| The New Bass /Band Rehearsal No.2 |
[Oct. 13th, 2004|08:07 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Meadow/The Phone Call - (hed) pe | ] |
Busy, busy, busy - and no time to write so I have a number of entries to make. I've been in Amsterdam for a long weekend and I'll write about that in a bit but I've also been busy playing my new bass. Yes, it finally came!
The New Bass
It's a beautiful thing as you can see:
And of course the important this is it sounds absolutely gorgeous - I've always loved the sound of fretless basses cos they have a much rounder sound and this does not disappoint! Of course I now need a decent amp to play it through ;-) My little practice amp just doesn't do it justice.
The 32" scale is much shorter than I thought it would be - it makes the whole bass look really tiny, specially as it has a small body anyway. But it does make it easier to play - well for certain values of the word easy. Which leads me nicely onto...
Band Rehearsal No.2
It appear to be a widely held belief that the second rehearsal will never go as good as the first (assuming the first went ok ;-) Well as far as the other's are concerned the second rehearsal went great - as well going through the 3 songs we rehearsed last time we got 2 more songs down. For me, however it was extremely hard work and really no fun at all as I had to spend the entire 3 hours staring at my fingers or I played horribly out of tune. So no cuing the drummer, no grinning at the guitarist, just staring at my fingers and trying to put them in the right place. I'm aware I will, with practice, be able to play without looking at my fingers once the muscles remember what they should be doing. But for now, it's hell :-( Ah well, practice makes perfect... |
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| Girls and basses |
[Sep. 23rd, 2004|01:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The wind in the trees and the hum of the eMac's fan | ] |
So what is it about girls and bass guitars? I was thinking this for the nth time yesterday as I lugged around my heavy old bass and my boyfriend bounced down the road ahead of me with his guitar. There are a lot of female bass-players out there and there must be a reason for it.
So naturally I googled 'female bass player' - this page was the first to catch my eye ("hi, female bass guitarist needed to play in a talented progressive rock/metal band with a special twist mixed in. preferably between the ages of 16-20 she needs to have good looks (and image), she needs to be able to play a bass guitar reasonably well"). Hmmm, the plot thickens. Do they just want a female eye-candy member of their band and happen not to already have a bass player or is it the female bass player thing again? Is a bass sexier than a guitar? Maybe they're just all very shallow women?
This was the next interesting one (thread topic "Female Bass Players" in a forum) - mainly because the thread has been deleted *intrigued*. It's in "bass humor and gig stories" so I'm assuming it was offensive but it's made me curious (I'm also very hard to offend). Anyone got an offensive joke about female bass-players I'm all ears.
Bass Guitar Magazine tell me 8% of their readers are female which quite frankly I think is pathetic but Better Guitar's readers seem to be only 7% female so maybe that's the kind of percentage I should be expecting. But female guitarists in bands are even rarer than female bass players. So they must all be playing solo (or in their bedrooms) *confused*.
OK, maybe I should open this one up - why don't girls play guitar? Obviously not strictly true as I have know female guitarists but in general there appear to be far, far more men playing guitar than women. WHY?
Aha. The googling has paid off. Finally someone who has noticed this phenomenon as well. According to Annabelle Magazine, "pretty girls make bands" although it doesn't explain why it has to be the bass player that is the pretty girl. Or what happens if the bass player is merely a plain girl. Well, we shall see, innit ;-) |
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| Finally - a band to call my own... |
[Sep. 22nd, 2004|11:57 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Unrockbar - Die Ärzte | ] |
In spite of having played the bass since I was 15 I have only been in a band once before - at 16 with a bunch of 14 year old boys...
Now at last I have a band to call my own and we had our first rehersal which went surprisingly well. Luckily the three of us actually playing instruments (well ok, the two of us and the drummer) can actually play ok and had learned the songs beforehand so it all fell together nicely.
It was so nice to play LOUD for once - having only ever really played through my little practice amp it was quite an experience for me to play through some big fuck-off cab. And so much easier when you can actually hear yourself without having to thump the bloody thing. Of course when my new bass comes (this beautiful Warwick Corvette but in red, fretless, no markings, 32" scale *bounces with excitment*) it will be even more fun but I try not to think about it too much cos I get overexcited and it's not likely to be ready for another 2 weeks. Oh I wish I were more patient!
We are playing an interesting mix of pop and metal at the moment - the initial idea is 'pop covers in a punk style' but it remains to be seen how that ends up being interpreted. I'll admit it sounds like it could be a bit dodgy but I have every faith we will \m/ ROCK \m/ - bear with me on this one and I'll keep you posted on our progress. We just have to learn some more songs now so we can get a gig. *bigger bounce* I'm excited as you might be able to tell... |
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| Photos from Hungerford Bridge |
[Sep. 14th, 2004|10:36 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Criminal World - David Bowie | ] |
Right. I think I've got them reduced to a reasonable size so here goes...
Here is my first blurry shot looking east(ish). I hadn't realised at this point it was that bad cos of the tiny screen... I think it's quite pretty though.
I have more, but I'm starting to relealise I'm going to need a table to get these photos looking ok - I am too ill to start thinking about writing serious HTML I reckon ;-) I'll come back to it...
Why doesn't XJournal pick the artist from iTunes as well as the song? Criminal World is my favourite song off Let's Dance which my boyfriend recently bought for me - I used to own it years ago and lost the tape (!) which seeing as it was a tape is probably just as well... |
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| Pet Shop Boys' Battleship Potemkin |
[Sep. 13th, 2004|08:32 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | sick | ] |
| [ | music |
| | None | ] |
In spite of being ill last night (and today - I have a horrible cold :-( ) I dragged myself to Trafalgar Square to see the Pet Shop Boys and the Dresdner Symphoniker perform their new Soundtrack to Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.
And I thoroughly enjoyed it - I might be a little biased having been a Pet Shop Boys fan for as long as I can remember but I think they have done well with it. I have never seen Battleship Potemkin before so I would like to see it with another soundtrack to see how it contrasts and I am looking forward to the CD coming out - I hope they release it on DVD with the film as well - so I can have another listen...
I took some photos but they all came out a bit blurry - I don't think I've quite got the hang of the camera yet ;-)
I got some interesting ones crossing Hungerford Bridge though - improved by their blurriness I think ;-) I've got to find a way to reduce the size of the pictures first and my brain isn't working too well at the moment. I'm sure I'm just being stupid here... |
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| First post |
[Sep. 10th, 2004|12:17 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Barbie Girl | ] |
Amazingly, I'm awake and it's a quarter past midnight - usually I am falling asleep by 11:30...
So I'm writing my first post - and Xjournal decides to tell the world the last thing I listened to was Barbie Girl. Yes, it's true - and I've learned it on the bass as well ;-)
I'll go off and work out how this thing works, and find myself an avatar and be back when I have something vaguely interesting to say I suppose... |
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onebadmouse's journal
tired
