BigRedX

The last time I went to a musical instrument store with the intention of trying some things out and also to make a purchase there and then if I found something I liked it was a disaster. I was in the market for a controller keyboard to use with my DAW, had done my research and seen that my local PMT stocked several of the models I was interested in. When I got to the shop the keyboards and high-tech section was physically closed off with a notice telling me to ask for a member of staff to assist. I did this and was told that someone would be with me shortly. While I waited I had a look around at the various guitars and basses on display, which seemed much reduced from when I had been there previously. After more than 10 minutes had passed and with no-one showing the slightest inclination to serve me, I left. In the end I bought the cheapest of my choices from Amazon safe in the knowledge that if it didn't do what I wanted I'd able to send it back and try something else. I've been back once since this episode when I was in the area and had 15 minutes to kill and it looked even more run down than before, although the keyboards section was open this time. I couldn't even find enough things to keep me interested for 15 minutes and left shortly after entering. TBH the needs of the people who post on here regularly have become far too specialised for the typical musical instrument store to service and we should recognise this and accept that we are not their customers any more.

If you like the sound of your current cab but it's not cutting it when it approaches the output limit, then just buy another one the same. You may find that additional placement options means that the second cab also ends up nearer your ears.

Have a look at black anodising too. This is what was used on most of the metalwork of my black Gus Bass:

The point I was trying to make is that with bass cabs you are stuck with the colouration they impose on your sound. At leat with modelling speakers you can pick some different ones. I've found that for the sort of bass tones I want speaker emulations simply don't work. The only one I still use is a guitar one that is tied to a a combo sound I quite like. In every other case I found that turning off the speaker emulation made my sound better.

There's a lot more to bass than the tone in the OP and P-Bass with flats.

I was lucky. I've never smoked in my life. Not even one drag. At school the smokers were all IMO dickheads and losers and not the sorts of people I looked up to or wanted to emulate. After school I probably did a lot of passive smoking as just about all my friends smoked, but somehow I was never tempted. It might have been the cost. I was always skint either as a student or because I was on the dole and there plenty of other things I would much rather spend what little money I had on - like musical instruments or records.

AFAIK the C Bass and 5-string Original shapes were 36" and the standard 4-string Original was 34". However as most of the basses in those days were made specifically to order there could have been some variation. You can tell the scale length of an Original shape bass by looking at the bridge position. If the bridge is right up at the end of the body then it is 36". If there's some space between the bridge and the end of the body (as in the Facebook example on the previous page) then it is 34".

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.

Name bands have always charged support bands for tour slots, with a few notable exceptions. In the days when the tour was a loss-leader for album sales it helped keeps the losses down. Now that the live performance is the main source of income ofd most artists having a support band that pays is probably more important than ever for making the tour profitable.

Being successful at sport is almost always about being very good at it which is relatively easily quantifiable. Music on the other hand is nearly entirely subjective.

That sounds to me like you were insufficiently rehearsed and put your faith in the ability of people who weren't part of the band and intoxicated to be able control the music. You'd have had an equally disastrous outcome if any one of the musicians had been intoxicated. When any of the bands I've been in have used programmed or recorded backing we practice for every contingency we can think of. For the bands where the backing is just "icing" we have practiced playing the songs without it. For the others when something goes wrong in rehearsal we don't stop but play on and work out how to get out of the problem, such as the singer missing their cue or coming in early, so if it happens at a gig we'll get through it and only those in the audience who know the songs inside-out might notice that something went awry. We also control the backing from the stage and have the ability to do so without it being obvious to the audience.