Adventures In The Land Of The Preons
In December 2006 I began to rehearse with a new band called the preons. The band has been around for a few years and has released some music on CD. It’s a bit of a new experience for me since I’m playing bass in this setting. The music is an interesting mix of pop, rock, jazz and earnest folkiness. My first objective was to learn the existing material, so I transcribed the bass parts as recorded by the band’s former bassist. I consider it my responsibility to perform these parts very closely to the recorded versions.
We also started right in on some new material, which is coming along nicely. The band has an interesting collective musical sense that often manifests itself in unexpected chord substitutions and harmonic structure. One of my bandmates, Brad Nelson, is a friend from work who also has a degree in music. I’ve been impressed with his trumpet and keyboard playing, and it’s a lot of fun to play together.
Initially, I used only my fretted 5 string bass. But I’ve also been spending a lot of time playing fretless at home. There are a number of songs where I think fretless would work nicely, and I’m beginning to feel fairly confident about my intonation. It will be fun to see how this instrument works with the new material we are writing. At this point we don’t have any gigs on the schedule yet, but I think we’ll be starting to book shows fairly soon. The band’s myspace page has a good collection of comments from friends and fans, and I’m looking forward to their reaction to the new material.