T-Bay

I didn’t really get Placebo at first but then rediscovered them a few years later and they are now one of my favourite bands,

440 refers to standard 440hz tuning. You should never need to adjust that unless playing with musicians who use a strange base setting (possibly used on the continent but I could be wrong).

3 minutes ago, edstraker123 said:

Yes still really liking it - I think the pace of the lessons is spot on and  even the backing tracks used in the warmups are really good. Post registration you do get an email a day  from Nigel, but I guess that is to be expected from a commercial site. I've raised a couple of questions through their chat and I have received a response within 24 hours so nothing not to like so far.

Definitely going tro sign up after the trial.

It sounds great, are you still going to try and get the discount or just sign up?

On 14/05/2020 at 18:47, edstraker123 said:

I registered for the 14 free days on the Mcgill site and think it's absolutely brilliant, quality lessons, good songs and really well structured. Last night's Masterclass with Roxy Coss was awesome.

Think I will definitely subscribe at the end of the trial. Wondering if I leave it a litle bit whether he would offer a discount as an incentive as some other sites I've been on in the past have done.

How are youu getting on with this? I am planning to sign up for the freebie two weeks on Saturday as I have next week off so make more use of it.

1 minute ago, Bilbo said:

It is complicated isn't it? Some of this is about the fact that instruments are physical instruments that have a range the is different depeniding on the physical characteristics of the artefact itself. A tenor saxophone is bigger than an alto which is bigger than a soprano. A tenor and soprano are both Bb instrunents whereas an alto is Eb. The way that the written note deals with this is to make the C on a tenor the same as a C on an alto. This means a sax player only has to learn to read one clef rather than two different ones depending on which horn he or she is playing. In short, whenever anyone reads a tenor clef, the C is in the same place. In short, the instrument changes not the written note. Theoretically, a pianist can read a saxophone part if he is playing a saxophone and a saxophonist can read a piano part if he is playing a piano. I guess whichever way around you do it, you will have the same problem in reverse.

Thanks, that clears it up a little. I sometimes think my mind is too scientific for music as I struggle if I can’t find the ‘why’ as opposed to just accepting that is just the way it is. As I was hoping to mess around playing bass to accompany my fledgling sax playing (the reason the subject came up) I think I need to study this all a bit more!

Apologies if this is a stupid question, and it probably is, but what is the benefit to that? Is it purely the ability to move finger positions across instruments?

1 hour ago, casapete said:

I think Kevin McCloud from Channel 4’s Grand Designs was / is a bassist.

And a genuinely nice bloke to boot. I had the pleasure of is company for a short while a few years ago as part of a project I was involved in with 20 kids with a range of disabilities. He promised to come back and find us after the event and was true to his word and took time to talk to each and every one of them. Quite a day that was, Stirling Moss, another true gentleman also took a lot of time to talk to the kids.

15 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

I own quite a few assorted hercules products. I contacted them after one of my floor stands developed the sticky handle problem and disintegrated, but I didn't even get a reply back from them. I've bought a few stands from other manufacturers since including millenium stands from Thomann which are cheaper and better made.

That’s odd, they have replaced two of mine because of this, about a year apart. I just needed to send the product code on a small sticker underneath. Both bought at the same time but one developed the problem later for some reason. A dodgy batch by all accounts.

19 minutes ago, jrixn1 said:

Some old instruments could only play some notes; e.g. a bugle.  To play in other keys, the only option was to use a larger or smaller bugle.  They decided that notes which were the same to play physically should have the same named name on each instrument, even though they sound different; otherwise they would have to learn a new system for each instrument.

Yes, bass guitar is a transposing instrument - they sound an octave lower than the written notation would suggest.  If you wrote it at pitch, there would be too many ledger lines.

The bass makes sense, but if different instruments play different notes wouldn’t there be the possibility of it sounding terrible? Or is the interval such that it’s always ok? I think,I must be missing something really obvious here but just can’t quite get my head around it.

Doing some reading as part of yet another attempt at becoming slightly less musically inept with regard to theory. Couple of things I don’t get with relation to transposing instruments, firstly- why? Why would you want an instrument to play an A when a C is written? Is it some sort of trick for composers to get a fuller sound by instruments at different intervals? And secondly the article said a bass guitar is a transposing instruments, well that’s the first I have heard of that, so is it or isn’t it? Thanks in advance for helping me in my stupidness.

40 minutes ago, casapete said:

Reading a lot of the posts on here has made me realise I generally dislike music that is predominantly male orientated! I have tried to get on with heavy rock / all forms of metal / prog / jazz rock / anything else that is shouty or stupidly angry etc etc. Of course these genres are not exclusively 'male' but do seem to attract a larger male following than female. I've always been drawn to stuff with a groove and a 'tune' - something basically singable and/or danceable too! Fortunately Mrs CP likes pretty much the same stuff that i do, so no real problems there - she has even enlightened me to Leonard Cohen! If I played a lot of the songs at home that I've listened to on this post I would certainly now be single. 😁

Leonard Cohen is guaranteed to get me out of any room. What a dirge.....

