BigRedX

It is. Although you might be able to get away with making the live room of a venue a huge Faraday cage.

I also suppose it depends on what sorts of gigs you go to. It's almost 10 years since I was last at an all-seated gig and IMO the requirement to sit seriously killed the "vibe" and it would take a VERY special band to convince me to go to another seated gig any time soon. I suppose I'm lucky in that the majority of bands I want to see right now are on the same gigging circuit as the two bands I play in, and it will only be a matter of time before we're on the same bill and I'll get to see them for free. And other than the previously mentioned seated gig and can't remember last time I paid more than £15 to see a band, and most of the time it's a lot less.

This. Absolutely this! All of it.

Maybe if you've had a couple of million selling albums, then you can afford to try lay down the law about how your audience should behave... I realise perfectly well that at the majority of gigs I play, my band are probably not the one most people have come primarily to see, and therefore it is unrealistic for me to expect them to shut up and attentively watch/dance (as appropriate for the music I'm playing). I'll settle for them not leaving while we are on and hopefully by the end of our set we'll have made some new fans. Also at the sorts of gigs I do anyone with their phone out is just as likely to be taking photos and/or video which will be posted on social media, hopefully with a few kind words about how much they enjoyed the band, as they are to be scrolling through Facebook. Many of the live shots I post in the "How was your gig last night?" thread are courtesy of someone in our audience who happened to think the band worth worth photographing and then posting and tagging. I'm not complaining.

To me that seems like a lot of bands. In the 50 years I have been playing I've been in about 20 and that includes a few who never made it out of the rehearsal room. Plus a musical project that existed for less than 2 weeks during which time we wrote and recorded two instrumental dance tracks that we put out on a limited edition 10" white label single. The others all played at least a handful of gigs and well over half have recorded and released music for public consumption. Some of those releases were even organised and paid for by people who were not in the band. I suppose it helps that most bands I've been in were either instigated by me, or I have been responsible for composing at least half of the musical output. Also I have enough "front" to be able to get up on stage or in the recording studio playing guitar and synthesiser even though I'm not particularly good at it. I'm pretty ordinary bass player too. Like yourself I can't get into playing songs I wouldn't normally listen to for pleasure, but that doesn't seem to have ever been a problem when it came to finding bands or musicians to play with. I've been in bands with people who were my friends before we started playing in a band together and bands with "randoms" who I have met through ads in music shops, record stores and on the internet, and maybe I've been lucky but maybe also I've been sufficiently selective when it comes to choosing people to make music with. For me the least satisfying music project I have done was the dad rock covers band. It should have been great - the music I grew up with and one of the guitarists was a very good friend of mine which is how I came to know about them and had seen them play several times before I joined. Maybe I had too high expectations, or maybe it was unfortunate that my stint with the band coincided with also being in The Terrortones who were more artistically satisfying, more fun, did more gigs and made more money for seemingly a lot less effort. Maybe I've just been lucky. I'd like to think that mostly I've made my own luck.

Maybe you've just been in the wrong bands? For me over the last 20 years the band I've been in that has had the poorest audience reaction was the dad rock covers band, who should in theory have had the audience eating out of our hands. In practice for the most part all the originals bands I've been in have gone down better. The last two gigs I've done, there have been people down the front dancing from the first song and even singing along! That's all to music I've written. Maybe there are some people who don't like it. Who cares? There's plenty of people who do, and they are the ones that count. You can't please everyone and you'd be stupid to try and do so. That way leads to madness. Embrace the good, ignore the crap and get on with entertaining those who want to be entertained.

No bootlegs (that I am aware of). One of my songs was covered by the band that eventually become 13 Candles. I also had a request via GarageBand.com for the chords to a song we had on there as someone wanted to do a cover. After sending scans of the various convoluted shaped the guitarist used I never heard anything more.

Are there any other shapes available other than the vaguely J-shaped acrylic basses that have been posted recently?

In the "Sliding Doors" universe where my band got signed rather than Wham! after our single (minor) hit the next time you would have seen me would have been in the Identity Parade on Never Mind The Buzzcocks...

IME having just about any kind of job (or a family for that matter) is almost totally incompatible with being in a band that has any hopes of success. If you can't drop everything to do that last minute gig then you put the band at a disadvantage compared with all those are prepared to make these "sacrifices". Perhaps there will be time for a family once you are established as a musician. You also need to be one of the band's songwriters or at least have negotiated a share of the songwriting royalties in order to still have some money coming in after the band is over. The only time I have been able to put in something approaching the time and effort that is required to be more than just a weekend warrior, was in the 80s when I was unemployed, and more recently now I am self-employed and can be more flexible about how I allocate my time.

Like the P-Bass and the Ampeg stack, SM58s are popular because they were good for what they did at a time when there was relatively little competition.

