BigRedX

This is always the way I've done it with backing an live drums. Only the drummer has the click. The rest of the band plays to the drummer. However, this has caused problems in the past when I used to be in a band with a drummer who was to all intents and purposes a human metronome, and had to be reminded that not everyone had is perfect sense of tempo and would need counting through the parts with no drums. i.e. four stick clicks count in wasn't sufficient for me to be able to play 8 bars of guitar intro with no drums (or anything else) and still be in the right place at the start of bar 9!

Playing faster live can also work against you. A friend's band had finally found what they thought was a suitable replacement drummer fro their previous very excellent one. Unfortunately at his first gig they discovered that he suffered terribly from nerves and played MUCH faster than he had in rehearsal. What should have been a 45 minute set was completed in a little over half an hour. The venue wanted to dock their fee because they didn't play for long enough.

Not always. Some songs need the push and pull of variable tempo. Whenever The Terrortones were due to do some recording we would run through all the songs with a click to work out which benefitted from a steady tempo and which didn't. Generally it ended up being about 50/50. We did try programming a variable tempo click to cover the changes, but could never get the transitions to feel right and TBH it was more trouble than it was worth. What we did find very useful was every so often playing all the songs at a much slower speed - usually around 75% tempo, which worked wonders for generally tightening up the playing as a band, and particularly effective when your slowest song was around the 140BPM mark. Also I currently play in two bands that use backing tracks live; one with a drummer playing to a click, the other with programmed drums on the backing. The one with programmed drums has several tempo changes within the course of the songs. This is down to the way we write, as I tend to work out most of the song just by playing the bass line, and therefore I'll unconsciously introduce tempo changes between sections because that's what feels right.

Just like your average lyrics....

Hurtsfall's slot at Oxjam Beeston has been officially confirmed. We playing at The Malt Shovel in Beeston at 5.00pm sandwiched between a fairly standard rock band and an Americana/blues band. It should be an interesting crowd...

I'm down from about 40 to just 5, and expect that to go down to 4 when I get around to selling the Squier Bass VI and Burns Barracuda and replace them with another Eastwood Hooky.

Of course... A couple of years back I sold a Marshall PowerBrake on eBay. It got damaged in the post - nothing serious, one of the chunky handles and a small section of the front panel where it attached were bent. However the buyer understandably decided they didn't want it, so it got returned for a full refund. I was able to hammer out most of the damage and re-listed the item mentioning the problem and showing extra photos of where it had been bent. This time it sold for almost 50% more than before despite the fact it was in less good cosmetic condition. The two listings were only 2-3 weeks apart.

Actually prompted by @White Cloud's response, I've had a rethink, and while I don't regret buying any individual piece of musical equipment, with the benefit of hindsight I do regret all the money I spent building my home studio in the 90s (both in terms of equipment and actual construction and sound-proofing work), only to ultimately discover that my engineering skills were the definite week link in my recordings, and most of the several tens of thousands of pounds would have been better spent hiring a good studio, engineer and producer for a month or so. That way I would have come away with a great album's worth of recordings with a reputable producer's name attached to them, instead of a handful of "finished" songs that I've never been 100% happy with and the rest of the album in various states of incompleteness. I would probably have had more than enough money left over to release and properly promote the album too.

Stick it on eBay with a 99p starting price and no reserve. What it sells for at the end of the week is what it is worth at that moment in time.

Simesky+Fritch

But does it come with the original Shaftesbury TRC which is probably more valuable? (I'm not on Facebook on this computer so can't check for myself.)

The strong and vibrant music scene goes back all the way to the late 70s and is full of bands that should have got national if not international recognition (Fatal Charm, 23 Jewels, Medium Medium, The Howdy Boys, 1000000 Fuzz-Tone Guitars, If All Else Fails, None So Blind and many more). Somehow the bands involved always seem to manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in one way or another...

I think it depends on how important music and playing gigs is compared with all the other things in your life. It also depends where you live. I want to play gigs. Luckily there are several local ones for both my bands and the vast majority of the worthwhile out of town gigs for us are within a 4 hour drive of where I live, so all a relatively easy to do. I'm also lucky with my job in that I work from home and that could be anywhere (most of my clients only ever deal with me by telephone or email) so if the gigging situation were to change I could potentially move somewhere more suitable. And if I really got stuck somewhere with no gigging opportunities I would still be reasonably happy composing weird instrumental music and releasing it on Bandcamp.

Luckily this has never happened to me. In the early days of playing I had no money so every purchase other than a new plectrum or a single replacement guitar string had to be carefully considered. By the time I actually had serious disposable income for musical equipment, I was very good friends with several people in musical instrument retail, and I was able to try anything I wanted to buy for up to week at home. TBH I'd usually done my research first and I can only recall two items that didn't make it to the end of the trial period without a purchase - A Trace Elliot Bright Box that went back to the shop the same day I bought it because it made no difference to my bass sound, and a Kurzweil synth module that proved far to complicated to program.

Surely then the problem isn't with the Juno emulation but the fact that it's also trying to be other things? If you really want those other things and better control over them you should get the Jupiter X which has most of the controls missing from the Juno X at the top level.

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Surely the Juno X completely replicates the original Juno's front panel? What makes the new version less immediate?

