TimR

OK Thanks.

Quite an old thread this. Now a few second hand ones on ebay c£35-40. Anyone any views good or bad?

People will expect you to buy it anyway thinking you have got a good deal when you knock the price down. Seems odd in this day and age not to have lots of pics emailed to you of any damage so you can decide if it is good, very good, excellent or immaculate. I've had conversations with peole who've advertised cars as "immaculate for age". I think "good condition" is probably the lowest condition you can reasonably sell something in.

Busk it. Have fun!

When I was trying to become famous I worked as a temp. I could practically work whatever days I wanted. I told one boss that I wouldn't be able to work the next day as I had a gig and the agency would be sending someone else tomorrow. He said "Oh good, I was going to get rid of you anyway. Don't come back." I didn't.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1323955323' post='1469115'] .... Get to know a good accountant too. [/quote] In fact get to know her very well and marry her. Then you can do whatever you want.....

University is a great place for networking. Making contacts that will do you well in the future. Network will fellow musicians (including yeras above and below) but also network with people who are going to be doctors, lawyers, politicians, film proiducers too. These are the people who will book your band or ask you to write material for them. Get to know a good accountant too.

I think as you've said your PRIMARY instrument will be Bass. I'll suggest that you'll also have to be able to play or will at least have to learn piano as your secondary instrument. I played with a drummer who was in his second year of a music degree with percussion as his primary instrument. Awsome drummer, his second instrument was piano and I've never heard anyone play piano like it. I would say he was a better pianist than drummer! So wen you graduate you should be able to do all that sequencing stuff that you're worried about becoming the norm and add your own live bass parts As an aside and not really that relevant. There will always be a call for 'real' musicians. I'm fairly sure that there is (there certainly used to be) an agreement with the MU that anyone miming on a TV show must be a memeber of the Union. Even those pretty girls that look like models you see miming to tunes you know don't have real musicians playing on them, are registered with the musician's union. I may be wrong, of course, it may have changed. My friend joined the union as a tuba player and has done lots of shows despite not being able to play tuba - I kid you not!

I have a Jackson charvel with pointy headstock in White. More of a bass used by Bon jovi and the like really but if you are interested I could be persuaded to part with it.

Definitely go for ER20s as a minimum to start with but if you sing get vented plugs. There is a sticky on earplugs here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/533-ear-plugs/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/533-ear-plugs/[/url]

Music is a language. The notes are the letters, the bars are the words and the phrases are umm phrases. I can have a conversation with my 7 year old son, I understand what he says and he understands what I say, but I can also have a conversation with my friends down the pub. Both are equally enjoyable and valid. Just the older you get the more words you learn and you start to hear the same phrases used time and time again. Well at least from the wife I do.

Yes. I think the most important thing is to get into a band as soon as you can, don't worry about how good you are. I started in a band playing 3 chord wonders and plodded along on the root for most of them. As we leaned more tunes I had to learn more and harder basslines. Knowing that you have to learn a song by next week will give you focus.

[quote name='Jigster' timestamp='1322920081' post='1457299'] of course, if you're playing some toilet in darkest West Mids and it's the band, the sound man, the bar man, the bar man's mate (cos he's got nowt else to do) and three punters, I don't suppose those low freqs are going to have all that much to bounce off and the sound...as Zep might say..stays the same [/quote] The high frequencies bounce off hard surfaces and are absorbed by soft surfaces. The low frequencies are omni directional and are not absorbed by soft surfaces. Adding people reduces the top end meaning you can hear more bottom but also means you can push the overall volume up a bit.

For a start you pickups do not capture the sound of your unamplified bass. They only attempt to transfer the characteristics of the resonating string. What you are hearing when you play unplugged is a combination of the string and the bass wood vibrating, you can't capture the sound waves coming off the wood. If you speak to Alex, he will probably tell you that his cab design is a compromise. He did try to build a three way hi-fi full frequency cab but found that fully transparent cab is not required for bass. So the barefaced cabs are 'fairly' transparent. Another factor is that unless you play solo, you need to redically alter the bass sound so that it sits in the mix with the other instruments. With an upright you will find that a lot of the frequencies it produces are masked by the other instruments and this happens naturally or is done by the sound engineer. If you don't you'll run out of headroom and everything will turn to mush.

