BenTunnicliffe

Green Flower Street is one of my favourite lines of all time. Brilliant album.

Pretty mental rendition and brilliant in it's own right (IMHO) but I find it hard to detach my opinion from my experiences of thoroughly enjoying playing through the tune as slugishly slow as possible so I think i'll stick to listening to the original. The guitar playing reminded me of some of the JazzPistols stuff especially the live video of them playing Spain on youtube in terms of the way the sound and lines sat within a rather intense and modern sounding drum and bass rhythm section. Cheers for sharing the link Derren, Ben.

Although expensive any headphones designed for the monitoring of audio in a studio enviroment and mixing etc would be more than clear enough and will have a wide/low enough frequency response to hear what you play. That said they ARE expensive though (we're talking a good shade over £100 and then waaaay up) but I've been happily using Sennheiser HD465's and used to have a pair of HD437's (the latter feeling very breakable) to practise in hotels or late at night/early in t'morn just with my bass going into a mixer and it's more than enough at a sensible volume. It might be worth pointing out I don't have a hugely bass-heavy tone most of the time and that I like volumes pretty much as low as possible if it can be done. They're not as expensive as the specifically designed studio monitoring headphones by a long shot. I don't have much experience in this but I'd imagine without spending a big wadd of cash you'd be hard pushed to find a set of the small in-ear phones that give a audible, strong low-end without cranking up the volume. That said I have a friend who uses Bose in-ear headphones all the time and says the bass is more than enough. [url="http://www.dv247.com/headphones/studio-headphones/"]Link here to a selection of the more expensive studio/monitoring headphones that'd do the job.[/url] Hope that helps, Ben.

Cheers Paul, hope Drymbago are doing well; missed you at the Uni ball a month or so ago! Just a quick mention that I was recently informed I was lucky enough to get a positive named mention in the July edition of fROOTS magazine as part of a review of Y Glerorfa's 2009 album! Scanned the whole article and put it on my blog and I've typed it out there too over at.... [url="http://bentunnicliffe.tumblr.com/"]http://bentunnicliffe.tumblr.com/[/url] "Added spice comes in the form of songs and some heavy duty clog dancing; the fiddlers and harpers fleshed out with Welsh pipes and flutes and a lightly funky bass guitar - huge thumbs up Ben Tunnicliffe." Cheers guys.

A huge and well deserved 'Nice One Mate!' You're more than entitled to bragging rights!

Did you post the Absolution ones and a couple from Origin of Symmetry on Talkbass at one point? If they are the same transcriptions then thanks a lot, you've done a brilliant job and I printed each one I found off and have ran them through without finding anything needing correcting and will certainly be printing the remainder of Origin of Symmetry. Awesome stuff, nice one. Ben.

Absolutely brilliant insight there OldGit, thanks very much. I'm working on a website myself with a web designer and being able to go in with a more sturdy idea of things to pick his brains about or what should definately go into the layouts and designs can never be a bad thing. Cheers, Ben.

Paul's just down the road from me really and I've worked with him occassionally over on Anglesey doing community music workshops and stuff, nice guy. Seeing Nathan play over in the Greek with Blewfish was a big thing for me when i was getting into groove-oriented improvised music, all of them amazing players. Lucky so-and-so is over in London now; I say 'lucky' but I know it's hard graft that's got him there rather than 4leaved clovers and horseshoes. I've seen a fair share of vids of Percy by now but really haven't found myself getting into any of it....bit too 'out there' for me but that video had a serious groove going on, reminded me of some of herbie hancock's stuff in quite a few ways. He does indeed go on this list of welsh bass players we've amassed by now though. Mabye this should get a thread of its own somwhere if there isn't one already

Great collection of stuff there and the pdf's I looked at quickly seemed nicely layed out. Can anyone comment on the accuracy? (haven't had a chance to check with my bass nor am I fully familiar with many of the tracks) Always a bit tricky figuring out what's what on a foreign-language site..... descargar='download'?

haha there's more of us around than we realise actually. I know Owen very well and a fantastic bass player he is too. There's also Nathan Williams who's currently endorsing cort and posts on here occassionally, incredible player. Not to mention we could possibly pull Pino out the bag in an argument if we wanted Glad to see i'm not the only guy in the area using the forum as well!

Diolch Tegs, rili'n licio'r tracia' ar y myspace - lwyth o egni ac cyfuniad o bod yn hynod o 'tight' ond yn 'raw' iawn hefyd. Good stuff! I can imagine to the non welsh-speakers reading here the above sentance is quite possibly a visual equivalent of the old drunkard from the Fast Show with his incomprehensible mumblings with the odd understandable phrase injected from time to time such as 'very, very drunk' or 'an enormous teapot'. Hope your band's doing well mate, it's great stuff. Cheers again, Ben.

