Tonight I managed to get in a double-workout, in anticipation of spending the next few days out of town. I figured it would be a good idea to do multiple muscle groups to make sure I finish my workout plan for the week. What I didn’t count on was being so universally sore… man I’m moving slow tonight. However, I did hit a nice milestone; I maxed out the weight range on the Bowflex dumbells on one exercise, so now I’ll start using the big macho chrome ones. It’ll be fun next week to get back to it. It’s surprising how quickly I became a daily workout convert and advocate… my friends and co-workers are generously tolerant of my regular “get thee to a gym” encouragement. Until three months ago I probably hadn’t been in a weight room more than a dozen times. Now I spend five days a week there, and find it strangely satisfying. As cults go, this one seems pretty good so far.
Last night I had my first official bass lesson. It took some research and calling around to find a teacher, but I am quite satisfied with my first lesson, and this seems like it will be a good fit for my needs. We spent an hour playing through some material and talking about my objectives. My teacher was well prepared and had put together some material for me to work on, including scale / arpeggio exercises and an accompaniment CD to practice against.
In terms of mechanical diagnostics, I was pleasantly surprised that my right and left hand techniques were deemed pretty decent. Thus far I have been using the same basic right hand techniques that I learned while studying classical guitar; in terms of finger style, this is the “rest stroke” and the “free stroke”. For thumb techniques I use a fairly standard approach that I derived from observation of Victor Wooten, Les Claypool, Larry Graham, and Booty Collins. I had more confidence in my left hand, since my guitar technique is more directly transferable to bass. One of my challenges on fretless will be to develop accurate muscle memory for finger position.
The real challenge in working on bass is determining the direction I’d like to go. Without a doubt, I’m interested in studying the styles of Tony Levin, Mick Karn, Bill Laswell and Bootsy Collins. These are the players who are most directly responsible for my interest in playing bass. In the process of analyzing these greats, I’ll probably explore some related artists. Beyond that, I am interested in developing sufficient chops that I could confidently sit in on jazz gigs. Good heavens… I’m thinking I want to be a jazz bassist… it’s just a matter of time before I get a beret and start smoking a pipe.
Last night we had a fairly productive band practice, even though one of our members is currently in Uganda (!). Three of us worked through our current set of live material, focusing on timing and a few tricky rhythmic passages, then we had a go at some new stuff as well. I continue to be impressed with Brad’s musicianship. He always has good musical ideas and plays them beautifully.
We’ll continue to practice without Josh for another few weeks, which will give us more opportunities to work on new ideas. Hopefully we’ll have some pleaseant surprises for him when he returns.
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My Bands
The search for an instrument teacher can be time-consuming. I suppose if I was a beginning student it would be a lot easier. As a reasonably experienced guitarist who is learning to play bass, the challenge is finding a teacher who (1) doesn’t regard this as a strange move and (2) can deliver some guidance in the right direction.
Today I contacted a local teacher to set up an initial meeting. This is the third bass instructor to be “interviewed”. To speed things up I’ve declared my bass influences; one of the absolute requirements for any instructor is that he has to appreciate Tony Levin and Mick Karn. This is what I mean by “in the right direction”… I want a teacher who is willing to help me analyze and internalize the individual style of the musicians that I like.
Most fretless players / teachers get all hung up on Jaco Pastorius, and they assume that anyone with a fretless bass should swim those jazzy seas. I do recognize that he was a brilliant player, but honestly I’ve never heard anything by him that really moved me. Maybe it’s my world-music leanings. At any rate, I’m cautiously optimistic that I will begin lessons next week, and that is exciting.
Well, today I received the first issue of my new Bass Player magazine subscription. After years of subscribing to Guitar Player, I didn’t renew, instead opting for the low-note sibling magazing. As quipped by a good friend of mine (in a decent Darth Vader impression) “Your journey to the Dark Side is now complete…”.
I still don’t consider myself to be nearly as proficient on the instrument as I am on guitar. For one thing, I tend to think and play like a guitarist, so my bass playing isn’t quite as idiomatic as I’d like it to be. But I do feel that I’m making strides on the instrument and look forward to digging in to some lessons with a local teacher.
