In a time when The White Stripes and Keane have dispensed with a bass player – just as The Doors did before them is the bass guitar an endangered species? Is a six string bass really a bass and how many more strings can be added before the fret board grows so wide that only giants are capable of holding down the bass end of the band?

I have been playing a lot more bass guitar recently. I’m working on a song of my called ‘Movie Queen’ – about the trials and tribulations of a young girl and her mother give the girl a career in show business. I have sketched out the basic part on note paper – I find it quicker than searching for manuscript paper – I write down the note and the octave as a number next to it. So the low F on the bass would be written as F1 while the F an octave up is F2. I use the music notes to indicate how long the note is played for. That is the system that I have invented. When its right I then write it up on the music paper. Its lot easier to read bass music not guitar music – bass usually plays one note at a time and often with time to play to notes rather than firing off notes like a archer in a castle siege that guitarists eventually gravitate towards.

The low E string was buzzing on the frets and I spent some time looking for an allen key to adjust it. I bought a large set of allen keys at the local car boot sale and sure enough one of them fitted the Yamaha bass bridge. A few turns later and the buzz has gone. I play a Yamaha rbx200 which I have owned for twenty years, during one of its rest periods one on the machine heads seized because when I came to use it the machine head broke. I wrote to Yamaha and they sent me a free replacement – kudos and thank to them all – I shall buy another bass and when I do it shall be a Yamaha.

On one occasion I played a set at an open mic with just my bass for company. I called it my tribute to Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney and included California Girls and the The Ballad of John and Yoko along with my own British Boy, it was different and went down well to a slightly bemused audience.

However if a band doesn’t want to include a fat string slapping, pick’n or tapping bass player thats their right but my band needs a bass player. Add as many strings as you like if it covers the bottom end of of the frequency spectrum its a bass to me. Proof of that – if proof were needed is the excellent Bass Guitar Magazine. I am happy to say that the bass guitar is alive and well.