musicbassman

Ooh, so many questions, (and opinions, I expect)...

What style of music are you playing?

What's the line up? - is it just bass, drums, guitar, or have you got a KB player? There's a difference between filling out the bass line to compensate for the loss of guitar chords if it's just bass and guitar, or making a more interesting and varied bass line that compliments the solo if there's also another guitar or KBs.

If you are playing to fill out the sound, a few carefully placed double stops can help, but don't overdo it.

And persuade your drummist not to play a heavy ride cymbal right through the solo, which is their usual solution and doesn't always help.......

Just leave the important ones on all the time, problem solved.

Depping with a band at a town centre pub in Littlehampton last night.

Jeez, talk about rough!. I didn't know there were such dodgy places in West Sussex!

Full of pi55ed up blokes and toothless old tarts - a fight had just finished when I arrived to set up, and it looked like people had been drinking there all day

Someone threatened the singer with a fist unless the band played some Pink Floyd......

Charming !  😳

I was trying to work out the time sig - it's the off time snare beats which were confusing, but I reckon it's just a straight 4/4 ......

Other opinions might be available.  

21 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

New strings? Jamerson never changed his strings.

3 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

I made a Bitsa P bass and put a 'Dinky Toys' decal on the headstock. 

That is the greatest thing ever !       😁👍

Welcome to Basschat, @BarnabasDavers9. You're new here, aren't you?  🙂

Many comments on this forum are very tongue in cheek, so they really mustn't be taken literally.....

It's just our British sense of humour !  

Well done, @warwickhunt, remaining cool and ultra professional is usually the winning hand in the long term.

.....can be REALLY hard sometimes, though ! 😕

Cockatoo's next up for the audition..........

A cheap spare amp, always.

You won't need it, but someone else in the band might, and you can guess that they won't have a spare... especially if it's the guitarist.  😀

7 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

I thought the whole point of flats on a fretted bass was to save you the 'breaking in/crudding up' period for rounds?

Nah, @Downunderwonder,  - I know what you mean, but the EB Cobalts are a sort of halfway house tonally between rounds and flats - they're naturally very bright. I really like them.

First time I've boiled these EB Cobalts and the results were way better than expected - really bright and zingy again. 🙂👍

Well, interesting topic. I've boiled strings occasionally for many years.

Yesterday, I boiled a set of Ernie Ball Cobalt flats from my P bass that had been pretty heavily used the last couple of months , and its embarrassing to see just how much crud floats to the surface of the water. And I don't suffer from sweaty hands.

I don't leave the strings in the water for long, about a minute or so, then pat them dry and replace.

Excellent! - tone restored completely. And I take the opportunity to give the fretboard a good clean while the strings are off as well.

If there's a downside to this technique, I haven't discovered it yet.  🙂👍

Well, I feel for you, @theplumber.

I've been in a few similar situations myself over the years, where you meet up with an old muso you played with in a band many years ago, and once you get past the 'Do you remember in 1978 when we broke down on the M1 and nearly froze to death' shared memories there's not much left to talk about........... and now he's more interested in droning on about his new patio than talking about music..........  🥺

4 minutes ago, T-Bay said:

Mustang Sally and Shotgun are the two worse songs ever written

Mustang Sally was actually a great soul song - but it's been completely murdered by so many bands over the years that it's now well and truly dead !  😳

For Sale!

1962 Fender Strat with ultra rare misprint logo!

Excellent investment! 

Value can only go up!

Depping with a half decent band at Worthing last night, hadn't met them before, nice guys.

So, the band play their first set, take a break, and we're about to go back on for the second set when a giant screen is lowered, completely blocking the stage.

Seemed like everyone was there just to watch the Tyson fight, and by the time this had finished there wasn't time to play again.

Got paid in full, but, err, communication, eh ?  😳

If you're using a PC to watch/listen to Youtube videos, then Audacity is free and reliable for creating MP3's. You may need to fiddle around a bit to get the right routing - I think WASAPI is the usual for Windows. There's plenty of advice online about this.

The Greyhound, Fulham, 1975. With a '63 P !

A new name to me, just listened to a load of their material. What a band, and a drummer sent from heaven !  🙂

Thanks for posting.

So, this afternoon I've been running through the setlist of a band I'm depping with tonight, and came across this gem, which I can't remember ever playing before.

A reminder of what a great song this is, and what a brilliant bassline !  🙂

Wikipedia tells me the bass player was Paul Arnold at this time.  Enjoy.

1 hour ago, Dan Dare said:

I don't know how you do that. If I eat a big meal before I play, I have difficulty keeping awake/alert.

This.

A seasoned old pro drummer I worked with always had the motto  "You should always go on stage feeling horny and hungry" 

These days I'll settle for just feeling slightly peckish.  🙂

I confess that I've realised, now, having played bass since the dawn of time, that when I was a 'professional' bass player in London in the 1970's I really wasn't actually very good at it ......

The worrying part of this is that other band members in various bands I played with at the time told me how good I was...........

Were they just being polite ???  😳

Yes, I've used these quite recently - they're perfectly fine - you'll play your bass and notes will come out.

Where they fall a bit short is, like many brands of flat, they don't respond tonally to differences in playing techniques - I use Ernie Ball Cobalt flats and when you use these and dig in on a P they have a lovely crunch to them. Conversely, if you play with the side of your thumb and palm mute they produce a great DB -ish tone.

Other strongly held opinions on various brands of flats are available...................!!!