the-anonymous-bassist

[the-anonymous-bassist]

The Seven Deadly Sins (Part One).

Long time, no post, my apologies.

This is part one of two interesting lists I've put together. This one cover the Seven Deadly Sins of bass playing, the next one will cover musicians in general, because we are quite a sensitive lot, and emotionally we are all around 11 years old. So without further ado, here is the first Deadly list.

1. Last minute string change.

For crying out loud, do not change your strings 2 f*cking hours before a gig, you raging simpleton! Do it at least a couple of days beforehand, and play the bass as much as possible between the change and the gig. Otherwise, you will be permanently attached to your tuner throughout the gig, constantly fighting the tuning.

2. Don't let anyone touch.

I've seen this a lot, and it's truly shocking. Guitarists adjusting the bass players amp EQ during the set. Just don't. F*ck off, and keep f*cking off, and when you get there, f*ck off some more. Twat.

3. Trying new toys onstage.

And no, I don't mean those kind of toys.

We all love new gear, especially pedals. But please play with them and learn to use them BEFORE the gig, not at the gig. It's a really simple concept guys.

4. Worst case scenario.

Be prepared, said the boy scouts marching song. Never assume it is always going to go well at a gig. If possible, bring a back up bass, as swapping basses is quicker than changing a string, batteries, cables, etc. Really saves agro and you look more professional (apparently).

5. Don't succumb to peer pressure.

Don't always believe what you read. Just because you are a bass player, doesn't mean you have to act like a total dork (horrible generic stereotype popularised by the general populace).

'Oh, I'll just stand quietly at the back, just doing my regular thing".

F*ck that, own the f*cking stage! Be confident, be fun, be assertive. You are just as important as anyone else on that stage, embrace it! F*cking blow their socks off.

6. Don't forget to listen.

Listen to your drummer. Sure, he maybe be dribbling and eyeing up 6 different woman, but locking in with them is SO f*cking important.

7. People will hate.

Human nature has a tendency to hate what we don't know, or don't have.

People will throw negativity at you for your playing, because they don't understand it, or can't do it. So they will mock you.

But don't let hecklers and peasants get to you. You'll forget about them when you leave, and they'll forget about you. It's not worth it. Petty jealous dicks. This one is sort of connected to Part Two, as you will see.

Right, Part Two coming soon

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Finding your tone.

This is going to be impossible...

As you develop as a musician, you will naturally have a bias towards a certain sound, or tone, be if from the guitar itself, or the amp, effects pedals, whatever.

9 times out of 10, this is predominantly influenced by listening to other bassists. The idols you aspire to be just like when you grow up.

For as long as I've been playing, I've always favoured a "modern" sound. What the f**k is a "modern" sound I hear you cry. Well, it's basically lots of low end, and lots of top, not a great deal of mid. It's the swiss army knife of tone. Fingerstyle, pick, slap all work on this setting. But, things have changed.

I recently sold my Sterling Sub Ray5, and bought a Squier Vintage Modified Jazz Bass V instead. The Sterling was too much. It was an active bass, and with the bass boosted all the way, it was muddy, unresponsive and could cause serious harm to your digestive system and underpants.

So, the Jazz has a much more "classic" tone, very middy and poppy, very typical Jazz Bass tone.

My go to bass for the last 4 years(!) has been my Squier Classic Vibe 70's Precision Bass, which doles out classic soul sounds in spades, but can easily cover the "modern" sound. And before that was the Squier Classic Vibe 50's Precision Bass (I'm slowly working through the decades....)

The Jazz, is a seriously different animal. It's pulling me towards the 70's disco and funk tones. And I'm loving it.

Not so bass heavy, bit more mid, slightly less top end. This is making me change how I set the amp up too. My amp has a 5 band EQ, and I used to use all of the bands, except for the mid. Now, I only use the bass, mid and treble, and let the Jazz's natural tone shine through. And it's had an effect on my playing too. I'm playing almost staccato style with my fingers. I must be getting old...

Anyway, just goes to show that just when you're comfortable, and got it all figured out, something comes along and slaps you silly.

