BigRedX

The rather confusing need to enable the "microphone" in order to be able to record external sources in Logic has been there a while, but it still caught me out when I upgraded from a 2010 MacPro to a Mac Studio. The Voice isolation mode appears to be a more recent development. BTW if you are on Facebook you should consider joining the excellent Apple Logic Pro Users Group.

All the bands I have seen in the last couple of years who use IEMs but whose guitarist(s) use amp-driven sustain and/or feedback as part of their sound have a SMALL amp somewhere on stage specifically for this purpose. It's placed so that it doesn't affect FoH but in a convenient location for its intended function. I've seen one placed with a 45° tilt-back at the front of the stage pointing directly at the guitarist.

IME semi-modular synths are always too much of a compromise. I had a Korg MS20 in the 80s which promised much more than it actually delivered. Many of the routings that modular users take for granted like being able to use the audio signal as a modulation source were unavailable, and TBH the patch pay while looking impressive could have been quite effectively replaced with a few switches. Similarly with the 2600. I was helping someone out on another forum with a patch routing and it was very quickly apparent that in order to do what they wanted another VCA and EG were required. And this was for a fairly simple patch that most non-modular synths could achieve on their own. Where The MS20 excelled was when you wanted to interface it with other equipment and when paired with the fully modular MS50, but IMO if you are going to do that you might as well build your own modular system from scratch, so you can concentrate on those modules that actually do what you want, and as long as you don't run out of Eurorack space, it's easy to add more VCAs/LFOs/EGs etc. as you find you need them. And if you don't find you need them you would have probably been able to make do with something non-modular.

But what about woodwind or brass transposing instruments? When they read a "C" do they think of it as "C" or whatever note their instrument actually makes?

I already do a creative job, graphic design, where much of the time I have little interest in what I am creating and my function is to produce what the client wants. If I really disagree with the creative direction that a project is going in, I will have one go at trying to persuade them my idea would be better, but ultimately the client is in charge and after that I'll take their money, shut up and do exactly as they ask. However when it comes to the music I want to play, I'm only interested in what I actually like. For me music is too important to be wasting time with songs I can't get 100% behind and I hope that the rest of the band feel the same. We are currently in the enviable position where we have more songs we really like than will fit in a typical 45 minute set.

Even the sound of the sticks hitting the pads on an electronic kit is surprisingly loud. My girlfriend can tell what song I'm practicing from the acoustic sound of the strings on a solid bass guitar.

The only printed tab I have come across was in a book I got in my early days of learning the guitar, back in the 70s. It included rhythm information and because it was aimed at slide guitar had the tuning for each piece as many of them were in open tunings. It also had traditional musical notation above the tab. Until I saw tab on the internet I assumed that all tab was done like this.

Low margins are in all sorts of retail sectors. I have a friend who used to work in sales for an Apple reseller. For something like an iPod the profit to the company wouldn't even cover the cost of his wages while he took the phone call to make the sale.

It seems to me, and again correct me if I'm wrong, but many readers are doing the thing that Tab is criticised for which is to go directly from a note position on the stave to a finger position on the fretboard without consciously identifying the note name. And I suppose that for complex pieces this is a requirement or you simply wouldn't be able to play them. And which is why for some people reading for one instrument is not a transferable skill to another even if it uses the same clef and transposition. Also makes sense for transposing instruments where the fingering is the same but the actual note produced is different. You're not actually reading the notes per se, you are reading a fingering position and blowing technique. As a composer I think the reliance on scale shapes and muscle memory limiting, and as far as possible if I find myself repeating note patterns from one composition to another (even if they are different keys) I will do my best to try something else and only revert to the original already used idea if I really can't come up with something different that is at least as good. Maybe that's why I'm not impressed with a lot of playing technique, because it often sounds like regurgitating the same thing over and over, particularly when we are looking at solos. Also I find a lot of the suggestions for music to use if you want to learn to read, very uninspiring, and as exercises that would put me off very quickly. On the other hand it seems that most of the people who want to learn to read need to do so in order to land paying gigs, which I suspect will involve performing some music that they have little interest in.

That will be the Ford Pinto.

One final one from me. Track 9 on this page is by my third band. This time I'm playing synth. This is yet another song originally written and recorded by my first band and repurposed as an oriental sounding piece of synth-pop. IIRC it only uses black notes on the keyboard. This version was recorded at the end of 1983 using our newly acquired Yamaha DX7 (we had one of the first in the UK), in our practice space/recording studio located in the tiny cellar of one of the band members. Recorded on 4-track with numerous overdubs including one that had to be added live during the final mix. As well as the DX7 the other instruments on the track were Roland 808 drum machine, Korg MS20 and Roland SH101 synths. The Bright Lights cassette compilation was organised by myself and a friend who at the time was running the Square Dance Studio in Derby (which subsequently moved to Nottingham and became the Square Centre). It was supposed to be a representation of the current state of the Nottingham music scene like the Bomb Party cassette that my pervious band had been on. Unfortunately at the time we didn't have the same clout as BBC Radio Nottingham so a few of the bands we wanted to feature weren't interested, and some of the bands are included simply because they recorded a demo at Square Dance. I think 100 copies of the cassette were produced and sold through local record shops and at gigs. The cover was screen printed by me and the cassettes duplicated in real time by the studio. Another track recorded at the same as this had William Orbit interested in working with the band, but we weren't that impressed with his band at the time (Torch Song), and another member of the band had been involved in a similar situation with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics which had promised lots but ultimately delivered very little, and so we turned him down.

