I love all the warm messages. I thought I’d follow up now that it’s been 6 months since I answered the ad.
I’m LOVING this music. I bought a bass to play punk. I had no idea I’d fall in love with jazz so quickly. It’s complex and difficult, but I’ve seen HUGE progress in my playing in the past 6 months. I don’t think I would be where I’m at if I hadn’t answered the ad.
The keys player (who hired me) has been an amazing jazz mentor and though he doesn’t know much about bass, he’s introduced me to all sorts of jazz concepts and taught me the theory along the way. I got super lucky.
We have our first “gig” coming up at the end of October. It’s a house party for friends and family, but we are treating it like a very real gig. I’ll check back in some day when I have more to share.
We haven’t fully fleshed that out yet, but here’s the songs we’ve worked on and are considering:
Just the Two Of Us, Black Orpheus, Road Song, Wave, Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars, Blue Bossa, Georgia On My Mind, My Funny Valentine, Sunny, What a Wonderful World, Moonflower, Once I Loved, Desafinado, Fly Me To the Moon, Autumn Leaves, and an original or two.
We play very few of these as written. The bossas we play pretty straight. Most things we try to “funk up” a bit. My favorite is Georgia with a slow funk groove.
Thanks CD,
Always interested in set list choices, especially groups with an instrumental focus. Here’s our set list that started with easy arrangements to get me ‘back in shape’ after a 50 year bass-playing hiatus…
Original, Peter Gunn (if good enough for ELP and Jeff Beck it was good enough for me), Madison Time (from the Jude Law/Johnnie Walker video), Watermelon Man, So What, Day Tripper, Morning Dance, Original, No Mercy For Me, Human Nature.
Obviously not bar band material… been there/done that/ won’t do it again. This time it’s for fun, playing music we want to play, even if it means booking and promoting our own performance dates and funding studio time for a CD. We did both with no goal of fame or fortune, just playing music that makes us smile.
Love your “terrified to best time” adventure. Lead the way. It’s an inspiration for others.
Congratulations! Your story is very inspiring and uplifting! It seems playing with others is a boost on learning. And it is interesting that though you started learning bass to play punk, you are learning and playing jazz and enjoying it.
I don’t have yet personal experience with playing with others, and I only started learning bass a few months ago. But my taste in music has broadened a lot lately. If the bass line is interesting, I can have fun with playing funky grooves. To give a context, my favourite genres are postpunk, grunge and rock. But bass create bridges leading anywhere, whenever the bass line is good!
That’s what I thought when I read that But I think you can change the “little boring”-impression into “quite easy and providing the opportunity to focus on other stuff and enjoy differently”-attitude.
We are looking for a drummer and decided to record some demos for prospects to hear and see if they’d be a good fit for us.
I’m pretty happy with my playing here. It’s a bit too repetitive and I want to change it up some on the repeats, but overall I think I did okay. This was the second take and I don’t believe anything needed to be corrected for timing. There’s probably some compression making my plucking sound more consistent. I’m not sure. I didn’t ask my band mate what he did to mix this.
Impressive first effort. I discovered Brazilian music through Stan Getz, and became a big fan of João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim, and many other Brazilian artists.
As an aside, I discovered the Brazilian band Uakti (pronounced something like “wah-KA-chi”), a side project for group of professional orchestra musicians who use regional and self-made instruments, from hearing this song as a backing track to the closing credits for Rush’s Rush in Rio concert video.
Your story is very inspiring and uplifting! It seems playing with others is a boost on learning. And it is interesting that though you started learning bass to play punk, you are learning and playing jazz and enjoying it.
But I think you can change the “little boring”-impression into “quite easy and providing the opportunity to focus on other stuff and enjoy differently”-attitude.
