It turned out that the anticipated dep couldn’t make it to this afternoon’s gig Charnwood Concert Band gig in Queen’s Park because thy had their own visit to the emergency room. Instead of helping the dep navigate the charts, I ended up singing the bass part to a lot of the songs to thicken up the bottom end. I cheated a little and put my mic through an octaver so the resulting sound was down in the same territory as bass guitar would have been. I was a little selective on where I joined in – no point drowning out bari sax or bass clarinet when they were holding the line securely – but it worked pretty well.

I can’t wait to get back to “string bass” and I’ll probably be taking my tuba to rehearsals for the next few weeks but it is good to have discovered another option to cover the low end.