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.
Archive for the 'News' Category
It’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.
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.
Christian McBride was born on this day in 1972 in Philadelphia. Happy Birthday!
Dave Holland has relaunched his website. For this week, the recording “Archive Series Vol. 1: DHQ ‘07” for download for only 1 USD (or only 3 USD in lossless quality).
Yesterday, Apple has launched the iPad with it’s new iBooks (E-Book reader and online store) features. I think the iPad will be great for sheet music. All iPhone Apps, like iRealBook, will run there, too. Pretty interesting.
Today, Jesper Bodilsen from Danmark stopped by to try out the Eminence and the Chrisopher RN. He is currently on tour with guitarist Ulf Wakenius, and while talking about travelling with the bass and double bass transportation in general, he told me that at his hometown Copenhagen, almost every bass player owns a Christiania bike. These bikes have two front wheels and a luggage space for up to 100 kgs. You can easily put a full size double bass and a small amplifier into the compartment. As I like riding a bike more than driving a car, I lik the idea of the Christiania bike. But a drawback is that you probably can’t go staircases with the Christiania. I keep my bikes stored at the basement (10 steps or something like that), and my local train station has maybe 30 steps and no elevator. Seems to be an insurmountable obstacle …
| October 5, 2010 | to | October 10, 2010 |
“A convention for all who love the double bass” – after the great success of Bass 2008 in Paris, the next big double bass event is announced to take place at Berlin in October 2010. Participants and guests can expect numerous musical double bass highlights and many different possibilities to interact with other experts in the field: Internationally reknowned professors, double bass soloists, publishers, instrument, string and bow makers will present themselves. Moreover, there will be competitions and workshops for all age groups. And, of course, you will be able to exchange and mingle with other double bass fans from Europe and all over the world. More informations at the Bass2010 website.
On Sunday night, bassist Ben Williams won the prestigous Thelonius Mink Competion in his hometown Washington. The six judges, including Ron Carter, Charlie Haden and Dave Holland, winnowed the list to three (Joe Sanders from Milwaukee, Matt Brewer of Albuquerque and Ben Williams) and those finalists performed Sunday with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and a rhythm section of pianist Geoff Keezer and drummer Carl Allen.
“The crowd favorite was 24-year-old Ben Williams, who grew up in Northeast D.C. and graduated from Davey Yarborough’s jazz program at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. He pulled hard at the strings, building up a powerful rhythmic attack on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” locking eyes and trading musical ideas with the ebullient Bridgewater.” reports Matt Schudel/Washington Post.
More about Ben Williams at his MySpace page.
My posts at www.DoubleBassGuide.com and www.Kontrabassblog.de (my German double bass weblog) can now be followed at twitter: www.twitter.com/jonaslohse.
While I was setting up this, I also fixed a configuration mistake at my FeedBurner account, where you can subscribe my posts via email. So this service should properly work again now, too.
Latest Comments