BigRedX

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1473205924' post='3128043'] I enjoy playing stuff venues are willing to pay for. I can find enjoyment in just about every bass line. For some of us this is a business, it's not about what I enjoy. I've been at this for 50 years and I have never been a bass lick snob. Blue [/quote] If it was really as much about the business as you claim then IMO you should be honing your songwriting skills because that's where the really money in music is.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1473205561' post='3128042'] Because that's the way this bass playing stuff works. There's a certain licks you should know. It's not art. Blue [/quote] The licks you should know are the ones that are used in the songs that you play. By all means go and learn some others if it's what you want to do, but you don't NEED to know them.

TBH I don't know any "licks" I haven't written myself. I might possibly be able to half recall a handful of the songs played during my brief stint in a covers band a few years ago, but I spend all my playing time working on songs in originals bands, so that's what I know and can play.

I started on guitar, but I was always interested in all aspects of making music so I wanted to be able to play as many instruments as possible. I consider myself to be a composer first and foremost so the instruments I play are simply a way of creating and performing my music. Over the 40 or so years I've been in bands, I've played guitar, bass and synth at various times depending on what the bands that I wanted to be in needed. These days I mostly play bass because it's easier for a musician of my abilities to find a decent band playing bass rather than guitar or synth.

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1473160608' post='3127467'] But did the record industry ever take chances? It would be interesting to know their failure rates today vs yesterday. I don't want to be mean, but perhaps your difficulty in getting a record deal was because the big companies felt you were not the right material? Given that you couldn't make it as a full time job, it could be argued that they were right. Meanwhile, record companies are sniffing around music colleges and signing up the likes of George Ezra and others, then promoting them like crazy for a while. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing and, personally, I'm not a fan of one-man-and-a-guitar acts trying to become the next Bob Dylan, but I guess that's the current fashion and the record companies job is to make money not act as some sort of paternalistic guardian of the nation's musical preferences (as if anyone really knows what they may be). [/quote] The record companies never think they are taking chances, even though they used to do it all the time. They're not going to sign up anyone who they don't think will sell enough of whatever the current format is to make money out of. But my record collection is full of bands that released a couple of singles and an album on an established label without any real success and then disappeared never to be heard of again. Some didn't even make it as far as the album release. In the 90s my band supported a punk rock/drum n bass hybrid act. They had just signed to Columbia Records and were out on tour to get some live experience and promote their debut single. They turned up with a load of brand new amps and guitars all properly flight-cased and racks full of samplers and sequencers that they needed to play live. The music was pretty impressive and I went out and bought the single the next week. And that was it. I never saw or heard anything from them again (and I've just had a look on-line and AFAICS that single is all that was released). At the very least the record company investment in them was the new equipment, at least enough studio time to record the single with the remixes by well known DJs of the time and actual production and distribution of the CDs plus booking and financing their tour as well as the promotion and publicity need to go with that. And I doubt the label ever saw a penny of that back - it would have been written off, along with a load of other unsuccessful bands, against an artist who was making them money. And you are perfectly right about my musical endeavours. None of them were the right thing at the right time to warrant record label investment. However what I was trying to say was that in the past it was fairly easy to get record labels sniffing about at the bands I was involved with even if none of them were ultimately going to do anything more than sniff. In comparison The Terrortones, a band with a far bigger following than anything I've been involved with in the past (and lets fact it popular bands is what the labels want) can't even attract a fraction of the interest I've had previously.