So for the moment I’ve stashed my guitar Jedi robe in the hall closet. Even if the Dark Side isn’t more powerful, at least the bad guys tend to wear much cooler black outfits.
As part of the Florida trip, we spent a little time visiting two of the Disney World parks: The Magic Kingdom and Disney-MGM Studios. They both have charm and plenty of fun. The Magic Kingdom is a pretty large park and was very crowded. We arrived early enough to get a few rides in before the long lines formed. By the end of the day, we had hit a number of the prime attractions: Space Mountain (twice), Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Mad Tea Party, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Enchanted Tiki Room (naturally!), Stitch’s Great Escape, The Barnstormer at Goofy’s Wiseacre Farm, The Jungle Cruise and the Hall of Presidents. Much to my dismay, the Haunted Mansion was closed for renovation. We did stay for the obligatory night time parade and fireworks, followed by the mass park exodus tourist stampede.
Regardless of what anyone may way, the Magic Kingdom is really fabulous and a lot of fun. It would impossible to thoroughly explore this place in a single day. The lines are pretty well managed, and the longest we waited for anything was our second run on Space Mountain, which involved about 80 minutes of standing around. The Disney “fast pass” system is great, and it saved us hours that would have been spent in line.
The next morning we made our way over to Disney-MGM Studios. Owing to some clever planning and the use of the “fast pass” system, We did the Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster (twice), the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (twice), Star Tours, the Journey into Narnia backlot tour, and then left to catch our flight home. The Tower of Terror was the best ride of the trip.
Last weekend we undertook a little vacation to Florida to attend a wedding, but we also did some tourist activities including a visit to Gatorland. It’s a 110 acre park with innumerable birds, thousands of crocodiles and alligators, a few snakes, scorpions, turtles and a bear. I found it to be a satisfying and interesting place to visit, and even managed to wrestle an alligator (which sounds much more daring than it actually is). Everyone at the park seemed to really enjoy the attractions. Disney World and the other theme parks are more spectacular in terms of production, but there is something undeniably fascinating about seeing live animals in a natural setting. Especially when the animals are large, scaly, and have sharp nasty pointy teeth.
Read the rest of this article for more pictures.
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The Police arrived at a perfect time in my musical education. I was interested in punk, new wave, and reggae. Somehow they gracefully balanced these musical styles and found commercial success in the process. Unquestionably, the band did groundbreaking work in the late 70s and early 80s with their defining albums “Outlandos D’Amour” (1978), “Regatta De Blanc” (1979), “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980), “Ghost In The Machine” (1981), and “Synchronicity” (1983). I saw them in concert twice during that period and was impressed with their performances.
During the last 25 years, the band has basically been inert. The three members have pursued their own paths and explored new artistic forms. I once attended a symposium on “Scoring for Film”, at which a panel of composers spoke about the challenges and rewards of writing music for movies. Stuart Copeland was one of the panelists, and while I enjoyed his comments, it was much more entertaining to speak with him afterwards about the experience of playing live music.
When The Police decided to reunite for a tour I was skeptical but optimistic. Tickets for the Seattle shows sold out very quickly and scalping immediately ensued. I didn’t manage to get tickets until the day before the second show, and that was only through very good fortune and the kindness of a wonderful friend. Our seats were great and the show was a lot of fun.
Read the rest of this post for my review…
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“Hey what’s that?” was how it began. My friend (and fellow Preon) Brad was sporting a cool new backpack today. It turned out to be a very interesting and well-designed LowePro camera bag. It hangs like an ergonomic messenger bag across the body, and with a quick movement, slides around the front to sit horizontally. This model is called the “Slingshot” and it certainly fits. Brad happens to have the same model camera as I do, so it’s clear this is a good fit. he bought it as a local camera store yesterday. Fifteen minutes later we were headed down to that same camera store so I get buy one as well. It’s the perfect size for traveling with my camera, and one of the really nice benefits of this design is that it doesn’t look like a camera bag. To the casual observer, this is just a small daypack, which is hugely important for security.
No wonder Digital Photo named it “best camera accessory” in their Practical Photography Gear of the Year issue.
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