BigRedX

Thanks! We've been toying with the idea of a vinyl version of the album, but as we'll be funding it completely ourselves, it's difficult to justify the cost when it's 2-4 times more expensive than CDs depending on the quantity and packaging. And as I said previously I still have 300 copies of the Terrortones album that right now are unsellable, plus the fact that for our audience CD still seems to be the most popular format.

That's excellent. Can I be cheeky and ask you who you are using for the CD and vinyl production, how many of each you are having done and what it is costing? You can PM me if you don't want to share that info in public.

Probably equally through gigs supporting better known bands and being on popular streaming playlists. Both require that we spend time doing promotion and research so that promotion is effectively targeted. From a gigging PoV we have made a conscious decision that we are not interested in "headlining" and that a support is far more valuable to us. As a result about half the gigs we have done recently have been to capacity audiences either due to the popularity of the headline act or the overall combination of bands on the bill. It also helps that the band fit into a genre with an enthusiastic and dedicated audience. We're now starting to see people wearing our T-shirts at gigs (and not just ones where we are playing). On-line, it's all about getting on popular playlists and pushing each new release on social media, without coming across as "spamming". It's a delicate balancing act. However we currently have a handful of songs that get around 40 streams a day, and more importantly new people following the band, saving the songs and adding them to their personal playlists.

My band has worked the other way. You can only purchase one of our CDs by actually coming to a gig, and both of the CDs were are currently selling have "bonus features". "Lost Souls" includes a remix of one of our most popular songs that is only available by buying the CD, and "Robert Smith's Eyes" has special packaging that can't be replicated by an on-line image. It's a strategy that appears to be working. We expect to sell out of "Lost Souls" after the next 2-3 gigs and after 2 gigs we've sold almost a third of the copies of "Robert Smith's Eyes". Currently we are not selling physical copies of either single on line, mostly because the P&P even in the UK would double the cost of the CD. We may reconsider when our album is released, but until then if you want a physical copy you need to come to one of our gigs. However as I have already said, you need to tailor your releases to what your audience wants. Our audience are still into buying CDs so they are worth producing.

Just to be contrary here: I'm a Helix user and do the bulk of my programming using HX edit on the computer. The Presets and Snapshots are fine-tuned from the Helix controls in the rehearsal room once I see how they work (or not) with the rest of the band playing. In anticipation of this I make sure that any parameter that I might want to alter is already assigned to the "Snapshot" setting so that changing it only changes the setting for a particular snapshot and not the whole Preset. That way I can fine-tune the Snapshots for a new song after a couple of run-throughs.

Anything that you still have significant quantities of after the band has become defunct is always going to be somewhat depressing. I still have about 300 copies of The Terrortones album, on vinyl, that I have very little chance of selling now, but due to the amount of money and effort I put into it, I'm loathe to chuck the unsold copies away. They'll continue to take up a large amount of storage space until I next move house at which stage they'll almost certainly go in the bin. (And shortly afterwards someone well-known will give an interview saying how much that like it and how it has been an influence on their music!)

So what have you gone with? BTW the double press problem with my AirTurn appears to have been solved by wearing shoes with less flexible soles.

Played The Lending Room in Leeds on Saturday supporting The Faces Of Sarah. It's a decent-sized venue with a great PA and lighting system, but is upstairs from a student pub. Every time, no matter what time of year, I have been here, the pub downstairs has been rammed full of students all in fancy dress getting very drunk. It's a complete contrast to the audience upstairs. A slightly smaller crowd than usual, but still very appreciative. Plenty of people down the front dancing. Fewer problems than two weeks ago. The footswitch problem appears to have been solved by a different choice of footwear and the wireless bug stayed firmly attached to my bass. However our singer managed to forget the words to the second verse of a different song to last time. Still sold a decent amount of T-shirts and CDs afterwards. We're close to selling out of copies of "Lost Souls", we have two gigs coming up in a fortnight's time and after those they may well all be gone. As usual gig photos courtesy of Oh My Goth: Next gigs are in two week's time first on Saturday 24th May in Bradford at the 1-12 Club as part of the ReVamped event and then on Sunday 25th in Nottingham at The Chapel as part of the Dot-To-Dot Festival.

Thanks! The remix has gone down almost as well as the original so we're looking for someone to do an "industrial" remix of the next single. As for the Vivian Westwood shirt, it's a "modern" re-issue bought about 10 years ago.

But the size and number of drivers in a cab are only part of the overall sound of the cab. Every cab I have ever owned has sounded different. Even when I've owned cabs by different manufacturers that had the same combination of drivers in them they sounded very different. Not surprising really considering that the cabs were all different sizes and the drivers while being the same diameter had different technical specifications. So why do we keep defining the sound of a cab by the number and size of drivers it contains?

Thanks. The illustration was based on two photos, one where I liked the expression and the other which captured the "hair" better. I did a Google image search on the finished version (before I added the googly eyes) and neither of the inspiration photos showed up, so I considered that a job well done. I also did illustrations of the band in the same style to go on the back cover...