10 hours ago, ubit said:

I love all forms of Bob Mould, Hüsker Du, Sugar, solo. Great!

4 minutes ago, danbanbass said:

Love Bob Moulds later stuff especially! His Bassist Jason (Can't remember is surname) is an epic bass player, he  just does what's needed!

I had tickets to see him this summer. That’s all gone belly up sadly 😟

9 hours ago, stewblack said:

Just bought it. Sounds like my kind of thing

 

It’s brilliant, Bob Mould was going through a really rough patch of his life with band and relationship breakups and other problems. You can really hear it all come out through the album. And as we all know, happy people don’t write good music.............

1 minute ago, stewblack said:

When I feel utterly desolate and need to wallow, while being simultaneously cheered I play Bish Bosch by Scott Walker. While it reaches deep into my soul, nobody else seems to want to hang around.

Now you mention that, Black sheets of Rain by Bob Mould, utterly miserable and brilliant at the same time. My wife hates it.

I love NiN Broken, bit it doesn’t seem popular with many people. I think it’s a work of complete genius.

A wedding we played last year, seems a long time ago..........

7 hours ago, Ashweb said:

Once you totally mastered Baker Street (and told 'em confidently it was played by Bob Holness of Blockbusters fame for good measure 😉 )  You could turn your Sax chops towards the Pink Panther theme (written apparently after Henry Mancini visited Durham) - that'll really cheer them up.

As for bass, try seeing how far you get with the intro to Psycho Killer by Talking Heads, or Sunshine of Your Love by Cream...

Good luck with your mission!

Sunshine of your love was on my original list, it’s a cracking riff (one of the best imho) but they must hear it sooooooo many times.

17 minutes ago, edstraker123 said:

I registered for the 14 free days on the Mcgill site and think it's absolutely brilliant, quality lessons, good songs and really well structured. Last night's Masterclass with Roxy Coss was awesome.

Think I will definitely subscribe at the end of the trial. Wondering if I leave it a litle bit whether he would offer a discount as an incentive as some other sites I've been on in the past have done.

Thanks for that info. I plan to sign up in a few weeks when I have some of the basics down a bit better. Not sure how much stuff is on there for complete beginners.

As a complete beginner to saxophone (less than a month in) I have been learning Baker St. It reminded me of trip to PMT in Birmingham a couple of years ago. The rhythm guitarist in one of the bands I play in dared me to ask to try a bass and then play seven nation army. Just for fun I agreed and even managed to ask the salesman with a straight face if he had ever heard it before, his reply was ‘once or twice’. I have felt a bit bad about it ever since (just a bit) I imagine Baker St Is one of those tunes that every saxophone salesperson must be utterly sick of as well.  So it got me wondering what tunes shouldn’t you play in a music shop if you don’t want to upset the sales people.
So.......
Bass - Seven nation army, sunshine of my love
Guitar - smoke on the water, stairway to heaven
Saxophone - Baker St,.

So what others are there?

I have a couple of jazz basses, one with Seymour Duncan’s and one with super cheap Entwistle ones in. The Entwistle ones were fitted after a recommendation on here. For the money they are stunning and compare very nicely with the SD ones. And if for some reason you didn’t like them you haven’t risked a lot of money. £24 gets you a pair delivered.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Entwistle-JBX-pickup-for-bass-guitar-ceramic-designed-by-Alan-Entwistle/232855804486?hash=item3637499a46:m:mOy4G8FemBuWEWzNJZWMWhA

If you are interested in glues look at some of the data sheets. I used to build and race single seat electric race cars. I used a mix of carbon honeycomb and aluminium extrusions for the monocoques, all glued together with 3M DP410 full structural adhesive. It is ridiculously strong stuff.

Looks like the sort of thing a shop would have for background muzak and announcements.

35 minutes ago, edstraker123 said:

Let me know how you are getting on or if you find any good resources .

 

Will do, at the moment I am using a mix of lessons from a mate (handy man to know) by Skype, YouTube videos and tips from a saxophone forum. I am generally happy to self teach, that way I can bypass all the sensible stuff, get into lots of bad habits and generally stuff it up, sorry I meant ‘learn at my own pace’

8 hours ago, edstraker123 said:

I've just ordered a Roland AE10 . I had an Alto about 20 years ago but it was just too loud to play in the house - the AE10 is the perfect compromise for me and I can use effects !

I'm dying to get started but I'm a bit unsure of how all the tutorials will translate into digital sax. Of the youtube vids I've been watching while I wait for it to arrive, I've liked the McGill ones the best although it looks like its £179 a year for a membership. I'll try the free 14 days and see how I get on.

 

You can pay month by month though, I am waiting to get a few more basics sorted then will sign up for the free trial.

I was gutted to see this last night. I love the stranglers and they do not get anything like the recognition they deserve. As a kid their irreverence was striking and spoke to me as a grumpy teenager. This performance from Dutch TV is my favourite of any band anywhere ever. I understand that they wanted to play live but were told they couldn’t so this was their response.