Franticsmurf

Foot tapping is the norm for me. During energetic numbers I may well get caught up in the groove and move about. If one of the guitarists is going for it I may join in if it's appropriate (I wouldn't want to steal his thunder). If I'm doing BVs, I'll move back and forth to the mic. Recently I've had a couple of bass solos spots and I'm stationary during them but afterwards the relief of getting it right means I bounce a little more than usual. 😀

Enjoy the ride. 😀

Hi Jack.

Hi Jan, welcome.

Surely not? 🤣

I have several... ok, I have seven basses (but I'm in control and can stop at anytime 😀) but for the last year I've been using my Stingray to develop my own sound. I like the basses I've got and some of them have pleasant memories attached so I probably wouldn't sell them on (and in any case, they're not worth much in cash terms) but I find myself playing them less and less in favour of the Ray. I like to have a spare bass at gigs and I tend to rotate the rest of the collection in that capacity. And if we're rehearsing without an imminent gig, I'll sometimes use one of the others just to make them feel loved.

This might help - round the back of a wedding venue several years ago. I needed some air after setting up and found the power supply for the whole marquee with the grey cloth wrapped around the connection. My RCD was already plugged in. 😲

It's a great pedal and currently the most expensive one I have on the board. 😀

It's only happened to me twice in my gigging career but it's great when it happens - worth more than the face value of the extra cash.

We went through a phase of all having the right set list, but the singer not following it, resulting in random song order and occasionally a song being started that wasn't on the list. Very annoying and a potential source of nerves - but then we found out he needed glasses but was reluctant to wear them on stage. The cure was a giant font set list and the occasional prompt from me. Sometimes with the headstock of my bass. 😀

Hi Mikey.

I've never encountered that problem but I'm thinking a shallow collar of gaffa tape or card to shade the LED? I guess it depends on the pedal layout.

Today I've been listening to 'Yessongs', the live album with quite a bit of Fragile on it. The whole band sounding really good and Squire's bass solo reminding me why I got interested in music in general and bass in particular.

I agree, and it's great that the choice has widened without too much compromise on sound quality. Coincidentally, last night I decided to put together an alternative board using small and cheap pedals - the idea being to experiment with sounds and set ups. I love trying out budget effects and I'm relatively new to the whole effects thing so I need to find out how things sound and how they fit in (or not) with the stuff the band is doing. Up until lockdown I was using an EH Chorus and that was it. Since then I've added a few little boxes and my current line up includes a Zoom MS60b and a Laney Digbeth preamp. But I like experimenting, and I have been collecting a few of the cheaper micro pedals, including a Mooer Octave and Nux Sculpture compressor. Last week I bought a new delay pedal from Amazon for £9.99! (If you go looking, its branded 'Olycism'). It's never going to make it to a recording but it will provide me with slapback echo. And that set me thinking that it would be great to have a baby board with several effects on it that I can play around with and swap and change and that won't require the sale of an internal organ to fund or a sack trolley to move about. As an aside, the board is an old off-cut of a 4" wide plastic fascia strip, covered with black masking tape. I've put a piece of non-slip matting on the floor side and strips of velcro on the pedal side.

Hi Mark, welcome. ...I play jazz. A lot. Most gigs, in fact. 😀

I think it might be down to a wide angle lens used on some of the shots, which exaggerates the neck and headstock.

I used to feel the same way. I saw a band onstage once and the bass player looked about the same height as me. His Precision looked far too big for him (particularly the headstock). Although I was a guitarist at the time, I was leaning towards picking up the bass as the band I was in was struggling to find a reliable one, while we'd had plenty of interest from guitarists better than me. The sight of that bass dwarfing that player put me off. Years later, I found out from a mutual friend that the bassist in question was shorter than my 5'7" and around the same time I discovered headless basses. I now play a Sterling Ray34HH and don't care if it looks too big on me (I don't think it does) as there are many other things that people will pick on first - grey hair, white beard, dodgy wardrobe, inconsistent backing vocals.... 😀

In a former life as a guitarist, I was once told at the end of the version of 'Another Brick in the Wall' that "David Gilmour wouldn't have played it like that." To which I had to own up and admit that I wasn't David Gilmour. Rock star name snobbery? 😀

I think there may be many contributing factors, but the psychological element is definitely there. I have done it myself and I've learnt not to rely on a great rehearsal being an excuse to wing it on the night. In fact, I actively look for any areas to improve my performance during any rehearsal as strategy for dealing with the over confidence a good rehearsal can bring. Equally, I've experienced the 'great gig, we don't need to rehearse' approach which inevitably leads to performances we'd rather forget.

For years my criteria for a bass guitar were that it had to be affordable and versatile, i.e. suitable for a range of genres as the band I was in played all sorts of songs and all sorts of gigs. We were mostly in pubs to start with and the acoustics were almost always dodgy, so the sound was secondary. For the first 12 years of my bass gigging 'career', I didn't own any new basses and hadn't paid more than about £250 for the ones I had. As the gigs got better (and as I improved as a bass player) I started to invest in the sound aspect; better amp and speakers and a new Epiphone EB0. Finally I decided to buy a 'decent' instrument (a Sterling Ray34HH). I've never experienced bass snobbery although I've seen guitar snobbery aimed at our guitarist and on one occasion a case of band snobbery - we were gigging in a pub and another band was watching. Halfway through the set they decided to critique our backline for some reason. After a while our singer engaged with them along the lines of 'what's the matter guys'? to which the response was something like 'we'd never gig with that old kit'. So he asked them where they were gigging tonight. And where they were gigging tomorrow night. And next week. They walked off and later the landlord explained that they rehearsed in the pub but never actually played any gigs.

Hi Adrien. 😀

Hi Rib. 😀

I started using a headless bass for exactly the same reason. 😀

I am fortunate that I don't suffer from performance nerves. Being your own worst critic is probably the main cause of performance nerves but the reality is that most people watching can't tell if you've made a mistake unless you signpost it. I learned this quite early and although I still self analyse, I now use it to improve my playing. I found this approach really helped. I find things outside my control are the usual sources of anxiety. Finding the gig, dealing with the venue and leaving afterwards without any hassle from drunken punters are particular favourites. More recently 'will the singer get the song arrangement right' has been a concern. 😀

We had to 'let someone go' once. I was chosen as the bearer of the news and rang him up to explain (generally poor attitude and specifically refusing to play an encore at a nicely paid club gig because he didn't like the song). It wasn't pleasant, mainly because he hadn't seen it coming and was upset, but we owed him the courtesy of a phone call. Years later I met him again at one of our gigs and he ended up taking photos for us. It's always good to take a professional attitude, deal with issues early and regardless of the problem, treat the person as you would want to be treated.