cheddatom

Not sure about The Voicer. On our local musicians' facebook pages we've had loads of posts asking people to audition for X Factor which I've not seen before this year. Maybe there are less applicants

My busiest band is described as Folk-Punk but in my opinion we don't do any folk or any punk. I really don't get it but we do loads of gigs on the punk scene and go down well. I play in a band doing funky dance music with some provocative lyrics, we call that Disco-Punk Another band I play with is backing up a singer-songwriter doing kate-bush style prog-pop, then I play in what I would describe as a "stoner rock band" but some people have called it "desert rock". I play in another couple of pretty heavy bands I would describe as "prog metal" but they sound very different from each other. It's all original music and quite difficult to pin it down to labels people will understand but I just tell them to listen to some and see if they like it

Friday night supporting the Wildhearts, then Saturday night doing a local benefit gig our frontman organised for a friend of ours. Both brilliant gigs but I didn't play well as I was feeling rather ill. No-one else seemed to notice so who cares?! Me! I hate making mistakes.

I got back from Ireland last night. We did 3 nights, Friday in Dublin, Saturday in Dundalk, Sunday in Cork. It all went pretty well and was loads of fun but now I'm absolutely wiped out. I didn't expect it to be so tiring!

Check out my mate's project, it's ace! https://velocity-automated-astronomical-sonic-transmissions.bandcamp.com/

I just received a pedal only a couple of days after paying for it. Excellently packaged too. Brilliant chap!

Negativity on a gig night. beaching about various gripes with the band is fine, do it at rehearsal or a meeting, don't do it while I'm out trying to have a good time and DEFINITELY not while we're on stage you massive grumpy "£$£&%^*%&^

A friend of mine was diagnosed with a form of arthritis, I can't remember the name, but it made it impossible for her to play piano or guitar. The NHS tried all sorts. She found some research suggesting a particularly weird died of nothing but raw fruit and veg, avoiding anything particularly acidic, and it's totally worked for her. It sounds like pseudo science BS to me but I can't deny that it worked All the best anyway

I play in 6 originals bands and I'd go to watch all of them!

I don't understand this. If I "leather the kit" with my hot rods, it's just as loud as with sticks?!

I really don't think hot rods will make a heavy hitter any quieter If he's hard of hearing and everyone else is loud, he might be playing harder to hear himself over everyone else. Turn your amps down. Does he play quieter or does he just complain that he can no longer hear everyone else?

We did the last slot at a festival on Saturday night, outside a pub in a tent, not a huge affair, not sure how many people were there but the tent was big and packed. It was loads of fun even though the crowd were constantly trying to put off our frontman, and the mains kept tripping.

Wow, that's amazing, thanks for the info

This looks amazing! Do you mind if I ask how much you spent? And how soundproof it is?

Ey Up Mi Duck festival on Friday, on drum with Headsticks, we played inside at the end of the night, around 11pm, and it was rammed. I guess most of them had seen us before as they were all singing along. The PA was a bit dodgy, they had a bunch of 4 gang extension leads chained up and one of the revellers managed to spill a drink on one of them. The soundman looked a bit worse for wear and suggested that was us done for the night but someone managed to find the reset switch - it turns out the extension had one of those protection things built in. Anyway, we played till after midnight and it was great fun Saturday night we played the May Day Festival of Solidarity which is a socialist affair. When we arrived there were a few VERY folky acts on and the crowd was in total appreciative silence - not our usual crowd. I was a bit concerned but it went alright. Nowhere near as good as the night before, but then the crowd weren't anywhere near as wasted. On Sunday I played a local festival on lead guitar as part of Julia Mosely's band. I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it. I've played guitar since I was a kid but never done it in a band before so I'm struggling with confidence a bit, but I've seen some recordings and it sounds good. It's on Facebook so I don't know if you'll be able to see it... Great weekend anyway!

When I was 15 I bought a fender musicmaster. I really had no idea what I'd got but I loved it and started running around the house playing pop punk basslines. I got carried away and ran into a door. The door handle gouged a bit horrible chunk out of it... Still, I'll be able to identify it when I finally get the chance to buy it back!

It's just the done thing to mic the snare isn't it, people get set in their ways and forget to use their ears

As a drummer I'd always prefer an overhead to a close mic on the snare (if we have to compromise on channels)

I played at The Tivoli in Buckley the other night. I assume the soundman was a "house" guy but he was extremely professional. He went to great lengths to EQ everything and it sounded brilliant... but he knew what he was doing Most of the gigs I play with bad sound are caused by people playing with EQ when it sounded fine before they started. For most small venues it should be as simple as setting the mic gain, and then turning up the faders until you can hear everything.

Tivoli venue in Buckley last night, brilliant venue, not a massive audience but it was cool. Great sound on stage always makes it fun

My 2nd gig playing drums with a backing track. A lot fewer technical issues this time!! I think I need to sort out some sort of ambient mic to get a better sound in my ears but it was really good, loads of fun

One of the best posts I've ever read on Basschat, thank you!

There are two sound guys and the other one is fine. This one is just really hard work. Our singer has a vocal effects pedal. He's a loud singer so I keep the input gain right down on it. The soundman cranked up the input gain on the pedal to the point of distortion, so I shouted "that's distorting, I'll turn it down" and did. He came back to the stage and rather angrily told us to stop messing with his settings, and put the gain back up. I was on drums and it was time to get the set going so I couldn't do anything else. Our frontman kept begging him to put more vocals in the monitor but either he realised that he'd got so much distortion that it would just feed back, or more likely just decided that we were an annoying band, either way he just sat there on his phone ignoring us

Yeh, I was telling Paul, once the headline band had an inaudible bass. Our guitarist asked the soundman to turn it up and he shouted F OFF at him

On Thursday we played at The Sugarmill which is a fairly big club in Stoke. It was rammed, about 300 in there. Our set was shorter than expected (supporting a bigger band) and I had to set up my drum kit to the side so it was all a bit cramped. We played some new songs and there were some mistakes. Honestly I thought we were crap, in particular me. The next day I watched some footage back and I couldn't spot any mistakes at all, and it looked great! Weird On Friday we played at The Maze in Nottingham. I got very annoyed with the soundman who wouldn't listen to me resulting in quiet and distorted lead vocals. Despite that it was loads of fun and we played really well. The other bands were great too! I met @PaulWarning who's got a brilliant sound for Verbal Warning!