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Lightbulb joke...


knirirr

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Q: How many bassists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. The Pianist could do it with his left hand.

I'd not seen a band without a bass guitar or double bass perform live,  but I went to a jazz club in Prague last night and the pianist was indeed doing the bass with his left hand, having brought along a separate keyboard for the purpose. At one point he even took a bass solo whilst drinking beer with his right hand. Most odd and a bit of a disappointment although the music was good.

The piano and bass are shown in the attached photo taken during the interval.

 

 

IMG_1371.jpg

Edited by knirirr
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Many many years ago I saw The Alan Price Set at the Top Rank in sunny Donny, only it was winter, and one of their vehicles had an accident on the way.  So they arrived without drummer and bassist.

So as not to let the crowd down, they recruited the house band's drummer, and AP played the bass part on keyboard, at the same time as singing, playing keys, and leading the drummer.

Brilliant.

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Slightly OT, I saw Jimmie Vaughan supporting Eric Clapton at the RAH a few years back. No bassist, just the Hammond player using pedals. Sound wasn’t great for me , and really missed something. Also saw Stevie Winwood in Sheffield with his superb Brazilian band, and the same thing again. Maybe you just get used to the sound of a bass guitar underpinning everything?

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7 hours ago, casapete said:

Slightly OT, I saw Jimmie Vaughan supporting Eric Clapton at the RAH a few years back. No bassist, just the Hammond player using pedals. Sound wasn’t great for me , and really missed something. Also saw Stevie Winwood in Sheffield with his superb Brazilian band, and the same thing again. Maybe you just get used to the sound of a bass guitar underpinning everything?

The keyboard did sound a bit like organ pedals, and from a distance a little like a fretted bass guitar; it took me a while to work out what was going on.

On recordings I have the organ pedals sound reasonable.

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8 hours ago, casapete said:

No bassist, just the Hammond player using pedals. Sound wasn’t great for me , and really missed something.

Aye, it's more like short drones innit. Also, most of the time these people have never learnt to play the organ pedals at a professional level, and they tend to keep it simple - mostly using one foot only.

That said, on many organs, especially from the seventies and later, it was perfectly possible for the organ to produce bass-resembling sounds, but of course the organ players still were no bass players.

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I've seen the Matt Schofield trio a couple of times, a British Blues band.  Keyboard player definitely thinks like a bass player.  I was astonished at how he could play some complex and syncopated bass lines whilst soloing on the keys.

 

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1 hour ago, Chezz55 said:

The Doors didn't have a bass guitarist - Ray Manzarek (keyboards) used a Fender 'Piano Bass', which IIRC was about 1.5 octaves.  And they recorded some pretty good music ! !

Chris

They didn't use a bass player for gigs but they had a few session men on some of the original albums

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Went to see Cadillac Three live last year, and tho they comprise a guitar/vocals, drummer and lap-steel player, I'd presumed they'd have a dep bassist for live work. Nope - the lap steel did the bass stuff - it was going into two or three Orange stacks, and sounded fantastic...

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6 hours ago, Muzz said:

Went to see Cadillac Three live last year, and tho they comprise a guitar/vocals, drummer and lap-steel player, I'd presumed they'd have a dep bassist for live work. Nope - the lap steel did the bass stuff - it was going into two or three Orange stacks, and sounded fantastic...

Kelby Ray was their bass player in their previous line-up as American Bang (worth checking out if you like their music). 

"I split the sound from my lap steel into 2 parts. One goes through some effects into a guitar amp, the other goes through some effects into a bass amp."

Full interview here:

http://thinkcountrymusic.com/whats-new/kelby-rae/

 

Edited by josie
minor typo
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6 hours ago, Paul S said:

I've seen the Matt Schofield trio a couple of times, a British Blues band.  Keyboard player definitely thinks like a bass player.  I was astonished at how he could play some complex and syncopated bass lines whilst soloing on the keys.

 

Was going to mention Matt Schofield. They are such a talented band but when I've seen them I'm always left thinking they would be so much better with a bass in there.

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9 hours ago, gjones said:

Bah humbug.

I'm an easy going kind of guy but I can get very irritated when keyboard players go anywhere near the bass end of their keyboard, when I'm playing. Two musicians playing the bassline, is one too many.

It’s when any two musicians try to operate in the same region when they aren’t listening to each other. I once played in a band with two guitarists, it was horrendous. Neither of them could agree on who was going to play what and it was just a sonic mush. 

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5 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

The late great Jimmy Smith played all the bass parts with his feet on his Hammond. Very tasty bass parts they were, too.

Indeed; this one is a particular favourite:

I can't quite work out all of the bassline though.

Of course, this would allow for a "None; the organist could do it with his feet" variation of the joke.

Edited by knirirr
Fixed a typo.
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