Why is there no picture today? Read on and discover it would not add anything to the discussion. (I added the picture in 2023.)
The big push is on to get a working band and I think it obvious the major position this holds in my life. I must have music and bands. But, there is somethi>ng less visible to you. It is the great popularity of my music articles. It is definitely juicier material than you’ll find in the industry magazines. Because I will tell you what is screwed up. More to the point, I will talk the “business of music”, a topic they won’t touch. And these become some of my most-viewed articles. This blog began as a collection of articles. And unlike the guitarists of America, I am not an expert in music and am still learning. Here's Miss Miami getting ready to hop in my sidecar. Classy babe.
Where I readily understand the formulas of so many ccs and mls, JZ gets past those with some difficulty. One particular sentence typifies the chasm between our mental abilities. The sentence was, “. . . modifications to this procedure have been made over the years to improve specifity.”
To me, that is a nonsense statement unless one knows precisely what is meant by the single word, “specificity”. To JZ, the definition is not as important as knowing that it has been improved. The point is the dissimilarity of how our brains are wired. There are no doubt some who say all this is common knowledge and why am I even bothering to tell the tale? I say wrong, that is underestimating the point. JZ and I are not discussing sports scores or cake recipes. The dialog to which I refer is based on page 444 of an advanced medical text.
Education is supposed to “increase the probability of a consistent response”, yet no such phenomena is present—and that is the surprise. It strongly indicates that if both JZ and I had become doctors, we would not be merely different. One of us would be wrong. (The solution of course is that JZ treat the patient while I work in the lab.)
[Author's note 2023: this entry is unclear. The point being made here is how environment changes outcome. JZ and I are about the same in the IQ department, yet he would have passed the exam and I would have failed. It works like this. I would have have focused on learning what "specifity" meant. JZ, having been to medical school, would know the definition was not important because the exam would only ask if you knew there had been improvements.]
Yet a lab environment would show how nearly opposite things can get. We both look at the chart of lab personnel. I see there are nine departments and such. JZ right away sees the dotted lines I didn’t. They represent the “channels of communication”. To me, those would be determined by who in the lab is smart and who is less-than-smart. Even the appendix shows that around a fifth of the words are part of my everyday vocabulary where JZ never uses terms like parts per million, infrared, and standard error.
Therefore the remainder of today is connected to music. There are two addendums on the matter. I’d be lying to say anything else happened all day. A name for the band with Billie-Bill and I has been suggested: “Oil and Water”. That would be us, the band with two egos jockeying for position on one tiny, woefully inadequate stage. The title is fitting, as we are already having grinding disagreements over protocol. But I take credit that the issues get resolved rapidly, because it is a matter of record that I predicted the timing, the topics, and the outcome of each, which is the mark of a good manager.
You see, there is a combination of good musicianship and bad politics that, like a Laffer curve, has two points of failure, not just one. Thus we two have face-hardened resistance to musical losers, but different tolerance levels—and mine is not the lower. If that isn’t clear, think of it this way. Billie-Bill is concerned with how much you’ve learned, I am concerned with how fast you learned it. To Billie-Bill, Clapton is a hero, to me Clapton is just another gronk who got lucky. Billie-Bill can name all the “greats”, I have yet to meet someone who became a success by doing so.
Also, I am quite willing to let anyone who wants to sit down to watch me learn a new song on the bass. Yet I know that most guitar players would rather croak than reveal how slow they are at picking up a song. Picking up a song, ha-ha. And I’d like to hang the next guitarist who says to the bass player, “This song is easy, it is only G and A.” (It shows you what a stinky attitude they have and how little appreciation they have about what bass playing is all about.)
So why bother? Because the path of least resistance makes for crooked rivers and crooked men. What Billie-Bill and I do have is an emerging song list second to none. Oil and water.
ADDENDUM
This totally concerns the hardships of forming a music band. Don’t continue if such things are of no interest to you. We have around 25 songs ready to go and a place to play. I believe the obvious conflict in our styles can be parlayed into a great stage act.
And the phone starts ringing. The shutdown at Buddy’s was also a surprise to the bands booked there through the end of February. It’s not a nice situation and, music- and business-wise, there are not that many men left standing. There are now exceedingly limited prospects for any musician in town. Edgar, the Saturday Karaoke guy, is going to be looking for work, and he has a full-time rock blues band on hold. Each club closure now sends a ripple through the music community. Even a lounge musician like me has been reduced to playing bars and saloons for quite a few years now.
Well shut my mouth, just moments after I wrote the above, Billie-Bill calls. He was one of the bookings over there. Does this mean we’ll have to scrounge for work? Yep, unless one has reality problems, it means things are decidedly worse. I have to work my advantages and one of them is that I am (or was) an accredited cost management accountant. Bands can only undercut each other down to the level of about the $60 per night, then they are taking a loss. It is from what accountants call “sunk costs”. But you don’t have to know all that, just focus on that $60 lower limit.
Play [a gig] for less, and you [as a guitarist] are losing—unless, unless, hmmmm. Unless you can get your own costs below that. If I wanted to put on a guitar show right how, I’d have to shell out around a thousand bucks for basic, no-frills, equipment. Guitar, mic, stands, PA, cables, batteries, and boxes to keep it all in. And I’d need a way to move this gear around. To make a long story short, I’m off to Guitar Center to take another look at another acoustic bass. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? There might be more money to be made playing barber shops than bars.
[Author’s note: on a strict competitive basis, I am probably the worst enemy a solo guitarist could have. You see, by playing for tips only, I essentially work for “nothing”. But my “nothing” is repeatedly more money than I ever made in a guitar-led band. To them, “nothing” represents the ultimate undercut. That which guitarists loathe as a sell-out has no such connotations to me or any proper musician. Our costs are low because we are playing music, not pedals, whammy bars, and “40th anniversary” Fenders.]
ADDENDUM, revisited.
I checked out the acoustic basses at the music store. This time I was hypercritical on design and performance rather than sound. Last time I was concerned about relative volumes and tones, this time I was looking for my money’s worth. Testing every model in the sound room from the $389 Dean to the $1,449 Martin, I did not find a winner. Instead, I found a “family” of problems across all the designs. For openers, not one had the solid slide action of my Danelectro Longhorn, the bass I’ve played for eleven years since the first time I picked it up.
Nor was there much difference over the price range. They all had neck dive, fret rattle, and the truss rods were not set right. I suspect the truss rods are purposely left loose but there is no excuse for bad neck design. Except for the hardware, my Danelectro is right off the shelf, so good bass design was possible years ago. These new instruments are lacking. I conclude I’m encountering a new “generation” of acoustic bass designs following some kind of trend out there that I’m unfamiliar with.
Don’t confund (col.) fret rattle with fret buzz, which is a result of bad “action”. Fret rattle is the tendency of the strings to rattle even when you’ve found the so-called sweet spot. It is a noise due to that tiny moment just before and after your finger pressure lands the note. And please don’t tell me it is natural, since on a well-made bass like my Danelectro, you actually have to force it to make that noise. I suspect all of these newer offerings are built on guitar jigs and use guitar parts wherever possible. (As opposed to jigs designed for the bass.)
Lending evidence to this principle was the fact I could not find any acoustic basses with a short scale neck. Yet these necks are plentiful as they are used on the Fender Bronco. (Fender destroys the advantage of a short neck by sticking to their too-heavy pegs and club-like head (the wooden part where the pegs are mounted).) Other tell-tale signs these basses are not original engineering is the presence of guitar garbage like pick guards and active pickups (that will not pass a signal unless a battery is installed).
I don’t think I my search for an acoustic bass has even begun.