I spent a hell of a lot of time (like a lot of people ahve already said about themselves) TRYING to emulate Jaco by listening to his records, buying the books, reading the charts and even going down similar avenues of education as him like I bough the book by Nikolas Slonimsky "Thesaurus of Melodic Scales and Patterns" to try and sound like the man himself. I gave up on this when I started to pretty much digg my head out of this initial honeymoon period of hearing him for the first time and also realising that his sound and playing style etc aren't very friendly for doing varied session work. You hear his influence in a lot of the session guys but trying to convince an engineer that a bridge pickup-only sound with brand new strings and a lot of honky mid will do the low-end good in a rock song is a pretty hard thing to do. Stopping emulating Jaco also was also helped by starting to listen to Victor Wooten and his contemporaries talking about being yourself and letting things come naturally. Bit of a rant but for me going through the Jaco stuff I got a nice basis for technique, insight into improvisation, rhythm, harmony and individualism but breaking out of that was equally beneficial in different ways with both these processes being hugely important to me. The more musicians I run this by the more of them I find did at one point have a phase of copying someone or another, infact a huge majority.

Well whatever your bag is in music I can assure you I've spent months playing music I've not necessarily dreamt of playing (to put it lightly) and that I'd happily swap my time to get back in an own-material band with a load of mates or for a nice studio session. I hope it comes 'round to you though Andy, you dont' sound too chuffed right now. Good luck!

Thanks ever so much mate, means more than you'll know. I can promise without hesitation if I had a chance to read through your musical CV there'd be a whole host of things I'd kill to have done or get the chance to do at some point. Thanks for the kind words, Hope everything you've got on the go's doing well. Ben.

Hi guys, Just a quick rundown of what I've done in the past and what I'm available for at the moment. (Sorry for rambling on a bit, hope it's not [i]too[/i] long.) RECENT UPDATE [11/08/10] - Last month I did a stint performing a licensed production of Billy Elliot on electric bass and in the July edition of fROOTS magazine was named and given a possitive comment as the bass player on an album I came in to record last year. I'm a bass guitarist (occassionally double on upright to a basic standard if need be) now with years experience performing and tutoring with a host of references available from a range of proffessionals including lecturers and MDs in the North Wales Area. I'm a strong sight reader (standard notation and charts) having done so for the recordings BBC's Last Choir Standing Finalists 'Glanaethwy's television series last year, a production of West Side Story the year before that, a modern interpretation of Handel's Massiah and a licensed production of Billy Elliot. Besides reading I have a history in jazz, rock, reggae, folk and a variety of covers bands developing a diverse repetoire of popular songs [list of standards or function covers perviously performed available]. I can confidently transcribe things on the fly by ear or happily take instructions on the fly to adjust accordingly if you generally don't work with charts or notation. My CV of gigs has taken me abroad to Sweden and France as well as all over the UK and October 2009 I was humbly lucky to be trusted with the privelidge of being asked to play as part of the accompaniment for a choir in the Albert Hall, London. I take pride in my attitiude, equipment, appearance and personality being proffessional but I'm not a dry old git by any means. If it helps in any way I'm a fluent welsh speaker, have experience academically and in-field with music technology and have an in-date CRB check. As a footnote I'm really not 'that guy' who turns up late, doesn't help pack and then buggers off with a smile without setting the gear down; I consider getting along and working with everyone to lug things around and all that just part of it and have yet to find anything I enjoy more than being amongst a group of people getting a kick out of music in the same way I do and managing to pull together to do the best for the piece or situation in question. Please don't hesitate to contact me directly via email unless you'd rather work through BC first, either's fine. [email protected] [i][b]I'm most interested at the moment in doing RECORDINGS, FUNCTIONS, THEATRE work and certainly DEPPING work encompasing any styles of music in any settings. I'm also interested in working on original material but appreciate that trying to orchestrate fortnightly, weekly or bi-weekly rehearsals with someone far away can prove an issue but I record all my rehearsals and notate them as a failsafe all the time to make that life easier for myself and everyone else. I'll make time as often as needed for anything that's offered and have no problem traveling a good distance for neither performances or rehearsals. I have my own transport and will comfortably travel to Leeds,Blackpool, Manchester,Liverpool, S.Wales and that general 200mile radius if need be.[/b][/i] Thanks very much for reading the above, hope it wasn't too long winded and that I can be of help in some way. Cheers, Ben. [email protected]

