Bass Diva

I did a fill-in gig last night, where I was a replacement bass player for a band that plays heavy, original music. This genre seems to attract egotistical, self-centred musicians (using that term extremely loosely). Why did I do the gig? I only know of two gigging bass players in town who use five-string basses, and I'm one of them. The other is the regular player for this band, who couldn't make the gig. The singer is a friend of mine, so she asked me to help and I said yes. It's certainly not my genre of choice, but I can appreciate the music and have no problem with being able to play it.

Egotism in musicians is one thing I cannot stand. Arrogance about your chosen genre and your playing just cut you off from the rest of the musical world. That's why these guys form such a clique - they've got nobody else left who wants to talk to them.

I got the CD on Monday night. I asked for charts - why should I go about working something out from a recording when these guys know it already? They wrote it. Okay. So Thursday night is when I get handed a few pages of tablature of the riffs. No rhythms, no form, just a bunch of numbers. To me a chart is a sketch of the chord structure and a form showing the order of sections of the song. So basically the tablatures were handy for what the riffs actually were, but I was still at square one with everything else.

There was a full rehearsal with the band set for Saturday afternoon, with the gig Saturday night. In true last minute form I worked out the songs Saturday morning. I turn up to the rehearsal completely prepared.

I sit there and watch them fart-ass about setting up. [Tick, tick, tick.]

Both guitarists make eye contact with each other, but the only band member to look at me is the singer. Cues, anybody? I asked for them at the start, with specifics of where I'd need them. But no. [Tick, tick.]

The singer stops the band: "Is Vic playing the right bit in this verse?"
The guitarist: "Nuh"
Thanks for letting the singer point that out, asshole. You should have communicated with me there. [and the Bass Diva time bomb is set to explode]

"Oh yeah we do another song. It's really simple. Just follow along."
..."Oh yeah there's a bass solo in it."
So, Bass Diva is right on exploding point. What do you want the solo over? Verse or Chorus as you've got them so far?
"Whatever, man. Just make it up."

I left my explosion until after the rehearsal and the singer copped the full brunt of it. I'll keep it simple here - "arrogant fuckwits" "guitarheads" and "better things to do with my time even though they might not" was the guts of the explosion.

So I did the gig. Did my job, played well. Had fair few comments about how good it was from people in the audience. And did not recieve one thankyou from the band. Not one member. I don't think they even said goodbye when they left.

Was it worth it? I earned a total of fourty fucking dollars for all of the shit. But I know one thing now:

There is no place for arrogant cunts in my life.

Guitar Party Tricks

For those of you who can't watch the YouTube (sorry Dive) here's brief idea: Harmonics being played with the nose and tongue, and five people playing one guitar all at once. Worth a watch!

Also worth checking out on YouTube is Andy McKee. The pieces I've seen him do involve two hand tapping on an acoustic guitar, as well as incorporating a tapped drum beat. It's amazing to think about the melody and rhythm parts interlocking and have both represented so well.

I was intrigued by Andy McKee's style and decided that since I've never really freed up my right arm enough to tap the body of the guitar while I'm playing, I might as well have a go and learn now. It can only be good for me! So I was mucking around yesterday with the idea while a student was about to arrive. He walked in to me bashing out a basic rock beat on the guitar body with my right hand and tapping out Smoke on the Water with my left. Raised eyebrows.

Guitar Pieces

Currently I'm working on:

1) A piece called Partita by Australian composer Roland Chadwick. It's fairly easy going and fits under your fingers nicely, so I'm about two thirds of the way through - of course leaving the beasty bits until last. It's listed as an AMusA piece by the http://www.ameb.edu.au/about/about.htm">AMEB, but I think it shouldn't be graded as that difficult. Maybe there are some nasty little nuances that I'm skipping in learning it.

2) Midnight by Joe Satriani. For anyone who skipped out on the eighties guitar god thing, this is from the definitive album Surfing with the Alien. It's all done by tapping the strings and isn't that difficult except for the speed. I've never really bothered with it before and thought I'd do it now just for the hell of it.