BigRedX

One of my bands do this: It's mostly D with the occasional A and C, so dead easy to play. I just have to remember to count the bars of 2/4 to come in in the right place. My other band has just released our own composition Christmas song called "December Snow": We don't have any gigs coming up so we won't be playing it live. Maybe in December 2024? However we massively changed the structure of the song once the lyrics had been written, so I'd have to relearn the bass part from scratch as what's on the final mix only has a passing resemblance to what I originally recorded.

If I want to show photos from Facebook posts I save them onto my computer and then re-host them somewhere more universally accessible. Regarding Spotify payments - it's not a fixed amount per play. From looking at my data from this year the amount depends on both when and where the stream occurred. In the UK earlier this year I was getting several months of over 0.5¢ per stream. Last month each US-based stream was only worth 0.2¢. However extrapolating my figures to 1 millions streams would have netted me around $5000 after my aggregator has taken their cut. And that's only for the "mechanicals". One of my bands has managed to get a song onto a fairly popular Goth playlist which is currently getting 50-100 streams a day. If it's still getting that kind of attention this time next year that will give a far better indication of what a decent amount of streams pays. Of course the real money is in the performance royalties for the songwriters, and streaming even from the better paying services is minuscule compared with what a couple of plays on National Radio will bring it. Best get writing those Christmas songs....

All I have bought this year are two sets of strings for my Eastwood Hooky Bass.

He’d use whatever was the cheapest.

Thanks everyone! "December Snow" is now available on all the major download and streaming platforms. Also we have an animated lyric video to go with it:

Also the only USB-A to USB-B cable I have is the one that came with the Helix. I have a load of other USB cables but no others with that particular combination of connectors.

Logic X runs perfectly happily on my 2010 MacPro. It's not the very latest version of Logic X but it does everything I need it to.

And GarageBand which will probably be more than enough for most users needs is free.

Full price for an SY300 is £650 and for that I would expect a USB cable as well as the correct PSU for the country where it being sold.

The Line6 Helix comes with a USB cable.

If you venture regularly into the for sale threads you find an entirely different set of users who rarely post on the rest of the site.

I use one of the reverbs on my Line6 Helix for a solo part that I play on a Bass VI on a quite up-tempo song. However at that point the arrangement breaks down to kick drum, sequencer synth, and a simple synth pad, and the Bass VI part is massively pumped up in volume:

If you are a Mac user, the moment you spend more than £200 on 3rd-party plug-ins and samples to go with Reaper, you might as well have bought a copy of Logic. Just the instruments and effects that come as part of the installation are more than most people will ever really need. I have broken my "Logic only" rule twice - once for a Simmonds Drum emulator and once for Helix Native. However, while they do make life a bit easier, neither of them are essential - I could recreate all the electronic percussion I want from drum machine designers and the various synth plug-ins; and having Helix Native allows me to manipulate my guitar and bass sounds after recording, but I could either use the hardware to re-amp the direct recorded sounds or simply tweak the Helix settings and re-record the part as required. For everything else I do - drums and synth programming for the live backing of one of my bands as well as recording Bass VI parts Logic does way more than I will ever need. Some years back I did fully orchestrated Christmas Carols for a high-profile web site's seasonal promotion using just the instruments that came bundled with Logic and some vocals from the marketing company's employees.

Who you know is always key, but I have found that you get to "know" more people by making your band more visible - by networking and promotion. It's a sad fact that getting on the BBC these days means having music that appeals to one of their "gatekeepers" and if they simply don't like you or think your music isn't a good fit then there's nothing you can do about that until your band becomes a lot more famous to the point where they can no longer ignore you. However I have found that they will take you more seriously if you actually put out our music on a physical format like CD or vinyl. After all anyone with some audio files and $50 can get a "album" out on all the major download and streaming services, so just having something on-line isn't really that impressive any more. If you are serious about upping you Spotify plays then you need to get your songs on some decent Spotify playlists. Unfortunately there are no real shortcuts and it will involve a lot of hard work doing research and pitching your songs to the most appropriate playlists, and even then you'll still need a bit of luck. One of my bands recently managed to get a song on a very popular Goth playlist which means that it now gets over 50 plays a day and as a result of this the listening numbers for the rest of our catalogue are slowly increasing. However this was the result of several months of hard work identifying appropriate playlists and then having the right song to pitch to them.

