Cantdosleepy

Oright, a couple from me - -I worry about needing a wee when I'm onstage, so tend to sneak to the bathroom three or more times in the ten minuters before we're due to go on. Which is silly, as we're only up there for twenty minutes, and I'm an adult. I went to practice last week and really did need to wee, but I held it in as we ran through our whole set. By the end I was jiggling between songs, but I made it, and I didn't play too badly. I now no longer worry about needing to wee onstage. -I get nervous before we play, so usually go into the first song with my heart racing a little, and so flub early notes when I shouldn't. At home now before I practice, I sometimes do 20 quick press-ups, turn on the metronome, put on the bass and start playing after only 4 metronome pips. This really simulates the strange rushed nervousness of playing live and has improved my performance in the first half of the first song no end. Any other slightly weird tactics/tricks you do in practice/at gigs tyhat you'd like to pass on?

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='248921' date='Jul 27 2008, 02:42 PM']Has anyone heard his take on Norah Jones, John Lennon etc? He is SOOO missing the point of those pieces; adding noodling bass to a Jones hit and playing 'Imagine' without the lyrics is like adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa and watching the Aurora Borealis in the daytime![/quote] I'd argue in the Lennon example that he's half right; he's got rid of the lyrics - all he needs to do now is get rid of the music and we'd be on the road to a decent tune. (Sorry John.) This argument is silly and seems mostly comprised of people wilfully misunderstanding each other. Berlin draws a lot of criticism because he finds it difficult to accept that there are many ways to become excellent at the bass. The difference between saying 'Personally I don't use a metronome, or really see their value,' and 'If you have ever attended any school, any camp, any class, or studied with any teacher, and were taught that you have to groove, and used a metronome to play in time, or practiced contemporary tunes and paid your teachers for these lessons, then you've been F***KED because you haven’t been taught the important elements about what a good player needs to know' is huge. For the record, I don't dislike his playing any more than I dislike the playing of Bailey, Wooten, Jaco, Sheehan, Willis, King, or 90% of people who are likely to appear on the cover of a bass magazine.

For some reason I think singer/bassists look really douchey. I don't know why that is.

John Carpenter's synth-tastic scores fro the eighties. Assault on precinct 13 has one of the best synth lines EVER.

I dislike the sound of slap bass.

Will there be a ball pit? Please, say there will be a ball pit. Helter skelters? Ice cream factory? Paper hats on birthdays?

Definitely Bass. When you have just starting out gigging you will most likely be using the toilet venue's bass amp, or the headliner's amp. When you are onto medium size venues you'll most often go bass -> Soundman's Behringer/Sansamp (sdepending on venue) DI -> Amp, so the amp is used more as a monitor than for the audience's listening pleasure. When you get bigger still you are probably DIing and micing a sexy boutique thing that Ampeg 8x10ers would sneer at in terms of watts. A bass you love the feel and play of will be the thing in your hands.

[quote name='Jase' post='238133' date='Jul 12 2008, 07:11 PM']But what I reckon really devalues live music ( nothing to do with OG ).......the amount of utter sh*te bands that are out there, the amount of bands that'll play for bugger all, the amount of bands that shouldn't even be out there!!! The live music scene is littered with "bands" everyone's in a band...everyone's got a guitar [/quote] Couldn't agree more, Jase. What we need is some kind of licencing system. I can't believe that just anybody can buy an instrument and start having fun with music. Don't these people realise that mediocre cover bands want to be paid more money????? The nerve of these people with 'guitars' forming 'bands'. But we need some kind of authority who has the power to decide who is allowed to play music. Who could have the moral authority to stop our fair venues being 'littered' with bands, driving down the vital expenses of Mustang-Sally-playing pub rockers? Perhaps you, Jase, could be our arbiter of taste?

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='237072' date='Jul 11 2008, 09:09 AM']How about you give ol' Chiefy your address and he'll pop round and give you a nice deep-tissue massage? Extras 20 quid.[/quote] Warning: The vaunted 'extras' are in fact an Irn Bru bar and some of those 1 portion hotel soaps. Argh - you sound miffed. Why don't you just put the bass down for a month? You sound like you need to 'go big or go home', and unless you're really excited and energised about making a big putsch, I'd suggest you relax and recharge for a bit....

[quote name='Jean-Luc Pickguard' post='233906' date='Jul 7 2008, 08:10 AM']I would like to agree with you but then we'd both be wrong.[/quote] Blam! Told!

Good luck! Enjoying the myspace. I think the vocals should be lower in the mix on Sacrifice, though - get a good wall of metal instrumentation going, and slot the vocals around that!

