I had a rough night but am feeling fairly recovered today. Normal service will resume shortly. However, checking through my emails, I saw that Andy had sent me a report on last weekend’s Deep to Deep that fills in some of the blanks on my own report:
First of all a big thanks to all those who came to the Deep To Deep day in Newport last Saturday, I think it was a very successful day all round and I’m looking forward to the next one, so somebody hurry up and sort one out!
Here’s a short run down on the day
We began with introductions, there were a few newcomers there who were not on the Churchbass list so it was good to see that my efforts at local promotion had not gone unnoticed.
To kick off the day I asked a couple of the guys to talk about their custom basses.
Firstly Nigel Hodge who has recently taken delivery of his custom built short scale bass built in the USA by Birdsong. A truly beautiful instrument which Nigel has recently restrung with Black Beauties, giving it a dark, woody tone. He particularly wanted a short scale bass and found it difficult to get anything of any quality on the UK, so an internet search led him to Birdsong and his bass is only the third Birdsong bass in the UK.
Next Matthew Foote introduced us to his pair of seven-string Seis. I for one was thrilled with these, astonishingly beautiful pieces of work extremely playable and with fantastic tones, coupled with a pair of Accugroove cabs these basses were the Rolls Royces of the day.
Next we moved on to look at a couple of new songs and I played the group a song called ‘Sing Of The Lord’s Goodness’ by Ernest Sands, Nigel played the melody on flute and we all had a crack at it. it’s an unusual song because it’s in 5/4 but it’s gone down well in our church. Then Gareth from Newport City Church played us a couple of Israel Haughton tunes.
At this point Les, Wulf and Richard arrived, slightly late due to traffic so we stopped for a cuppa and jammed together a bit more.
Time for lunch.
Les Hollingberry gave us a demo of the Tascam Bass Trainer, a handy bit of kit for learning new pieces and then we had a DVD session using Norm Stockton’s ‘Grooving For Heaven’, Norm looked at the art of jamming and then Wulf expanded on this with his own ideas. Next we had another DVD session from Todd Johnson’s ‘Technique Builders’, in which Todd looked at some basic tips for holding the instrument in a position which will give you the best control and will avoid strain on the wrist muscles. it was at this point that I realised I was doing everything wrong according to Todd’s method, no wonder my wrists are always aching (have to work on that one!)
The afternoon wound up with some informal jamming and general trying out of everybody’s kit. It was good to see a wide range of players of all abilities at the day and I hope we managed to give everybody something of value to take home and work on.
You can check out a pic of everyone on my Facebook page, I’ve got more pics that I’ll be posting soon
Thanks Andy! He has also sent me lots more pictures, which I will add to my Flickr collection over the next few days (and one from Richard as well).
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