Recent content by JamieParkinson

Funny you should mention that about the low brass, I get on well with them :p I'll try to engineer getting a decent room mate if I can... Is there anything I should bear in mind apart from using the hard case to make travelling with the bass easier/safer?

It's nothing special, pretty beginner level with kids mostly younger than me, the Nottingham Musicschool Senior Concert Orchestra. I believe we're playing with some equivalent German youth orchestras.

I've been playing in a local Youth Orchestra for little over a month now, but I've been invited to go with them on tour to Karlsruhe, Germany! It's super cheap for a week, too. Anyhow, they've somehow managed to find me a hard case for my battered plywood rental bass, but I was wondering if...

I absolutely can't recommend Sibelius enough. Numpad control and just little touches with adding anything you could possibly want to the score make it the best. It's used, so far as I know, by every school and college in the UK for writing notation.

Hi all, I play French bow; but I can see now that pivoting around/over the skipped string (that's how I conceive it, at least) is the way to go that keeps things quiet. I do have a teacher but haven't seen him for a while. I do intend to soon, although he is definitely more of a jazz guy...

Wow, I'm surprised at the response I've got from this. Not only a lot of responses, but everyone's getting on fine! Of course, nothing beats practice and talent etc, but that's completely free (well, apart from a teacher, I suppose) and completely worth every minute of time you put into it...

Thanks Bill! Should I expect the skipped string to be completely silent, or can there be a small sound (not a note) when I just touch it?

Completely agree with you there - of course, top level stuff in most fields isn't really about competition and whatnot, just making the best instruments, usually in very small quantities.

Apologies to you JayB, thought you were addressing me - I get what you mean now, thanks! Sorry for my obtuseness. DrUrb, I've got to agree that that sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense - what I meant was that the fact that DBs are so much more complex to make and sensitive to, for...

JayB, I'm posting in the DB section and as such have no particular interest in the price and quality etc of Electric Basses. If I've been wrong to post about buying a Double Bass in the Double Bass 'Basses' section, please point me in the right direction. I think the complexity, sensitivity...

Hi, I'm a British A-Level student and have been playing for around year, and I'm loving it - I play in a Youth Orchestra as well as doing jazz stuff. For this past year I've been using an unexceptional but decent plywood Artia Excelsior bass, and I'm just about starting off on the journey of...

Hmmmm, I did expect some Sterling-bashing :p I can see the advantages of learning it at pitch and maybe that would have been a better choice, but I'm fine with this route for now. However, I have already changed the bowing (and did quite a lot of research on the matter) not to the somewhat...

Hi, I'm playing the Prelude from the 1st Cello Suite, Sterling Edition, and I'm struggling to get a nice sound when slurring notes across the strings and skipping one string (ie, missing one out - in the first few bars for example) The string I shouldn't be playing usually makes some ugly...

I think it's that that I'm struggling with (slight transatlantic language difference too, I *think* what you'd call a measure is for me a bar and my 'minim' is a half note), ie for the first bar, playing the first 8 semiquavers (16th notes, total length of one half note) in one bow and then...

Thank you very much! That all makes complete sense now, stretching the strict Simandl positions seems sensible. I'm having real difficulty slurring the whole minim-length groups of semiquavers now (any advice on that?) but apart from that I'm making decent progress. Thanks!