potentially do your own promotion and get other good bands in so people know that if it's one of your nights they will have a good time.

Find similar bands who you think are really good and do gig swaps with them. Generally the music industry works off networking so just network like a bastard - just by being generally affable you can really help yourself out with finding more interesting gigs and whathaveyou.

Adam Clayton has a lot of those- [i]New Year's Day[/i], [i]With Or Without You[/i] ( very simple, but without it the song would be nothing ) and I'd say [i]Mysterious Ways[/i].

Garbage- Stupid Girl

That Freak Power song.

Those are the ones that came to mind straight away. I bet there would be more if I went away and thought about it for longer...

+3

711

How do you get it out?

I first jammed with my friends when I was 17 then realised there was one guitarist better than me and one worse so I switched to bass, traded in my six-string and started using that. I mostly played with the band and we played in front of other people (but only friends at a party) a couple of months later. We were young and thought we were awesome, but looking back now I realised that we had a great drummer, an ok lead guitarist and the rest of us were absolutely rubbish.

That was back in 1993, but I've been in bands pretty regularly since then. I doubt that even now I'm a quarter as good as most of the regular posters on here, but i've played a lot of gigs and really enjoyed them, which is what matters as far as I'm concerned.

For most gigs I would take 1 bass in huge industrial strength gig bag from [url="http://www.clubbass.ca/"]Club Bass[/url], the best bass shop I ever visted, with all my leads and tuner and bobbins in the rucksack-sized pocket on the side of the bag, and my amplifier- which is a 1x10" hartke kickback. I would often take a stand as well so I didn't risk my bass falling over during everyone else's sets.

For a really significant gig I would carry a spare bass but at most I've only ever needed spare batteries for my active stuff.

The outcome of this was that I could carry all my stuff from the car into the venue in one trip at 95% of gigs. Very handy indeed...

[quote]Yeah I've seen that. I'd rather they put money and effort into events for people to play: We used to have a yearly one which was kind of everyone's high point for the summer. Then they stopped it and nothing has replaced it.[/quote]
I would guess that was either a licence thing or they lost the organiser.

Having a person or a few people who keep pushing things and keep the scene moving are the only way most local music scenes get by. You just need one or two people to move away or give up on it and it falls apart. Usually if you have the will you can get funding from somewhere.

When building up lines I'm big on Rick Kemp if I want something singing and melodic, Adam Clayton and Eric Avery if I want something with more push and groove, Jeff Ament if I'm wanting to riff and Nick Seymour most of the time...

[quote]There are tons of brilliant originals bands! A lot of my favourite bands are unsigned or signed to small labels and tour the UK. If I go to see a band showcase, there are usually a couple of good bands on. You get the occasional ropey one, but not all the time! How would you ever discover new bands if you didn't go to gigs?[/quote]
I've only ever played in originals band and never wanted to play covers, and I completely agree that there are some utterly stunning unsigned and small label bands out there. However, having played somewhere in the range of 50-100 gigs with an originals band over the last four years or so, pretty much all on mixed lineup small band nights, most of the bands I have seen have been terrible.

There have been some outstanding ones, certainly, and some very competent bands that I just didn't like, but they were absolutely in the minority. Most originals bands combine hypothetical musicianship and woeful performance with a laudably avante-garde contempt for the tune. Any one of those three would be enough for an enjoyable set, but the combination of the three - typically combined with a "turn it all up to eleven" sound engineer- has made for some very tiresome nights.

It may be that having seen many excellent bands down the years has set my standards ridiculously high or something- I don't know- but there are relatively few small/unsigned artists that I have seen before and I would pay to go and see again.

Most originals bands are rubbish, including most of the ones I've been in.

Once you've built up your reputation a bit you can start expecting to be paid for playing, but while you're trying to get a name for yourself there's no point- no bastard is going to pay to see a band they have never heard of who have a 95% chance of being rubbish. The best option is to be playing on nights where the promoter is a bit choosy and the night gets a reputation on it's own merit, and even then you need some better known bands on the bill if there is to be an audience.

If you're paying covers you already have that familliar product so punters know what they are getting and are more ready to pay for it. Rightly so, in my opinion.

I've played Liverpool, Derby, Bath and Cambridge from here in Surrey with my last band.

It was cool to have played the Cavern, but aside from that the amount of work involved in travelling for a 45 minute set was maybe a little much. I also don't think playing up and down the country to relatively apathetic audiences is great if you're an originals band either. Better to work up a buzz in one area and build things out from there, I'd say...

Obviously, none of that really applies to covers bands, but if I was in it for the money I would be surprised if people would pay me to go ever so far, not with fuel prices the way they are now.

+1 for Richard Thompson. If you want to see amazing virtuosity, stunning songwriting and be thoroughly entertained go and see him play live.

Michael Chapman is good for that too- another singer songwriter and stunning solo guitarist from the same generation with a real ragtime feel to a lot of what he plays. A little instrumental of his called [i]Naked Ladies And Electric Ragtime[/i] is particularly good. Also, while I think of underrated guitarists, Steve Tilston.

Hammer Of The Gods by Steven Davis converted me from someone who didn't like Led Zeppelin particularly to someone who really does.

They're all horribly bad but you are a rock covers band so I'm figuring that is your intention. In that vein I've gone for the most horribly bad yet somehow also great "eROCKtion"

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='80105' date='Oct 27 2007, 01:18 PM']You like it there? I've always found the staff to be surly and the rooms themselves, grubby. One bloke who runs it there we nicknamed "Smiler" on account that he never did smile. Even when he took our money.[/quote]
That's exactly unlike my experience- the guys who have been working there when I've been rehearsing (which was weekly for most of the last three years) were an entertaining and helpful bunch. But then I did see them pretty much every week over years so we got to know each other a bit.

It be [url="http://www.myspace.com/the_rooms"]The Rooms[/url] you be wantin'. Just across the roundabout from North Camp station, pretty good facilities and cheap in the day.

I think you can hire any number of amps and drums as needed.

I listen out for fragments of melody from other instruments I can steal and integrate with the bass line without them clashing with what everyone else is doing.

[quote]Practise in the dark so you can learn the feel of your fretboard without having to look at it[/quote]
Definitely! This is really important because if your face is anything like mine and you look at your fretboard it creates a double chin that isn't normally there and the stage lighting emphasises this cruelly. Learning to play while you look up means you look better, you photograph better and you can make eye contact and engage with your fellow band members and the audience better.

If you can't do it slow, you'll never be able to do it fast.

True of so many things in life.

Listen to what makes songs work- what the rhythm section do when they want a song to pick up into a chorus or space out for a bridge. The better you understand those dynamics the better you will sound when you are playing in a band.

If you know anyone good at reading I've been told that a good way to get started with it is to transcribe bass lines you already know. That will teach you a whole lot about what note goes where and if you can find someone to play it back to you (or chuck it on your computer and let that sort it out) you'll get a good idea of how accurate you are with it.