Jo.gwillim

Benefit gig in the local village pub, Corris in mid Wales, packed out as we've got 2 more gigs before we stop playing or regroup with a new guitarist. Graham bless him is fantastic but arthritis is making playing tortuous for him. Double special gig as our singer Beth's mum died unexpectedly 2 days before so she was singing for her dear mum. Such a buzz when the gig works, everybody in the pub singing and the sweat pouring off you.

What a great wealth of advice on this thread. For me it's Keep it fun Put itunes/radio/spotify on random and try to keep up. Sing the notes you want to play. Try to play what you sing rather than what your fingers tell you to do. Experiment with weird sounds and ways of playing let one thing lead to another just keep going. Something good usually emerges. I find this really helps me from getting stuck. Learn all the notes up and down the finger board. I've been lucky enough to play in more than one band simultaneously. Both need a very different style but what i learn from one really helps in the other and vice versa. So play with as many people as you can.

Sorry if the point's already been made. But been in exactly the the OP's situation. Really hard when you're the bass player being asked to turn the vocals up mid gig but know you can't. Most of the feedback we had is was coming from the vocalist's floor monitor rather than FOH speakers. When she switched to iems things got so much easier even though she was the only one using them. Our band took the decision to get someone else to do the sound even if it meant much less dosh for the band us. It takes that dual role off me and the sound bod can make subtle tweaks mid song that i could never do.

I must admit to being a terrible noodler in rehersals. But i do turn the volume down to zero. Our drummer is too. He doesn't turn his drums down at all!

Love that honeymoon period with a new bass.

This sounds like the break through we've been waiting for. Pictures please!?

One of my bands records all our rehearsals in my living room. Quite often I'll leap up and swap basses because the sound is all wrong and feel much happier for it. When I listen back it's very hard to tell which was the mike lull jazz and which was the £200 thrown together bitza jazz, so why did I feel so much better for swapping? It's obviously psychological but maybe many small changes like one piece of bent steel over one piece of cast zinc. Maybe this can have more of an effect on how it sounds or feels to the player than how it sounds to the audience. How you can ever estimate the size of that effect I haven't a clue, just musing....

Often tempted, added advantage of not clonking band menders on crowded stages.

All good comments. Seeing as the neck is tons more wobbly that the bridge or the body I'd say that's the most important bit, and that's been my experience. I'm wondering if the bbot bridge actually performs much the same as the badass at the fundamental frequency but at higher harmonics more energy is absorbed with the bent piece of tin. More flexes per second equals more energy loss. That might explain greater punch with the badass. For me, I hate neck dive so I put high mass Bridges on to help a little but there. My other thought is about contact area with the body. More contact area might make the body look stiffer hence more sustain. Like other contributors I'm an old codger with a physics degree that was never really used. Nice to exercise the little grey cells though!

There's a local pub we play in that had some horrendous electrics. The buzz that the stage lights were giving off was playing havoc with my single coil jazz. Back up p bass came out of the car and all was fine. Apart from 3 broken A strings when I was playing hard enough to blister my fingers after every gig no other probs. I've got a traveller bass for backup which doesn't take up much room on my back seat.

Never more than a pint when I'm gigging. Any more and the notes don't leave my head but they definitely don't come out in the right time or order. The only exception was at a party, 4 in the morning, totally pie eyed, playing the guitar accompanying someone singing John Martyn. I knew and everyone in the room knew I was brilliant. Sober the next day everyone was saying "play some more Jo" but I never played like that again, sober or drunk.

Just sold Pete an old zoom pedal I was dying to send to a good home. We didn't meet but had some good online chat. Thx mate.

Ah, thx for the auction tip off. Mach is doing well especially if you like antiques old books or cafes. Seriously there is so much going on musically it's hard to keep up. I reckon there must be ten bands of various sorts.

I don't see anyone saying "I'm going to keep this posted for 2 weeks, send me your offers and I'll take the best one after that if it's good enough". Tbh often I'd rather just sell in a given time frame than hang on indefinitely. A sort of nicer Ebay best offer or buy it now system.

You all seen so sussed. One week I can rehearse and everything seems perfect. Next week, same gear, same room same band it sounds awful. Gigging we use a quite a range of sound people, often what they do with my DI'd output means FOH sound is a mile off what I expecting. This seems to have a much bigger effect than all my eq fiddling. Good game!

Yes i do that too. It does help but things get worse as i get older, i wish I'd kept up with my sight reading. Our sax player just scribbles a few notes to remind her and she's off. I'm 70 now and retired, lots more time to practise but i forget more often too.

Our singer/guitarist arrived without his lead so we didn't play a note. Nice to catch up with mates though. Rehersals don't really allow for chat, which i wholeheartedly approve of on the whole.

I go blank often in gigs however much i practise. It can be half a verse in before i remember whats what. My best defense is to practise playing along with random songs on Spotify so if i do have to wing it it won't sound too awful playing by ear for a bit. I hope my band pals aren't reading this....

Can't agree more. I put a set in a cheapy bitza passive jazz I built. I'm usually a precision player, but I'm loving the lollar sound, its getting lots of gigs, it seems to be happy in P territory, sits great in the mix with the 2 bands I'm in; rnb covers band and acoustic ska band.

Yes that's the buzzer for me, the feeling you can't trust people hurts more than the lost 35 quid. It's a life lesson no-one should have to learn. Hope it works out.