The Jaywalker

The bottom line is that string action mainly affects acoustic volume. Orchestral bassists use adjusters as a volume control depending on whether they're playing section or solo stuff. From a jazz perspective, I reckon there's a tonal input as well. If you play with a lower action and start to raise it, you'll notice the sustain may start to fade a bit sooner and the overall character may be more old-school in nature. On my bass it's quite a fine balance where the tone and feel starts to change, enough to be noticeable with the change of seasons and require tweaking. My own action is between 4-5mm on the g side, rising to 9-10mm on the e. Being a bit incrementally higher on the lower strings than the Gage setup mentioned earlier gives a better low end response and more growl on the e string. You won't lose anything by lowering your action apart from acoustic volume perhaps. Please don't listen to any "dig in" "big sound" "high action required" guilt-trip stuff. At the end of the day, a big sound is a full, rich tone - and that's completely different from how subjectively loud your bass is. In fact, a lot of basses resonate a bit more freely and give up more tone when the action is lowered a bit/tension released. And it's easier to play well with a manageable action. Effortless mastery vs the sound of struggle? I know which I prefer!

Check out Jaco in more straight ahead jazz vibes: http://youtu.be/I4rfe5xHCIg Baron Browne is, imho, probably the best example of straight ahead jazz on electric bass http://youtu.be/lGr5i-cZRSI

Electric bass sounding good in a jazz setting is definitely a bit of a rarity; but it can sound amazing if you get into the music in an immersive way and study jazz walking bass concepts and phrasing. Another thing to consider over and above tone is volume. Electric bass is a much more present and projecting sound than upright - you need much less onstage volume than you think.

I actually know a composer who did something similar as an "experiment" with beginning improvisers.... Anyway, your analogy doesn't hold water. The OP wanted to know what scale to play on the D7. Mix b9b13 is the most basic choice in that situation. It's a V - I in a minor key. Not rocket science or complex. Basic stuff. Or perhaps it wouldnt seem so complex if it wasn't swamped by all the misleading and just plain erroneous stuff put forward by YouTube "teachers" who neither play nor understand the stuff themselves and/or want to supply shortcuts for the legions of bedroom players and rock band dudes who refuse to learn any theory etc as its "not creative" or "not the right way to learn music".

Erm, yeah. He wants to know what to play on the D chord. I told him where to put his fingers. This stuff isn't difficult.

Ok, there's a wee bit of clarification needed here. It's important to realise that ABRSM theory texts are of no use whatsoever outside of a classical education. I know this as a professional Jazz bassist also teaching classical bass and ABRSM theory on behalf of a national Conservatoire. If you want to learn about harmony etc, then go down the Jazz textbook route - it's the "academic" contemporary/pop music, if you like. To correct a couple of points made earlier; the basic chords in a key are as follows: I maj7 II min7 IIImin7 IVmaj7 V7 VImin7 VIImin7b5 (sometimes called Half-Diminished) It's important to add the sevenths of the chords or else you end up with the erroneous idea that chord VII is diminished; which it categorically is not. Diminished chords have a different harmonic function (not important to get into that just now!). Also, in Minor key harmony there is no "borrowing" of a seventh chord from the parallel major to make chord V a dominant seventh. That's nonsense. Minor harmony uses either the Melodic or Harmonic minor scale as its base (hence the name, harmonic minor...it creates a V7 chord). The most important thing to grasp when playing scales over chords is that you NEVER think of them as modes ie playing the same scale with different starting notes. In this case in point, playing G minor but playing it D to D. I know that probably sounds contentious as there's about a quadrillion YouTube sites extolling this method (including one run by a guy called Scott....); but it's crap. Plain and simple. As a musical approach it results in pointless, scalar noodling which doesn't "gel" with the chord sequence or make much coherent sense. The guys who teach this way don't actually spend much of any time functioning in music that requires them to play these scales/chords. I feel strongly about this as I was led up the garden path as a beginner by this approach. The main reason for this common error is misunderstanding the connection between a mode and a scale. If we're playing Modal music like So What or Impressions (all Dorian); then we're playing a mode. If we're talking in purely academic terms about where a scale comes from, then we can talk about eg, Dorian being the second mode of the Major scale. That's it. In any other circumstances, we're talking about Scales - Chord Scales to be precise. So called because if you take the basic chord (R, 3,5,7) and add the upper extensions (9,11 and 13) - all the notes together make up a scale. Key of C V7 is G7 G,B,D,F (1357) A,C,F (9,11,13) Extended chord is G13, which, by the mathematical nature of functional harmony, is also G mixolydian when expressed as a scale. In the minor example from the OP, the D7 has upper extensions b9, 11 and b13 (Eb, G, Bb as extensions are taken from notes in the key, Gmin in this case). This results in a chord of D7b9b13 and scale sometimes called mixolydian b9b13 or Phrygian Major. It also happens to be the 5th mode of the Harmonic minor scale - but we DON'T think of it in those terms when creating lines or solos. We think of the chord and chord tones. To illustrate this point further, let's look at other dominant 7th chords occurring in a major key. Old jazz tune All of Me. Cmaj7 /// | //// | E7 /// | Amin7 /// etc E7 = E, G#, B, D (1357) Extensions from key of C = F, A, C (b9, 11,b13) We get the same scale (Mixolydian b9b13). This Harmony and scale choices have been around since JS Bach. In summary: Scales aren't the most important thing: chords and the chord tones are. There are many possible scales which can fit with a given chord; so scales are essentially ways of decorating chord tones.