Probably somewhere in between...

IME no ethernet cable is as robust as a good quality Jack or XLR lead. I have jack and XLR cables that I made myself in the 90s which have been in use continually for gigs and rehearsals over the past 30 years that are still going strong, whereas the best ethernet cable in a similar environment lasted about 12 months. As you have discovered the typical office ethernet cable is completely unsuited to the rigours of gigging. It's designed to connect a device to a wall-socket in an office and never be touched again until the device is replaced. In the days when I was using a rack mounted BassPod with the Floorboard footswitch unit I was going through a cable every 2-3 weeks. Eventually I bought two very expensive Van Damme coil-able ethernet leads with heavy duty shrouds on the plugs which were supposedly designed for gig use. Each of these lasted about a year at which point they would stop being coil-able and then fail very shortly afterwards. Luckily for me the failure of the second cable coincided with me replacing the BassPod with a Helix Floor. I deliberately chose the floor version of the Helix so I wouldn't have to deal with ethernet cables in a gig situation again. A coil-able cable with heavy duty shrouds would be the minimum spec I would go for and I would always carry a spare. As soon as your lead shows any sign of less than 100% reliability chuck it in the bin and buy a replacement. Be aware that plugs with some of the chunkier shrouds do not always fit snugly in some sockets, but the locking mechanism on un-shrouded plugs will break with moderate use rendering the connection unreliable. If I was using ethernet cables ideally I'd like them to be fitted with EtherCon plugs, but they only work if your equipment is also fitted with the corresponding EtherCon sockets and for some reason very little supposedly gig-worthy equipment with ethernet connections has these.

The bassist in on of the bands we find ourselves playing with a lot has a Kemper. I don't like his bass sound much, but he and the rest of the band do, and anyway it's all subjective.

Different processing? Sit differently in the mix with the different instrumentation? It's the same vocal track. Also for a "pop dance" mix you'd expect the vocals to be a bit more prominent in the mix. Matt Pop also did us an instrumental version of his edit mix. We've been considering dropping this version into the set for selected gigs.

Unfortunately you can't just look at your audience. You have to know them and that doesn't happen without actually trying to sell them stuff first. Plenty of "younger" audience member are interested in buying vinyl. Also as I said previously it doesn't matter how big a proportion of your audience are small and skinny, the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. At our last gig we sold all the size L T-shirts we bought with us and nearly all of the size XL.

As a band you make a lot more money from a T-shirt sale then you would from music on physical media. Sad but true. In October last year my band did a run of 100 T-shirts in two designs. We have already made enough money from sales to cover the production costs. We won't break even on any of our CDs until nearly all of them are sold.

It's not so much viruses but as has been said executables that are likely to be the problem. A less than scrupulous band might include something that would make your computer stream their Spotify catalogue 24/7 in the background. Having said that most short run CDs are on CDR these days. Even if you have them duplicated by a commercial outfit do they actually check what they are producing? Most of the services will ask for a DDP file which could have pretty much anything on it. And even big labels aren't immune from including undesirable files on their manufactured CDs. Anyone remember the Sony Records root-kit that was supposed be for copy protection in the early 2000s?

IME having speakers at head height or at least pointing at your ears rather than your knees is always going to make it easier for you to hear yourself. Until I changed to an FRFR wedge, the best rig I had for being to hear myself was a home-made Bi-amped set up. Not specifically because it was bi-amped, but mostly because the arrangement of cabs and amp/effects racks put a 2x8 cab which contained the treble component of my sound at head height. Everything also went through the PA so the bass side cabs on stage were essentially stands for the rest of my equipment.

This is very much my thinking too. For the bass I rarely use any of the amp or cab sims and when I do it's normally a guitar one chosen for the sound it produces in context with the other instruments in my band. I've yet to use the Helix with the guitar, but as I'm selling my guitar amp this weekend that will change in the next few weeks. However given that there (IIRC) over 100 different amp models in the Helix I'm sure that I can find one or two that make my guitar sound howe I want.

As someone who has played in many bands where the drums are produced by non-human means and has shared the stage with lots of bands with human drummer this used to be a massive problem back in the 80s and 90s and we were always having to ask the drummers in other bands to turn their snares off so they wouldn't rattle along in sympathy with out backing track. However this thread made me realise that I can't remember the last time I had to make this request, so at least the drummers in the bands on the small bill as us are clued up to this now.

Only the most naive of users would put a USB stick from an essentially unknown source into their computer. It's positively begging for your device to be hacked at turned into part of a bot net.

This.

Have you watched "Mr Robot"?

I have an AirTurn pedal. It's fine if you use it with one of the recommended apps. However should you want the pedals do anything else other than step backwards and forwards through the pages on one of the supported apps, the interface is less than intuitive. Also on mine the actual foot switches are no longer as reliable as they should be in that I am now getting phantom double-presses.