funkle

Adam Waldmann (Kairos 4tet), Portico Quartet, and Manu Delago all sound great to me. Thanks for the list, Mike.

Neil Cowley is doing great work, although I'd call many of his compositions near-classical, or rock. I also miss not having any bass improv, although the piano improv is great.

I'm working my way down Mike Flynn's list now - I wasn't aware of all the others, save for one or two.

+1 to Transcribe software, really excellent.

I'll generally play through the whole thing for a while, getting the flavour of it + not worrying about speed, get the speed up a bit, then take phrases I like and play them in all 12 keys to get them into my brain. I never end up playing the licks I learn when I improvise, but it does seem to change my playing.

It's what Jeff Berlin taught me to do when I studied with him, so I reckon what's good for the goose is good for the gander...

Pete

[quote name='funkle' post='837882' date='May 15 2010, 08:08 AM']Is this going to be alder, or ash-bodied?[/quote]

Anybody?

Think I prefer the DJ shape too.

Is this going to be alder, or ash-bodied?

Looks like somebody bumped my old review.

Looks to me like Jeff is pretty busy on Talkbass these days. Not sure if he'd have the time to make it over here too.

As to his views on metronomes - well, hit Talkbass and have a look-see for details, but essentially he believes you can learn music very well without ever using one. I'm a convert, and doing pretty well....

Still for sale?

Still for sale? If so, can you tell me the neck thickness front-to-back at the 1st and 12th frets? Thanks.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='803027' date='Apr 11 2010, 08:40 PM']All that scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be climbing the walls like a caged animal after a few hours, let alone a few days.

Kudos to you for your hard work, committment and dedication.[/quote]

Thanks. But you might do better at it than you think - the school meets you at your level, and then works you upwards from there. You are expected to work at it though - 2 hours of practice a day as a minimum, plus the classwork. But when practice becomes absorbing, it it's a lot easier to do. And when practice is done correctly, it is (for me, anyway) almost a form of meditation. I didn't know it, but before I went to the school, I wasn't really practicing correctly. Now, it's a whole different animal.

Haven't practiced yet today - too busy transcribing a whole bunch of soul/funk songs for a gig next week. But hey, the gig comes first....

[quote name='RhysP' post='802864' date='Apr 11 2010, 06:37 PM']Thanks for posting your comments about the Players School.
I was all set to go out & take one of their intensive courses this year but family illness meant I had to postpone for the foreseeable future.
I'd still love to do it if possible though.[/quote]

Good luck. Hope it works out for you eventually!

Yep, it was a great experience. However, if you can't afford to go, you can always find someone who has been and get them to teach you. Phil Mann teaches at the ICMP in London and has also attended...

So, that's the potted review of what I spent my time on at PSOM, and what you can expect if you attend.

The last 2 and a bit years since I started coming have been a musical epiphany for me, and I have improved a lot. I have completed the harmony and ear training courses at the school and learned more about composition and arranging, and am playing well these days. I'd say the school pretty successfully achieves what it sets out to do, and if you're willing to put the legwork in, you will not fail to improve. It's plenty of work, though!

As a final comment, I would say that if you intend to make a living playing your instrument, I would regard everythng that Jeff tells you as gospel. Everything I have learned from him has turned out to be true, ranging from his views on metronomes to those on how to practice correctly/'out of time' (although not 'out of sync'). I'm going to say this simply - Jeff's methods have worked extremely well for me over the last couple years, and I expect them to continue doing so. I might not have been convinced of everything he said when I first 'got serious' 2 and a bit years ago, but it has all proven itself many times over since then.

If you want some further detail on the concepts Jeff espouses, have a look at his 'Jeff Berlin on Music Ed' threads on Talkbass, or my previous PSOM review thread (there's a post on it there).

So going through each class in turn:

[b]Ear Training 8 (combined class with Harmony):[/b] We moved into continuing the sight-singing of chromatic solfege, sight-singing syncopated 16th and 32nd note lines in a variety of time signatures, and writing out chord progressions from listening to them. This was hard work and required constant practice between lessons. However it definitely got easier with time.

In terms of the Harmony, I had in fact completed the school's harmony course from my own private study of their materials, so Matt Bokulic had me composing a new song (or two) each week. Which was pretty hard work; composition takes me a while. We worked around major/minor/etc Blues, Rhythm Changes (major + minor), Blues based on sus chords, pentatonic melodies, melodies and ways to invert/change them, etc. This was incredibly useful to me overall, helped me to understand melody better, and got me thinking about writing a lot more. Matt composes fairly constantly, and having someone who is experienced to read over and make suggestions on your compositions is invaluable.

