cheddatom

Star and garter in Manchester on Sunday, loads in, played well, went down well, great all round really! The bass drum of the house kit was knackered which was a massive disappointment as it's normally great and I would have brought my own if I'd known. Never mind, no one in the audience cared!

Bannerman's in Edinburgh last night. Great venue but I really didn't like the sound. It seemed like everything was on the edge of feedback. It went well anyway, and I got a curry and a night in a hotel out of it

The Station in Ashton under Lyne last night. A tiny little pub with a small and unusual audience. We've done it a few times now. Terrible room, terrible PA, the place smells awful, but actually it was loads of fun

nice one! The bassist in my main band is always going on about feeling like an imposter, but he's been doing some really big jazz gigs. He says he's "getting away with it" but everyone else just knows he's ace at the bass guitar

Last night at Wroot Rocks which is a great venue in Wroot, near Doncaster. It's in the middle of nowhere really but the stage and PA are brilliant, and people turn out. I'd highly recommend playing here if you get chance!

good read, thanks. It amazes me how many people just do their own thing without listening to everyone else - and yet manage to stay in bands!

It's difficult to be in "the zone" or the right mood every time you go to play. I was talking about this to a mate of mine at the weekend, in the context of drums. If I'm not in the right mood when I go to play, I don't realise it, I'm just really unsatisfied with my playing, and I start trying different sticks, adjusting the heights of stands, swapping cymbals, even looking online at gear to buy. When I'm in the right mood to play I'm just "on it" and the gear I'm using makes almost no different to my level of satisfaction (obviously crap gear is no fun but it's very rare I'm confronted with crap gear)

One of my bands does pretty well, great gigs, enthusiastic audiences, and the money is OK too. It's a great night 99% of the time, which is worth it for the 1%. Some of the music I'm not very keen on playing, and most of it I'd never listen to at home, but I still think the gigs are so much fun that I'd do it without the pay I'm in another couple of bands that are so much fun to play in, and I love the music so much, I really don't care about money. In fact I'd happily just play that stuff in the studio and listen to it at home, although the desire to have other people hear it is pretty strong, just because I'm so proud of it

Bass is very difficult to record, you have to be very precise. A lot of the bassists who come through my studio are often surprised to find that they can't actually play the riffs they thought they'd been playing live. It's quite easy to get away with just making a low end rumble live, but you can't really do that in the studio

I'm on drums in that band

O2 Academy 2 in Birmingham on Saturday night. We were first on. It was my first gig with my new moulded earplugs. They're so quiet! It was a bit disorientating for the first half of the set but I got used to it. We played well, even though we had a dep on bass, and we got a great reception. Ace!

Alexanders. I don't really know Chester but it's the 2nd time I've played there and both times to pretty much no-one

one of the drummers things would probably do it, something like this: https://www.roland.com/uk/products/spd-sx/ I've never done it myself though, maybe check out some youtube demos?

A small pub in Chester last night with my band Dandelion meow meow. A very small audience, and I've been knackered all week. I was expecting to have a bad night but playing with this band is just too much fun. So funky!!!!

the one you linked will be fine

Good find! I looked at the manual but missed that

oh well, it seems it's just a fact of life and I'll have to live with it. I'd still prefer if the sound for the support acts was "acceptable" IE drums audible to the audience, but then if they want to turn the whole thing up and put on a light show for the headliner - fine. I have to say we've headlined quite a few shows and it's never happened for us, but then we don't take our own light or sound engineers

The Xvive v19 only supplies 300mA I can't seem to find a definitely spec for the current draw of the tonehammer, but a couple of talkbass threads suggest it's 500mA MXR 87 is only 19mA according to this site: https://effektpedaler.dk/en/product/mxr-m87-bass-compressor/ Boss TU-3 draws 30mA So you want a power supply can can do 550mA or more. It looks like the Xvive won't cut it v19

Outstanding work, I'm really enjoying this thread, thanks!

If a promoter said to me "Would you like us to do terrible sound and lights for the support acts before you come on?" I'd say no, and I'm pretty sure that's the case for 99% of other musicians, so I just wondered where this practise comes from

I get that, it's a similar situation to the touring band who take their own sound engineer.

I always thought that as most of the audience are there (or should be) to see the headline act, then they would see it as a climax anyway. I'm not talking pyros but lights and sound should be decent all night, surely?

How does it benefit the venue at all?

Like I said, if they bring their own sound/lighting people then I get it, and for most "big" shows that's the case, but I'm talking about small 100-500 capacity multi-band originals gigs where the same people do sound and lights all night

I've heard it said that on some multi-band gigs, the sound and lighting is intentionally improved for the headline act. I'm quite cynical but I also believe that in general, people are nice, so I really don't believe this to be the case. That being said, here are some of my experiences: Playing at Sound Control in Manchester. The sound is OK but the lights are just static - fair enough, but when the headline band go on after us the volume is turned up and the lights change and move in time with the music I can't remember the venue but the same deal, same headliner a couple of weeks later, except this time they kept the house lights on for our set, turned them off for their set, great lights, and a smoke machine Many, many times I've been asked to show up at 4 or 5pm to sound check, only to hang around waiting for the headliners to get their sound perfect, leaving no time for anyone else to check Last night the drum mics were very quiet in the PA for all 3 acts before the headliner came on and the same sound man cranked them up If the headliner has their own sound and/or lighting guy, then I can totally understand why things would improve for them, but that doesn't apply to any of the above. What are your experiences? Does anyone know if this is a real thing? I can only think of those few examples and I've played hundreds of gigs over the years. One of my bandmates thinks it's the done thing to try and make the headliner look/sound better but I reckon he's just paranoid. P.S I thought we'd done this topic a year or so back but I can't find it so sorry if I've duplicated anything