It's Pay-to-Play any way you look at it. The tickets for the concert are FREE and there's a donation encouraged. Going by the numbers on the website (250 piece orchestra and 280 piece choir) that's £10.6k from the musicians/choir and they only raised £11k from the event. In other words, the musicians raised almost all the money by paying to perform. I also note there are "expenses" like hall hire and "printing and distributing music". Elsewhere on the site it states the music is emailed to you to print yourself... Hall hire can be expensive - if it's a charity event then let the organisers pressure the Council or whoever runs the venue to provide free or greatly reduced hire and actually charge an admission fee. It may sound cynical, but experience tells me that someone(s) will likely be taking a (perhaps handsome) cut of the money raised for their services in the event. Would anyone working on behalf of a charity or with charitable aims ever advertise a door-to-door donations signup or street signup chuggers by saying "Here's a job doing charity fundraising...but you don't get paid, it's voluntary...in fact...YOU have to pay us to work and we fully expect to raise more money from staff than from anyone you sign up to donate." ??? NO.WAY. The whole thing is a disgrace. Avoid.

I tried the 7710's a number of years ago. I found the tension quite high on them, which is a common complaint. Sonically, I couldn't really get used to the metallic, trebly ringing characteristic that seemed to be there. Also felt like the nylon winding dampened most of the low-mid growl and made the lower register quite indistinct - a bit like having too much bass and treble and missing the mid-character of the bass. I always think that when I hear someone play on them as well; even some of my favourite players like Mads Vinding, Buster Williams and Ron. Just feels like there's something missing from the sound. On a positive note, they did blend really well with certain drummers I worked with who had a quieter style and quite a washy ride cymbal.

Hi guys, I'm down in Newcastle Jazz Cafe on Tuesday 26th May with the David Carnegie Quintet. If you're in the area and looking for something to do of an evening... Should be down early and will be staying over, so I can potentially fit in a couple of lessons. PM if interested.

Ha! Aye....them were the days 😄

Agreed...but, there's little point in saying leave modern bass playing that for later and concentrate on the 1950's until you find your feet. Chances of a beginner having a bass set high with guts and no amp are pretty slim; so from a sonic development point of view it makes more sense to be aware of a broader range of bassists than potentially trying to emulate the sound of Ray or Doug playing really hard on gut as they struggle to cut thru the band; all whilst playing on spiros and a decent action for example. Also, there's no reason for someone not to start with Gary as an influence if they have access to good tuition material with regard to bass line construction etc etc. i started with Ron and the Bill Evans guys like Gary and Marc Johnson - never had any desire to sound like PC or Ray.