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1473153767' post='3127357'] I'd be interested to see some figures on this. Are all the artists queuing up for things like the 'BBC Introducing' and on the myriad similar stages at Glastonbury and other festivals just self-promoting? I've always assumed they were being pushed by the record companies. I know for a fact that they 'sniff around' the various music colleges looking for artists to sign up so have assumed it, a more or less business as usual for the record companies, albeit managing a lower [u]proportion[/u] of artists because of the boom of self-promotion enabled by the digital age etc. I agree that record sales are down compared to the good old days, but doesn't that make it even more important for record companies to sign up new artists and push them out on the road where higher than ever ticket prices can help fill their coffers? [/quote] Well strictly from personal experience... I've been playing in bands which have been releasing records/CDs/downloads/tapes etc. since the late 70s and from my perspective the ratio between band activity/fan popularity and the amount of "industry" interest has never been lower. My band in the early 80s had major record company interest off the back of a single demo track we had recorded that had been picked up by local radio plus a couple of decent gig reviews in the press, and at that time TBH we'd have settled for pretty much any deal that would have got us into the studio and our music out on vinyl, no matter how small the label. And the two serious bands I was in after that also attracted a good amount of management and label attention. Although none of it ever amounted to anything that allowed us to concentrate on the band full time, it did see us getting tracks on a couple of compilation CDs with world-wide distribution. Compare that with The Terrortones - more gigs in the 6 years we've been together than all my other bands put together. A sizeable fan base. Two singles, a mini-album and a full length long player all financed mostly from band earnings and all getting good reviews. And what have we had? A record deal offer that essentially amounted to someone else putting their label on our next release but not actually financing any of it and a couple of publishing deals that offered nothing we weren't already getting by doing it ourselves. And that illustrates the crux of the problem. AFAICS what little of the record industry that is left won't take chances any more, and by the time they are prepared to look at an artist, said artist is generally so well established that they need a lot of money and guarantees of effort being put in by the record company as regards promotion etc. that the cost is significantly higher than it was previously.

[quote name='luckydog' timestamp='1473149628' post='3127287'] Much depends on yer ultimate goals I suppose, and you seem well sorted - that's just great. That generally doesn't happen by accident in life, even if one is good. Yes, there's typically a glass ceiling to popularity outside of yer genre/scene, that's probably one of the big breakthroughs on the path to world domination, if that's the aim - I mean, how do we know when to stop ? What drives us, when what we have is already great ? I think one has to enjoy the present, no matter where it fits in with ambitions etc. I can get 'the quest for being 'personally better', but not really the popularity bit, beyond a certain level? LD [/quote] Because for me being more popular is a means to an end, not the end itself. If the band is popular then hopefully by extension it is earning more through gigs and selling downloads/CDs/vinyl/T-shirts etc. That means that we can spend less time doing "conventional" day jobs and more time on the band, which then means we have the time to write more songs (and concentrate more on the "better" ones) and use the money to make better recordings of them and spend more time practicing how to play them to the very best of our ability. It can be difficult to be a decent band when it's a struggle to get everyone together in the rehearsal room once a week for 3 hours (because of their commitments outside of the band) to work on the new songs and tighten up the old ones for the next gig, and when you've run out of money and could really do with another day or two in the studio to turn that good sounding recording into a great sounding one. Personally I'm not after "world domination", but If being popular allows me to make the band my day job, I'll take it. And although it's probably harder now than it ever was I do believe that if you work hard enough at it so that you maximise your chances of being in the right place at the right time playing to the right people, then it is still possible to break out of your genre niche.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1473148849' post='3127281'] Which in the old days was the record companies job, you got signed, got an advance, got put on tours with established acts and got the record companies publicity machine, oh, for the days of the big nasty record companies, we all thought it was a hoot when the got a bloody nose with the coming of the digital age, the law of unforeseen consequences eh? [/quote] Indeed! Be careful what you wish for. And record companies at least had a vested interest in going some way to look for and promote new talent. Now they have mostly been replaced by the digital distributers and aggregators, who simply don't need to do that when there is a steady stream of wannabes lining up with their $50 to get their demos up on iTunes etc.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1473087219' post='3126754'] no, it's not just the songs, or the performance, and I agree with you about putting on an entertaining show, (although it didn't seem to do Oasis any harm) it's exposure as well, right place right time and all that, and the right age, although I know you don't agree with me on that one, you say you've been gigging all over the place for 6 years, putting loads of hard work in, and fair play to you, but do you really think you are going to progress any further? I know other originals bands who travel all over the country playing gigs and they've got their hard core support but then it's like hitting a brick wall, they never seem to get any further, you need media interest, and I'm not sure what that is anymore apart from TV (Jools Holland?). I've said it before, apart from Sea Sick Steve how many unknown bands 'make it' past 30? But if you're enjoying yourself, great, that's all that counts at the end of the day edit, it depends on what your interpretation of making it is, I suppose mine would be earning enough money from the band to live on without having another job [/quote] And I'd agree with your definition of making it, and about enjoying yourself. For the rest of it, TBH I don't really know. Right now I'm happy with the situation where the band pretty much pays for itself. The way I see it, is that the easier it becomes to do things for yourself the more you price yourself out of a "record deal" should such a thing even exist anymore. It might be possible if you were a solo artist who didn't need a band in order to perform live, but as soon as you add up the band members the cost start to spiral. IME in order to be able to take the band beyond the level we are currently at we would need funding to allow us to spend more time being a band and not have to rely (so much) on our day jobs in order to live. Plus a massive amount of promotion and publicity to grow our audience beyond those that are interested in the punk/psychobilly scene and therefore already know all about us. In the end it comes down to "luck"/persistence (I believe you make your own luck by being persistent and visible as a band).

