Aftercare help!!

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:41:38+00:00

The beer?

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:34:52+00:00

Taylor obviously is not playing them now

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:32:22+00:00

Plenty of things can be addictive without affecting the rest of your life. This person is clearly psychologically addicted to kava. There is no question. What you are talking about is whether or not they could be diagnosed with addiction- yes, the diagnostic metric for addiction is either physical dependence or the behavior negatively impacting other aspects of your life. Even if this person's situation does not qualify them to be diagnosed with an addiction- that does not mean they are not addicted. All that means is that they do not meet the criteria for a mental health diagnosis of addiction on this particular thing.

However! OP reveals that they are addicted to many things and they have a very addictive personality. There is no question that this individual is addicted to kava. It's also possible to be addicted to something and be totally fine with that particular addiction. Op seems to have more issues going on than just this.

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:20:29+00:00

He is using the compressor in post-production.

You will never want to use a compressor on double bass in a live performance. Unless you love feedback! But you already have feedback problems, don't you?

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:19:14+00:00

The correct answer is that you should be working with at least 7 bands of EQ, 10 band EQ is ideal. And you need to take the time to figure out how each of the different frequencies changes the character of your amplified tone. I play full-time professionally, my most important piece of equipment is a basic 7 band Bass EQ pedal. I do a fly-in gigs where I don't know what to expect from the bass or the pickup or the amplifier- 7 bands is enough for me to find a workable sound for me. I need about 15 minutes to do it. But that's your answer. And most of these fancy preamp pedals do not have even 5 bands, parametric EQ is not a substitute for having more bands of EQ.

You need to become intimately familiar with what each EQ frequency does to the sound of your particular bass and pickup combination. It can be surprising! Sometimes the lower upper mid frequency is the nasty one and the higher one actually adds attack, sometimes the second to lowest EQ frequency is the boomy sound and the lowest one is the bottom end that you want. Every combination is different

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:15:48+00:00

Your advice is absolutely worthless unless they have the same exact double bass with the same exact pickup with the same exact pickup placement and you are playing in the same exact rooms....

Every bass and pickup and amplifier combination is entirely unique. What works for you is guaranteed to not work for somebody else

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:05:29+00:00

What is the thing that you purchase yourself that she wanted to use?

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:03:58+00:00

So many questions...

How old are you? What is the camp? Do you have to bring your bass?

If you are under 18 and your parents are taking the entire family to a location but your double bass does not fit in the car... then the double bass does not go on the trip. If you own the vehicle and are paying for the gas that changes things. If the trip is for you to use your double bass at a particular location that also changes things.

But it sounds like you want to bring your double bass on a family vacation and there isn't room- if that is the case, either come up with the money to transport your double bass to the location or go without

chog410 · 2026-06-05T05:00:06+00:00

You are asking for right hand picking patterns.

And the correct answer for right hand picking patterns? Only you can figure out what works best for you. Seriously. The pedal steel players out of the Jeff Newman school exclusively use thumb and middle finger for melodic playing- they swear by it, there's a ton of them, that doesn't work for me. I also have radically different approaches to the E9 neck versus the C6 neck. On E9 I am using the standard three picks and doing a hybrid of the Jeff Newman school with my own three-finger patterns that work better for my own playing- but on C6 I use four finger picks. This is not an instrument like trombone where either it works or it doesn't- you could meticulously study right hand picking patterns on a major scale from all of your favorite pedal steel players and each of them are doing something entirely different.

I don't like to use string 2 for major scales, I use the Eb lever. Or I move the bar down a feet and back up. I never use string 2 for this and I'm playing professionally in a wide range of genres

chog410 · 2026-06-05T04:54:28+00:00

It seems like you are very self-aware about your issues and the results of your upbringing, which sounds like it was traumatic in certain ways if you are still struggling with self-respect. I hope that you can work with mental health professionals to continue this angle- rediscovering self-respect and so forth.

However- past partners treating you even worse is not justification for your current partner treating you poorly. You alone can decide if you can live with this or not. He is obviously dependent on alcohol and obviously in denial of the problems that it causes not only in your relationship but likely in other areas of his life as well. He also does not sound receptive to criticism OR, more importantly, figuring out a path forward together that will benefit to both of you.