Problem is the discussion word is 'sound', not 'tone'. Sound is too ambiguous to actually be answerable. Is my 'sound' the fuzz? The note choices? The neatness and competency? The volume? The amount of reverb? Arguably all or any. That Clapton guy had Clapton's sound (tone) but did not have Clapton's sound (note choices). This can run and run. Another meaningless datapoint: I swapped my rig/bass out with the guitarist for a song in my old band. Exact same setup, but he hit the strings a lot harder and played slightly more sloppily. He had my sound, but he didn't have my sound. He sounded good, but different , but the same. Gah. Also, now I'm a zombie.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='230918' date='Jul 1 2008, 09:24 PM']If you heard Jaco playing an Encore precision through a 10W RockTek practice amp do you think you wouldn't notice it was Jaco?[/quote] I'd be more like 'Yikes, this room smells of dead guy. Hey check it out - zombie Jaco. Nice rig, Jacks. What are you doing? No! Back off, Jaco! No - not my brains!!!!! Noooooooooooooooooo!'

Things that make you a better bassist, a spectrum with best use of time at the top: Playing a gig / Practicing with a teacher having a jam learning new songs practicing alone studying theory playing Guitar hero having sex posing with bass in front of mirror posing naked in front of mirror playing Grand Theft Auto smelling your bass cooking food reading a novel self-touching whilst listening to Weather Report cutting off your hands posting online about basses In terms of computer games or non-bass-related passtimes, I think guitar hero can be a little helpful. But it doesn't have to be - it's a computer game.

Since Zimbabwe flared up I've started using Sainsbury's Basics. Fancy and that. My (passive, flatwound, jazz) bass is in the shop at the moment, so I took my housemates (active, roundwound, humbucking) bass to practice. Fiddled for hours and couldn't get the sound I was looking for. On the other hand, I was using a Trace combo last week, and this week was using a sketchy-looking Carlsbro...

So I finally caved in and ordered some new pickups for the old bass. Got them from a fella named Andy who owns Wizard Pickups. I order and pay on Sunday, 8 June. Andy ships pickups that were wound just for me on Tuesday 10 June. That's service. Lovely guy. Royal Mail apparently deliver them on Wednesday 11 June, but no-one's in and they don't leave a card, so I don't realise they've been. I wait until Thursday 12 June before e-mailing Andy and saying that I've a gig coming up next week and was wondering when the pups would be dispatched. He tells me they were sent on Tuesday. I call royal mail to get a re-delivery, but can only get through to an automated service. I try to use the automated service to get the pickups delivered to my work on Monday 16 June. Monday 16 June - no pickups appear at work. Monday evening. Royal Mail have left a card this time. At home. It says they're at the depot down the road, but please wait 48 hours for them to be processed before I can pick them up. The depot is open 8:00am to 12:00pm. When I'm at work. Thursday 19 June - get some time off and pick up the pups. Gig is the next day, though, so no time to install them (want to get a set-up, action intonation, etc etc all at the same time). Friday 20 June - play gig with old pups. Tuesday 24 June - get time off work, drop bass off at gallery to have work done. Should be done by Friday, but can't get time off work so agree to collect on Saturday. Thursday 26 June - get call from Gallery. Neck pup is the wrong size.* Could jam it in but better to get job done properly. Cycle home from work early and collect wrong-size pickup. E-mail Andy at wizard, who is as usual super-helpful. Today 27 June - post old pickup back to Wizard on next day delivery, with return address of bass gallery in Camden (where my bass still is) so they can stick it straight in. Next gig - Thursday 3rd July. Have started practicing the setlist at home with my housemate's bass (Mine is a flatwound passive jazz. His is an active, roundwound Yamaha) in case it's not done in time. The clock is ticking.... *absolutely and entirely my own fault for ordering wrong size. No discredit to Andy or the Gallery.

[quote name='OldGit' post='227323' date='Jun 26 2008, 01:05 PM']I reckon 30 mins of bass, drums and vocals would be pretty good, with the right tune choices [/quote] Yeah, get all ESG on their asses! [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBq_sv9N-gk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBq_sv9N-gk[/url]

I've not broken a string in the 11 years I've been playing. My singer has my backup bass at the moment - when his car gets fixed I'll ask him to bring it to gigs. I bring three working instrument cables and a spare battery for my tuner. My bass is passive, and I loop the instrument cable through the strap so if I stand on it there's less chance of damage. Plus my bass lead is a telephone cord style, so it sorts the slack out most of the time.

When you have 25 minutes of material sorted (as in, everyone can remember the changes 80% of the time) book a third-on-the-bill at a pub somewhere for a month's time. Sorted.