IME 80s basses with XLRs have them because the XLR provides a parallel DI level output to go along with the standard instrument level jack output. Somewhat confusingly the DI output on my 80s Overwater didn't work without having the jack lead also plugged in which IMO defeated the object, and originally I thought that it didn't work. However once I'd figured that out, I found it very useful for recording the direct bass sound whilst listening to the proposed effected sound and then being able to "re-amp" at mix down and tweak the effects if necessary. Personally, if it was feasible I'd replace all line and instrument level signal cable with XLRs as they are some much more reliable than jacks.

Next gig for Hurtsfall will be on 14th October at the Malt Shovel, Beeston, as part of Beeston Oxjam Despite it being only a week and half away no bands or times have been officially announced by the festival organisation. We've been given a starting time of 5.00pm but both this and the venue itself are still only provisional. Should either change I'll update the details.

And the anime Macros Plus with it's "AI" virtual pop star Sharon Apple predates Idoru by a couple of years. One of the main plot points in the movie is that Sharon Apple isn't as AI as her developers would like the audience to believe, and that she still requires a human component to function. Of course it all goes wrong in the most spectacular way.

Personally I find the vast majority of lyrics including those for songs I really like, trite and cringeworthy. Even those writers who are good with their word play can't sustain it for a whole album's worth of songs. For me AI composed lyrics are no better or worse then any other method of writing.

A more serious answer than my original one... In the pre-internet days your string choices were pretty much limited to whatever you could buy in your local musical instrument shop(s). When I bought my first bass in 1981, if you wanted round wound strings like I did there was no alternative to Rotosound. Even when I was playing guitar the only choice was Rotosound or Ernie Ball. By the early 90s when I was playing 5-string basses things had improved a bit there was the choice of Rotosound and Elites. Rotosound proved to be incapable of making a 36" scale low B and Elites while not having any obviously duff strings in their sets were always very ordinary, I discovered Newtone who at the time had to be ordered by phone followed by sending a cheque in the post. However they were able to make perfect strings for both my 36" 5-string and my 30" scale 4-string basses. TBH compared with what I had before they were a complete revelation, and if at the time they hadn't been so complicated to order I might never have tried anything else. At the end of the 90s I then had a break where a played mostly guitar for the next 4 years, and when I bought my next bass I had it fitted with D'Addarios because I liked the guitar strings which was a poor choice, as I really didn't like them, and went back to Elites simply because they were less hassle to buy than Newtones. Then I discovered on-line bass forums and internet string sellers and went mad trying pretty much anything that was recommended: DR - tried 4 or 5 different types and hated them all. SIT - I liked these a lot but was never 100% happy with the low B and they were quite difficult to get hold of. TI Flats - If I was going to play a bass that required flats again this is what I would fit despite the ridiculous price. Pedulla - worked great on my Buzz bass but not on anything else I tried. LaBella - I'd still be using their Hard Rocking Steel strings if they hadn't changed the design, weren't so stupidly expensive and difficult to get hold of in the UK, they also completely discontinued the heavier set that I was using on my passive Gus G3. While they were still good and relatively easy to get hold of they did show me that I preferred a taper-wound low B. I used used their round wound Bass VI strings for a while until I discovered the cheaper, better and easier to get hold of Newtone Axions. Warwick - I'd be using their Red Label strings if it wasn't for the fact that the taper-wound B sets are seemingly impossible to get hold of. However the appropriate Black Label sets are available (though more expensive, but still only half the price of the LaBellas) so that's what I use on some basses. So currently I'm using: Gus G3 5-string passive - Warwick Black Label 45-135. Gus G3 5-string active - Warwick Black Label 40-130 (for some reason the heavier string work better on the passive bass despite the fact that apart from the electronics the instruments are identical. Eastwood Hooky 6-string Bass - GHS Hooky set 30-105. These are the strings that are supplied with the bass and so far I've been happy enough with them not to want to try the Newtone Axions on it. However I'm starting to think the highest two strings are a bit heavy for how I play so when I've used up the sets I have, I may order a custom set from Newtone. Burns Barracuda 6-string Bass - Newtone Axion 24-100, far better than the LaBella round wound Bass VI set for a fraction of the price. For my guitars I've stuck with D'Addario since I discovered them in the early 90s. They have been great so I've seen no need to experiment with alternatives. Currently I have light top, heavy bottom sets (10-52) on both guitars with the 52 replaced by a 56 on the one I have permanently tuned to drop D.

Having dipped into about half the tracks on the album I suspect that there is some deliberate mangling of the original songs going on, because even 25 years ago Recycle! would have done a better job of dissecting the drum machine intro from "In The Air Tonight" than has been displayed by ORGANVM PERCEPTVS. Also I think that knowing what the original should sound like is influencing at least some of the musicians as the dynamics of "Born To Run" have been pretty much preserved even if all the notes haven't.

That's because you are organised, and is what I would do. However no every musician displays the same level of organisation as us, and unfortunately I have learned from experience that these people can't be told, and don't get that quite often you need to be able to set up and be ready to play in under 15 minutes. You either have to live with it or replace them with someone who is properly organised.

Any further details like how it was made? Possibly a link to wherever you found this?