BigRedX

The next gig for Hurtsfall is: Pride Day Celebration on Saturday 26th July at Rough Trade in Nottingham. Free entry. We're on at 3.00pm.

Two gigs for Hurtsfall this week. First on Thursday at Rough Trade in Nottingham Supporting the brilliant Miranda Sex Garden. Lovely air-conditioned venue which was a relief from the heat and also meant I could wear my normal stage gear rather than something that wasn't going to make me pass out due to heat stroke. Played to an audience who were largely unfamiliar with our music but it looks like we won them over, and consequently sold loads of CDs afterwards. As always here's some photos from the gig: Then on Saturday we were near Ellesmere on the Welsh border for Goths On A Field. The bands play inside a barn which could have meant it was like an oven, but luckily it turned out to be marginally cooler in barn than outside in the field. My sister (who last saw me play live in 1985) and her husband who live nearby came along and seemed to enjoy it almost as much as our usual Goth audience. Plenty of people up and dancing from the first song, and the new song we were playing for the very first time got a great response. Despite the fact that most of the audience must have seen us play before we still sold a decent amount of merch and we had a number of people saying that we were their favourite band of the weekend which given who else was playing was high praise indeed! No photos as yet, but I'm sure there will be some posted when everyone is back home later today or tomorrow. For both gigs I was using my Eastwood Hooky 6-strong bass going direct into the PA via a Line6 Helix. Footwear was a pair of black and silver Converse-style boots bought years ago from TK Maxx Next gig is back at Rough Trade on 26th July as part of the Nottingham Pride festival.

If you can push some buttons with your fingers then you can program drums and keys. That’s all I do.

I make my own. My band uses computer backing for drums and some additional synth, which I create.

This is why nowadays my "studio" is contained within my Mac.

Still only just over £3k with shipping, VAT and import duty.

The one that Bass Direct are talking about is £5999

I suspect that most of these things don't really matter to most bass players. To me "nitro finish" just says it will wear away simply by looking at it, and if I'm buying a new bass I want it to look new - I'll add my own "mojo" simply by using it and no doubt the wear patterns I add will be completely different to Pino's. TBH I'm not in the market for this, and if I wanted one, as other have said, there are actual made in 1979 Stingrays available for less than half the price EBMM are asking

I wouldn't know what a 3 or 10dB change is. Besides dB measurements have to weighted to be meaningful.

I've learnt from experience unless something important is either deafening or inaudible not to mess with the monitor mix by asking for "a bit" more or less as the SE's idea of a bit and mine are completely and utterly different.

But as I said, that was over 40 years ago. Does he play his fretless Stingray with any bands these days?

I'm a Helix user (for my Bass VI) and most of the time I go direct into the PA. However my band tend to play places with decent sized PA systems and multiple monitor mixes so there's no problem if I need a different mix in the wedge directly in front of my (although I generally have the same mix as FoH). I always use a DI box for reasons mentioned previously. I don't bother tweaking my settings for individual gigs (as it would involve changing settings for about 40 patches for a typical gig), that's what the EQ on the PA desk is for, and for monitoring so long as I can hear that I'm in time and in tune with the rest of the band I'm happy. For the occasional gig where we know the monitoring is very poor or the PA is strictly vocals only I have an FRFR cab. Mine is an RCF745, which is complete overkill for what I need. If I had to replace it I'd be looking at something much smaller and lighter.

Thanks. I'm always interested in how manufacturers and luthiers deal with binding edges on contoured bodies. I suppose in this case it's a bit easier since it's not actually binding but simply a line with the colour masked off/removed.

While £6000 for a bass is not unusual, it's excessively expensive for what is essentially a CNC-made mass-produced instrument. If I had that kind of money to spend on a bass right now I'd be getting Gus Guitars to make me Bass VI based on their G3 Baritone design, an instrument that would be unique and personal to me and not something that to all intents and purposes is indistinguishable from any other Music Man fretless Stingray. Besides it's at least 40 years too late. Does Pino even use his original anymore?

Hurtsfall have been going in our present incarnation since October of 2021, although we had done a handful of gigs in 2019. The current sound and line-up is a result of the original drummer and guitarist leaving the band and us deciding not to replace them, instead with me switching from conventional bass to a Bass VI and alternating melody and bass parts with our synth player and using a drum machine to replace the drummer: We play originals in a post-punk/goth/synth-pop style, and while we are based in Nottingham will travel anywhere for the right gig. Currently we are doing on average a gig every 2-3 weeks. We've released 10 singles, the most recent of which is "Robert Smith's Eyes": We're currently working on our debut album for release later this year. We'll play anywhere that will give us a gig and pay at least enough to cover our expenses. Most of the gigs we've done so far have been supports or festivals. These are the sorts of gigs that we like since it puts us in front of audiences whom may not have seen us play before. Our singer who is good with people and social media sorts all of this out. Here's a short clip of us performing "Revelator" at a festival last year: Hurtsfall-Revelator.mp4

Thanks! Lyric video up now:

What does the binding do around the forearm contour?

