knirirr

Tonight's rehearsal has been a bit of a pain to organise. The BL thought it would be a good idea to have multiple people available for each role (e.g. to guitarists, one of whom can fill in on bass, 2 percussionists + drummer, 3 horns etc.) to make sure we have enough to cover gigs. But, the result is that it's pretty much impossible to get everyone in a room at once to rehearse. I'm not at the rehearsal as I, as well as one percussionist, caught Norovirus and aren't 100% yet. Even worse, one of the horn players had a relative pass away and, of course, has other things on their mind for the immediate future.

Interesting... That stuff I bought earlier this month was all guitar related, so perhaps I got away with it. Makes it harder to stop browsing all those jazz archtop listings, though.

I found what had happened; I appear to have two accounts and was logged into the other one (which is an alias of my usual email address). I probably created the second one a while ago and forgot about it. All the items are in stock but the order hasn't been processed yet (placed on the 15th).

As far as I am aware I was, but that's an interesting possibility. A shame they haven't got back in touch though. I don't appear to have an email from them confirming the order.

I put in an order 5 days ago and was charged via PayPal. But, there's no sign of the order on my orders list on Thomann's site. Still waiting for them to answer my email enquiry.

Last night's gig was at the Three Horseshoes in Charlbury. A rather nice pub, but the performance area is barely large enough for the band, no cards are accepted and it's pretty much drinks and crisps only. IIRC the landlord runs it as a hobby. The pub was empty when we started at 8:30 (the rumour was that the 7:30 lecture by the local gardening club had over-run a little) but soon filled up. There were even some Spanish tourists in addition to the locals. As usual, the jazz-adjacent long grooves seemed to go down well. Headroom was a bit of an issue...

I was hoping to join in this thread but I have already ordered a gig bag and a footswitch this year.

Standard practice for jazz! 😉

Just got back from a gig. This was a party in honour of a local jazz musician who died just before Christmas (made it to 90, and this would have been his birthday). He was a friend of our BL, so we volunteered to entertain. Good gig - the audience were very appreciative and enjoyed the material (inc. dancing at the end). The highlight for me was some recitation over musical accompaniment of prose reflecting the deceased's other hobby of ancient archaeology. The result resembled an extended jazz version of the Spinal Tap Stonehenge intro, with soprano sax noodling. Nice!

Enjoy! I got to grade 5 and found the lessons very helpful overall, even though I'm not playing classical right now. I hope it's similarly useful for you.

A totally awesome colour, esp. with that plate on it. For me it would be my Orange OBC112 cab. Sounds great, is the correct colour, and weighs a reasonable amount (I used to have to carry around a TE combo of much the same size but double the weight).

I suspect he's right; it doesn't actually know what it's doing any more than it does when writing boilerplate text. Some colleagues find that it gives them a good first approximation, though.

This book might be of interest: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249131/ai-snake-oil#preview I've encountered "AI" when it comes to programming and have found it to be of limited use at best, essentially as a fancy autocomplete when writing boilerplate code.

Here's my first bass. I should have kept it.

What was the issue? A problem with the conversion, or playing it afterwards?

Exactly this. The first bass I ever had was an unlined fretless, back in the 90s (Encore P copy) and it was easy enough to adapt to. I would struggle to play one with lines and dots in the same place as a fretted bass; it would be rather confusing. I'm reminded of an amusing exchange on another forum, which went along these lines: A: "Unlined fingerboards are stupid! You never see professionals who have unmarked tools - would a mechanic have spanners without the sizes marked on them?" B: "I program computers for a living and own a keyboard with no markings on the keys." A: "No one cares what nerds think!"

Looking good - I hope you're still enjoying it!

100% I must have re-started playing around 2016-17 and it's taken until the end of this year to manage to play a gig with the variety of music I like and a band able to do it justice. To get there involved quite a bit of networking at jams, though I found the drummer by advertising on JMB.

So did I. Recently, I played a tape of my first gig to a teacher, who thought that the intonation was good but the choice of notes ... less so ... No ponytail involved, but I'd have one if I could get the rest of my hair back to go with it. BTW I always try to drop in to Machynlleth when passing.

I don't know... But, at both jams I attended this month someone either brought a fretless bass guitar or promised to do so in January.

Quite! Unfortunately playing those one tends to meet extreme fans or haters (I have given them up for the moment).

Indeed, though I think that fretted bass clickbait is long overdue a cultural reappraisal.

Claimed!

I saw this anon opinion earlier today: Is that an accurate representation of how they are viewed? BTW, I got one out at a rehearsal a few months ago, prompting the saxophonist to comment that fretless bass guitars appeared to be prevalent in Oxfordshire. Perhaps they are popular everywhere.

I traded in my old iPhone for a Pixel but still have the box, inc. a cable. If it would be of use to anyone then I can send it on for the cost of postage (again, I guess that £5 would cover it).