Until next time.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Jam Nights

Jam nights, in my opinion, are a great idea. It means that people who aren't in a band, for whatever reason, get the chance to go out and play with other musicians in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

What's not to like about that situation?

I attend a local jam night fairly regularly, as it is a blues jam, a style I'm not overly familiar with. The band who run it are very friendly and nice guys, I've known the drummer over 10 years, and they don't take themselves at all seriously. It's supposed to be fun, right?

Now, there isn't much of a system in place, you turn up, you go up as and when you when you feel like it, you play 2 or 3 songs, and then you come off stage again. Very laid back.

I went this week, and I had a good time, until right at the end.

A regular attendee, who is quite an arrogant pr*ck, seems to enjoy ignoring the general idea of a jam.

He turned up, proceeded to tell everyone they were wrong about various subjects, including myself, and then insisted he had certain people on stage with him.

He had brought his own set list for f*ck sake! When the previous drummer said he was happy to carry on playing, he had a proper diva tantrum, shouting "I need a drummer who knows what he's playing", and when another guy tried to calm him down, he said "f*ck it, I'm not doing it" and threw his bass on the floor.

This is completely against the whole idea of a jam! You all get up, have a go, and hopefully it sounds like a song. The biggest problem with it is that it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. There were a few new people there and I can only imagine what they were thinking about it all.

He eventually agreed to play with that drummer, and then he proceeded to mangle the Timewarp. My cue to leave I think....

Until next time.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Choosing the right amp for you.

Well, this is fun, isn't it?

You're in a music shop, looking at the vast array of bass amps thinking "They all look the same".

True, they do. I'm not going to lie, bass amp shopping is a dull as a weekend visit to an elderly relative's house.

The problem is, they all do pretty much the same thing, or do they?

When I started out, I was using a Trace Elliott Commando 100 watt combo. A bomb proof, idiot proof, solid workhorse, but it wasn't loud enough. It had a single 12 inch speaker, that a had to replace more than once during my time with it, so it was boomy, with no real definition.

So, when I went shopping for a replacement, I was pointed towards Ashdown Engineering, and thank god I was. It's all I have used for the last 10 years. This time I went for a 300 watt combo, with four 10 inch speakers.

10's are very popular these days, and it's easy to see why. In multiples, they have more than enough bowel worrying rumble, but they have tons of mid range pop, so notes are clear, they ring out and don't get lost in the mix. Great for slap or fast basslines using a plectrum.

But, and this is an Olympic sized but, take your chosen bass with you when you try out an amp. Amps and guitars need to get on. They need to gel with each other. Like a bad relationship, a mismatched guitar/amp pairing will end up with one of them crying, and the other one having the kids every other Saturday.

My two basses for example, one absolutely sings through my amp, the other, not so much, so naturally I favour one over the other. It's odd, but trust me on this. I've seen it happen too many times.

I recently went guitar shopping with a good friend of mine, who was getting serious with his playing, so he did a load of research on guitars and amps, and narrowed it down to 3 guitars and one amp.

Not one of those 3 guitars sounded amazing through the amp, so we tried 3 or 4 more. Still nothing, so we changed amp. Getting better, I thought. Then the last guitar he tried sounded like f*cking angels having a orgy through this amp, and that was it. Sold, done, do you take cash?

So, after that rather sizeable ramble, the moral is try every amp under the sun, as some do have some very nifty features these days, but do it with YOUR guitar. It will seriously make a difference.

Until next time.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Guitar Maintenance

Yes, it's that time to finally dip into the wild roller-coaster ride that is guitar maintenence. Hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen, you are in for a rip roaring time.

Looking after a bass guitar is in many ways similar to looking after a guitar, they are, in essence, the same instrument.

The beauty of bass guitar is in buying strings. A lot of bassists don't like the sound of brand new strings, myself included, so we tend to leave them on for as long as possible, so they sound dull, and don't ring out as much. I buy strings for my bass every 6 months, maybe? The downside is bass strings are significantly more expensive than guitar strings. A pack of guitar strings can cost as little as £6, where as the cheapest bass strings I have bought were £15. Some can cost up to £40. For four strings. Ok, they are as thick as telegraph wires, but still.

