New Year's Day eb fun - reading Bach

[Steve Freides]

My friend Sue Williams came over yesterday, and we spent some time
reading through a few Bach Two-Part Inventions on two electric basses.
I played a Cort fretless, and Sue played either my MIM Precision fretted
or my Dean fretless. We used the two channels of my setup, an AI Clarus
amp @ 400 watts into my 4 ohm AI Contra EX cabinet. This amp will drive
a pair of these cabinets @ 800 watts into 2 ohms. The sound was
fantastic.

It was great fun, highly recommended. We played much slower than the
kinds of tempi you'd hear in a piano performance of these pieces and it
was still pretty challenging. I'm more comfortable in treble clef than
Sue so I took the right hand the whole time and Sue the left, but even
playing the left hand you still have to be able to read treble clef
because the part gets high enough to require it being notated that way
(or at least in some other, higher clef - could have used tenor clef, I
suppose, had this been for bass and not for piano.)

Highly recommend for eb and electric guitar, too - sounds better that
way, truth be told, but it was way fun on two electric basses in an
elephants on parade kind of way. :)

-S-

[BW]

Steve,
I've had a lot of fun doing that with students and some colleagues.
For instance, a mandolin player who's a good friend and fine musician
and I play through inventions, and he's getting me interested in doing
a Goldberg Variation. Mandolin and electric bass. Interesting. Nice.
Fun.
BTW, say Hi to Sue for me. (If she doesn't recognize my name, tell her
I'm the guy who sometimes plays with Don Gardner.)
BW

[Steve Freides]

BW wrote:

> BTW, say Hi to Sue for me. (If she doesn't recognize my name, tell her
> I'm the guy who sometimes plays with Don Gardner.)

Will do!

-S-