BigRedX

But then you still get the colouration of the speakers.

@diskwave You neatly side-stepped the age question. I'm probably only a year or two younger than you but I have yet to turn into my dad. "Young people" like all sorts of music, although IME quite a few of them don't realise that the tunes in the ads are old. In a way I am glad that lots of music is not longer bound by age, as it means the gigs I play aren't all populated by 50 and 60 year olds trying to relive their youth. There's 30 years age difference between the oldest (me) and youngest in my band, but we all have similar broad-ranging tastes in music which is why the band works. Later this month we'll be doing a gig with a great new post-punk/goth band who look like they are in their early 20s and may actually be younger than that.

They could on the Overwater I had that had both still connected. I used it for recording a straight sound whilst hearing the affected sound I was using. During mix down we would run the bass track back through the rig and the effects settings could be adjusted to suit where we were going with the mix.

Not everyone wants to drink alcohol and most soft drinks are sugary shit that's probably even worse for you. If I went to see a band I wasn't having a beer for whatever reason I probably wouldn't have anything to drink.

All laptop screens are a bit small: That's my work set-up. InDesign Document on the middle screen with the pallets to the right. Two word files which I am working from on the left. And here's the same set up for music: Logic arrange page on the middle screen. HX Edit or Logic mixer page on the right and plug-in editing windows on the left.

I ran a bi-amp system in the 90s, but that was mostly so I could put certain effects on the HF side only. Also the way I had my rig set up allowed me to have the HF speakers at ear level which allow for better monitoring and lower backline levels on stage. The dual DIs for the PA feed did tend to confuse some in-house FoH engineers so we ended up with our own sound engineer. These days it can all be done within a decent must-effects pedal and the results summed at the output for direct feed to the PA.

All about context. That tone wouldn't suit any of the music I want to play.

I think you probably meant to say "Playing covers in a group is an essential part of learning your craft." I'd been playing in originals bands for 10 years before I played a cover. The song in question taught me nothing about arrangements or form, in fact we altered the arrangement of the final verse to make it more interesting otherwise the song would have been an intro followed by 4 verses that only varied in the lyrics, each separated by 4 bars of identical instrumental. IMO it is perfectly possible to learn about songwriting, arrangement and form simply by listening. You don't need to actually play anything, and certainly not in a band. Besides many successful songs are those that break the conventions of the time regarding those attributes.

But for a lot of classical music the composer would be part of the original permanence, and if not it would have been written specifically for a particular performer or ensemble. It's only since the death of the composer(s) in question that music essentially becomes a cover.

It sounds like me that they were too interested in being musicians and not concentrating enough on the songwriting or the performance. IMO if you can't put on a performance there is no point in playing live irrespective of whether you use backing or not. That's hardly new. Unfortunately bands have been doing that for at least the last 60 years.

As someone who both writes and plays, the lucrative part is nearly always in the composition and not the playing. I have a back-catalogue of 45 years worth of songs, and although most of the songs that aren't being performed by my current band only earn a few pounds a year, it all adds up, and it only takes a couple of songs to become popular either from my band or someone deciding to do a cover and I could be set for the rest of life. I'm certainly not going to be scrabbling around for paying gigs in covers bands just so I can pay the bills, because that would kill any enthusiasm for performing music that I have. For me, income from writing a song is like buying a premium bond. I'm know that I'm very unlikely to win a big prize, but if I don't do it then my chances of "winning" are definitely zero. But each additional song is a very slight extra chance. And if by some miracle one of my songs does become successful, it doesn't affect my current musical activities. I can still continue to do what I want right now and not have to bow to the pressures of having another "hit".

I would like to be able to earn enough from writing, recording and performing music so that I could give up my day job and concentrate on it full time. The more time I have for music the better I think it will be. Currently I'm posting this in between laying out pages for a very boring magazine that will take me most of this week and pay the bills for the next month. I would not be doing this if I didn't have to.

But music has moved on and you haven't. Besides it's hardly new. I was working with bands using drum machines and backing tracks back in 1981. The Who used backing tapes in order to perform "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the 70s. I bet no-one other than the Musician's Union complained about that. I would love to be able perform our songs without programmed backing but finding a drummer and synth player with the technical ability to do what we need is proving impossible. Also it would completely mess up the logistics of playing live. As I said in my original post we get the whole band plus all the instruments we need to play a gig into a single estate car. We can be set up and be ready to play in under 10 minutes from load in. We couldn't do any of those things with a drummer and second synth player.

Did the OP ask for a valuation? If so that's the offending part. Please repost your original question but don't ask what it is worth.

We have the facility to extend sections of our backing track should we want to. However we have yet to use it at an actual gig. Likewise when I have been in bands that were totally live we rarely changed the length or structure the songs on the fly, and if we did it was because someone had messed up and it was a chance for us all the catch up and get back in sync, not because we thought the song could do with being a bit longer. Currently my band is in the enviable position that we have more songs that we would like to play, and more importantly that our audience want to hear, than will fit in a typical sub-45 minute set, so we would much rather play another song than extend a couple of the others, and I think our audience would prefer that too.