musicbassman

What a great player. Here he plays a simple groove but demonstrates loads of great fingerstyle technique - there's muting and stopping, ghost notes and clipping. And there's a few bass faces as well - enjoy!

Favourite bit at 2.14 - Mccartney and Lennon winding up the engineer - Lennon : hey, we're bloody stars, y'know !

Yep, I've used one of these for regular daily practice for a couple of years now, so simple and no problems. I just run an audio link from my PC to play along with Youtube and mp3 tracks etc. It's worth using decent headphones with it and investing in some rechargeable batteries - I find they need changing about every 10 days with heavy use. Have fun.

I managed nearly three minutes. Oh, those naughty Cardiacs ! RIP Tim Smith..... .

I would guess that a lot of bass players would regard a Rick as a pick players bass only - both in terms of ergonomics and the overall sound ? For a 60's band, pick playing fits right in (hello Carol Kaye), and may also solve your singers...err....issues, in terms of tone. Have fun. 🙂

The absolute pits. Anyway, what's the problem ? All the band have to do is pay their landlords in exposures and buy their food with free publicity....

Flat stomach - tick ! 🙂 Risk of developing major long term problems with vocal chord nodules and polyps - tick ! ☹️

Someone sent me this link. This genre is described as 'Noise Rock' I'm not going to pass comment, you might like it, you might not, but it's certainly interesting. Band are Lightning Bolt, it's bass and drums only, the 'music' starts around 3.00... err - ish The audience clearly love it, but I think the disco pills might help. Not sure whether the two girls in red shorts launching themselves into the audience are part of the band or not, but, hey, whatever.

An update - Steve (drummer) was sent to East Grinstead Hospital today where they apparently specialise in reconstructive and micro surgery. He had a two and a half hour operation which was apparently fairly successful. Obviously only time will tell, and there will be 3 months of heavy duty physiotherapy also to follow. And, because of it's impactive nature, playing drums will be out of bounds for even longer than this. Poor guy, he lives for his drumming. 🙁 Thanks for all your BC kindness and good wishes, and, don't forget to take care!

So, I've been doing a few gigs (remember them ?) with a soft jazz rock band over the last few months. Very nice. We were due to do 2 gigs at a restaurant (semi outdoor) just before Christmas. All fine, and any gig is a rare event at the moment. But yesterday the drummer, an excellent player and good friend who I've known for many years, sent me a picture of his arm....... not a pretty sight. Apparently he was trimming off some floorboards with a hand held circular saw and it kicked back. The saw landed on his bare arm......... my wife nearly threw up when i showed her the picture. He is having emergency surgery today as he has cut through a couple of tendons. It's quite possible he may never have proper use of his hand again, so his drumming days might well be over. Please guys, don't be like my drummer friend. I know he always had a habit of charging into things without stopping for a brief moment to plan his work out carefully. The thought of having an accident like that fills me with horror - being unable to play properly ever again is almost unthinkable. So, spare a thought for my dear drummist friend today, and please, please, look after yourselves!

Adam Neely is joined by four other incredibly talented musicians who each rise to the challenge of making great sounding music using the scale from Hell..... Most enjoyable. Who's your favourite?

'Edith' is among my top 10 songs of all time Here's an early demo version of the song. She clearly already knows exactly how it should sound. Pure genius, I never tire of listening to this!

Drinks on amps? Did a rather posh jazz gig Saturday before last and as we started the last number the restaurant owner, who had possibly had a drink or two herself, came up behind me on stage and proceeded to stand 4 champagne flutes on my amp and then rather unsteadily fill each one with Chateau whatever. I motioned for her to stop but she just smiled and pointed to the bottle, mouthing "No,no, this is really good stuff" I was completely distracted from my playing, expecting the very worst to happen behind me, but miraculously we all survived.

I'm sure all BC'ers must be feeling really sorry for all the pro musicians out there - they might have just about survived the last lockdown and been limping along since then, but tonight's announcement might be the final straw. And also all the support crews that worked with them..... not so easy to 'retrain' when it's the only life you've known. And even if Covid is beaten or becomes just another virus for us humans to deal with, it'll take many years for the live arts in all their forms to fully recover.

OP here - again. Sorry this has ruffled feathers - that wasn't the intention. I'm not that kind of guy. You're welcome to reread my comments again, but to summarise I said that I thought it was awful (still do) and then added "Other opinions are available" In other words, it was just my opinion I then added the further point about how little control an individual collaborator would have over the finished product, and it must be a bit hard for them if they really didn't like the end result - possibly very disappointing after all the hard work and effort they'd put in to add their contribution. That's all folks. Peace and love etc. 🙂

OP here. The point of the post is that although each musician may work very hard on their part of the collaboration they're ultimately putting their name on something where they had no control over the end product. These collaborations are all dressed up as great multi disciplined efforts, but maybe really they're more about the ego of the presenter/producer. I'm sure Alba Armengou wouldn't have wanted to have her name on this when she heard the end result.

Well, here's yet another multi musician lockdown collaboration, this one apparently put together by a guy called Freddi Sturm. It came up in my Youtube recommendations for some reason. Loads of instruments, everyone trying very hard, but I think the end result is utterly awful. And quite how he managed to get the uber talented Alba Armengou to appear on this is beyond comprehension. Other opinions are available.

Well, that's how I read it, for some reason. 😮

Oh no, not this topic again! Every few months someone revives the straight/curved debate, and they just need to remember what Gene said about this when he had the first curved strung bass specially made for him: "Well, I don't play the bass with straight fingers, so why shouldn't my strings should be the same as my fingers - curved" Here's the opening lines of Rarfer Friytnt's notoriously difficult bass piece *Straightjacket" which Gene was struggling with when he came up with the original idea:

I use a pick about 10% of the time (Jim Dunlop 1mm) and for certain rhythms a pick is really pretty essential to get the right feel. Take this, for example:

Interesting discussion. I only dabbled with a DAW briefly about 15 years ago, so I'm now completely out of touch with what's going on. For an absolute zero knowledge newbie like me, could someone explain why no one's mentioned the PC specs necessary to run something like Reaper? This was a big deal back then, so could I assume that these days any standard supplied soundcard would be up to the job?

One of my all time favourites: There's an abominable snowman in the supermarket, He's down by the peas and the, carrots Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, taking a sharp knife to the penchant for pretentious prog rock lyrics in the '70's

I've only managed 2 gigs (outdoor) since March. And now I've got 2 gigs offered - but they're both on the same b****y date! Sods Law. One is a dep with a club band, other is a jazz type gig in a new restaurant venue (good luck with that in the current climate 🙄 ) I've passed the club gig over to another local bassist who hasn't had a single gig this year, poor guy. Pleased to be able to offer it to him