Beedster

Singing lessons are a great idea Mick, not just to improve singing technique (pitch/tone/range/control) but also to protect your voice for things other than singing. I had short-notice surgery on my neck years ago - long story - and during the surgery my vocal chords were damaged requiring further surgery. I was told in no uncertain terms by the surgeon that I would need 6-weeks of not using my voice at all followed by regular speech therapy. The therapist was also a voice and vocal coach, and the stuff she taught me was well worth learning. I still do the exercise occasionally especially if I'm doing BVs for a gig. Enjoy the journey mate

Recently bought two rather lovely music-related items from Mick (he does move on some really interesting and unique stuff so I'm always keeping my open for new stuff from him), and thoroughly enjoyed doing so both times. Packaging of the second brought a huge smile to my face also, many thanks Mick 👍

That doesn't mean that they are autocracies though? But either way, if democracy means a process by which a group of people accept that a smaller/sub-group will take responsibility for decision making, then many successful bands are democracies. The problem with some/many other bands is that that one or more members have usurped power. I'm happy to be in the former, I've usually walked quite quickly in the latter. Having said that, I was at fault for this with one of my longer running bands years back in which I thought I was getting my own way because my judgement was valid, in hindsight the others simply weren't prepared to argue with me, they preferred to get on and play the music. We made some great music and we're all still good friends, but I would do things differently now for sure.

I hope that the advent of AI generated music will lead more people to recognise, appreciate, participate in and support real live music. Of course, we're in that awful stage where people have done things with AI because they could not because they should (not unlike the early 80's when digital sampling became easy and our group of electronic music students were doing things like the national anthem performed by a choir of barking dogs), but we will no doubt see some imaginative integration of AI and analog in time. But for me the ease with which AI can be used to generate professional sounding digital audio has pushed me away from a focus on recording (I can spoend hours doing something analog that can be done in seconds using AI), to concentrating on playing and performing live.

Yep, I thought that also, there are moments when there's a whole lot going on bass-wise but his right hand's not moving, nice work 👍

It's a whole lot easier/quicker/cheaper to do it these days than even a few years back. OK, most of magic of that video is the band for sure, but if you're wanting to know type of bass/amplification.FX/EQ with that tone in mind, I'd still say a lot of it is probably in the box. Doesn't take anything away for the performance, which is tight as 👍

Who knows, but the bass tone you're hearing could be exclusively DI and hugely processed. I don't know whether the host website have any clear production values that might prove me wrong, but given that for well over 50 years many very well known and respected live performances have been largely the result of studio production, I'd not put too much money on the audio on that track being exclusively from the room

I'll expand.... I've played in a lot of bands, some I auditioned for (both pro and am), some I was invited into, some I forced my way into (long story), and some have simply emerged from conversations with friends. By far the best have been the latter, and specifically the guys I'm playing with at present, who are 1) a guy I've known for 15 years as a friend but who seemed musically well above me (multi-instrumentalist/multi-genre), 2) a close friend with whom I've gigged a few times but with whom I've drunk beer and talked band ideas more times than I can remember, and 3) a good friend of his who is (was) a casual acquaintance of mine. It's a project I'll expand on here as it develops, but the main thing is that the core sentiment of the band is goodwill, there's not been one argument despite the fact that at least two of us are very good at arguing, everyone turns up at rehearsal having learned their parts, no-one is trying to take the lead, there's an implicit group decision making that is quite unusual in bands in my experience. But most of all, we enjoy playing the set and that means that at rehearsals, while we may arrive with the weight of a day's work/kids/families on our shoulders, 30-minutes in we're in the groove and I think it's fair to say we all leave feeling a whole lot better than we arrived. And I am by far the least talented member of the band! I've only ever been in one other band like it, and that band was the same, a group of friends. They are without doubt the two best bands I've had the pleasure of belonging to. Friendship is I think a major player in bands I'll update on this band's gigs etc in another thread as things develop 👍

Play with mates and only mates 👍

…. and fines a good revenue stream for 2025 @ped 😆