I'd build a time machine, travel back to when I had two arms, then chop the one I was missing off my sleeping self, bring it back to the future and reattach it. Plus, that would explain where the arm had gone in the first place. Hands off my arm, FutureSleepy!

Ten hours and counting down... [url="http://www.themonotremes.co.uk"]http://www.themonotremes.co.uk[/url]

I'm about to embark on my first pimpage mission. Owned my MIJ 75 reissue jazz for about four years now - use it everywhere and for every jam, practice, gig etc since I bought it. Never been quite happy with the sound, though - I'd like it a little beefier and more defined. Just spent £70 on pickups (still lost in the world of Royal Mail!) £40 on a new bridge and am going to take it into a shop to get all actioned and sorted. The bass was ~£375 new. After the shop I'll probably have spent about half that amount again on upgrading it. Haven't bought a bass since I got this one, though, so it's a reasonable outpouring of GAS.

Wikipedia: He uses hot-rodded Marshall JMP Superbass II amplifiers from the later 1960s/early 1970s. Each amp, with a nominal output of 100 watts, is used with a 4x12 speaker cab and a custom-made 4x15 cab. He uses two such stacks, one on each side of the drum riser. For many years the amps were nicknamed "No Remorse", "Killer" (left side amp) or "Murder One" (right side amp) with appropriate nameplates. "No Remorse" was subsequently replaced by a new amp nicknamed "Marsha" when, as Kilmister said in an October 2004 interview, it "blew up". "Killer" and "Murder One" were destroyed in Argentina when all the other equipment was stolen. They were not seen for many years, but in 2006 "Murder One" got on stage again. In 2008 Marshall released the "1992LEM", a signature series copy of his 1992 100 Watt Super Bass Unit, "Murder One". The phrase "everything louder than everyone else" sums up Lemmy's sonic approach, as he plays at the loudest possible levels. He uses the neck pickup exclusively (giving his bass sound more definition) and turns all the tone and volume knobs on the bass up full. On the amplifiers, he turns the bass and treble off, and the midrange up all the way, with the volume and presence up to the 3:00 position. The result is a biting midrange sound which is somewhat distorted but not "fuzzed out" or "blurry", a formula well-suited to his use of open-string drones and power chords. In the 1990s after a Motörhead show at Hultsfred, Sweden a radio reporter asked Lemmy "If you were to play here again in ten years, how do you think you would sound?" Lemmy replied "Same, but louder..."

[quote name='P-T-P' post='216936' date='Jun 11 2008, 03:00 PM']On a different tack again, isn't popular music (be that folk, jazz, country, soul etc.) separated from the other arts by the fact that a song, unlike a painting, novel etc. doesn't necessaily become an untouchable piece of art once the songwriting is complete, or with it's first performance or even it's recorded release. While in many cases, the original version will always stand as the benchmark, it's not completely uncommon for a cover to become the definitive version. Songs are living, breathing art because they need to be performed in order to exist. The Mona Lisa will still be there once you've left the room. But once the last note has disappeared, the song has gone and it was only those that heard it there and then who experienced the artistry involved in bringing it to life. Each time it's brought to life, it will be slightly different - the musicians, the equipment, the room, the audience, the dancing and so many other factors all go into creating that little shared artistic moment. Even if you've seen a song performed live by it's creator(s) countless times, it's only a collection of artistic moments you've been witness too, you'll never be able to get that exact same experience again, you'll never be able to own it the way you can a book or a painting. It's why covers bands exist. People want more than a memory, or to experience more moments. Even if some will be better than others, they still want them, even if they aren't fully aware of the artisic element of it all and express their enjoyment in less high-brow ways such as "I enjoy a sing-song." or "I love a good dance." Every performacne is a little piece of art so we all have artistic integrity.[/quote] Theatre is very similar to music in that regard. As is spoken poetry. And ballet. There is a difference between cultural artifacts that are a process and cultural artifacts that are a product. And there is some blurring of that line - a DVD or a CD is a product, but one that must be played to be enjoyed (ie transformed into a process). Not to derail the thread entirely (or rather, to obviously derail the thread) I'd actually say that experiencing The Mona Lisa is just as much a process as enjoying a gig. Once you are out of the room the picture is gone and all you have left is a memory. The principle difference between process-process and product-process is that you can return to the picture and in theory it's the same artifact. But it will always be a different experience, because you'll be bringing a different mood, mindset and memories to it. But I definitely agree with your post, just having a bit of a think. Good work!

My tickets to see Radiohead in London arrived yesterday! I'm so very excited! Just teasing you with the 'meanie' stuff.