I did a Stick bass gig today. The children's librarian at the Denton North Branch Library was kind enough to invite me to play, and my boss was kind enough to let me off work, to do this.

Our librarian played guitar and ukelele, and swapped guitar off with another librarian, and that woman's daughter played viola. The room sounded great. We played at 11:00 a.m., and showed up an hour before to go through the tunes: "Hello Everybody", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Bingo", "Row row row your boat", and a handful of other tunes, one of which I played conga for. We had puppets for a few songs, and read out of books in between some of the numbers. Some of the books were written to be sung.

We had 41 adults and 51 kids there. Mostly moms, but a couple of dads. They were a beautiful crowd.

I'd planned on having arrangements ready, but my computer died the night before and that was that. So I had to wing it. There was only one tune with a 6-2-5-1 in it (Bingo), and the rest was very 4-5-1 or 5-4-1. I tried to keep it simple, but once I felt confident I took the bass lines a little farther afield, with linear triads to connect the chords, and occasionally shadowing the melody, and shifting octaves. It was fun!

I used my Roland Cube Street - not a recommended amp for this gig, but I was too tired, and too hurried, and my back hurt too much, to bring my SWR. I played about as loud as you might expect to hear out of an upright bass.

Oh, one thing: my Stick is tuned down a whole step, so I had to mentally shift up on the charts, which I'm getting better at.

I'd been agonizing over practice time so much lately, but this was needless, as I'm continuing to improve slowly regardless of how little practice time I have. Now, playing a gig with both chords and bass would've been much harder, but I've been doing bass lines for over twenty years, and I can generally wing this kind of a gig.

After the performance, people came up to see my Stick. I was able to demonstrate some bass-plus-chords grooves. The violist was very excited - she'd never heard of a Stick before and was thrilled about the concept of a tapping instrument.

The librarian wants to form a busking country band, which is fine by me, as I have a Roland Cube Street EX as well my littler Cube. We'll play on the Denton Square and set a new standard of quality, as the acts busking on the Square are uniformly dreadful.

Well, that was fun! Can't wait 'till my next gig.

R

Lots of Fun!! My standing gig has been a short tune (~2+ minutes) in the midpoint of a 5k run at the Fort Worth Nature Center using a Roland Street Cube with a pre amp. Even most of the walkers get by before I take the "infinitely occurring" repeat. I switch in Itsy Bitsy Spider when the smaller kids start coming by (the parents are ready to take a short break). First year lot of people asked "what the instrument is.." - this year several told me "what the instrument is.. " I was playing. Usually takes about an hour for the last walkers to go by.

Cheers Mr. R!
A gig is a gig is a gig. Stoked for you that you got out and played man.....kiddie steps....
Sounds like it went over well.......and the ability to play with others must have been rewarding.

Kudos man!

kev

A gig is a gig, man! Awesome, it sounds like you had some fun!

Personally, I find that when I go out and play with people, even if it is just a jam, it always leads to some kind of improvement...

Lol It's what I do now when I am frustrated with my progress! Haha go out and play...