[b]Ear Training Analysis:[/b] This was a class I'd never heard of before, but essentially involved detailed analysis of the form of a variety of different songs and styles. It required a lot of listening to music and noting of many features - time sig, key, form and function of each of different sections of a song, instrumentation, dynamics, etc. An apparently simple class which turned out to be deceptively difficult (especially when trying to pick apart songs with many different meters). Kind of hard to explain in some ways, but it really has helped me to listen to songs very closely and pick apart how they work. I'd call this class the flip-side to arranging.

[b]Ensembles: [/b]This was pretty much the same format as previously, with an hour daily of playing and improvising on a jazz tune with the superivision and commentary from a teacher (Matt Bokulic, Jeff Berlin, Joe Porter, or Jeremy Powell). The crux of the school, really. This year, the ensemble I was in made it through Jordu, Days of Wine and Roses, Seven Steps to Heaven, How My Heart Sings, and Tune Up over the 10 weeks.
[b]
Chart Reading:[/b] At the stage I am at, this was essentially a reading class focused on written out jazz/funk/latin charts with 16th-note syncopations. Many of these were originals, some were big-band charts. Also expected to improvise/solo over these. Done with Matt Bokulic.

[b]Private Lessons with Jeff Berlin: [/b]These were really good. Jeff can listen to you and give you exactly what you need to deal with a problem. The material we worked through was pretty wide-ranging this semester. I transcribed some solos he played for me (simple ones, given my level), worked on some Pat Martino lines Jeff had previously transcribed, and worked on a ton of Charlie Banacos material, which is uniformly excellent. I can't really go into all the details, but we covered a whole heap of material in a range of different tonalities, which is really starting to open things up for me. Also, a great lesson on phrasing, which I need to work on.

Jeff himself is a very easy to get along with, and he and I have a good friendship. Of course we've known each other for a few years now, and I always do the work he asks me to do...

[b]Introduction to Arranging:[/b] A great primer on arranging, covering all the main instruments, ranges, transpositions, pitfalls, etc. The final assignment here was to arrange a song of your choice for drums/bass/sax/trumpet/piano (+/- guitar). I chose Frevo, by Egberto Gismonti, which was considerably harder to arrange than I had anticipated. However, the teacher of this class is a well-known arranger (Brian O'Flaherty), and he was extremely helpful and patient with us. A great learning experience overall, and it was great to have the arrangement performed by the teachers at the ned of the semester. I would recommend Noteflight (www.noteflight.com) for getting basic musical ideas down (it's free), but I turned to Sibelius for the final engraving and layout.

[b]Introduction to Recording:[/b] Not too much for me to say here, except that I dropped it after a few weeks as my schedule was too hectic to accommodate it, and I felt that it was a bit too lecture-based for me (the school does not currently have a lot of hands-on recording PC's). I believe they are looking into developing this course further. Wait and see, I guess.


In addition to the classes and work required, I generally spent 3 hours a day practicing, varying a bit with workload. The school recommends a minimum of two hours a day of practice to keep up.

I also spent as much time as I could squeeze in playing charts with other students - generally flipping open the Real Book and going for it.

So, when I went back to school, my schedule was this:

Ear Training 8 (combined class with Harmony) - 2x week
Ear Training Analysis - 1x week
Ensembles - 4x week
Chart Reading - 1x week
Private Lesson with Jeff Berlin - 2x week
Introduction to Arranging - 1x week
Introduction to Recording - 1x week

Each class is an hour, or up to an hour. This schedule was extremely busy, and resulted in a lot of work. So, I dropped the Recording class after the 4th week, because it was eating up valuable time, and was not essentially what I had come to the school for.

In the 9 months since I last attended, I spent the time:

- practicing through 6 complete keys from the Chord Studies for Electric Bass book, practicing every exercise in all 12 keys

- practicing various pieces of Charlie Banacos material obtained from a bassist passing through my town (ii-V7-I's, triad pairs, etc)

- practicing through material from the PSOM Chord Studies book (primary subordinate substitutes in all 12 keys, etc)

- continuing the PSOM Ear Training course, bought from an ex-student, finishing off books 6 + 7 (there are 8 books in total). Book 7 moved into chromatic solfege and 16th note syncopated rhythm studies, which took me a lot longer to get through.

- playing in 3 different jazz bands, 2 amateur and the third semi-pro - lots of reading needed. Cut a jazz demo with the semi-pro band, planning to look for gigs after I get back from school. Practicing the music associated with all of these.

- working a busy day job.

Hi all. This is my 3rd thread on the Players School.

I have two previous (long) posts on the subject in this forum. One from when I attended Oct - Nov '07 ( [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7438"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7438[/url] ), and one from when I attended Jan - Mar '09 ( [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44548"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44548[/url] ). I have also posted this review a little while ago on Talkbass.

