Darren Tingey

Since I have been playing bass It has been a great honour to have worked with artists such as Roger Hodgson (Supertramp), Jocelyn Brown, The Temptations, Seven Days, The Platters, Tony Hadley, Earl Green, Pet Shop Boys, Sandy Dillon, Luddy Samms, Atlantic Soul Revue, The Blues Brothers and Lionel Richie. 

I first picked up the bass at the age of 16. Before that I had played a bit of guitar and piano, but I never really felt settled. I seemed to find my ear being pulled more towards the low frequencies, and I spent most of my playing time working out bass lines on my acoustic guitar. It wasn’t long before I decided that it would probably be a good move to get an instrument of the four stringed variety, and it was around this time that my friend Eric, who was also a guitar player, told me that he knew of someone who had a bass that they wanted to sell for £40. My mum happened to overhear our conversation and she offered to buy it for me, giving him the money there and then - Thanks Mum!  The bass arrived the next day with only 3 strings and a very uncomfortable action. I used to plug it into my stereo and play along loudly to all my favourite songs. My neighbours were not at all amused, and I even had one of them go for my throat as I came out of my front door one morning, but that’s Rock and Roll!
 
My exposure to music from and early age had covered a really wide spectrum: Motown, Rock and Roll, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Elton John & Bob Dylan as well as T Rex and other various 70’s pop. These were the sounds being played by my mum all the time in the house when I was a kid. Then from the time that I was about 13 yrs old, I was constantly listening to bands such as Supertramp, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and lots of progressive rock.

After owning my bass for 3 months, and playing along to tracks at home with it plugged in to the microphone input on the front of my stereo, I was asked along to a rehearsal studio to see my friend’s three piece band.They were going to perform some new songs they had been writing; after I entered the studio and closed the door, the band fired up.. I knew in that split second that this was what had been missing from my life and that I just had to become a musician.
 
The first real band that I played in was a bunch of local lads, and we performed original compositions to whoever would listen to us. This was short lived, and was followed by a band led by guitarist and songwriter Bernard Jory. We played some of Bernie's own tunes which were very good, and we filled up the rest of the set with tracks from artists such as Grace Jones, Danny Wilson, The Kinks, Paul Simon and some Stax soul classics. The line-up changed constantly and we worked hard, playing east London pubs and the university circuit around the UK. This lasted for roughly 3 years, and was a very good grounding for me.

Moving to London from Essex in 1994, I was immediately exposed to the realities of being a professional musician who was working to pay the bills. One gig led to another and soon I found myself playing with Luddy Samms. Luddy is a superb soul vocalist, and to be playing bass in his band alongside the exciting drumming of Gonzalez’s stick man Glen Le Fleur was a great experience and something that I enjoyed very much. Unfortunately, although it was brilliant working with him and the other top players that were in the group, we struggled to get regular good quality work, as the band was an eight piece with horns and could not easily fit in to smaller venues.
 
After one of the many gigs with Luddy I was chatting with the sound guy, and he asked me if I would like to come and play with him and his drummer friend Toby Baron. I quickly learned that this so-called sound guy’s name was Sean Genocky. He was one of the best young blues guitarists I had ever heard, and It wasn't long before Sean, Toby and myself moved in to a flat together. Soon after that we were gigging all over the country as the Sean Genocky band.

In the spring 1995 I became a member of Nicola Quilter’s band. Nicola was a singer songwriter from Australia, and was in the very popular t.v. series “Home and Away”. We worked very hard in the studio refining her songs, and played a seemingly endless number of showcases for music business people. This was followed by a lot of studio recordings that were made as demos for various labels. We enjoyed some good music together and we had quite a lot of record companies interested in our work, but the band eventually drifted apart during the long process of trying to get a decent recording contract.
 
So I moved on, and by the middle 1996 I had quite quickly become very much in demand as a dep. bassist on the function band circuit. Towards the end of that year I think I was playing in about seven different bands and earning a pretty decent wage doing so.

Then in 1997 I made up my mind to take a break from the band work. I felt that I had reached a block in my playing, and it left me feeling very uninspired. So I decided to do one year of intense study at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, and I left London to live in Surrey while I was on the course. I met some great people there and really enjoyed the whole experience: I think it’s what I needed to do at that time in my life - to renew my interest in the bass and to get away from the hard gigging for a year.

After returning to London from Guildford I found myself playing in all kinds of bands, and making some pretty interesting music with many different artists. I worked in France quite a bit with the famous French dance producer Pascal Lamont, and we recorded lots of remixes for various well known acts. I played on a wide variety of sessions, and gigged with several highly creative songwriters around the UK.
 
I joined Be Sharp in 2003 and really enjoy working with the guys. With the combination of Bob’s precision drumming, total dedication and good business ethic and Jerry's fine guitar playing, soulful vocals and incredible ear for sound, I jumped at the chance to join the band.
 
My favourite artists are: Roger Hodgson, The Beatles, Sarah Mc Lachlan, Trevor Rabin, Lewis Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, CSNY, The Feeling, The Band, Little Feat, Stevie Winwood, Motown, Art pepper, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck.
 
For any of you that may be interested: I am available for both live and studio work on your musical projects, either with the band or on my own. Please come and have a chat at a show or contact me through this site with any questions. I look forward to seeing you at a gig very soon. 

Basses:
My 3 main instruments are a custom Mike Lull 5 string jazz, and my trusty 70s Fender Jazz & Precision bass. I have various others but these tend to be the ones I always go back to and take with me for live and studio work.

Studio:
When working in the recording studio I let the engineer take control of how they want to record my bass, sometimes its into a valve compressor, something like a TLA, most of the time its directly into the desk, compression and trimmings are put on after.

On the road:
I Used a 70’s Musicman 130 HD as my main amplification for years, Its loaded with 70’s mullard valves and through my eden cabinets sounded awesome, unfortunately it only packs 130 watts of power and for larger venues struggled. By introducing my QSC slave amp in conjunction with the Musicman I was able to overcome this problem. After hearing that Demeter had modeled their bass pre amp on the Musicman I decided to retire my old trusty to the studio and replace it with a Demeter MPB1. Im also using Mark Bass speaker enclosures most of the time now and am very impressed with their weight and sound.

Effects:
Below is a list of what’s on my analogue pedal board.

• Stevenson custom optical compressor
  
• Stevenson custom valve distortion
  
• Boss bass chorus
  
• Pearl octave pedal
  
• Rocktron Volume pedal
  
• EBS Bass IQ
  
• Radial tonebone

Although I use my analogue pedals live with B sharp I do have a Line 6 XT Pro digital board.