My preference is for Rotosound strings, a fairly heavy gauge, on both my basses. Made in the UK! #proud. These are between £20-£25, depending on where you buy them from.

Some bassists go to the extreme of boiling their old strings in hot water with vinegar, but this, from a scientific point of view, won't increase the lifespan of the strings. The process removes all the dead skin and finger grease (yummy!), but it won't stop them stretching.

Strings have a fair amount of elasticity when they are new, and can adapt to the riggers of being re-tuned constantly, but as they get older the natural elasticity of the metal starts to disappear. The become harder and harder to keep in tune. But, whatever helps you save the wonga.

Other areas of interest on this whirlwind tour include intonation and action, done at the bridge and with the truss rod, which is a dark art only to be practiced by a licensed magician, and wiring maintenance. Wiring is kind of my thing, so I'm more than happy to whip out my soldering iron when needed. I've swapped out pickups in an hour, as on a P bass especially, it's two wires. Cripes, where is my wiring diagram!

Last of all is cleaning. Lots and lots of cleaning.

Every time I change strings, I give the neck a wipe down as it will be covered in FingerPoo®, a disgusting concoction of dead skin and sweat. It kills strings in no time so the neck needs treating like some sort of biochemical hazard. My bass also has a lot of chrome on it, I mean A LOT, and it getting covered in greasy fingerprints every gig means even more cleaning.

So there you go, a whistle stop tour in keeping a bass guitar alive. Told you it would be a thrilling adventure, didn't I?

Until next time.

AB

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Cancellations.

So, for the second time running, a pub has cancelled our gig.

Why?

No idea. Honestly, we have no idea why. The pub cancelled 4 days before the gig. 4 f*cking days. What a joke. We were told that we should have been told 3 weeks ago.

Funny, we didn't get any phone call.

Now, we don't mind if a pub has to cancel. We get it. Sh*t happens. But at least have the common decency to a) give us plenty of notice, and b) tell us the truth. With enough notice, we could perhaps organise another gig. Instead, we had a practice instead. So not a complete waste of our time.

Someone suggested we start charging deposits for pub gigs (we do for weddings and birthdays). In theory a sound idea, but here's the problem.

When we get hired for a wedding or another big event, we have been asked because they want us specifically, so we can charge a deposit. With a pub, if we start to make those sort of demands, they have a massive list of bands to choose from who won't ask for one, and the work starts to dry up for us. Simple as that.

A pub is a business, and it wants a product for its money. We turn up, play, and we get paid. Now, we start asking for money up front, even a small percentage, then there is nothing stopping us from not turning up. The pub is out of pocket, and cannot get another band in with such late notice (not that we would do that, but I'm sure there are people out there who would).

So, we take the cancellation on the chin, and decide if we reschedule or not bother with that pub again. In this case, we won't be going back. Oh well, their loss.

Until next time.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Rough gigs

So this weekend, my band played at a wedding. Fairly normal stuff usually, but this one had some horrible stipulations from the venue.

We had to use their P. A.

Oh good f*cking christ.

We've done this only once before, but it went fairly well, until demand number two reared its ugly head.

The drummer had to use an electric drum kit.

Just f*cking shoot us now. We are extremely fortunate to have one available to us, but what if we hadn't? What then? This was a point raised by my wife when we had discussed this gig and I simply didn't have an answer.

The set up was thus. The P. A. was installed in the ceiling of a marquee, and we had to be plugged into a xlr junction box, consisting of just two jacks (and, which I might add, looked like it had been installed by my son, who is 4). The reason for the stipulation is that they had a decibel meter installed. I don't know why, there wasn't a house for literal miles and a combine harvester in an adjacent field was making more noise than we could.

With no scope for equalisation, I suggested we bring our P. A. desk so we could mix levels and EQ.