It really depends what you play and how important image is to you. If you favour 34" scale 4-string basses there are hundreds of options under £1500, especially if you also take second hand instruments into consideration, that you would need to have a very specific set of non-standard additional requirements not to be able to find something suitable at that price. If you play something less conventional it's not quite so clear cut. I currently play Bass VI and the only suitable instrument I have found costs just under £1500 new. There is nothing else available off the shelf that has a comparable specification for my needs, and to improve what I already have would involve having something custom-made by my favourite luthier and would cost four times as much.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the implication I get from people advocating being able to read (meaning sight read) is that you can play any score, so long as it is within your technical ability, on first look and not make any glaring errors. AFAICS the only way you can get up that standard of reading is by practicing using pieces that you don't already know. Otherwise the music is just a memory aid. The other thing about reading I never understand is those people who play multiple instruments, but can't read for all of them. How does that come about?

As someone who understands the various musical notation symbols but can't actually sight read, when you are practicing how do you know if you are doing it right? If you have even a passing familiarity with the music your are trying to read then it could be argued that you're not always actually reading but relying on previous knowledge of the piece along with some musical conventions that you have picked up along the way in regard to key etc. And when you have a new piece of music to practice your reading from how many times can you use this before much of it becomes playing from memory rather than playing from the score?

Tiny photos. What's up with that?

I really can't why anyone would want to use 2.4 when 5.8 is an option.

Unfortunately that's the price you pay for latency low enough to allow real-time wireless audio transmission.

And of course the sound will change again a soon as the venue fills up with audience.

IMO there are two important things: 1. You need to practice your reading on things you actually want to play. IME nothing puts people off learning quicker than having to do something they don't like. 2. You also need to practice your reading on tunes that you don't already know how to play and ideally are not familiar with. If you know or have some idea of what you are supposed to be playing you'll find that you are by-passing the actual reading. Also if I found that I need to be able to sight read I'd learn both the bass and treble clef.

Since room problems are a mix of frequency and time domain problems and EQ is a frequency domain solution this method only works for audience members who are stood at the point where the microphone was.

The heaviest piece of kit my band take to gigs is the 3U rack case that holds the computer and associated devices that supply our backing. Since this case essentially replaces a drummer plus their drum kit and another keyboard player, synthesiser and stand, and means that we can get the whole band with our instruments and merch plus our roadie/merch seller in a single estate car I can put up with the 17kg weight.

Track 11 on this page is the only publicly released recording of my second band The Perfect Party. Contrary to what it says on the page the compilation was released in early 1982. The song was written a year earlier by my previous band and a very embryonic version of it appears on our third cassette album "Do Modern Atoms Wear Fashionable Clothes?" This time I'm actually playing bass although most of the bass part is played on G-string and it never goes lower than bottom E on the guitar. Believe it or not this recording had CBS records interested in signing the band until they heard our second more polished and less quirky demo and decided that Wham! would be a better choice.

Lost In Music by Giles Smith

Musically? Probably very subliminally. Much of our early music (including these two songs which were composed several years before we committed them to vinyl) stemmed from both our inability to play well enough to be considered prog rock as well as the fact that we had very few conventional rock band instruments. I didn't have the album in my record collection, but it was definitely to sort of thing that at least one us would have been listening to in the 70s; we tended to favour the less well known bands. The band name comes from The Pretty Things song "Cries From The Midnight Circus".

Here's my first band The Midnight Circus with our only appearance on vinyl as part of the "Angst In My Pants" various artists double EP. This was recorded in 1980 at a 4-track studio behind one of the musical instrument shops in Leicester. Multiple warnings: Weedy sound, no bass guitar on the first track, dodgy lyrical subject matter (we justified it at the time by claiming to be sarcastic). However John Peel liked it enough to play on his Radio One show... And Johan Kugelberg rated the EP 34 in his Top 100 DIY Singles in Ugly Things magazine saying: "...and extremely do it yourself DIY frenzy from the Midnight Circus. Who in "Silicone Baby" and "Hedonist Jive" have out-poignanted a tow-truck full of Aimee Mann's and Michelle Shocked's edgy humanity and funny as shit to boot..." There are older recordings out there in the public domain. We were asked to contribute to Angst In My Pants as a result of our first album "The Bland Craze" which was released on free cassette (you sent us a C-60 cassette and a SAE and we returned the cassette with our album recorded on to it alone with a cover made from a folded A4 photocopy. We distributed about 150 of these so I am sure some still survive.