BigRedX

A very nice humorous story (and probably has made a good interview at some point) except: 1. It's not true. On the record label it's credited to both Ian Anderson and Gerald Bostock. 2. Unless he was very stupid/lazy Ian Anderson would have registered "Gerald Bostock" as a pseudonym with the PRS thereby getting his full share of the performance royalties. Even for a relative songwriting non-entity like myself it is simple to do. I'm registered with the PRS under my full name (which was required when I joined in the early 80s) my usual abbreviated name (which most of the songs I have written are credited to) and my Terrortones stage name (which all Dïck Venom & The Terrortones songs are credited to). Each name has its own unique CAE number, but royalties for all three names get paid to me.

Since the mid 1980s, all the bands that I have been in have shared the songwriting credits equally between the band members at the time of writing the song. The only exceptions to this were: 1. Towards the end of The Terrortones when we are going through numerous guitarists and drummers (and essentially the songs were being written entirely by Mr Venom and myself), we insisted that PRS membership was a requirement for receiving a songwriting credit. Not every new member took up this offer although by my estimation all would have made back their £100 PRS joining fee by now. 2. A band I was in during the 90s where our original singer (and lyricist) quit just before we released our debut single. The rest of the band bought out her songwriting contributions. We had a proper legal contract drawn up stating that she relinquished any claim to any of the songs we had written while she was in the band and any money that was made from those songs. We paid her a fairly substantial amount of money for this. As it happened her replacement re-wrote most of the lyrics, and ultimately the band didn't make a massive amount of money from performance royalties (although over the past 25 years we probably all earned our "investment" back), but at the time we decided it was best to play it safe.

IIRC the arrangement with Queen regarding splitting the royalties equally between all of them was so that the best songs got released as single irrespective of who wrote them.

I assume you need to do something to the wood to kill the bacteria responsible for the salting otherwise they'll eventually consume the whole slab?

Most colour names are ridiculous. My favourite useless colour name is Sonic Blue. I can't think of a colour less "sonic" than that insipid pastel shade.

I probably couldn't. I mean I'm sure that I would hear 3 different bass sounds, but if they were recordings where the artist(s) in question weren't known for playing one of those particular basses, I doubt I could tell you which is which. I also think that unless they were recorded in such a way to emphasise a particular unique characteristic of the bass a decent mix engineer could get them all to sound much the same in the context of a band recording.

Several years ago I was in the market for an acoustic guitar for recording. I spent a whole afternoon at a big name musical instrument retailer trying out all their acoustic guitars from the cheapest to the most expensive. It was quickly obvious to even a technically poor player like myself that I would need to spend at a minimum £1k to get an instrument that I would be happy with from a sound and playability PoV. In the end I couldn't justify spending that much and with the knowledge that I would never really be able to make do with any of the cheaper offerings now I knew what was actually possible at the upper end of the market, I left without spending anything other than an enjoyable 4 hours of playing.

And on the subject of U2 as a band, I saw them for the first time in 1980 at The Boat Club in Nottingham, just after the "Boy" album had been released. A friend of mine had seen them a couple of times previously (supporting The Only Ones, IIRC) had been most impressed, and insisted that I come to the gig. Other than having heard the name I knew nothing about the band and I don't think I had even heard any of their songs. I was completely blown away by the sound and the performance, particularly The Edge's guitar playing/sound. TBH I don't recall anything about the bass, which means that it was probably perfectly competent, and anyway, back then I was still mostly playing guitar. I do recall that there wasn't a particularly big audience turn-out, about 50 people there, and because we were also with someone who knew them from when they first start playing in Dublin, I got to meet the band after the gig (not that it counted for much at the time). I went out and bought "Boy" and all the non-album singles I could find the following day. A year later I saw them for the second time Rock City for tour to promote the "October" album. This time they were deadly dull and completely outclassed by the support band The Comsat Angels. It turned that apart form the first two singles I didn't much like the new album either. Since then U2's musical direction and mine have gone our separate ways. Occasionally they will release something that I like, but those songs are few and far between. I think the last thing they did that I liked was the cover of "Pop Music".

TBH anything that isn't a 4 string, long scale bass with either Fender or Squier on the headstock is a niche instrument.

Some gear is important, and other gear less so - especially as the size of venues that you are playing gets bigger. And the venues don't have to be very big before the contribution made by your choice of bass amp and cab(s) to the sound the audience (and the band) hears becomes negligible. I don't play gigs of the size that U2 do, but even so for the vast majority of the gigs I have done over the past 40+ years the bass has been going through the PA, and that's the sound that the audience hears. Only at the smaller venues (<200 capacity) would anyone in the audience have heard the sound from my cabs and then only those at the front who were directly in the "line of fire". For myself, on anything but the smallest of stages the moment I stepped away from being directly in front of my rig, the sound of the bass in the foldback would completely take over. The PA feed was taken post-effects, and would have only included the pre-amp part of my bass rig (and only for those rigs where some of the effects went through the FX loop of the amp). Anything after that in the final chain - power amp and cabs - made zero contribution to the sound that the audience heard. In the studio there would be a mic on one of the speakers in one of my cabs, but there would also be a DI taken from the amp and another direct from the bass guitar, and I had no idea which of these sound sources ended up being the one used by the producer or engineer. It could have been the mic on the cab, but it could just as easily have been the direct sound of the bass going through a couple of plug-ins on the DAW. So long as the bass sounded right in the overall mix, I really didn't mind which was used. This was one of the reasons why a few years ago I sold my big, impressive looking, and expensive bass rigs and replaced them with a multi-effects unit and a powered speaker cab (which only gets used at the smaller gigs where I don't know how good the supplied foldback is going to be). In the studio I now go directly into the desk from the multi-effects. I find the whole idea of big name bassists endorsing amplification completely perplexing, and especially so if they are not actually getting the equipment for free - after all why pay for something you don't need or even use? At the kinds of gigs these people play, the bass will be DI'd and the musicians will all be wearing IEMs. All those big impressive looking rigs are there simply for show. No one will actually be hearing the sound that is coming out of the cabs (if indeed anything is actually coming out of the cabs). In the studio anything produced by the rig will be further modified by the studio outboard gear and "in the box" plug-ins, and even then unless you are doing the engineering yourself you don't know which of the multiple sources are actually being used to produce the bass sound in the context of the final mix. The only bassists whose choice of amplification makes a significant contribution to the sound that both they, the rest of their band, and the audience hears, are pub bands using a vocal-only PA system. Those are completely at the other end of the scale to the big-name bassists being used to "sell" the amplification.