In the end we ended up bringing the desk, our foldback monitor and both our amps, mainly so we could hear ourselves and provide a decent tone.

Now, I will admit, me and the guitarist were a little naughty and ran our amps a little louder than we should have. Tough titties. You want a semi pro band at a wedding? They need to make some noise.

We had one poor guy, clearly a muso, who kept looking at the desk at our levels. When a song ended he asked me if we could up the drum level, and I told him we were not allowed to. He was dumbfounded. He proceeded to ask several members of the wedding party if this was true. Each time he received a solemn nod, and a quietly resigned yes.

The drumkit in question wasn't a stunner to put it mildly, but we couldn't run to buying a Roland TD20 for this one gig. The hi hat pad kept falling off, the hi hat control didn't work, and if the drummer was counting us in, him banging his sticks together was louder than the kit through this P. A.

All in all, the wedding party were more than satisfied with our efforts, but the drummer has stated that was the hardest gig he's ever done. Both me and the guitarist were extremely conscious of our sound and because we weren't getting the normal responses from our usually loud amps, we lost a ton of confidence. I could actually hear my bass strings acoustically over the volume of my amp and the P. A. combined. Says it all really.

Oh well. It's in the can, the client happy and we didn't have a full P. A. to pack down for a change. Every cloud has a silver lining.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Brand Snobbery

This for me is also a real bone of contention. Brand snobbery. There is just no need for it.

I've played many, many bass guitars over the years, but my heart belongs to Squier. Every Squier I have owned, at last count 4, well 5 if you include my Stratocaster, has been an absolute dream to play. Three Precision basses and one Jazz bass. I did own an American Series Fender Jazz for a couple of years, but it never felt right.

I bought the offending American when I tried to audition for a signed rock band. I was told I would need to get pro gear before they would consider me. At the time I was using a modified Squier Affinity P bass, the lowest model on the rung, and a very creaky, but reliable Trace Elliott combo.

I auditioned with them at an open jam night, and was promptly told that I wasn't good enough. Perhaps sub consciously I blamed the bass and that's why we never got on. And that's where my distaste of brand snobbery really started.

Up until then, like most young men, I lusted over Fenders and Gibsons, the more expensive, the better in my mind. Surely the massive price tag meant it was the best instrument in the world!

But after the American issue, I realised that actually, I can't assume that the most expensive are the best, and started to, you know, actually try a bass out properly in the shop.

I started with the Squier Affinity P as a present from my mother. Still going strong. I sold it to a friend only recently but it is still loved. Alongside this for a time was an Aria Acoustic fretless bass. My god what was I thinking?! That thing was horrific to play!

Moved onto the American, then an Epiphone EB3, which didn't even last a full day before the bridge unit popped clean out of the body, Squier Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz, that was long termed loaned to a friend in return for a Epiphone Embassy Standard IV, which had 24 frets! But was too light and the neck warped badly.

Back to Squier, this time a 50's CV Precision bass. Good god what a bass! A trip to America resulted in a impulse purchase of a Peavey Grind 6 string bass. Madness!

Then a 70's CV Precision bass. Again an absolute stunner. And finally, a dip in the world of 5 strings, a Sterling by Musicman Sub Series Stringray 5.

The clued up reader will note that all of these, bar one, was sub £400. Kind of says it all. Ok, some of them weren't brilliant, but the two I had real problems with were cheap, like really cheap, like less than £200 cheap. I think between £200-400 is a good ballpark. But if a guitar feels good, and sounds good, I'll buy it, regardless of who made it.

People don't tend to make fun of my "cheapo" models these days because they can hear that it sounds good, and Squier's quality has sky rocketed, but way back when, if they saw the Squier logo, they had already made the assumption that it would sound like sh*te and that you weren't a real professional. Again, very closed minded. Fo shame.

So, buy the best FOR YOU. Not the latest or the shiniest, but they one that fits you. A good guitar should fit you like a tailored suit.

Until next time.

AB.

[the-anonymous-bassist]

Bass guitar is boring, right?

The first thing I want to get off my chest is...playing bass is NOT boring!

