cheddatom

If I want strings I can never get what I want in any of the 3 local shops. The stock is very limited. In fact I've gone back to using vic firth 5A sticks because that's all I can get in shops and always leave it too late to buy the Promarks I want. Anyway, Rhythm House in Hanley is a great shop. Friendly, knowledgeable staff, and loads of 2nd hand gear to look through. They'll even do part-ex So, I'll go into a shop for emergency sticks, or for a look at 2nd hand gear, or to trade in some of my gear.

Thursday afternoon we played "almost acoustic" at Rebellion festival. I'm on drums and the suggestions are "snare and brushes" or Cajon. Instead I took my snare, hi-hats, crash cymbal, and a kick drum contraption I made out of a tupperware tub, pedal, EQ pedal and noise gate. The soundman didn't look very impressed when I gave him the jack to DI but the audience loved it. Best reaction to a gig since we played the Arena stage at Rebellion a year ago. The following day we did the Pavillion stage with our normal full setup, and it was good, but somehow not as exciting as the Almost Acoustic thing - probably because we were just winging that one. Someone posted some footage on Facebook, I'll try to share it here: Last night I played bass for my mate down at the local open mic and that was just as much fun as having hundreds of people cheering for you!

I'm sure the easiest way is to just mute the instruments you want to play live and then export that as a backing track. I did this with a band I play drums in. I muted all of the guitars and lead vocals, panned the entire thing hard right, put a click in hard left, then exported the album. I put these exported mp3s into a play list, give the soundman the right output through a DI, and listen to both left and right through my headphones while I play drums The problem with triggering sounds is that the tempo might have shifted, and if some of your sounds/samples are quite long they could then sound out of time, even if triggered at the right point

of course, but I have spares for the MOTU and the card, I even have a spare desk... but yeh at some point it'll all break. I think at that point I'll get a digital desk

It does in my studio! I built a PC about 5 years ago. I have a MOTU 24IO that I wanted to use so I got a motherboard with an old style PCIe slot that'd work. 6 core 3.5GHz AMD CPU, 16GB RAM. I put windows 7 and Cubase 6 on there and I haven't updated anything on it since. I've installed a couple of plugins which is a bit of a pain sometimes, depending on their license method, but other than that it's fine to keep offline. I find I spend more time learning how to get better at the basics, and less time trying out all the new shiny toys I have managed to push it right to the boundaries of it's capabilities, but that was with a whole album in one session file, 150 odd channels, 20 odd reverbs, same delays, probably 50 compressors etc. and running Izotope on the master bus. It still handled it but there's the odd glitch on playback (not on the exports obviously) When I get the money to build a new system I'll do the same again - including windows 7

Do you mean the profit from physical sales? Or revenue from royalties? Either way ours all goes into the pot with gig money. We can afford studio time, loads of merch in stock, a few charity gigs, and we still get to take a small bit of money after every gig - the boss manages it all

I'll be there with Headsticks on Thursday and Friday... can't stay for the whole weekend unfortunately but it's such a brilliant atmosphere! I can't wait to get there! I used to love the Star & Garter but I went there to see a hardcore band and got "crowd killed" bashing my head on the floor, so every time I go back I get reminded of it... great venue though, I'll get over it 100 club is great too. Brilliant house kit!!

Well I've been getting great results doubling, tripling, even quadrupling my bass takes. I guess it depends on what sounds you're going for but this is pretty tight metal with a doomy slant and it works very well

Cool, thanks!

I can't count 1 2 3 to it at all! Weird! I figured a way to count it - nod my head as usual, and each time I nod, press a key on my keyboard. 13 key presses per repetition for me. I guess I'm nodding 1/4 notes. Me theory is not up to much so no idea what that means. 13/4 ?

I don't know if this is helpful but for a lot of my recent work I've been double tracking - taking one pass at the song with my clean sound, then another with my dirty sound. It takes a bit of concentration to play it tight enough but it's a much fatter sound than just blending clean and dirty from the same take.

We did Rock City once, supporting Buzzcocks, definitely a highlight for me, I've seen so many huge bands play there, it was quite a honour to be on the stage. I love that venue!!

Saturday night we played at the Sun Inn in Llangollen. We've played it before but I always forget how weird it is. Very friendly staff, great beer, but the crowd always seems thin until 11:30 when they start streaming in wasted. This time was better as there were a bunch in early specifically to see us. The sound on stage is awesome. It's a hollow wooden stage but quite shallow, adding the correct amount of "weight" to the drums. Brilliant night! Even if I did get home at 3AM Sunday night I was on guitar, un-rehearsed, unable to hear my amp properly (should have taken a stand), guitar wouldn't stay in tune, tuner broken, and I was knackered from the night before. The first set was definitely ropey, but after a pint at half time I seemed to pull it together somehow. I guess it helps that we have a great drummer and amazing bassist!

I'd definitely go for 16Gb RAM Any reason you're ruling out AMD CPUs? Whenever I've spec'd a new build I've saved loads of money going for high spec AMDs over Intels To record without latency you need a half decent audio interface and a fast CPU (and keep your VSTs to a minimum)

I always try to have a "riff" or phrase in my head, basically a melody that's the length of whatever the bar is. If I try to split it into sections, or count, I just make a mess of it. For example, I play drums on this track and I have no idea what the time signature is for the main riff EDIT: I'd love to know what timing this is in if anyone can tell me?

ace! Loving the funk sound clip as well

ace!

Hah, thanks

I doubt they'd be allowed left handed violins in orchestras, you'd be poking eyes out left and right!

It looks awesome! Nice one

Yewstock festival on Saturday on drums with Dandelion meow meow. It's always loads of fun with this band. The crowd was a little thin but a few were up dancing. Great sound on stage until the house-bass-amp blew. We had to cut our set short Deerstock yesterday on drums with Headsticks. Awesome sound on stage and it was going really well until they cut the sound as someone had collapsed

I'm sure they said that when I played with them over a year ago - I wonder if they just can't bring themselves to stop. Awesome band anyway

We're generally playing multi-band gigs so as the drummer it generally depends on what the soundman/promoter are forcing me to use, and how long it takes the previous guy to get off. If we're on our own I try to set up my kit while the front man clambers over me trying to put the backdrop up

I always loved his basslines and sound. I couldn't figure out how he got that weird tone until I realised he played an acoustic

There's a venue we've played at a few times, a very small room above a pub. They always promise there will be a sound engineer and a PA but every time we turn up there's 2 knackered old speakers, a 4 channel desk, and one mic, stand and cable. We have to do the sound ourselves. If people turn up it's actually not a bad gig, but we really have to keep volume down so that you can hear the vocals which is very frustrating for me on drums. We all agreed we'd never do it again but I notice it's on the gigs list again for next year