[quote name='alyctes' timestamp='1473107670' post='3127047'] Looks nice, for sure. But I thought piezos need batteries? I can't see anything looking like a battery box. [/quote] Not necessarily. I have a Fernandes Pie-zo bass, and although it does have a battery, it's there just to power the built-in amp and speaker. Plugged in to my bass rig it works fine with the battery switched off.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1473081399' post='3126669'] Thanks for elaborating on that one. I'd been hoping to drag Cherry White back up to the East Mids in the near future, but based on your experience I might give Leicester a miss and focus our efforts more on Derby and Notts. Useful to be able to find these things out in advance! [/quote] Originally I thought that it might just be that Leicester didn't "get" The Terrortones, but from other threads I've seen on here, it's not just us that gets a hard time there. As I said, we'd give it another go again if it was the right gig with the right other bands on the bill, but otherwise no.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1473097878' post='3126922'] This very much depends on the genre. I wouldn't expect to go & see a death metal band, or somebody like Steven Wilson, & have them smiling & throwing cheeky winks at the crowd, or telling crap one-liners in between songs. [/quote] And IME what the band does in between songs is as important as what they do when they are playing. There's a place for witty banter. Although you do need to be good at it and lets be honest most people aren't, and you do need to communicate in a way that the majority of your audience can understand - it doesn't matter how eloquent your in-between song repartee is if it's delivered in the style of Elvis through a 70s train station tannoy system! There's also a case for shutting up and playing the songs while you are on stage. At nearly all the gigs of the type in the OP there is plenty of time for the band to interact with the audience after they have finished playing, selling march, adding names to the mailing list etc. In many ways this is a far more effective way of communicating with your potential fans.

The demo videos have been around for years. I see it's finally made it to a production model though.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1473070233' post='3126493'] I'm afraid the majority of newly written music is not very good, as a bit of a songwriter myself, I know, we all think it's good, but it probably isn't, I don't know what the 'x factor is' nobody does otherwise we'd all be writing good songs, as an open mic friend of mine put it as we were watching the performance of a particularly tedious song, "most singer songwriters aren't" doesn't make much sense but I knew exactly what he meant [/quote] I don't think that songwriting is the problem. There's at least a couple of decent songs in every originals band. And remember that very few "signed" bands are much better. How many albums (that aren't greatest hits/best of) do you own where every song is a classic, and how many times have you bought an album on the strength of a great single only to find that is the only good track on there? The problem most bands have is that they simply don't have the ability to perform those songs in a way that is entertaining to an audience. The number of times I've seen bands struggle to project beyond the edge of the stage or simply play as though they are still in the rehearsal room and the audience might as well not even exist. And with the "product" now being the live performance it should be easier than ever to be able to hone your act so that it entertaining on stage. After all you just need to use your rehearsal room time properly. That's relatively cheap compared with what you used to need in order to make a recording that could compete with what was in the charts.

