BigRedX

Unfortunately I have been too busy working on mixes for existing songs and finishing off the arrangements on new songs started last year to have spent any serious time with it yet. The only thing I have worked out so far is that the synth part will be of very limited use to me since my Bass VI playing is far too polyphonic.

Over the last 3 years my band have done 4 charity gigs. They are all local, either at established venues or somewhere where to PA will be provided by the organisers. Therefore the amount of effort required on our part other than playing is minimal. We have also been able to sell some band merch which normally goes to offset any travelling expenses we might have incurred. We've played Oxjam Beeston three times now and the first two times we were definitely playing to an audience that had mostly never seen us before, and several of those have come to see us play at subsequent gigs. Having said that, the last time we played there was a good chance that the number of people in the audience who had specifically come to see us outnumbered those that just happened to be at the venue already. At Oxjam we get given wristbands that gets into all the other gigs for free, and overall the organisation is excellent so it's a joy to be able to take part. The other charity gig we have done recently was probably one of the best paying gigs we did that year. Again excellent organisation at an impressive venue where we were fed and watered and had proper back-stage facilities including a kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. Apparently these were for all the performers but we appeared to be the only band that wanted to make use of them. So long as we are doing gigs of this caliber we will be happy to play Charity events. Just remembered that Leeds Goth City Festival is technically also a charity event, but again it's well organised and all the bands are paid an amount that at minimum covers their expenses, and the organisers still manage to raise a significant amount of money for the charities they support.

I know it's probably not a popular opinion, but IME talent is probably the least import thing. So long as you don't mess up too obviously too often you'll be fine, and besides until you are totally without ability, you'll make less mistakes as you get more experienced. The other things are much harder to improve should they be lacking. I've managed to be a lot less obnoxious as a band member than I was in the 80s and 90s but it has taken 25 years of concentrated effort to achieve a more "chill" persona and being being in bands where I haven't been responsible for almost every aspect of the organisation has most definitely helped.

I don't think I've seen any political extremism in posts on here. However I don't spend a lot of time in Off Topic. There have been opinions that don't always align with mine, but nothing that I would class as extremism.

In the studio stitch together my guitar, bass and keyboard parts all the time. Live it doesn't matter if I play some bum notes or the timing and/or pitch of a few notes is too loose, it's all over in the next instant, never to be heard again, and besides the energy of the gig normally overshadows any errors. If it's being recorded for people to listen to over and over again I want it to be without mistakes. That doesn't mean quantised and autotuned to "perfection". I simply want what is committed to tape or DAW to match what I hear in my head when I'm playing it so that I, and other people, can enjoy listening to the song without noticing any errors. If that means dropping in to correct dodgy phrases or individual notes so be it. I recently discovered when recording an 8 bar riff for a song that my timing was a lot better for the last 2 to 3 bars of the riff than it was for the first few. Therefore I played each bar 16 times in succession and used the best 3-4 bars from each take, usually from the second half) to assemble enough instances of the riff to use throughout the song, so that each time to riff come in it has the correct feel but each instance is subtly different. For me it's all about getting the right sounding end result. Getting there in a single take is not even remotely important to me.

IIRC this part of the Helix Stadium is still to be implemented, and the initial units have been released without this functionality.

I was thinking in the way that every TV or computer monitor now comes with mounting points for a VESA adaptor as standard, all desktop high tech music devices should have similar points to allow the attachment of a standard microphone or cymbal stand adaptor. I've got around the flimsy cable and connector problem by fitting all our high-tech devices permanently in a rack case with a removable top and then using XLR and PowerCon connectors to join them to the outside world. It has the added advantage that our computerised backing playback can be set up and wired into the PA in couple of minutes. Most of the other bands we share the stage with who have similar based systems are still looking for suitable tables at the venue to put all their gear on and the right cables in their bag of leads. The disadvantage is that the rack case at least doubles the weight and size of the devices.

Unfortunately all these new products I have seen seem to be aimed at studio users, and if they are expected to be used as part of a live rig they have been designed by people who have obviously never been to multi-band gig at a small venue in their life. Too many mini-jacks, consumer-grade computer connectors, and external PSUs with weedy cables and non-locking plugs the low voltage side. Whenever a band we are sharing the stage with has technical problems at a gig, it can be tracked down to one of these "features". Also IMO anything not designed to be used on the floor needs to have mounting points for a microphone or cymbal stand adaptor on its base.

I've now found that simplest and most cost effective way to sort out these Canva files is to rasterise them at 1200DPI into Photoshop and then use the AI generative tools to add the missing bleed. Drop the resulting PSD into InDesign to add whatever printers marks that are needed and make a new PDF.

But that doesn't take the way your brain processes audio in an acoustic space into account. They would only be the same if you and your speakers were in an extremely dead acoustic space. In the real world the way your brain uses your ears and eyes, being 3.4m away from your cab in a typical room is not the same is having the sound piped directly into your ears with a 10ms delay.

