ambient

That’s a beautiful song.

At uni we used to have to learn the bass part to a song each week, then perform it with as part of a randomly selected ensemble, usually two guitarists, a drummer, vocals and backing vocals. We’d be marked on various aspects of our individual performance. I’d spend hours and hours learning them, I actually really hated that particular module. I’d forget it totally after a week or so. Funny thing is I can remember chord sequences to dozens of jazz tunes no problem at all, but individual bass lines no.

I used DPD the other week to take an instrument to France. Booked through Eurosender.

It’ll be quite a bit more money, PayPal’s exchange rate isn’t very favourable.

There’s not really that much more though. Again, it comes down to using the available technology, tweaking it and getting used to using it. I’m part of a laptop thing with my uni, we have a virtual get-together on a Thursday afternoon, playing stuff using Supercollider. The first couple of sessions we had the odd technical problem, since then though it’s been working really well. It’s probably not going to replace a group of guys in the corner of a bar, but if you’re not able to play in the corner of a bar, then?

That’s it, I do wonder how long this is going to go on for. Even if pubs and bars do open in July; something I’m actually rather sceptical about anyway tbh, but with social distancing still going to be in force, then I think the only live music will be outside. Are we not being a little Luddite in our attitude, maybe we should be using the technology available, and improving it to improve the experience?

I didn’t no, rather foolishly I decided to sleep on it 😂

I didn’t think you could insure musical instruments with Parcelforce?

I think it depends to a big extent on the genre. The gigs and events I tend to go to are more along the lines of sit there and enjoy the music. The streamed session I watched tonight my friend was doing a DJ set, which was quite entertaining. It would work well for someone like Steve Lawson, I watched some of a set by his wife last night. It almost certainly wouldn’t work well for a rock band I agree. It would work for jazz though, I’ve seen a couple of live streamed jazz and improvisational things recently.

I watched a friend of mine and his wife doing a ‘kitchen session’ this evening. It was brilliant. It’s simple to monetise by having people pay before being given an invite to the Zoom session.

I recently sold an instrument to a guy in France. I used Eurosender, it cost €52, that was fully insured, tracked and took just two days to arrive. I used a massively over-size box, figuring there’d be crush space. The whole package was 140x70x20cm. I made sure to pack all around the actual flight case with bubble wrap, and packing paper that I’d saved from Amazon parcels. Print off a copy of the label plus both adresses; yours and the recipient’s, place that inside the case. Stick at least two on the outside of the package. As far as being paid, try and avoid PayPal, their exchange rate is terrible, we used TransferWise.

If you click on ‘stats’ you can see when and where the listens have been.

I had a TRB6 a few years ago, that had an amazing clear tone, very bell like. Have you tried changing the battery? Silly question I know, but I’ve convinced myself a couple of times that there’s something wrong with my instrument, only to suddenly realise it’s the battery.