Ferretwrangler

Guys, thanks so much for taking the trouble to respond, I'm so very grateful! I'll take a gander at the Geoff Chalmers site, and the books mentioned by Burns-bass and tinyd. I'm thinking those together will be a real boost. We're really lucky here in Sheffield that there are loads of different jam sessions, so I'm not short of places to try out as I'm learning. I like to learn with books at first, but it doesn't take long before I want to get out - I'm deffo not a 'bedroom player'! There's also a really good DB player at our local gypsy jazz session and I've been watching him rock - reckon I'll be picking his brains too next time I see him.

Thanks for the input. At the moment I'm playing lots of scales to get my fingers landing in the right place, and that's improving pretty quickly. Once I'm confident I can hit notes first time I'll move on to playing along to recorded stuff. I did this when playing for a cover band, and it does help, as you have both said. Burns-bass, you mentioned understanding chords and progressions - what are you doing to develop this? I've never seriously played a chord instrument so my understanding of how it works in practice is weak.

Greetings fellow Earthlings (or should that be Basslings?). I'm returning to the bass after a long time away - from the instrument, not from playing music. I'm classically trained, and played in an orchestra but now I'd like to try something else. I've played as a melody player on other instruments for many years in musicians' sessions, so I'm used to playing tunes picked up by ear as I go along. But now I want to play rhythm and not sure how to begin retraining myself. I'll be starting easy with folk sessions (only a couple of keys to grapple with) but I'd like (in the end) to be able to play in a local gypsy jazz session. I work full time so my practice time is in short chunks, and not every day, so I need my practice to really pay. So does anyone have any suggestions on how I should direct my learning/practice focus that will enable me to play session? I don't want to waste my practice time on stuff that won't really help me move genre, hence my plea.

I got into double bass when, at school, the music teacher brought one into the classroom. At 4' 6'' in height at the time, my hand went up straightaway. Then when the bass teacher looked at my hands and dismissed me as 'hopeless', my hackles went up and I spent the next *** years proving her wrong.