gjones

And a very good job you did as well

I have a drummer friend, who told me about a gig he played at a social club, where they wanted a trio but the guy who hired him only played guitar and sang with backing tracks. He'd played the week before and they told him they wanted a band the next week. So he hired a drummer and guitarist to just stand and mime all night. Whilst he sang and played over his backing tracks, exactly as he had the week before. Nobody noticed.....

Buy a secondhand John East J-Retro and forget about the pickups. Let the J-Retro pre amp do all the work. Just slot the loaded control plate into your bass. No soldering. All connected up in 15 mins. Trust me, your bass will sound epic.

If I were you, I would spend a bit of cash getting your bass set up by a local tech. A bass that's easy to play makes a big difference and will encourage you to play more.

I use the memo recording app on my android phone all the time. It's very, very useful when I'm learning new songs. The sound quality is fine for what I use it for.

Macca never makes a mistake ☺ But have a listen to Lennon playing bass on Long and Winding Road. He's all over the place.

Is that a mistake by Paul at 1.12? Or was it just Jazz.

I bought a set of pickups, for £40, from a guy that had taken out of a Road Worn Jazz. I put them into a MIJ Jazz I have and they have a really nice deep, dark, warm sound to them, that I really like. I constantly get compliments about my sound, from other bass players, when I play that bass. Recently I bought myself a Road worn Jazz and the bass sounds very similar. If you can find a set of pickups from a Road Worn bass, I recommend them. They have a really nice vintage sound.

Put his bass amp out front. He doesn't need to hear it, unlike you who uses your amp as a monitor. If he insists on having it near him, therefore interfering with your bass sound, then he's obviously a tosser.

All the best musicians have 'feel'. Which is a difficult quality to define. Those with feel are not necessarily the most technically adept, and those who are technically adept, may not always have feel. .

Fender are concentrating a lot of their resources on promoting to women. They're reaching out to a lot of, guitar playing, women and are offering them endorsement deals. My niece plays Fender electrics and has never paid for a guitar. She has a house full of them but has never had to buy one with her own money. Her first electric was her dad's MIJ Telecaster. Since she signed with a record company, Fender have thrown guitars at her willy nilly (at least half a dozen so far). She's over in LA, recording her 3rd album, and I was with her dad when he called her to see how she was doing. Where was she when she answered? ...... the Fender factory of course. Where she'll no doubt be picking up another freebie.

I own a GK MB500 which is extremely loud through my barefaced compact. I own a Ashdown ABM 500 and an Ashdown MiBass 550 and the GK is significantly louder than both. I recently bought a GK MB800 which is significantly louder than the 500 watt version. GK appear to make very, very loud amps.

The Jeff beck version just sounds like an excuse to do a lot of guitar widdling, over the top of a very boring musical backdrop.

I love this video of John Lennon and Chuck Berry. Especially the bit where the sound engineer switches off Yoko Ono's microphone, as soon as she starts wailing.

Google 'Freakpower'. Their first album Drive-Thru Booty is a great jam along album for bass players. It will teach you how to groove. Curtis Mayfield's album Superfly, has some superb groovy bass on it.

This is how you review a bass. Ed Friedland doing it right.

Of course, she is a pro bass player. In my experience, pro bass players are quite happy to keep down the low end and play the root note all night, if that is what is required. In my experience, diddly widdly bass players don't get much pro work. The guy I saw the other day at a jam, who slapped and popped his way through a segue of 3 U2 songs (I kid you not), spends most of the day waiting by his phone that never rings.

She wrote this note, for the super advanced, freeform jazz, bass soloists out there in Youtubeland, who didn't agree with her video. This is it: ' 'Note from Yonit: Hey everyone! Thanks for watching the video Just wanted to make a few clarifications! * This video is for beginner / intermediate bass players * Obviously, there’s exception to all my tips (which are not rules!) but these tips should help you when playing with your band. Of course you can play open strings if you can mute them (which is a difficult technique to master if you’re a beginner), of course you can play fills that are well practiced, on time, from the bottom to the very top of your neck and so on. * Always play the root - in the beginning of the bar - you can obviously play any chord tone / mode tone you want after. But not straight at the top. We establish the root and then venture out. Of course you can play inversions but that changes the chord, and you probably should make that decision with your band-members. * I may have said ‘never’ and ‘always’ but this is really me just trying to make a point, don’t take it too literally fellas * This can be applied in many genres, but mostly for mainstream genres such as pop, folk, rock, funk etc. Yes, if you’re playing a progressive-jazz-fusion-hardcore-metal song this might not be the video for you. * Here’s a 6 tip for the brave ones who read all of this - make music to be happier and have fun with other human beings. That’s the point of everything, including this video Peace, love and many low frequencies, Yonit'

Just received a lovely P bass from Rich. Excellent deal and great communication throughout. Buy with confidence.

The Fender logo looks undersized and the serial number looks oversized. It's worth £100, if that.

You were probably an obsessive teenager, as I was, when you got your first bass. The first song I played live was 'Alright Now' by Free. It took me forevers, squirrelled away in my bedroom, to get the tricky bassline in the solo. In fact I was still figuring it out about 5 mins before I went onstage. But this dude is 51, he's got better things to do than hide away in his bedroom for 6 months learning 2112.

Learn to play with fingers and play along with some ZZ Top - which have some good simple basslines (I recommend you don't start with Rush).

Hmmmm.....from my experience using them, tapewounds don't do treble. Sounds like he's looking for hi end that just isn't there.

Hmmmm......the piece of kit that made the biggest difference to my sound, is the John East J-Retro. It's so very versatile and lets you get the sound you want through any amp.