Whilst I don't disagree with the above suggested listening by any manner of means; it's important to remember that the bass didn't really develop fully until good quality steel strings and amplification came along. The evolution of sound and technique since the early 1960's in both the Jazz and Classical worlds has been exponential. Check out players who have emerged since then: Gary Peacock, Eddie Gomez, Marc Johnson, Dave Holland for example. Also, Peter Washington is a great contemporary example of the Paul Chambers vibe, same as Chris McBride is to the Ray Brown stuff. We also have an amazing bass tradition in Europe - Niels-Henning Orsted-Pedersen, Arild Andersen, Palle Danielleson, Miroslav Vitous, Anders Jormin, Mads Vinding etc.

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Hi guys, If anyone's looking for tuition on DB or EUB, I'm currently taking on students. I'm based in the Glasgow area, but am usually in Edinburgh one or two days a week. I tend to cover LH and RH technique; sound production (including working with pickups/amps; scale studies; chord-scale theory; harmony; basic to advanced bassline construction; soloing concepts etc etc I'm mainly a jazz bassist, but was classically trained in the past and I also teach orchestral students of school age with the RCS's Musicworks Dept, so I'm happy to cover arco/classical studies as well. PM for more details. Jay

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Thanks guys! Should have some more up on the channel soon ;-) ...and nobody go giving up! Get the bass out and practise

I use a reasonably strong solution made from Milton tablets. Cleans and brightens strings like you wouldn't believe. Also great for cleaning the fingerboard, which also helps with the sound of your bass IMO.

Another aspect to factor in is string choice. Animas don't offer much sustain; especially in thumb position.

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Hi guys, Started a youtube channel with some clips from a recent gig. Hope you enjoy them! [url="http://youtu.be/UUeoMhJcIfE"]http://youtu.be/UUeoMhJcIfE[/url]

I play German bow but all my students play French. Sometimes I'm not sure which i prefer; each has relative advantages and disadvantages i guess. As far as the Yita bows go, one of my cellist colleagues bought a carbon fibre one for about £40 and A-B'd it with her Pfretzschner (which was substantially more!). Her verdict was that it compared extremely well.

Hi Stevie, I use a zoom B3 for acoustic bass effects and looping with no major issues apart from balancing the volume levels, as my Schertler preamp has a pretty hot output which i need to tone down a bit. I don't use the B3 as a preamp to set up a sound(s) (the way I do for electric bass) - tried that for giggles but it sounded awful. Bear in mind that it's not designed to work with DB and piezo pickups/mics; many of the effects simply won't track properly. I have 2 custom pads for Arco and Pizz with chorus, reverb and delay. If you're not using it for effects, I'd definitely try to bypass it. Probably not the solution you want to hear; but if i need acoustic and electric bass on a gig I take 2 amps....

I'm not belittling Betty Carter in any way. I'm sure the sound WAS uneven and that's what she was hearing. What I'm saying is, she wasn't a bassist or bass pedagogue. She was a vocalist (one of the greatest!). Her technical opinion on how a bassist should play/improve is just that. It shouldn't be treated as in any way authoritative. Gawd knows there's enough strongly-held nonsensical opinions by non-bassists in the Jazz world about the rights and wrongs of playing bass! From memory, Dennis usually played with one finger, I think: maybe it was one of Betty's crazy tempos and he was trying to keep up 10 minutes in!

When the bass was lower, you likely had more arm weight in your pizz. It's never just about the fingers. Also, "dig in" is such a misnomer when it comes to RH technique. To quote Rufus Reid: "A lot of younger bassists are playing harder than they should, trying to get the humungous sound they hear on recordings. But if you play too hard the bass clams up - the sound gets squashed. You have to learn your instruments sweet spot; from the softest sound that projects to the loudest that doesnt sound nasty." To be honest, if playing with two RH fingers is sounding uneven; then practice is the solution. Possibly instrument setup may help too. Definitely a better plan than accepting a bass lesson from a vocalist! (although to be fair, Betty was a pretty intimidating presence by all accounts)

I'm using a SR tech BB300 at present. It has way too much low-end response (down to 30HZ), but the full 15db cut on the lows sorts that out well enough. It definitely has the "my bass but louder" aspect going for it. I use a Schertler stat-b p/up and go for a modern, ECM kinda sound. Friend of mine plays old school with a realist and gut-sounding strings and his bass sounded absolutely great through the amp as well. If you're playing old-school and a it of slap, the SR might be a good shout. It's hi-fi, but it sure got low as well.