zbd1960

oooh... shiny.... On my bucket list is to commission an instrument - more realistic and significantly cheaper and more predictable than commissioning a cello....

I'm just thinking about restringing my Fender for the first time.... As a cellist, I tend to think bass strings are relatively cheap.... Despite some of the manufacturers being the same... replacing my cellos C string (lowest string) will be around £120. On the plus side, apart from the A string (top string) cello strings last a long time. Just as well at around £300 to restring

Not a band but a group I'm involved with perfectly demonstrated the issues around use of social media for 'communication' and 'chat'. Someone takes a 'view' on what someone 'meant' and it gets toxic pretty quickly.

It's not unique to bands and it's a classic case of someone with an ego / narcissist who thinks they're the centre of the known universe and that everything ought to be in orbit about them. These people usually don't understand the concept of 'team'. I had a very unpleasant experience many years ago with an 'ego' and until you see through them, you can waste vast amounts of time trying to please them, keep them on board etc. It's remarkable how things improve when you stop trying to accommodate them.

You get these issues with all music groups of whatever genre, including classical. You get different types of choirs/orchestras - community ones that accept all-comers, auditioned ones, pretentious ones doing ridiculous repertoire etc. This gives rise to similar issues. The main difference is yo usually have a music director / conductor in charge of the music decisions. I've been chair of various ones over the years. When you're working to a deadline of a concert date and you need to rehearse and you haven't got the same team from one week to the next... it can get painful. My sax ensemble is fortunately very stable, but due to distances involved we can only meet monthly. As a relative novice on bass, I'm not in any sort of group/band yet...

The association of pitch/sound with colours is synaesthesia - it's not common, but I know two people who have it, one is an artist.

Several years ago I had to analyse a mountain of company data, which ultimately had to be signed off by the Bank of England... What was obvious when I looked at a breakdown of UK companies by size is that there are a lot of small ones, quite a few big ones, and very few in between. What that tells me is you have a lot of small family businesses and start-ups, but once a company begins to get to medium sized, the big boys step in and buy them out an eliminate the competition. It's bad news as it removes market diversity. It's basically a complex monopoly and needs some serious legislation to deal with it.

My music tastes have evolved a lot and probably opposite way round to many. In my teens through to around 30 I was exclusively classical music. It started off as mainstream classical in my teens and broadened out to early music as I got older (i.e. baroque (pre-1750) and renaissance (pre-1600)). Some C20th featured, but I'm not a fan of atonal music or of serialism etc. I started to listen to some jazz around 30ish and then some New Age / World music. I'm not a fan of bebop - zillions of notes and running up and down scales isn't very musical in my view... ymmv. I started classical singing lessons in my 30s, which got me singing with choirs and performing concerts. I started playing viol (aka viola da gamba) in my 40s which introduced me to English consort music. In my 50s I added cello and sax and that got me playing with various orchestras and wind groups and a huge variety of music including music theatre, film music, even orchestrated 90s dance music (pic is of that concert where I was playing cello). Bass is the most recent addition and I'm in the odd position of knowing very little 'rock' music - I rarely will know the title or artist of a piece even if it's something I've heard. I'm in my local 'Rock School' (joined 2 weeks before lockdown last year and have met once...) so I've had some bass lessons on stuff I've never encountered

I had a GAS attack...

I've acquired my first hefty rig, taking advantage of the heavy discount Anderton's are offering on TC gear... So, I now have a TC RH750 and a K-410 cab... If I move these around, especially the cab, it's going to get bashed without some protection... This is not something I've previously looked into. I suspect that the head can go into some sort of padded bag - flight cases seem to have heft price tags. It gets very pricey for the cab. Anyone any suggestions for either flight case options or alternatives that provide a mix of protection with mobility? Probably asking for the impossible, but thought I'd ask.

I don't think anyone ever accused me of being 'typical'...

Hey - we're civilised round here! Washing-up and laundry are both usually under control... dining table has a habit of disappearing under photography gear, astronomy gear, bookbinding gear....

How remiss of me....

I have a simple solution to this problem... I'm single and live on my own... 30kg of new amp and cab arrived yesterday...