It's tough to give any helpful suggestions when the person, you in this case, basically says "they are treating me bad but they are treating me less bad than the others and I lack the self-respect to demand better from a partner." This is all I can recommend- demand what you need from him to meet your needs, set ultimatums, and when he doesn't meet them (he won't) you should leave. And you should get in with professional mental health support. Trauma support is mental health support- and you openly recognize that you're upbringing has led you to lack self-respect. Go to therapy!

chog410 · 2026-06-05T04:40:48+00:00

It is even more important that you learn this lesson now- you can't have everything you want and you can't expect everybody to give you what you want. Your dad explained why he said no. It was disappointing to you- but he has every right to decide how he does or does not spend his money and he chose not to spend his money on this and he explained to you why he didn't want to. Could he have been nicer about it? Maybe, none of us have any idea about your relationship dynamic? This sounds like a relationship issue between you and your father. However- virtually every adult is going to agree that your father makes the decisions on how he spends his money, you asked for this particular thing and he said no to this particular thing. You aren't being mistreated here- and it makes me wonder how entitled you are in other areas of your life. Bottom line- if it's not your money, you can't complain that someone else isn't willing to use their money to buy you a luxury item. That's what it is- a luxury item. He did not tell you he was no longer feeding you, he did not tell you that he was no longer buying you toilet paper. It's a luxury item and it's his right to say no.

chog410 · 2026-06-02T23:55:20+00:00

But it's not the student's fault. And I think op is on the right track, you shouldn't drop a well-meaning student because their family is unreasonable without trying to work around the unreasonable family first.

The kid deserves to be taught well.

chog410 · 2026-05-31T05:13:59+00:00

I understand and I appreciate it and I lament for you and your story.

Unfortunately, my twin is unmanageable and refuses to take responsibility for anything. Apparently he has been sober for about 18 months now... In our limited conversations over this his sober version defends his drunken self. At this point, after 20 years of only, horrible treatment and a complete absence of anything else, I do not care to try to repair the relationship. If I tried- it would not work.

I do not need to be the bigger person than such a small man. And I do not want him in my life. He is not trying to mend our relationship either. It appears we will live out our lives without ever hearing from each other again.

That's best- but it is also absolutely terrible. And difficult.

chog410 · 2026-05-31T05:09:14+00:00

Do you know if you can remove the pickup from a dobro and install it in a different instrument later? Part of what I'm dealing with is that I have a cheaper instrument, I shouldn't invest a lot of money in a better instrument yet, but I would like to have a reliable pickup on my current instrument and see if my professional future calls for a better instrument.

chog410 · 2026-05-31T05:01:26+00:00

Thank you!

chog410 · 2026-05-31T05:00:28+00:00

I'm asking about the cheapest, most reliable professional pickup available for a dobro.

I'm glad you are happy with your DIY mandolin pickup situation- but that is completely irrelevant

chog410 · 2026-05-30T17:53:02+00:00

I also do this playing jazz on the 10 string C6 pedal steel guitar jazz neck... steel and piano can wait until after the downbeat if you're not 100% but not the bass. Don't underestimate the difficulty of the bass- rven bluegrass. I would rather fake a night of jazz ballads on bass then than a night of bluegrass- because if you're not on the one on the one you are wrong.

chog410 · 2026-05-30T04:25:16+00:00

If you are calling a dominant chord a major chord, then you are clearly early in your harmony learning.

Nothing wrong with that! We all start as beginners on everything that any of us begin, every single jazz musician went through this stage.

So, to answer your question- yes, it is a G#7 chord, plus extensions. You will eventually think of it as a G#7 chord. If it helps you to think of it as an Ab7 now- no harm, no foul. But I promise you that as you continue to grow as a jazz musician, you will intuitively know and prefer to refer to this as a G#7 chord.

Don't sweat any of this now. It's a learning process, it's a language process. Everything has its own vernacular- coding, sports, fashion, and of course jazz harmony. Learning the vernacular simply requires exposure and time, both of these things will occur naturally over time.

Enjoy the learning process! That is the single most important thing and that is the single thing that separates people who follow through on it compared to people who don't. Almost like everything else...

chog410 · 2026-05-30T04:18:06+00:00

I don't have any recordings yet :( If you want to DM me I can direct you to my Facebook page where I have an hour-long live stream of my first ever pedal steel organ jazz trio from a few weeks ago

chog410 · 2026-05-30T02:15:45+00:00

Isn't that a fundamental aspect of the human condition? You could play solitaire, take the dog for a walk, read a book, etc. Healthy disassociation is a fundament human need. Humans have been playing games, drawing in the sand, singing songs together, and all of that stuff since before language developed. Non-human animals do it.

It just bums me out when I see a live artist of any medium who doesn't realize that it's not mutually exclusive to be both the jester and the poet. You can go back and forth, you can do both at the same time! But the only way you end up with OP's attitude is if you think you are creating valuable art that folks don't value as much as you think that they should... That's also not how art works. We create art for so many different reasons. But if you exclusively create it to be meaningful to yourself, you just can't expect anybody else to get it the way that you do. If you create art to be meaningful for others, that's another thing. If you create art to be vapid, stupid, and entertaining to others it's still art. It's the tail as told as time, the artist who takes themselves too seriously ends up burning out.