I get recognised quite a bit, but that's partly because I seem to be quite distinctive looking and partly because I've been gigging for almost 45 years now. Most of the time it's more of a "I know you from somewhere" and then I have to list all the bands I've been in before they recognise a name they know. However I did get specifically recognised as a Terrortone when I was at the HIM/Fields Of The Nephilim gig in London about 10 years ago.

Thanks! In Isolation have a London gig in December. Nothing down south for Hurtsfall at the moment, because as we all know it's "Goth Up North".

These are easily achievable if your are prepared to spend the appropriate time and effort required and maybe throw a bit of money at it. Apart from the billboard thing I've managed all of them. However, from recent experience unless you are supporting someone well-known a tour with mid-week dates is pretty pointless these days. All but the biggest bands tend to concentrate on weekend gigs with the occasional Thursday or Sunday for the right venue or event. My last "tour" (earlier this year) was 7 gigs over three consecutive weekends (including one Thursday).

Making a living out of music is hard work just like any other job. It appears there are still too many people who thinks it's like the lyrics to "Money For Nothing".

I'm in a band. That's reason enough for me.

Very much this. Although I have a separate Helix Preset for every song often with multiple Snapshots, a lot of the time I'm using the same set of modules in the same order just with small tweaks to the EQ, drive and volume to get the bass to sit in the correct place in the mix as the guitar, synth and drum sounds change around it.

We were having this very conversation while packing up after rehearsal last night. Our synth player said it would be hearing one of our songs unexpectedly on the radio or as background music to a TV programme.

I have a Helix which is a similar device. TBH I'm not that much interested in the authenticity of the amp/cab models because firstly I don't know what the originals sound like, and secondly that's not what I'm after for my personal sounds. Most of the time when I add a bass amp and cab to the signal chain it sounds less good IMO, so I've given up and use EQ and drive modules instead. I have a couple of patches with a bass amp in the signal path, but that has been chosen primarily because the distortion sound it produces works perfectly for the song rather than anything good about the actual amp sound itself. I also use a Roland Jazz Chorus sim for some sounds- some that in real life would be totally unsuitable for bass guitar at gigging volumes, but again I like the sound it produces. And that for me is the great thing about modelling devices, you're not going to break anything by putting low frequencies through it. The worst that can happen is that you won't like the sound and then you try something else in the signal chain instead. Even if I only needed a single sound for the whole gig, I'd still be using the Helix, because it is possible to dial in exactly the sound I want, and trying something else is a question of selecting another module rather than going to the expense of buying another amp/cab/effect to see if it's the right one for me.

I'm in my early 60 and I still haven't realised. As others have said it very much depends on what constitutes "making it". For me it would be earning enough money from my musical activities so I didn't have to do anything else in order to be able to pay the bills. The closest I've got to that was when I was in my 50s and in The Terrortones who after the first year were completely self-sustaining financially. TBH I probably don't have what it takes in terms of drive and commitment. Sure I like gigging, recording and writing and pretty much everything that goes with being in a band, but I don't live and breath music every single waking hour which is what is really required. In the past when I plenty of time and energy to put into being in a band and playing and writing music, I was too stupid and naive to realise this. These days I have too many other commitments. That's not to say I haven't stopped dreaming, because IMO the moment you stop dreaming you might as well sell all your musical gear. IME trying to tailor your music/band/image to "make it" the less likely it is to happen, because you are always going to be behind the wave. My most successful musical ventures have been the ones where I haven't worried about what other people thought of us but simply got on with the process of making and playing music. We worked hard (although in retrospect not nearly hard enough) and the "luck" happened. The Terrortones was simply supposed to be a bit of creative fun to do in-between my covers band gigs. I ended up having to quit the covers band because The Terrortones were far more successful both in terms of the number of gigs we were getting and financially. I'll carry on writing music, playing in bands and gigging until I'm not longer physically able, and then I'll be composing and releasing weird music on Bandcamp from the comfort of my studio until I die.

@Geek99 According to the Facebook page for the event we've been moved up the bill and are now playing from 7.20 to 8.00. No idea why this has happened and we haven't had official confirmation from the organisers yet...

Surely an "item not as described" complaint to eBay, telling them that it is in fact counterfeit will do the job? They may well ask you to destroy the microphone and supply photographic proof that you have done so before refunding your money.

I assume from your OP that you are "the client" and it seems from the other posts that you already have a pretty good idea about the style and feel of the music that you want. That does make it a little easier. When I've gone down this route in the past it has always been with someone else having the final say, and in those cases composing and performing the music myself has made it simpler when the client comes back with changes - most of which would be impossible to apply to a piece of library music.

A probably a lot cheaper. It's been a while since I had to look at the process and prices, but for my client (a well-know but cheapskate chocolate maker) even the ball-park prices and approval time scales were too expensive and took too long. I believe that among other things they need to check that the recording(s) you want have been cleared for your particular use (some artists are very particular about how and where their music is reproduced).