Here in the UK I've joined my local branch of 'Rock School' which runs taught sessions for beginners. I'm in the adult class. Maybe there's something similar or a community group? I joined a community orchestra when I started playing cello - they take all-comers and all ages. Perhaps there's something like that near you?

My musical background is very different - I don't play by ear at all I only play from sheet music. Learning music in all its aspects is a long journey. In my thirties I started singing lessons - I'd never sung a note prior to that. I had weekly lessons for about 8 years - they stopped when I moved house. The start of the journey was slow, but after a while I suddenly realised I was able to sight read straightforward stuff. Early 50s and I start to play cello and sax. Because I could read music, that side of things didn't get in the way, but there's a lot of technique learning any instrument and it takes time to get proficient. Latest addition for me is bass. So, reading music not an issue, left hand is very similar to cello, so not too bad, but right hand is more challenging. What is alien is some expectation from my teacher of being able to play from memory with no music and learning without music: I find that really challenging and frustrating as give me the music and it would be much easier for me.

I don't want to open a complex discussion about temperaments, but curious as to 'what' they autotune to? I assume that since keyboards are likely to be involved, as well as fretted instruments, then it must be equal temperament. But ET itself is a compromise, and at times will sound out of tune especially on major thirds. There are purer temperaments around which have nicer (narrower) major thirds and purer (wider) perfect fifths (there are complex reasons why we tend not to use them, not least being you can't be in tune for all keys at the same time).

One of the issues here is that so few people are used to hearing live musicians, especially ones who sing without any sort of assistance live, that they lack the critical skills to know what a 'good' sound is. I started singing lessons (classical) 30 years ago in my early 30s and I have sung a huge amount since then (not as soloist though). I never ceased to be amazed how some 'pop' singers make it as they clearly lack even basic skills in many cases.

I'm a cellist and relatively new to bass and have lessons... so on the one hand I've been taught to have the bass so that it's in the same place sitting or standing. The other influence is my left hand technique from playing cello - basically hand shape should be pretty similar and I don't want any stress or strain on my left wrist/arm as that way tendinitis lies... I'll have to take some pics of me playing bass and post something up...

As a rule I don't listen to what is loosely called 'pop' music... Some years ago I was on holiday in the Greek islands and I stopped at the bar on the way back from a walk to pick up a bottle of water. The bar was empty and there was a big screen playing music videos. A well-known 'girl band' was on with one of their main numbers. This would have been around early 2000s. The volume was up and this is not something I would have really ever listened to. I was shocked at how badly out of tune it was - excruciatingly so in places. At the time, I was singing with various sizes of choirs and singing in concerts from local churches, to the odd cathedral to big concert hall (all as an unpaid amateur). If we'd have sung that poorly, we'd have been embarrassed and given a rocket by the MD...

There's an element of 'horses for courses' about this. My background is mostly classical and I have a lot of experience of choral singing, including a cappella. We're expected to be in tune and it's something that gets worked on in rehearsals. I also play cello which is 'fretless' and a lot of effort goes into being in tune. Tuning though isn't an absolute, and there are complications around temperaments which is an entirely different debate. Minor imperfections are what tells you music is life and gives it character. Where technology is being used as an effect, or to subtly assist/adjust I can see that having its use and place. I tend to balk when it's being used to fix and correct people who struggle to be in tune (I remember hearing a track about 20 years ago from a then well-known group and I was shocked how out-of-tune it was - it was not minor!).

Yes, would look forward to that.

Yes, I now have two basses... the original Fender Jazz bass and now a Marcus Miller 5 string... I finally got a bass tutor through the local Rock School. Whilst not exactly my genre, it's a way forward. I was going to be playing with them, then lockdown hit - expecting it to resume shortly.

I have a full set of SATB Yani saxes... I think we know each other from elsewhere...

Apologies for going quiet for a year.... I went to NZ, nearly got stranded as lockdown hit, scrambled back to UK, and kind of lost interest in everything for a year... although I have kicked off my astornomy again after many years of not doing it (then there's the weather....). On the plus side, I'm now retired. All my music making stopped. I did manage to get a few bass lessons in, albeit online, so I've made some progress on the bass. Being able to play with people would be good. Hopefully events and meet-ups will be able to kick off shortly.