Category Archives: News

My iPad

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Did I already mention that I love the iPad? A great gadget, especially for a musician. I’ve copied PDFs of all my Real Books and other sheet music to the iPad, so I don’t need to bring tons of books to rehearsals or gigs anymore.

But much more convinient and versatile than the Real Book PDFs is Massimo Biolcati’s iPhone App iRealBook (which I already have recommended here before). It has been updated recently to an universal app, so it now makes use of the full screen size of the iPad. I prefer the landscape view over the portrait view, because you always have the song list handy on the left side.

Making good things even better isn’t easy. But with version 3.0, iRealBook has got a player feature, which I really like. The player creates surprisingly good play along accompaniments for all the library songs (more than 900) and properly formatted user created songs in iRealBook. Don’t expect a really natural sounding band – but compared to my old Band-in-a-Box software, the “iRealBook Band” really swings and the instruments sound less artificial.

Bass2010

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In 3 days, the international double bass convention Bass2010 at Berlin/Germany will open the doors. I’ve just downloaded the schedule: 6 days, packed with concerts, recitals, masterclasses, sessions. And packed with meeting and talking to with many, many interesting people. I hope to find time to post some news from there here at my webblog, as well as at Twitter.
I’m looking forward to an exciting week at Berlin!

Flying with the double bass

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The American Federation of Musicians is gathering signatures on a petition to urge Congress to adopt uniform rules for musicians to carry on or check their instruments aboard U.S. planes.
To view the bill as currently written, go to http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s1451/text.
Section 713 “Transporting Musical Instruments” a.(3) provides for instruments too large to be carried into the cabin to be checked without additional charge (!), maximum combined linear measurements 150 inches, and maximum weight 165 pounds. You’ll have to sign in and create an account in order to sign the petition.

[via doublebassblog.org,  International Society of Bassists]

gear review: PJB Bass Cub

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Phil Jones Bass CubIt’s really fun to carry the Bass Cub in it’s gigbag. 6 kg seem to me as almost no weight at all, compared to my other amps. I think you can’t built a bass amp much smaller and lighter than this.

Like all PJB amps, the Bass Cub has an high impedance input (4 MOhm in this case), which makes it suitable for piezo pickups, and uses speakers with 5″ diameter only.

Last weekend, I tried out the Bass Cub on an outdoor gig, on the streets of a friend’s hometown which had 750th anniversary (the village, not the friend, of course ;-). The overall volume of the Bass Cub was absolutely sufficient for this band (double bass + three guitars/voice/bluesharp). But due to the lack of room acoustics (no room at all … just a tent to protect us against the rain), the bass reproduction was rather weak. For a gig like this, a larger cabinet is the better choice.

Back home, I tried the Bass Cub in my rehearsal room. As expected, the bass frequencies sounded much more powerful there. I’ve put the Bass Cub on the floor, and moved it around in the room. With the amp facing a room’s corner, with aprox. 1 m distance to the wall, it sounded best.

Conclusion: the Bass Cub offers a amazingly good “size-to-sound”-ratio, which makes it a very transportable amp rehearsals or gigs in small clubs. The Stereo input was designed to plug-in a drum machine or iPod – very useful for practising. With preamp-out and DI out, the Bass Cub can also be used on larger stages – as preamp and/or stage monitor with FOH, or with an active speaker cabinet.

Links: Technical data, www.kontrabass-atelier.de

AAJ Jazz Awards 2010

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The Jazz Journalists Association has announced this year’s winners of the Jazz Awards 2010. Bassist of the year 2010 is Dave Holland; other nominees in this category are Ron Carter, Charlie Haden, Christian McBride and John Patitucci. In the category “Up & Coming Artist of the Year”, composer Darcy James Argue won the award – but: two young bassplayers are among the nominees: Linda Oh and Esperanza Spalding.