For most musicians the recording is no longer the main source of musical income. Its the gig where how an instrument looks is probably as important as how it sounds.

It really depends what you are looking for from a bass (or any instrument come to that). If all you want is something that is easy to play and produces low notes that fits into a typical rock/pop/jazz arrangement/instrumentation then a Squier P or J will probably be fine. They're made to a 60 year old design that is barely changed over the years, and whose USP was they could be produced as cheaply as possible using 1940s technology and relatively (compared with your typical acoustic instrument) unskilled labour. These days, the CNC machines in the Far East, can churn out identical instruments in their thousands at a unit cost Leo Fender could not have imagined back in the 1940s. However not everyone wants that. They may want features that are harder to make, or simply things that might suit them, as musicians, perfectly but are by no means anywhere near the mainstream. All these things start to add up, especially when you consider that an instrument may only have a potential user base that can be measured in hundreds (and maybe less) rather than 10s of thousands. For instance I play the Bass VI. The Squier version is available at £400 which is very good VfM for what is essentially a niche instrument. However the narrow neck doesn't suit my playing style (and ability). I could probably spend a year practicing some more so that I can get around this limitation, and be boring on stage, making sure I don't play any bum notes, but I'd rather be using the time to be writing more songs. So instead I bought the Eastwood copy of the Shergold Marathon 6 which is roughly £1200 (mostly because the production run is in the 100s rather than 10,000s). Playability for me is much better than the Squier and it sounds fine. However it's a bit boring to look at and since I play live I'd like something that looks a bit more interesting. Also I'd like to be able use it with the Roland modelling system. All of a sudden I'm in custom instrument territory. The Bass VI form my preferred custom maker with all the features I want will be in the region of £7,000. I could put in the hours of practice and make do with the Squier, but if I can afford to make my life easier and more interesting why not?

That will be down entirely to the quality of the PA system. In the days when U2 were still playing gigs small enough for at least some of the audience to be able to hear the actual sound of the bass rig, AC appears to have been mainly using Marshall gear.

Looks a bit like a solution to a problem most people have never noticed existed. Plus there will be no benefit if you use non-standard tunings.

Once you start playing stages of a certain size the backline for the bass guitar becomes completely irrelevant - especially so if you are using IEM. Your technical rider may specify a mic on a particular speaker in a particular cab, but there'll also be a DI feed direct from the bass guitar itself and probably another from the DI on one of the amps, and in reality you have no way of know exactly which source is the main contribution to the FoH sound.

I'd take all of that with a pinch of salt. I would say it's highly unlikely that whatever amps and cabs he's currently getting for free will have made any significant contribution to the sound of his bass guitar either on record or at gigs since about 1982.

All my tone shaping is done with my programmable multi-effects, so the controls on my basses are pretty much ignored. On the passive basses everything is set to full on and on, and the one active bass volume is at max and all the other controls are at their centre dent position. This is so if any of them get moved I can return them to a know position. The only controls I use are the pickup selector (if there is one) and the series parallel switch (again if there is one) which are set to the sound I like the best and left there.

I usually do that during the "tasteful acoustic interlude"

I'm always amused when the audience cheer just because the band have walked on stage. Why do that? They might be awful. Even a well-known band with a great back catalogue of songs may fail to deliver at a gig.

Looks like it. It should go on to trying to find a Sine Wave Inverter that actually puts out something even remotely resembling a sine wave. If it doesn't then there's another one!

I play and compose first and foremost for me too. But there would be zero point in playing live or recording and releasing my tunes if I didn't also care what my audience will think.

Well worth reading the (fairly recent) SOS thread on sine wave inverters and why most of the the cheap ones are crap for the average musician's needs and at best will add loads of noise to your signal and at worst can damage your amp. I'll post the link when I have more time.

Solos are for boring old fashioned bands. Every note I write and subsequently play has been carefully considered and orchestrated ahead of time to to be the best possible note (IMO) to go with what the other musicians are doing at any given moment in the song. The song is the most important thing.

Even on a Bass VI chords of more than two strings tend to be muddy and indistinct unless played high up on the neck. If you want to play "guitar-style" chords use a guitar it works and sounds a lot better. For 2 note chords so long as you know where the notes are on each string the intervals between strings doesn't matter.

As a band member and composer the audience reaction to our performance and our songs is very important to me. Whether anyone thinks I have a "killer bass tone" less so. I personally think that I have the right bass sounds for all my band's various songs, but playing the right notes is more important. My choice of instruments is down to band image and playability above all else. TBH if a non-musician notices the bass tone then there is probably something wrong with the mix.