Yesterday saw the October 2008 Deep to Deep gathering for Christian bassists at Hither Green Baptist Church. It was a small, select and wonderful group; I was joined by Graham, Matthew and Mike as well as Leo, the drummer from my church.

The fact that we were a small group who know each other well and are all pretty experienced players meant we spent a fair amount of time jamming around on various tunes from the worship repertoire as well as one or two bouts of just making it up as we went along. You will have to take my word for it that it sounded quite musical most of the time – I should have been following the advice Mike was giving in his session about recording and snagged it for posterity!

As well as that, I showed off my Stagg electric upright bass and explained some of the things I have learnt in the months since I acquired it – about coping with the scale and tension of the strings and also about keeping things simple and drawing on the beautiful timbre of the instrument rather than relying on fast licks to bring life to the music. I think this range of instruments will make upright playing accessible for many more bassists.

Thanks to those who came down for the meeting and I look forward to the next one (probably somewhere round spring 2009), big or small. Meanwhile, do take a look at my pictures from the day. Not all of them are as blurry as the one above (which was just meant to be for checking the light level but I liked the way it came out).

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