Where did this spring from. It's a 3 year old thread! Complex? Isn't it just standard passing notes with feel. Maybe I'm missing something. If I am I'm playing it wrong..

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1321384276' post='1438592'] Fiat money is the type of money the western world uses these days. Fiat money is a method of exchange which has no intrinsic value......only the value we project onto it. They could make it out of recycled plastic. 95% of money circulating in the world is not in the form of paper or coins but bits & bytes on a computer these days. In reality money only has any value if people accept it as having value. Ever heard of quantative easing? It's a method of making money out of thin air. It's all a big con and part of the reason we're in the economic misery we're in now. [/quote] LOL. Even precious metals only have the value that we "project" on to them. Nothing has any value at all. It only starts to have a value when you can find someone who wants it and they have something you want that they will swap. The idea that Gold was worth anything is pretty ridiculous. If you start to base the economy on Gold, the price of gold has to rise to astronomical amounts so that it can support the trillions of dollars that make up the world economy. This would make electronics prohibitively expensive and we wouldn't be able to build the computers that do all the banking.....

[indent=1]Loads of ideas already about on this site. Search for Phantom power or similar.[/indent] [indent=1]Think the best Idea was to use a stereo jack to a box that sits on your amp with the 9v supply plugged into that. Mod the bass by linking out the battery.[/indent]

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1320502670' post='1427628'] Not really...he'd just be better off turning the camera off and practice more. This video kind of highlights my biggest problem with Youtube.....there is no sh*t filter. It's far to easy for anyone to post a video of them playing or a 'lesson' or whatever that doesn't need to be seen because it's so bad. What this kid and plenty of other Youtube players need is to get away from the safety of their computer and go and get their arse kicked on the bandstand. [/quote] That and there are far too many self taught people who've never had a lesson and think that all they have to do is copy what they hear. The problem is they may hear but they don't actually know what they are listening for. Compound this with people who are quick to offer up their opinion. Which is fairly worthless and unconstructive in most cases.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1320436063' post='1426969'] ... "off stage keyboard player" ... [/quote] This.

Played Tuba for a few years. "It's like diging holes."

Our guitarist started getting shocks off his mike the other week. The problem started when we started to use a drum machine plugged into the "PA". It's an old PA that the band bought second hand and have been using for a few years. Looks like the mains cable got damaged and someone "reparied" it with a connector. I looked at it and guess what.... [attachment=92175:Image0232.jpg] Check out the next PAT due date! Dec 07. Food for thought, could have been nasty.

Edward Norton [u][color="#810081"][url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_History_X"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_History_X[/url][/color][/u]

I arrived a bit late to the practice last night. The two guitarists and drummer had already started and played a number while I set up. At the end of the number one of the guitarists says "I'm not sure about that number. It's lacking something" (Probably the Bass. Right?) but I said "It was a bit out of tune". He asked "Which bit was out of tune?". I replied "All of it. Mainly the guitars"

[quote name='tonyclaret' timestamp='1318724184' post='1405657'] .... Severe cramp in my fretting hand, pinky and middle finger totally locked together. Had this happen a couple of times previously but have always managed to shake it off pretty much immediately. .... [/quote] Indeed. This is exactly what happens. Same advice. Relax and don't forget to breathe.

We were asked to play this at a formula 1 fans birthday. After struggling with it for a couple of weeks and failing to do it justice we told them we couldn't do it. The only real playable, usable and recognisable bit of it is the bass riff in the middle. I think the rest of it is really good it's almost like 2 tunes bolted together. Rumors is one of my favourite albums and sold massively (I believe).