h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Any orchestra will be crying out for bassists. This means that no matter how terrible you are, they will be willing to have you, if only for the look of the thing. Which means that not only will you (if you are at school) gain free and easy entry into all the youth orchestras you feel like applying for, you will be hounded by all the others within any kind of reasonable distance to come and guest on all expenses paid tours to all sorts of interesting places.

And its easy to get paid for your hobby too. Aside from youth orchestras, there are all sorts of amatuer orchestras around who need basses for their bi-annual concerts, amatuer dramatic societies who hire people for their productions etc etc. They will not take no for an answer and will follow you around begging to give you money for a few hours work, even if you stopped playing regularly 4 years ago, and have not, in fact, picked up your instrument at all in 2 years.

True!

Great isn't it One orchestra even tracked me down to Moscow, to ask if I would be coming home for Xmas and could I possibly...?

So true. Why is it that there's such a bass deficiancy?

Sheer predjudice and discrimination. Everybody wants to glory, fame and flash solos rather than growl around as an undervalued lynchpin of the orchestra.

... because the DB is a beast to transport. It's not a musical instrument, it's a piece of furniture. A doghouse. You need a rather big car to be able to transport your instrument decently.

It's not the robustest of all instruments. Just a little drop in the trunk of the car may cause some severe neckbreaking (that happened to me recently).

Jeremy

My friend has no problem at all transporting his daughter's double bass in a Nissan Micra (with one of the seats down).

It can be done, even in a VW Beetle. But you're going to be the "Lone Ranger" of the band.

"will you take me home to my place, darling?"

"No, I can't, my car is full to the ceiling."

That's what I mean with "decent transport".

Jeremy

And then say it's cold:

Coming down the pub?

No, sorry, have to get the bass home before it warps.

Still, mostly I managed a bass and four people in my Fiat Panda, though admittedly everyone apart from me was squashed under and around the bass in the back.

My bass teacher used to tell stories of biking around with his bass tucked under one arm.

My own experience of bounding around Manchester on busses with a bass, a stool, and sundry other acoutremants wasn't much fun either. Did either of you experience the feeling of joyful recognition when you read Long Dark Teatime, by the way? Assuming you read it.

But then, at school and various other institutions I used the school bass. You get very good at playing on different (shonky) instruments, but at least the heaving it around wasn't such a problem.

When I was 18 a friend of mine had a double bass which he used to transport in his navy Rolls Royce. On the occasions he drove me to school, he used to get stopped by the police because "he looked too young to be driving that car" They were just interested in having a good nose at it. Anyone know what happened to Colin Sutherland? Perhaps I'd better check out friends reunited.com