Depends on the construction. Does this bass have a centre block supporting the bridge and for the tail-piece to screw into? Even if not the way the forces are angled with regards to the tailpiece mounting shouldn't be causing the top to separate from the sides like that. However I'd be tempted to take the strings and the tail-piece off and have a look at what is happening where the tail-piece is screwed into the end of the bass.

It's on the iPlayer

Mastering is applied to the final stereo (or mono) mix. It involves EQ, compression - usually multi-band - and for vinyl collapsing any stereo imaging of low frequencies into mono. All the changes are global and any apparent change to the mix will be the result of the EQ and multi-band compression. Generally a separate master is required for each delivery medium - vinyl, Compact Cassette, CD/Uncompressed Digital, Compressed Digital in order to play to the strengths of each, and in the case of vinyl make sure the audio capable of being cut. Anything involving the use of the original multi-track recording or "stems" should be labelled as a remix.

I'd do it in 2-4 bar segments. With 16 bars I suspect that you've been limited to the nearest whole bar by the number of different notes that MIDI supports. Export audio is in the Format drop down menu in the Export dialogue box. The default setting is just the MIDI file, but if you change that to one of the audio formats the next dialogue asks if you also want to export the MIDI file as well. From what I recall (it's over 25 years since I last used it like that) ReCycle! works/worked very well with Akai samplers. I bought my copy to use with an S2000 which was connected directly to my Mac via SCSI. As I suggested in my last post, if all you want to do is change the loop tempo you are better of using REX files so long as your DAW supports them.

If you've got 91 slices either your pattern is too long or you haven't correctly identified all the relevant slice points and removed the "ghost" ones. You need to play with the sensitivity slider until it detects all the slice starts that you need and then delete the ones that aren't required. Unless it's very busy, a typical 2-bar pattern should have around 16-24 slices, and none should be shorter than 1/16 note The ascending pattern is created with the intention that you also save each slice as an audio file. You then load these into a sampler (real or plug-in) each one to a note. When it plays the MIDI file it will replay the pattern but now you can change the tempo without changing the pitch. However if that's all you want to do, it is simpler to save the REX file and if you have a Mac and are running Logic convert it into an Apple Loop which will do the same thing automatically. If you want to use your own drum samples you'll need to identify what each slice does (which is why it's important to remove the ones you don't want) and the edit the MIDI file in your DAW moving each note to the correct pitch for the relevant drum sound and duplicating those that correspond to multiple drums that occur on the same beat. Alternatively you can save the MIDI pattern as a quantise template and then program your own drums and use this template to replicate the feel of the original rhythm. HTH

Spent most of the morning listening and occasionally watching (I'm working at the same time) to the BBC's "Must Watch Track" selection. It seemed the best way of checking out lots of bands with what I would hope was one of their better songs and performances. For the most part I was struck by how weedy most of the bands sounded. Notable exceptions so far were The Prodigy and St. Vincent, but everything else so far was pretty much just a wash. It was a bit like listening to the radio in 1975/6 after glam rock had fizzled out and before punk. All technically accomplished for sure, but just aural wallpaper, and nothing good with a William Morris pattern, but bland, just wood chip painted magnolia. There was also a worrying amount of C&W influences both musically and sartorially for which there is no need if you are outside of Nashville. And some of it was just awful. Most notably The Libertines, not just weedy but out of tune vocals, too many bum notes from guitars and seemingly under-rehearsed with regards to the intro and ending. Maybe there's some songs and performances I'll like that I haven't got to yet...

All the post-processing will be just as important as the bass, strings and amp.

The "Drummer" instrument in Logic will generate drum parts based on the recordings of other instruments. However unless your tastes are very mainstream you might struggle to find rhythms in the style that you want. In the long term I have found it more effective to use a beat/groove detector (Recycle! is what I am most familiar with) on sampled drum parts that are close to the style/pattern you want and edit the results. That way not only do you get the rhythms you want but you also learn about how an actual drummer puts those rhythms together which will lead to improvements in your own drum programming.