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1473017817' post='3126142'] Originals is a tricky one to sell. I'm currently in an originals band, we're all in our 40's. The demographic of our part of the UK is very conservative towards anything and those who do go out generally prefer a covers band if music is at a venue. We sort of know that gigging is going to be sporadic and you have to be a little selective. There's no point in us approaching certain places, it'd be wasting our time and the venues. That's just the way it is. The band I'm with have struggled to get a momentum mainly because they keep loosing their bass player They'd probably be gigging more and have a better following if it weren't for that. Bloody bass players eh, grumpy lot. [/quote] Then go and play the places where they are receptive to bands playing your genre of music. We're lucky in that we have a great enthusiastic following in our home town, but that's hardly a big enough audience to sell a proper production run of CDs/Records/T-shirts to or to normally be able to play more often then every other month, so you have to look further afield. Alternatively, do what we did and put on your own gigs with a reasonably well-known band of the same genre headlining and your band supporting. We grew our local audience massively doing this for a couple of years and it also gave us an impressive list of bands we could say we had supported when it came to getting decent paying gigs out of town.

[quote name='ians' timestamp='1473017200' post='3126131'] I think we live in a new era.. where live entertainment is going to die and be non existent in 10-20 yrs time. I thank my lucky stars that my best gigging days were in the late 70's early 80's where I was out five nights a week doing originals, covers, holiday camps etc....feeling rather sad about it all really. [/quote] Complete bollocks IME. The live scene for me has never been healthier. I've been gigging since 1980, and my current band has, in the last 6 years, played more gigs to more enthusiastic audiences than I did with all my bands combined in the 30 years before that! The live performance is the way forward, because it's the one that can't be given away for from as a download (a crappy YouTube video is absolutely no substitute for actually being in the audience, although it might serve as a teaser for what to expect). Of course you do have to be entertaining if you want people to come to your gigs.

[quote name='mrtcat' timestamp='1473009610' post='3126016'] Personally I don't get to go out much on a Saturday because I'm gigging but when I do get the chance i always try to watch live music. The problem for me is that a night out is very expensive these days so if I'm going out I'm going to spend a little extra and buy tickets for either a show or a gig that I really want to see. I can't justify spending £50+ for a night out watching originals bands on the off chance i might like them. If beer was still £2 a pint and entry was free then I'd definitely take a punt on a few bands I know nothing about but it's just not like that anymore. [/quote] There is absolutely no reason these days to go to a gig and know nothing about the bands playing. A quick search on the web before hand should bring up their YouTube or Bandcamp page so you can check out what they are like. And there's still no need to be paying out £50 for a night out seeing live music. Having very little money spend has never deterred me so long as I can afford the get in to the venue. Sure a beer or two might make the evening a bit more enjoyable in between the sets, but I'm there primarily to see the bands play, and TBH I'd far rather spend my cash on a CD or record at the end of the night, then some alcohol I'm going to pissing out later.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1472990604' post='3125790'] what's the age of your band? I'm afraid with very few exceptions bands tend to attract the same age group as themselves and older folk, generally, aren't interested in new music, I've said it before, but as rule of thumb, if you've not 'made it' by the time you're 30 it's very unlikely that you will. That's not to say you shouldn't make new music, but it'll be only for yourself and a few followers, my band are working on our next CD but I don't really expect to sell more than a few hundred. [/quote] IME age has very little to do with it. You only have to look at the number of "younger' musicians on here who hold the music created when their parent's were teenagers in the same reverence, to know that. We attract an audience of pretty much all ages, and for every old punk/psychobilly who likes us because they are also a fan of the bands that we take our influences from; there's someone in their late teens early 20s from whom all of this is as new and exciting as it was for me back in the 70s and 80s.

[quote name='Funky Dunky' timestamp='1472982134' post='3125692'] People don't go out at weekends the way they used to. [/quote] That's a completely lame excuse.

