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Thread: The P&W (Praise & Worship) Team Bass Players Hot Line?'S

  1. #11

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    Do your teams have a fixed group of players, or do you rotate people in and out?

    We have had an "everyone is welcome" approach which has not worked to our advantage, imnsho. There are some really bad guitar players (and singers!) out there who don't know how bad they are, but they want to play in public anyway. And we let them.

    Many of them don't listen to P&W music outside of church, so they are not familiar with the songs and don't know what they should sound like. Arpeggios and melodic lines become strummed cowboy chords, and any sense of dynamics gets tossed aside. We're re-learning songs all the time, even if we've been playing them for years. It is frustrating.

    Sorry for the rant.

    As for playing bass, I often cop some of the melody line or even the lead guitar line, just to make things more interesting and to fill out the song a little bit. Gives me a chance to play higher up the neck, too.
    "Everybody got to elevate from the norm!"


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  2. #12

    Default

    Question? Slejhamer - Do your teams have a fixed group of players, or do you rotate people in and out?

    Answer. L6b- For the most part we rotate people in and out, although I am the full time bass player unless I'm called upon to lead P&W
    for some reason or another. If that happens then I have my guitarist which you might have seen around here from my other little side group band and he's my Photographer friend who my profile picture here is taken by or his wife will play for me and he plays lead guitar.
    Speaking of his wife, for some reason to me she is the simplest playing bass player I've ever heard,
    BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE IT'S FROM HEAVEN!!! Besides that, the ones like drummers, keyboards, singers etc that do rotate they have to practice with us for a while so we can make sure, ( you have heard a saying some where? Play Skillfully!) If you haven't or would like to know more about that one, PM me. Also we could go really deep here but yes I could feel your frustration on just anyone playing and it always goes back to THE team playing as one and SKILLFULLY. OK, I could rant myself on a lot of things I think your saying, trust me, I know what your talking about but we'll leave it at that for now.

    Slejhamer- As for playing bass, I often cop some of the melody line or even the lead guitar line, just to make things more interesting and to fill out the song a little bit. Gives me a chance to play higher up the neck, too.

    L6b- Yes, that sounds a lot like what I do, like I said not long ago around here, I almost never have played the exact original bass line
    to the songs except if it's a bass line that starts off the song ( I wish I could remember the song I'd put it here) I haven't had any complaints. But for me it all ways goes back to, HOW FAITHFUL ARE YOU TO THE TEAM?

    Line6bassman

    PS. I'm going to put up shortly the videos I put up around here from me playing back in the 80's and some from lately, and if you know some of the songs you can see and hear that I just play my own thing but for the most part I think it worked???
    GO LOW!!!STAY HIGH!!!ON BASS THAT IS!!!

  3. #13

    Default Way back when? And then some.

    I know I already put these up before, but since were into this thread I'll put them here.
    The first 2 video's here are from the 80's when I first started playing bass. Probably was about if I remember
    correctly started learning bass about 6 months before these videos.
    Also this is when the L6b had hair and a mustache, don't have much of that anymore but one thing I do have
    is that strap and have used it ever since till today. I had to buy it back then to carry my cross, THE PEAVEY T40 BASS
    Also amazingly, The VHS recordings sound a whole lot better then the recordings done on church recorders lately.
    Next reply I'll be putting up a couple of mp3's of me using the 5 string Variex bass in P&W.
    A PS on this one, is I'm really putting these here to continue on the subject of me not following the original bass lines
    if you know the song you could probably tell. That's it.

    Line6bassman



    GO LOW!!!STAY HIGH!!!ON BASS THAT IS!!!

  4. #14

    Default

    Hi All,

    I started playing bass when I was twelve. I so wanted to play that I didn't want to practice. Well, that lasted about 6 months and I stopped. At age fifteen I got the itch to play again. This time I was on my own. My parents weren't going to pay for anything. I worked and saved up for a Fender Precision. I loved that bass but the neck was a little fat for my hands. I started lessons again and also started to play with my brother (guitar) and a friend of his (drums). We were a basement band and practiced for hours on Sunday afternoons (the things we put my father through). We played 70's rock and only played out twice. We even had our own groupies.

