Band practice last night had several things go wrong only to turn into (probably) our best practice yet. New vocalist wasn’t going to be able to make it, and there was a problem with our reservation of our usual practice space.
So we ended up practicing in the middle of my taproom (we’re closed Mondays), and I took over vocals for the evening. We joked that it was our “first bar gig”, there just wasn’t an audience.
First time doing a whole practice of me singing vocals while playing bass, and I ended up doing way better than I expected to with it. Simplified some of the bass lines a little but, but probably not noticeably to anyone but me. It was a really interesting experiment of just what my muscle-memory skills are on bass.
First time we’ve attempted this, and I’ve heard much worse:
I’m doing a lot of homework lately so working on covers hasn’t been my focus but I’ve got the meat of it done for next lesson (I just need to compose something original off of a track he gave me ). I cut loose a little tonight and worked on Summertime Rolls by Jane’s addiction. That’s a riff I’ve noodled on almost since I picked up my first bass but it’s a PITA to play through. It’s just the one riff but it’s all played on the E and G string with quite a bit of 5 fret stretching and wrist contorting in other parts. No problem playing it at speed, just a bit of sore wrist after a few play throughs. I might end up recording that one, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get through it tbh. I’ll take the win for tonight.
When I started playing bass, I set three “target” songs that I wanted to build up to as my skills progress. I just managed to get the first of those three:
“If You Want Me to Stay” by Sly and the Family Stone.
Not trying to play it anywhere near the original. This is going to be an ongoing project to continually hone. But I understand it well enough to play it at tempo with appropriate feeling and character.
Next targets are “Rio” and “Roundabout”. Those are farther off, especially since they are very specific lines.
I hope this helps. I had this transcribed and for a discount you allow him to post it on his public page (this link). Tab is included. 2 versions. Standard tuning (which was sped up on the recording) and tuning which emulates the recording…
Good band practice yesterday. We’d had 3 weeks off with it being some rough weeks for a couple of us. So the songs we’d practiced were kind of rusty.
However, we were doing more jamming and it really felt like things were clicking, and we were really functioning as a trio. All actually listening to each other and trading ideas.
Lots of times I felt like I was really leading things with the Power Of Bass. Able to either push the energy forward or pull the dynamics back based on how I was playing. Really milking some whole notes.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the problems we were having with our singer, lateness, not learning the songs etc.
Anyway, this evening, we had a practice session with a new singer. She seemed to gel pretty well with us, had some great ideas of songs we could do and managed to sing the songs we’d agreed for this session pretty damn well.
All in all, I’ll take that as a great bass evening!
Things have been improving slowly but surely, and I really feel that after 3 months with a band, that has upped my game significantly. The first live gig last Sunday, went really good and we have 5 more here in June/July.
I feel much more confident, that I’ve even told my bass teacher if any of the other school bands needs a bass player, I’m down. He was very happy to hear that, since like most places, we are in short supply. Bass life is good atm.
If you like blues music, you could consider joining the School of Blues next year. It’s probably a bit late for this year as it only goes from January to July
I’m used to practicing with headphones and using the HX One to change the tone to fit the song.
Played the full set list through my new amp/cab setup tonight and have had to rewrite the HX settings for lots of songs. What sounds good in the headphones doesn’t always translate to the cab. The learning never stops.
Really enjoying the new setup of two 12" cabs.
Looking forward to being told to turn it down (I obviously won’t turn down as it’s a charity fundraiser and I’m giving my time for free )
Something I learned from our guitarist was to use a free decibel meter on my phone to ensure that all the patches are the same level when you switch between them.
We got rid of our not very good male singer and kept our very good female singer in the band.
She’s added in some of the songs from her solo sets into our set list.
One of which is a super simple bass line that’s great to play with a solid singer. We played it last night and it’s fun playing simple stuff kids! It makes you look better than you are
Started practice session with the drummer walking in and complementing our guitar player on his playing, because he nailed the tone from one of the songs so well, that he legit thought it was the recording over the speakers.
Warming up, guitarist was playing around with effects. The drummer commented, “That sounds kinda like Tool…” and then we launched into a Tool inspired jam. Which was stupidly fun for me, because it was just dialing in a bunch of reverb and chorus, and then like slapping the open E string and finding cool chords to play over the top.
Started rehearsing with wife(guitar + vocals), a drummer and another guitarrist some blues and we got a somewhat decent jam going… not so much on memorizing songs… but progressing has been working nicely.
I got surprised that I adapted really quickly to the drummer and managed to pick back up when I messed up.
Has been interesting… even some practicing at home.
). I cut loose a little tonight and worked on Summertime Rolls by Jane’s addiction. That’s a riff I’ve noodled on almost since I picked up my first bass but it’s a PITA to play through. It’s just the one riff but it’s all played on the E and G string with quite a bit of 5 fret stretching and wrist contorting in other parts. No problem playing it at speed, just a bit of sore wrist after a few play throughs. I might end up recording that one, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get through it tbh. I’ll take the win for tonight.
)
