Beedster

My favourite one night stand band, auditioned, got the gig, learned the set, rehearsed for three months, first gig booked, 100 mile drive each way to that London. Singer, of the low work-rate/moderate talent/high maintenance type, hasn’t brought his microphone and then kicks off when the venue don’t have a spare (I had one in my kit bag but thought I’d keep quiet at least a while). So, after s kerfuffle I lent him a mic through which he was rude to the venue, to us, and better still, to the audience. A few of my mates were there and said they thought it was irony at first, it was that bad. So to my mind a singer who owns a mic and who takes it to a gig is already at the better end of the singer scale 👍

Thanks mate, I’m going to send him my thoughts in pure Anglo Saxon 👍

Sorry to hear about this. UPS are by a long way the worst courier service available, only this week they left £1000 worth of electronics in my doorstep in the rain without even ringing the bell. Buddy my trusty Chocolate Lab doesn’t however let such couriers of the hook lightly, and alerted me to incoming audio gear with his barking. So I went out and asked the driver - who was back in the van - why he thought it was OK to leave the package with no attempt to ring the bell or get a signature, and to clearly risk it getting rain damaged or stolen. He simply stared at me and drove off 😡

Pretty much the percussiveness I get on a good day 👍

@3below trust me mate, there are plenty of bad gigs in my history, the one above was the rare example that had a happy ending @Burns-bass one of my biggest problems with DB (especially with gut strings) has always been reducing the percussiveness, I played in a Trad folk band for a while (a very short while on reflection by mutual consent IIRC), and they were not impressed by the non-bass noises one bit. I suspect your problem is that you're too good a player mate 👍

I did a blues DB gig 10 years ago in a decent sized music venue. I had a couple of beers beforehand and had a bit of a shocker note selection was bad, timing was bad, intonation was bad (the DB equivalent of Richie Benaud's classic "There's only three things wrong with English Cricket; they can't bat, they can't bowl, and they can't field"). At the end of the gig a guy came up to me and after some polite conversation including some flattery of my playing, he asked if I was free to play in more than one band. I said yes, assuming he was taking the fosters, but he wasn't, he genuinely thought my playing had what his band needed (and his band was pretty decent as well, I gigged with them several times). He was a jazzer Sounds like you might just need to have a couple of pre-gig beers and dig in a little more mate 👍

Not sure I suggested you spend any money mate! A more percussive sound doesn't mean playing slap/pop either, I found my early percussive style organically when I switched from steels to guts; I often used my right hand to mute between notes to keep the rhythm tight - essentially using the fingertips to push back down on the string I'd just plucked usually on the off beat. Using high action and steels this was a pretty quiet process, but when I switched to slacker and lower guts I found I was pushing the string onto the fingerboard, causing a percussive slap tone on the off beat (one AND two AND three etc). We didn't have a drummer - although the guitarist used a stomp box usually on the on/three - and the guys in the band quite liked the two together it so i worked on getting it a bit tighter and it works quite nicely without ever being slap technique per se). Personally while I'm impressed by slap, I don't especially like hearing it, even when it's as well played as Nicolas Dubouchet

Slap on DB is about long hours practicing. Precise timing is everything and I think that’s where most novices (like me) fall down. Important to remember that slap DB is, as the title suggests, a percussion instrument 👍

Believe it’s with @pbasspecial Andy 👍

Or this......

Yep, same here 👍

Funnily enough my initial impression of R6 were entirely negative having spent 45mins listening to exactly that, IIRC she was gushing about a viola player who’d recorded a piece of music about the sea while standing on a beach. Sounded like a poor recording of a poorly performed and poorly conceived composition to me, more an undergraduate project than something worthy of national radio. I avoid MAH as the result 👍

A little known Beatles fact is that plans for the 1968 Beige Album met with widespread disapproval at the focus group stage forcing a rethink. The rest, as they say, is history. However, as experts have subsequently often remarked, it's no coincidence that as the original album ages, it's cover morphs more towards it's original intended colour scheme......

I'm thinking of all the tribute acts you could start, Beige Against the Machine? Queens of the Stone Beige...?

That is exactly how most bizarre obsessions start, I'm seeing the 2032 Netflix documentary 'Beige' about a man who's whole life is dominated by it, the custom beige strings, bridges and tuners, the beige power cables.....

John Fruscante's agent will be in touch Mick 👍 R&M, audio antidepressants, a joy to listen to 👍 Think it will become part of mine I have to check this guy out Mmmm....... What I was going to say Heart FM Agreed 👍

That made me chuckle. The answer to that question is a whole can of worms best left closed, an era of my life that is well behind me, one I'd be happier to talk about had anything I played, wrote, or even wore - especially hairstyles - possessed any quality or merit

Glorious, just glorious. Why did I wait so long? It brings a joy to our kitchen that has been absent since my family decided that Heart FM was their preferred station about 5-years ago (I know, but some battles are not worth fighting). And the songs I'm hearing that I'd forgotten, I even heard one of my old bands from 1984 the other day (a reliable sign of quality curation if ever there was one). And the basslines? Seems the editorial policy is defined by the two questions 'Is the artist credible?' and 'Is the bassline creative?' Love it. Renewed my faith in the BBC 👍

I got the same, seems Trustpilot are happy to hand it out but not so happy to have it going back at them......

That old classic 😆