Nor is it easier than guitar. These are the two classic comments I have received over the years, along with insinuations that bassists are thick as pig sh*t and can only just remember how to play the root note.

This awful attitude greatly angers me, and many other bassists I know. Of course, in polite conversation I laugh and joke, then point out that without the bassist, the musical house you are trying to build will collapse, taking you all with it.

On the face of it, that does sound like a very egotistical statement from the "quiet, weird one at the back who isn't doing very much". But if you have a modicum of musical knowledge, you will know that it is true.

The bassist is a halfway house. Having a foot in the rhythm side with the drummer, and the other foot with the guitarist, providing the actual musical back bone for everyone else. They hold it all together.

Having had several years of piano lessons, I have a very healthy level of musical theory wedged in my brain, and I have found that 10 times, no, a 100 times more useful as a bassist, than as a guitarist. A solid right hand (or left for you really weird types. A lefty bassist?! How totally unimaginable) for holding a rhythm down helps too.

So that brings me to the "it's easier than guitar" statement. Well sure, it has two less strings, must be easier, right? Hell no! When a guitarist wants to let fly and indulge in some guitar w*nkery as I call it, you can throw out a solo, modifying pacing, rhythms and the like at your pleasure and it will fit beautifully, 9 times out of 10. Of course a guitar solo still needs to fit into the rhythm of the song, but they are afforded a lot more flexibility.

With the low end, extended runs and the like, need to be subtle, totally fit the timing and pace of the piece, and most importantly of all, still support the other musicians, musically speaking. Trust me, you'll notice a bassist screw up a flashy fill more than a guitarist throwing in a few "uniquely phrased" passages.

So, you might be asking yourself, why would anyone want to play bass? We never get laid and we don't have a single original musical thought of our own. If I got given a pound for every singer, guitarist or drummer who thought that way about us, I wouldn't be typing this from my rented house.

For me, and several other bassists I know, playing it is one of the best things you can do legally. That magical moment you gel with a drummer, and the rhythm section is tighter than a nun's chuff. It's a strange feeling of power and responsibility. Basically the musical glue. If you haven't got your sh*t together, the whole thing is done for.

The reason the derogatory comments get to me is because it clearly shows that some musicians just don't get how important each part is needed, and don't understand fundamental musical ideas. But hey, their loss.

I will leave you with a famous quote from Pete Townshend when talking about The Doors:

"Never trust a band without a bass player"

AB

[the-anonymous-bassist]

An Introduction.

Well hello there.

This blog is designed to be a platform to inform and inspire would be performers into the behind the scenes reality of being a rock star (not that I am a rock star, but I do a damn fine impression of one!).

I want to show it as it is. The highs and lows. Everything.

I hope to cover a multitude of subjects, from the horrendously mundane task of instrument maintenance, to fighting sometimes ridiculously crippling stage fright.

Let's start at the beginning.

I have been playing bass for nearly 20 years, starting at school as what I thought was a logical progression from the guitar. From the first time I held my first bass, a Squier Affinity P Bass, I knew it was the instrument for me.

Playing bass for various recordings for other students, to performing in musicals in the backing band, I honed my skills. After school ended, I joined several bands, with very limited success. My first "serious" band, at the tender age of 18, was an alternative metal band and we played one gig of 5 original numbers to a less than enthusiastic audience of about 14 people.

The band didn't last long after that.

After a looooonng period not playing live, I joined a fledgling covers/function band. I hadn't been idle in the interim period, spending my time writing and recording solo demos, unusual covers and some altogether embarrassing songs.

The band has now been together 8 glorious years.

We are a very popular local band, doing numerous weddings, birthdays, retirement parties and more. And that brings us up to date.

I will post fairly regularly, with tidbits, frustrations and triumphs as they happen.

Oh, and the reason for the anonymity is because I will be airing personal opinions of mine about people, technique, venues etc that may cause offence to people I know. So, I'm being a grade A chicken and hiding my true identity. I will also not be using the real names of people and places for the same reason.

Until then, keep rocking!

AB