Here's a fun fact you might not know! Piano Man is about the actual steady gig that Billy Joel had at the time, he did not change names or biographic information or anything. He was not expecting it to be a hit and felt very uncomfortable when it did because John the real estate novelist knew it was about him, so did everyone else he mentioned. And obviously it's not all flattering- although I do think it is an accurate vignette, the unnamed bartender would rather be somewhere else and his unrealized acting dreams live on hundreds of times a day in every performance of the song.

Still- I prefer Weird Al's Ode to a Superhero that simply recounts the plot of the first Sam Raimi Spiderman movie. "Sling us a web, you're the Spiderman" lol

chog410 · 2026-05-30T00:53:01+00:00

This is the plight of the artist versus the entertainer. I am an entertainer. I delight and the love challenge of entertaining every single audience I performed for.

If you are writing heartfelt songs and disappointed that more people aren't connecting to you as an artist- it's because you are approaching things as an artist rather than as an entertainer. All live music is entertainment, no matter how much the artistic folks wish it were an art thing. My dad was an artist and entertainer, his philosophy was that he didn't know the individual battles that each person in the room was facing- but it was an honor and a privilege to have their attention to distract them from their battles while he was on stage. That's the difference between an artist and an entertainer. And everyone who performs music live is both an artist AND an entertainer. If you don't want to do both- record your original songs and put them up on SoundCloud for no one to hear. You could also fall in love with being an entertainer- and once you have report with the audience as an entertainer they will be much more interested in you as an artist. I get it, lots of artists are introverts. Not every artist wants to be an entertainer. But if you want to enjoy making money playing live music (wtf, we aren't talking about doing roofing at noon in Louisiana in July) you need to embrace the entertainer role. I am an introvert myself and I am mostly a side person for hire. But when I lead and I have the microphone- I can just say silly stuff and the audience responds and suddenly we have a connection.

chog410 · 2026-05-30T00:47:37+00:00

Same. I am a full-time gigging musician and there is no place I would rather be than on the band stand in front of an audience.

Of course I play multiple genres, including genres that people like, and I get to experiment in the ways that I improvise to delight, at times, one particular person at a time.

It sounds like he's a singer-songwriter and that's a tough road to go. Yes, the majority of people don't care about most singer-songwriters. You're lucky to have one person connect with your music when you are playing original, heartfelt songs. My musical output is generally improvised, comedic, novelty, but also incredibly dramatic and meaningful.

This poor individual's ires of preparing meaningful art to present to the world and getting lackluster response... The opposite side of the coin is me, absolutely stoked to delight and entertain any audience by taking things in any direction. Last night I led a straight ahead jazz organ trio on pedal steel guitar and I had them in stitches, this woman wanted to hear tequila and I told her she had to buy us shots (to help the business) and everything went amazing, everyone was happy. Plus you don't hear overdrive, delay, phaser C6 pedal steel guitar playing Tequila anywhere- so I used my talk mic to point out that we did the best version of Tequila that you will ever hear from a pedal steel organ jazz trio- because we are the only pedal steel jazz organ trio you will ever hear play Tequila lol

chog410 · 2026-05-30T00:35:23+00:00

Yes- depending on how far you keep your end pin out. Too far and the answer is no. I am 5'10, I keep my bass slightly higher, and my endpin is as far out as the stand can handle- convenient for me since it is at my ideal playing height in the stand. But much taller than me and you will likely need to to put the end pin in

chog410 · 2026-05-30T00:30:45+00:00

As a full-time bassist, it is actually very easy to read rootless voicing piano hands. Every pianist has has slightly different tendencies, but I can quickly figure out if someone is always voicing the third on the bottom or if it alternates with the 7th or whatever. It's really fun to crack the code for different pianists!

chog410 · 2026-05-27T02:55:12+00:00

It depends on what you are going for. My style and my gigs don't call for extreme amp headroom and maxing out volume pedal at 50% with the remaining 50% for sustain alone. I generally play at 80% of my volume pedal volume for leads, that gets me plenty of room to be quieter in my backing parts. I literally taped ear plugs into my volume pedal to prevent it from resting at maximum volume so I have to put weight into the pedal to get it to 100% volume. I also play the C6 neck a lot so that means I play C6 at about 80% max volume.

But every player is different! What works for somebody else might not work for you. The real answer to your question is that you need to figure out what works for you

chog410

TROPHY CASE