    To make a long story short, I have played off and on all my life. The last experience was playing on a P&W team for thirteen years. We had an incredible team of players and singers. We even put out a CD in 2005 which the music is still available on iTunes. We had influences from rock, gospel, blues, acoustic, folk, etc. Even though we played every Sunday at church, we also played out for community events, fund raisers, other churches events, etc. This allowed us to explore more of our musical creativity than just P&W. It was a great time of my life and when we played there was something that happended that was greater than the sum of our parts (I'm sure many of you can relate)!

    My family and I moved to Arizona in 2009 and I have not played since we moved. In May I came across TMBG and it has brought new inspiration to me. We have had difficulty finding a church out here even though there is almost one on every corner. I hope to play again with a team of musicians playing almost any genre, but not necessarily church related. This looks like a great forum for bass players in P&W. Thanks for getting it started. I look forward to hearing about other bassplayer's experiences and chiming in once in a while.

    Live and play loved,

    Jim

  5. #15
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Alberta, Canada
    Posts
    2,088

    Default Praise Band Approach

    We used to have a "if you want to play, show up" approach, but that definitely DID NOT work. Some real crash and burn experiences made us realize that if we were to do a good job, there had to be some clear commitment to learning their craft and regular, routine practises to develop and a willingness to learn and understand of their specific role in the band before we would take them on.

    Unfortuately, not quite the same approach is taken with the backup vocalists, but that is another story - at least we can turn the off-key ones down in the FOH .

    We now basically operate with a fairly fixed worship band. Those who express and interest in playing are invited to come to several practice/jams where we can evaluate their skills (and even more importantly their listening skills and attitude) to see whether they will fit in or not. I have a back up bass player (a young guy who started playing a couple of years ago) and we have several fill in guitar players that rotate in and out if someone is missing. We have recently recruited a second KB player (actually, originally a "pianist" - so we have the typical mindset/approach challenges going on, but she listens well and is making a great effort to switch from the piano solo mindset to the KB role). The band itself does change, (more evolves as players retire/move away/change their life circumstances) but slowly. As mentioned, we do jam with potential players and those can be great times to discover new talents, new songs, new approaches.

    We also do a lot of listening to music in general and evaluating how others play/arrange the music and how we might incorporate some of what we've heard into our approach. We recently had an great evening watching an Eagles concert on BlueRay and spent probably 45 minutes afterwards reminding ourselves of things we have been attempting to do in our music that were reinforced by what we saw in the concert, as well as identifying new things to think about. It is interesting to now have the guitar and KB players actually able to point out where the licks were placed, why they were placed there and why that worked, so the band is developing a better understanding of "how" to do music.

    One of the things we are actively pursuing is playing less. Playing at 20% of full volume does not necessarily mean everyone plays, just less. It can mean that only two instruments play. We actively try to avoid the "wall of sound" syndrome that comes from everyone playing everything from the intro to the end. We talk about the words and how the music supports or reinforces them and do a song map we keep on file which documents who plays what and when - basically the dynamics we are going to incorporate into our playing. For some songs that we play in different ways, we have more than one of these songmap/arrangements. This helps a lot when a song that hasn't been in the rotation for a while comes up - we don't spend 30 minutes trying to remember how we used to do it. When we come up with a new arrangement, that gets documented and is added to the available maps for that song.

    Since Christmas I have also been using Worship Backing Band (from the UK) and downloaded tracks on my computer to play back worship songs (the program lets me completely isolate individual instruments and combine them as we see fit, to listen to just how little some instruments play and where they choose to lay in sweet licks that don't stomp all over the vocalists or other musicians. It is a learning process, but one that we are certainly finding produces tangible results.
    ___________________________________
    Steinberger NXT5 EUB, MTD 535 Fretless, Tobias Killer B6, 72 Fender Precision
    Eden WT500, WTX1000N & WP100, QSC PL230
    Eden D410XLT, D410XST, 215, Fender Bassman 10

  6. #16

    Default

    Thanks TM!! Awesome on the Worship Backing Band !! Didn't know about this one, and I thought I knew everything? LOL!!
    I'm guessing or not that this program might be used for different types of music? Just seeing this one so I haven't gone any where with this. But thanks again!! Here's a vid on the Worship Backing Band program!!

    Line6bassman

    GO LOW!!!STAY HIGH!!!ON BASS THAT IS!!!