I know you want real-world experience which I don't have, but AFAICS to me it looks like a marketing gimmick. Firstly based on those brands that actually show the tension figures, "balanced" tension IS NOT equal tension (it's not even close), and anyway IMO what feels "balanced" is entirely subjective. The only way I think that balanced tension could be made to work is if they also take compliance into account so all the strings feel about equally "stiff". However compliance depends on the construction and stringing method of the instrument as much as it does on the construction of the string itself. That means while the strings may feel balanced on one type of bass they won't necessarily feel balanced on others. I suspect that if you have a Fender style, 4-string, 34" scale bass, without using through-body stringing and favour standard string gauges, a balanced tension set may feel more "even" compared with a standard set, but even then it's going to be subjective, and after years of playing using sets where the A and E strings are noticeably lower in tension than the D do you really want strings that feel closer to the same stiffness? You are also limited to a few string brands that offer balanced tension, mainly D'Addario, so you may not like the choices available. It's one of the reasons I haven't tried them myself because whilst all my guitars are strung with D'Addario strings I haven't liked the sound or feel of any of their bass strings that I have used.

If it's just for stage monitoring loud and low aren't as important.

Any decent FRFR powered PA cab should do the job. Have al look through the FRFR thread for examples. I have an RCF 745 but TBH it's turned out to be complete overkill for what I need, and a smaller, lighter and lower powered cab would be equally suitable for nearly all the situations where I still need my own amplification on stage.

I looked dispensing with my Helix Floor and using Helix Native going through the laptop which provides our drum and extra synth backing. Unfortunately even on an M4 MacBook, having the Helix Native plugin active added another 5-10 seconds to loading time of each song which was IMO too slow for live use, so for the moment I've stuck with using the hardware.

Because we use computer-driven backing for drums and our second synth parts, our set order is decided at the rehearsal before a gig and I put the songs in the correct order on the computer so I can cue up and control the start of each one using a footswitch. Although I'm always given a printed set list for each gig I tend not to look at it because cuing up the next song also selects the correct starting patch on my Helix Floor which uses the song name as Its title and therefore the Helix display acts as much easier to see set list for me. At one fairly high-profile gig our singer who usually produces the printed set lists printed out a different set order to the one I had programmed. Luckily I noticed that he was not introducing the song I had cued up ready, and was able to manually select the correct one on the computer before I started a different song to the one the rest of the band were expecting.

Glad to have been of some use. You're not alone in having the dock taking up valuable screen real estate. Most of the people showing how to use various Mac programs on YouTube are guilty of this too. I'm wondering if it's a self sustaining attribute, since the Dock is one of the interface items that automatically identifies MacOS and therefore anyone demonstrating a Mac program thinks it needs to be on their screen and consequently users looking at the videos never question it. Because I come from a graphic design background where every vertical pixel is at a premium and therefore any interface elements make use these pixels at the expense of what is in the program window are banished. At the moment my bane is the Adobe "Home Bar" which is at the top of every Adobe program and for many users like myself serves no useful purpose, but can no longer be removed/hidden. And you never stop learning Logic IMO. I've been using it for over 30 years now, when I got my first copy it was either late V1 or early V2 when it was just for sequencing external MIDI instruments rather than the fully-fledged DAW it is today. There is no correct way of using it; the two people I collaborate with each use the program in a completely different way to me, yet we all manage to get similar end results. Finally for reference here's my "home studio" set up (which also doubles as my graphic design studio for my day job) You can just see the bottom of the dock on the edge of the right hand screen:

As a Mac user I always wonder why others need to have the dock turned on, quite large, taking up valuable screen real-estate at the bottom of the screen. Especially as in Logic you would be able to fit another two tracks on the arrange page without needing to reduce their size (and being able to fit more tracks at a sensible magnification is always a plus IMO), and I doubt whether you dropped out of Logic at any time during the day, and even if you did it's generally easier to switch between open programs using Command-Tab. On my set-up the dock is arranged vertically on the right-hand screen where it is out of the way and not taking up valuable pixels on my main screen. If I'm using a system with a single screen like a laptop the dock is permanently hidden.

I buy/listen to albums because I think the songs are good and not for any particular instrument. The only time I have bought albums for a particular instrument was in the late 90s when I bought the entire Led Zeppelin back catalogue so I could make my own set of John Bonham drum samples and loops. As a listening experience I found it unrelentingly dull apart from In Through The Out Door which made me realise why they had signed The Pretty Things to their Swan Song Label because the music Led Zeppelin were producing at the time, sounded to me like a second-rate version of Silk Torpedo and Savage Eye. Once I had grabbed all the audio I needed I sold the CDs. I think I used some the samples on a couple of songs my band was writing at the time. I've probably still got them in folder on a hard drive somewhere.

Mostly outdated music technology that will be overpriced due to who it used to belong to.

Or the old holes in the body of the bass filled and new pilot holes for the screws made in the right place. Quite why anyone would assume one piece of hardware is going to have the fixing holes in exactly the same place as the item it is replacing when they are of different designs is beyond me.

Is that any worse though, than the sound of multiple cutlery drawers being flung down a stone stair well which is the default noise produced at bass shows?

I think they are all too "Indie" for your typical Planet Rock audience. For me "modern rock" would be a band like Bring Me The Horizon who use guitar riffs and electronica, or a more modern version of Young Gods.

What would class as a modern band playing modern rock music?

I wouldn't ever consider using DT100s for mixing.

The usual fix is to remove the Librarian and Central programs and their preference files and re-install, because something has become corrupted from the original installation. This which trying on a different computer normally also works.