Date : 27th September 2004
Global Music
Attendance : 17
Apologies : Kai, Concord & Graeme

Present: Martin Simpson, Gerrie Lubbe, Johann Kruger, Philip Raath, Kerry Hiles, Doggit, Trevor Muller, Glenn Haggis, Steve Crozet, Gerhard Kok, Denis Lalouette, Dylan Wassersall, Stephen van Heerden, Victor Masondo, Bryan (Global Music), Barry Turner and Dave Askes

Global Music Hosted a South African Bass Players Collective meeting for the second time and although the day (27th) was the same, the month was one short of a full year since Carlo wowed everybody with his in-depth talk on his practice regimen. Unfortunately only 17 people turned up this year and we’ll just have to wait and see if Global will be prepared to host another evening next year. Global Music showed their hospitality by providing soft drinks and pizzas to everyone’s delight. Being in a music store provided an additional delight with an abundance of musical equipment on display.

Victor arrived at the store around 19:45 having hurried across town from a recording session but having made his apologies, quickly got into tuning up his basses and sorting out his equipment so by 20:10 he was composed and ready to begin the workshop.

Vic had previously given us a workshop at the National School of Arts (Braamfontein) back in 2002 and kicked off this year’s workshop with his trusty TB 1000 four string which he also showed us at that previous workshop. You could see (and hear) immediately that Vic knows every nook and cranny of this bass and it was marvelous to see man and instrument blend into one musical organism. Vic demonstrated the importance of holding the bass at the correct height and at the correct angle to allow this merging of human being and stringed instrument to take place – too high (ala Mark King) and the blood circulation in the arms gets interrupted, too low (ala Duff McKagen of Guns & Roses) and certain notes become unreachable. Vic was full of juicy stories and went back to his beginner days when he played a Dia bass which he had to extract a decent sound from by getting extremely creative with his hands and it was this that started him on the road to depending on his own two hands to give him the tone he requires – even now!!!

After going through various fingerstyle techniques he got onto some serious slapping techniques using the left hand to produce three notes for each right hand slap and then reversing things where the right hand was doing the majority of the work. At this point, Vic quipped, “you get off the stage whilst you’re ahead”

Vic then got a pick and went through some local grooves high up the fretboard and had us laughing at his stories whilst executing some demonic picking sequences that he’s been asked to play in the past.

Vic put the four string bolt on necked instrument down, picked up his frettless 5 stringed beast and hit us with a completely different set of sounds and techniques which showed off his complete mastery of our chosen instrument.

Vic made two interesting statements. The first was that you don’t need to have callouses (or blisters, as he calls them) on your fingers to play bass – in fact his fingers are very soft and this helps to give him more idea of what’s happening when he’s playing. The second statement was that you can boil your strings in water once or twice to get the grunge to come off and give them a new lease of life. Our Mr. Kruger once wrote an article in which he said DO NOT boil your strings – sounds like just the right material for us to have a serious debate one evening!!!

By 21:15 the attendees thought he’d finished the workshop and gave him a round of applause to which he reacted, “would you like me to demonstrate the silent bass?” and off he went to fetch one that was standing by the door.

Off we went again with Vic showing us his double bass playing prowess and questions were being fired at him from all angles.

We finished off the evening with an informal chat between the various bassists and by 21:45 Vic and I were the last to leave Global Music.

Thanks again to Global Music for their hospitality and hopefully we’ll be invited back next year.
Martin