  7. #17

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by jmcarvin View Post
    Hi All,

    I started playing bass when I was twelve. I so wanted to play that I didn't want to practice. Well, that lasted about 6 months and I stopped. At age fifteen I got the itch to play again. This time I was on my own. My parents weren't going to pay for anything. I worked and saved up for a Fender Precision. I loved that bass but the neck was a little fat for my hands. I started lessons again and also started to play with my brother (guitar) and a friend of his (drums). We were a basement band and practiced for hours on Sunday afternoons (the things we put my father through). We played 70's rock and only played out twice. We even had our own groupies.

    To make a long story short, I have played off and on all my life. The last experience was playing on a P&W team for thirteen years. We had an incredible team of players and singers. We even put out a CD in 2005 which the music is still available on iTunes. We had influences from rock, gospel, blues, acoustic, folk, etc. Even though we played every Sunday at church, we also played out for community events, fund raisers, other churches events, etc. This allowed us to explore more of our musical creativity than just P&W. It was a great time of my life and when we played there was something that happended that was greater than the sum of our parts (I'm sure many of you can relate)!
    Speaking of old bands, I my self used to be in a CCR cover band, doing a couple of party's etc. I used to be the lead singer in the band they said I sounded just like John Fogerty. But over the years and go figure, I have some what trouble
    singing some high parts my voice went more to BASS!! Now that figures. Also don't leave us stranded here did you play bass on the CD you guys did, what's the name of it? So we can hear a bit of it.
    One last note on other bands, my other band that we have away from church will be getting back to practice shortly to prepare for my old neighborhood grammar school reunion!! Hopefully before years out and I'm sure we will film it!!
    And lastly here, I know I'm somewhat of a bass brave here for putting some of my bass playing videos etc up, but I do have a couple of song videos with me singing leading P&W but I'm not a Singing brave yet but we will see.
    Thanks guys for your reply's!!

    Line6bassman
    GO LOW!!!STAY HIGH!!!ON BASS THAT IS!!!

  8. #18

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    Hi Line6bassman,

    Thanks for the interest. The name of our band was Jordan's Crossing and the name of the album is "There's a Place". It is still on iTunes if you want to hear samples. I played bass on every song except the last one since it was just acoustic guitar and vocals. I would be courious as to what you think.

    TobiasMan,
    I really like your approach. There seems to be a real team effort and a lot of flexibility with new people filling in. The Guitar player in our team was the arranger and he always challenged us and allowed us to grow in our roles. He also would insure song dynamics so that we wouldn't have a wall of sound. Very cool! We had a core of musicians that rehearsed together all of the time and occaisionally we would rotate the drummer since he was also the youth pastor. As much as I like playing with the core group, it was a growing process to have new people come in.

    Jim

  9. #19
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Alberta, Canada
    Posts
    2,088

    Default

    Worship Backing Band only works with the songs they have prepared. I think they are actually like midi files or something as there is no way to separate the instruments when they are recorded together on a CD or downloaded/ripped from somewhere. They have over 100 songs available. The software is only about $50. The songs are about $8 for each file. They have some deals where you can get the application and a number of files at a reduced rate.

    It is designed to allow a small worship team to play along with the instruments they don't have. They even have click tracks and prompts that can be panned to the monitors to keep a new/small band on track.

    We don't use it that way, and don't try to play the songs exactly the way they are done on the tracks, but as a learning tool to understand how the various instruments work together to create the musical tapestry.
    ___________________________________
    Steinberger NXT5 EUB, MTD 535 Fretless, Tobias Killer B6, 72 Fender Precision
    Eden WT500, WTX1000N & WP100, QSC PL230
    Eden D410XLT, D410XST, 215, Fender Bassman 10

  10. #20

    Default

    Well it's back to needing to learn to play guitar this week and pick it up again, I've been asked to lead P&W this Sunday and it's time to get the vocals in check again. The bad part is NO BASS PLAYER bo-ho, people are on vacation etc. Well at least I have a drummer if you like
    them people? Just kidding. I wonder if I ought to get one of these instruments? Click image for larger version. 

Name:	4-rickenbacker-4080-bass-guitar-double.jpg 
Views:	382 
Size:	57.3 KB 
ID:	2236Only thing is I might have to grow another set of arms
    and hands. Of course I will be playing my 9 String Alvarez guitar,Click image for larger version. 

Name:	StreamImage.jpg 
Views:	391 
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ID:	2237 so I guess I'll just have to pick the bass notes while playing chords!!

    Line6bassman
    GO LOW!!!STAY HIGH!!!ON BASS THAT IS!!!

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