Also lots of quite large dings and dents on the body edges and fingerboard. Missing the bridge and pickup covers. No photos of the back, or any showing the amount or lack of fret-wear. I wouldn't want to exchange money for this without inspecting it in person.

If the cab has a front port as far away from this as possible.

You really can't argue with the price, but in the long run it only works out as good VfM if you don't need to do anything complex with MIDI data and if you don't buy any 3rd party plug-ins.

Thank You!

In Isolation played at The Sal in Nottingham on Friday. Unfortunately it wasn't the greatest night - the gig clashed with New Model Army at Rock City and as a result was fairly poorly attended, and only a handful of people took advantage of the half-price entry for those coming from the NMA gig. It wasn't helped by Discord & Rhyme having to cancel at the last minute due to their singer loosing her voice. On the upside we played well and those that had come to see us were most appreciative. The new songs went down well as did out cover of "I Believe In Father Christmas" and we sold some copies of the single afterwards. Last gig of the year for me will be on Friday 22nd at The Fiddler's Elbow in London.

My first bass was bought pretty much on the strength that it didn't look like anything conventional. On my way back from a visit home during university term-time in 1981 and with a little surplus grant money during a hole in my pocket I dropped by the local musical instrument shop which was opposite the bus station. Hanging on the wall amongst the truly awful late 70s Fenders and a handful of Grant and Columbus copies was what I eventually discovered was an early 60s Burns Sonic Bass. Something about it spoke to me in a way that hadn't happened with the P and J basses. I spent half an hour trying it out, and had a quick go on one of the Grant copies as a comparison. It turned out that the bass came with the original Burns hard case and the shop checked in a Fender branded strap all for £60. This instrument ended up on most of my first band's recordings - although not the two that came out on vinyl and got played on John Peel's show. However it was on the demos my second band made that had CBS interested in signing us. This was my main bass until I bought a second hand Overwater Original 5-string (another unconventional looking instrument) in the early 90s for the bargain price of £350...

If you want to make money out of your music, then playing live is the way to go. Even if your actual gig-fee isn't that great you'll be able to sell band merchandise. Unfortunately the sad truth is that T-shirts are by far the best earner for a band. Punters seem to be perfectly happy to pay £10-£15 for a band logo printed on a black T-Shirt that probably cost about £5 each to produce, but will hesitate over paying the same for your album in CD or vinyl where you may have spent several thousands of pounds on recording, mastering and actual production. Also if your not gigging your streaming and on-line sales revenue will decrease too. Case in point, while The Terrortones were out there playing almost ever weekend we would normally sell a couple of CDs or vinyl between each gig to people who most likely had run out of money to spend at the end of the gig. Were were also getting $10-$20 a month from downloads and streaming. Once the band stopped gigging our on-line sales and streaming dropped off fairly rapidly to the point were now despite our past popularity I only sell a couple of singles or albums a year and it takes over 12 months for our download and streaming revenue to pass the $10 threshold to trigger a payout.

It is legal requirement for electrical goods being sold in the UK to come with a UK plug or adaptor. Get in touch with the seller and remind them of their obligations. Also for something that expensive I would expect it to come with the appropriate USB lead.

There is also the problem of both the band and the audience listening with their eyes when it comes for electronic drums. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. I band I used to be in had over it's lifetime several different drummers as well as a couple of periods where the drums were supplied from programmed samples and loops. The line-up of the band our audience enjoyed the most was the one where the drummer had what looked like a normal drum kit, except the shells were filled with damping material and the heads fitted with bugs to allow him to trigger EXACTLY THE SAME SAMPLES that the other drummers with more obvious looking electronic kits had done. He was also by far the most metronomic of all our drummers based on his MIDI output.

What course is this? If the marks are reliant on real-time pitch to MIDI conversion, then the whole concept is flawed since there will be a delay in the processing and the delay will vary depending on both the pitch and the "cleanliness" of the note. Playing ahead of the beat to compensate is wrong too, since you shouldn't be altering how you play in order to satisfy the laws of physics.

If the end result is trying to turn your playing into an accurate score, it might be worth looking at methods that process the recorded audio instead of trying to do the conversion in real time.