Hi guys, Having had a look at the version of the tune 'Skunk Funk' by the Brecker Brothers that is in one of the realbooks and then sighing dissapointedly at how inaccurate it is harmonically (the rhythm's pretty much spot on) I penciled a chart out this afternoon after playing around with it a bit. The tune almost completely runs from the top of the chart to the bottom over and over again on the album version with a break for a bit with the horns and the rhythm section (but not bass) slowly being added in before they just fall back into the section that starts with the repeat bar. I haven't been transcribing very long nor have I posted anything I have done on here in the past so I'd really appreciate your comments on readability and accuracy. Sorry it's scanned and in pencil, I haven't yet spent the time in learning to transfer hand-writen stuff into software in a way that's quicker than doing it by hand but I will in the future. Nice one guys, hope it suits! P.S. ignore the Segno symbol, wrote it in thinking i'd need it and forgot to rub it out before scanning it.

Me rocking out in Sweden, October 2007 or 2008 I can't remember....it was cold though.

Another +1 for Soundcloud. Some producer friends of mine have been talking on the phone about a latest effort whilst I've been there then said they'd post it on Soundcloud and without having to go off and make a cuppa they were both able to then hear the track in question and chat about it over the phone. The same guys actually discovered the website when it was recommended and being used by their uni lecturers on music tech courses to upload material etc so I can't imagine the bitrate etc is too bad bt I haven't checked myself so I wouldn't quote me on that. Hope that helps.

*Sorry, Bit of a rant here* Without trawling through the many valid replies to this thread to quote people I just see theory as another tool in a bag of tricks/arsenal/toolbelt or whatever you want to call it. Having a good ear that can hear things such as "oh we just went up a fret/semitone/halfstep/one metal line on my long wood thingy", when a chord goes from major to minor or things that to most us by now are very simple wether we know theory or not such as "oh sh*t we're in the chorus now....*moves hands accordingly* is a good tool to have but not everyone by far has this kind of hearing in music and the people who do develop it at different times in their playing. Being able to see patterns is a fantastic skill also but doesn't have to mean knowing theory. For instance in a huge list if not a majority of pop records or something like a blues learning a riff of notes as just a geometric pattern on the fretboard is far quicker than breaking it down into scale or chord degrees (R, m3, b7, #11) and as I believe in msot situations the faster you get stuff learnt or to a level of them being playable the more time you have to rehearse, or perform I would in a such instance take THAT approach. In a classical piece of music though there is a lot of patterns being played that are descending down a scale in which case if the music is being read from dots having the ability to VISUALLY spot such a pattern saves time, panicking and a lot of hastle. Also when a pattern of degrees is being applied to different chords of a scale (I, V, vi etc) being able to see this as a diatonic progression will save a lot of stress too. How we apply songs to memory or furthermore remember them is also soemthign that has many approaches. Some people will hear a new song as fragments of other things they've heard before, some people have perfect pitch and can play back verbatim, some people watch the other isntruments and apply what they see to their instrument and on the other side of the scale I know a good amount of musicians (a majority are from formal, classical or very structured learning kind of backgrounds such as brass bands or have had a number of lessons from someone with such a background) who almost refuse to play songs unless they're writen out in some form or another i.e. a chord chart or complete dots and just don't really apply things to memory. My overall view is that in any situation the more of these skills I have available to me then the more flexible I can be and ultimately get the job done. I enjoy listening to, playing along to, studying, recording and performing a very wide variety of music styles which is what's lead me to end up with this mentality. If you're thing is playing every weekend with some old friends in your (insert genre of choice here) band and that's what makes up 70% of your music collection the chances are you wont need ALL these skills by far and that without thinking about it you'll already have your own process with varying levels of music theory included in that. Frankly I was lead to teach myself music theory (i'm self taught) when I went through a good couple of years being besotted with Jaco and I'd heard he was a music theory buff and so I sent out to find, learn and apply all these scales and books he'd studied. From that I have all my diatonic harmony, scales, arpeggios, understanding of chord progressions, gave my hands a good workout and it really improved the way I can see a piece of music and it be something i can understand and draw from rather than listen, be amazed but have no idea how i'd approach trying to create something of that nature. A few years ago, after deciding that my aim was to play as much as possible to try and make a living out of it I sat down and decided to really concentrate on my reading music purely because I've been aware for a long time how little amount of bassists there are in North Wales who read dots and that if I could get to a level of being able to confidently play most charts thrown in front of me and thus be getting a larger run of the work available around here; it really has worked very well. No idea how to end this post so....yes....there's my 2p.