I'm keeping a similar format to the previous reviews, although I'm chopping it up for readability purposes.

Hello all,

I'm sorry to say I've had to withdraw the amp and the preamp for the moment. My drummer has told me today he has organised some bigger gigs for us with bigger backline requirements, and it looks like the extra power will actually be needed after all. I will re-list the rack again though in another month and a half, after I've finished.

My apologies. It certainly seems to have garnered some interest anyway...

Pete

Pics of both, all still in the rack.

[attachment=46860:IMG_2431.JPG] [attachment=46861:IMG_2434.JPG] [attachment=46862:IMG_2436.JPG]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='800760' date='Apr 9 2010, 12:32 PM']Alien was after the preamp. Shoot him a PM. Was gonna sell him mine, but decided to keep it.[/quote]

You couldn't drop him a line for me, could you? Feels a bit OTT to me to PM him and say 'buy mine'!

PMs responded to.

Holy mackerel. I should have asked for more money ^_^

[color="#0000FF"][b]Ok, as of 23/5/10, these are now back up for sale. Finished the bigger gigs I was doing. [/b][/color]

I am doing smaller gigs these days and have moved to a micro amp setup, so am selling off the incredibly powered rack I already have. Everything is in good working order, and has served me very well indeed.

The power amp is a Peavey DPC 1400X (a class D digital power amp), which puts out up to 1400W bridged into 4 ohms/1000W into 8 ohms, or in stereo mode each of the two channels can independently power 700W into 2 ohms, 525W into 4 ohms, or 325W into 8 ophms. 1 rackspace, 15 lbs. Original Bass Player review can be seen at [url="http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/reviews/00350750_4.pdf"]http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/re.../00350750_4.pdf[/url]. The manual is at [url="http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/reviews/00350750_4.pdf"]http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/re.../00350750_4.pdf[/url]. This is a seriously powerful bit of kit which has seen me happily through gigs powering my Acme B2. If you don't want to use it to power your rig, you can always use it as a PA amp (the original intention, I think, for this design). They're pretty scarce; I had to wait a few years before I could lay my hands on one of these on eBay. Given the number of responses I had that nearly bit my hand off, I have re-listed the amp. [color="#2E8B57"][b]SOLD.
[/b][/color]
The preamp is the Peavey Max Bass preamp, again a fairly rare item these days. I bought it originally in the USA many years back and had it converted to UK voltage by Peavey UK. It has served me faithfully ever since. It's a nice pre, with both solid state and tube preamps, both with independent EQ's (solid state = graphic EQ, tube = 3 band EQ) and the ability to blend between them. The tube preamp does the tube grind thing very well indeed. It also has a DI, and lots of other features. The owner's manual is the best place to see all of them, and can be found at [url="http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/manuals/maxbass.pdf"]http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/manuals/maxbass.pdf[/url]. [color="#2E8B57"][b]SOLD. [/b][/color]

Pete

[quote name='Sibob' post='769909' date='Mar 10 2010, 12:19 AM']New CV's are seemingly Chinese made........not indonesian!
What are his thoughts on his previous information suggesting the contrary:


Si[/quote]

Ah. Apologies. Not sure - this person is visiting the relevant factory in China now. They were confident that production had been moved from this factory to Indonesia, and that it had already happened for the CV Squiers. The other possibility, which I am sticking in here on my own supposition, is that production could alternatively have been moved from one Chinese factory to another. Wait and see, I guess! The labels on the back of the headstock will eventually tell.

[quote name='Sibob' post='769762' date='Mar 9 2010, 10:24 PM']This is a quote from another thread relating to the new new new Fiesta Red Classic Vibe Precision:

"[i]Well that is an easy one, I did ask the gentleman on the phone when I was ordering mine, what does it say on the back of the headstock and he confirmed that it's the same as the other 3 Classic Vibe's i.e. "Crafted in China". in fact except for the colour there are no differences in quality and parts. It's exactly the same as the Sonic Blue Precision.[/i]"

I'm genuinely interested to know what your 'friend in the know' thinks of this

Si[/quote]

No problem. I'm not quite clear here though - What's the question you want answered?

[quote name='EssentialTension' post='758368' date='Feb 26 2010, 05:44 PM']I don't mean to doubt any of this as such but could you clarify. Is this a rumour with some evidence to back it up or is definite truth, as they say?[/quote]

Definite truth. The person whom I know is next week visiting the factory in China where the Squier CV's were made, before production was shifted to Indonesia. I spoke again to them today - to paraphrase: if the Squier CV has 'Crafted in China' on it, it was made in this (very good) factory, and it will be alder. Some of the 09's may be alder too, but only if they say they were 'Crafted in China'. Otherwise, they're made in Indonesia, and hence are basswood.