[quote name='Roger2611' timestamp='1472979051' post='3125659'] [color=#1D2129][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]So, we played the Shed in Leicester last night, great little venue, great PA some fantastic artists and absolutely no crowd again....you have to wonder whether it is worthwhile, clearly bands / artistes playing new music are less attractive than a Saturday night in front of the television watching the next up and coming manufactured buy / girl band / whiny solo artiste with an acoustic guitar on Britain's got X Factor?[/font][/color] [color=#1D2129][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We have spent hundreds of hours writing, rehearsing to be[/font][/color][color=#1D2129][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]come the band we are, we get radio play and great reviews from the few that bother to come and see us. It seems a waste of time inviting people to come to these things as invariably they don't turn up. So, it was a waste of time for the venue, the promoter, the sound man and the bands, I assume at some point these venues will close, the promoters will stop, the bands won't have anywhere to play and people will be on here bemoaning the fact that there is no new music anymore.....rant over[/font][/color] [/quote] As I said in my very brief previous post I think a lot of the "blame" unfortunately lies with the attitude of Leicester audiences towards out of town bands. The Terrortones play gigs up and down the country to decent-sized appreciative audiences, but every time we land a gig in Leicester the turnout has been consistently poor. Even when we've had a gig with a Leicester band with a following, they've been there just to see the "local heroes" and then the majority of them are off somewhere else while while we've been on stage. I think the only way we'll be back in Leicester is if we are on immediately before a nationally known band with a sizeable following, otherwise Leicester is simply not worth our while when there a plenty of other places we can go and play where there will be an audience who want to see us play. So sorry Leicester, but on the strength of my experiences you are a sh*t audience for lesser-known bands. Having said that there is a lot more to being in a reasonably successful gigging band than being able to play your instrument and turning up to the venue to do the gig. To the OP; I'm not saying that your band doesn't put in the work to put on a decent performance and do the necessary work to promote your gigs but... You are a reasonably prolific poster here on Basschat, and while your signature has plenty of information about the instruments and equipment you own and a link to your Feedback thread, there's nothing about your band. Not even a link to your Facebook page (you do have a Facebook page don't you?) I couldn't find anything you'd posted in the last few months in the Gigs sub-forum on here either. Promoting your band means using every avenue available to you and IMO Basschat is one of those avenues. OK a lot of us might be out playing gigs of our own on a Saturday night, but I know from my own experiences that those who aren't, are quite keen to see fellow forum-members bands if we know that they are playing in our locality. So when you don't use a source of free advertising to an audience who are pre-deposed to enjoy live music, who knows what other failings you promotional activities may have? My experience is that as a band you have to put in a lot of time and effort to persuade people to come and see you at first, but if your band is entertaining, that hard work will eventually pay off. If your band is getting radio play (where?) then you are obviously doing something right, but how about letting us know about it too? It's all very well coming on here and having a moan about poor audiences, but when AFAICS that's the only source of information I have about your band, it makes me wonder... Also stop blaming X-Factor etc. for your lack of audience. Unless you are a boy/girl band or a solo artist playing bedwetting acoustic music those people aren't you audience and are unlikely to ever be your audience. However there still is a good sized audience for interesting and entertaining live music and you just need too do the work to find them.

IME part of the problem is Leicester's attitude to out of town bands, however, I'll type out a more comprehensive reply to the issues as I see it tomorrow when I'm sat in front of a proper computer and not on my iPad.

A proper book is a good idea. However I think you're page weight of 110gsm is a bit light for a quality publication especially if the pages are going to be so dense in their ink coverage like the examples you've shown. I'd be going for 150gsm minimum as well as something a bit more substantial for the cover with a lamination. Good luck!

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1472839461' post='3124730'] Jack Bruce also used a Bass VI with the Graham Bond Organisation and then with early Cream, Entwistle with early Who, and Lennon and Harrison both used one when McCartney was playing piano. Plus plenty of others too. But it is tuned normal bass pitch, not piccolo. [/quote] If it was tuned piccolo it would be a guitar.

How feasible is it to build this amp with the controls on the front (or at least on the front of the top)? I know top-back mounted controls are nicely retro, but with modern combo placement on stands or tilt-backs having them there makes it very awkward to adjust anything mid-performance.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1472817974' post='3124494'] I love it when an expert bass player announces "and you can hear that lovely clear piano tone" before playing a few notes that couldn't sound less like a piano if you hit it with an adjustable spanner. [/quote] To me it sounded as though the whole video had been EQ'd to bring out the "clank" those frequencies were noticeably boosted on the voice at the beginning.