Silvia Bluejay

What's the quality of audio recording of a GoPro at a gig? We have no experience of 'real' GoPros - we have had a couple of cheap Chinese copies and the audio is absolute rubbish, while the video quality is good in daylight.

I think I've seen ads recommending the Zoom Q2n 4K, which is what we use (on tripods) for our gigs. It's very lightweight, highly wide-angle (so it shouldn't chop your head off the scene if you have it on the headstock) and will record as many hours as the microSD card you put in it allows. We use fast, 256GB microSDs that will record just over 7 hours. A 128GB microSD will record - you got it -around 3.5 hours. Problem no. 1 - weight of clamp needed for fixing to the headstock. We use large sturdy clamps, so a headstock would be a no-no for us. We opt for tall poles with a small tripod at the bottom. We use four Q2ns, one placed 2m high at the back of the band, two on the sides and one in front, in the audience. Problem No. 2 - batteries. Even with new, good batteries, the damn thing doesn't record for long. We use external battery packs with USB2 to micro USB cables. One more reason why we need tripods. I think you can buy from Zoom an extra battery pack that will screw in under the Q2n, but then you're back to the excessive weight on headstock problem. Edit to add: sound recording is all right, but we add to our setup, wherever possible, a Zoom H4n taking a feed directly from the PA, mixing into it in Reaper the audio from each Q2n as needed. If adding the H4 is not possible, I use a Zoom H1n audio recorder on the same pole/tripod as the camera in the audience.

BUT - be careful about the risk of ending up out of pocket if attendance is poor.

Am I right in thinking that your non-bold ad will become bold again, even if nobody adds a new comment to it, if you "bump" it with the appropriate Marketplace function?

Plenty, in the school's car park, unless anything has changed @Hamster?

What a pity, we're gigging in Chiswick later in the month with Damo And The Dynamites, but we're in Herts and Bucks on that weekend. Hope you find a gigging Basschatter, but even if you don't, have a great time in London!

LOL thank you @Rosie! I notice you signed up very recently and these two posts about GigRealm are your only posts so far. I know exactly how these things work, I'm highly computer literate and and I'm quite networked within my local music scene too. Customer service (still hiding behind "Feedback") came back to me saying they had been doing some update to the site - except they did not say that in their first reply to my request for help, they only offered that as a (rather feeble, by then) excuse the following day after I had complained in a further message. In other words, I found them useless, while the site is all right - when it works, and that's the key. How do I tell malfunction, incompetence and maintenance downtime from each other, if I'm not told vital info until half way through any given process I'm trying? As I said, not worth bothering at this stage. There are lots of similar sites which are currently more established and less trouble. I might have another look at GigRealm in 12 months time.

You may want to ask Kanye West? 😂😂

I think it will vary according to the structure of the pub. Their manager should approve payment first, then someone at Concur. This stage may only happen once, but occasionally four people instead of two are involved, in two stages. Do you have a contact at the pub you can prod? The booker, or the manager? Or both? It's easy for a transaction to stall if they're waiting for someone to action it, and that someone has no idea they're expected to wake up and press some buttons...

@Dready Zeppelin

I would only like to add to all of the above on this thread, that it's no longer an excuse for the sound engineer to be sat in the best spot in the room and therefore not know what the band sounds like elsewhere. Wherever we have played*, and at least at the last few gigs I have attended in proper music venues, there were sound engineers walking around with tablets and making (perhaps only minor) adjustments from all corners of the room. It definitely helps if the room itself has been purpose-built or at least kitted out for music performances, of course, and that seems to be becoming a rarity. *Edit: where I wasn't the sound engineer, i.e open-air festivals etc.

I decided to see what GigRealm is like and tested it by entering some details for myself and one of our bands. Apart from being really clunky in operation, it stopped functioning properly within minutes of me adding info and images. Something broke and I can't access my band profile to modify or delete anything. Absolute crap. So I contacted their customer service, which hides behind a tiny link called Feedback at the very bottom of their page, and asked for help. They have been completely useless, to the point that they've been incapable of even just wiping my account out altogether and allowing me to start again (assuming I choose to do so). Avoid them like the plague.

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OK so it seems to aim to be a slightly less dreadfully organised version of Event UK. May be worth a try, although, as @Rosie said, very few Greene King pubs even mention it. Certainly nobody at the GK pubs we played recently told us that was an option. Most of my first page of Google search results are dated Sept-Oct 2021 and quote their press release, but there isn't much in the way of actual reviews in use on the field that I can see at a glance. I'll keep searching.

Just been on their website. Where's the catch? It can't be totally free. At what stage does it get its cut, and how much is it?

Welcome to many a female bass player's world! I've come to believe that most musical instruments, not just basses, were originally designed for tall, strong male players. I guess it's a bit too late to try and fight the situation now, so you either confine yourself to small-bodied, short scale basses, or say to hell with that and play whatever bass makes you happy. If the size or the weight of the bass, or the length of its neck, doesn't affect your comfort while you play, just play what you like. It's not the size of the player that matters, it's how good he or she is at playing...

Welcome, Hazel! I think you can buy some special finger protection tape, if you can cope with it while playing. (I imagine it's mostly a matter of getting used to the tape being there, in preference to the alternative, i.e. pain and possibly blood...) I think @Happy Jack tried some of that tape or a similar product, and was all right with it, while I simply could not tolerate it on my skin, which is very different from his and highly sensitive and prone to eczema. Anyone else on here have any experience of similar stuff?

All of us are on a scale, as opposed to being 100% either right- or left-handed. And some people are right-handed but left-footed, etc. Most of us use one hand predominantly, but it's rare for someone to be completely unable to use 'the wrong hand' for a certain task, unless is things learned as a child, such as handwriting. So, as @Grahambythesea suggests, you can be left-handed and play righty, in which case your most dextrous hand is definitely the one on the fretboard. However, playing stringed instruments proficiently traditionally meant having a strong picking or plucking hand, because that's where the virtuoso styles appeared, before the last few decades in which fretting fast and furiously and flamboyantly acquired more importance. FWIW, I tried both flavours of bass playing when I started out, as an adult, and was OK-ish on lefty instruments and an absolute f**king disaster on righties. No-brainer then...

Don't get me started on that. With all respect, if that were true, all right-handed players would choose to fret with their right hand, i.e use left-handed instruments. Doesn't happen, does it? That's because your most dextrous hand is in fact the one with which you pluck/pick, not the one with which you fret.

I've only ever seen thumb position being used in solo double bass! (Lovely stuff that is, when the player is good.) What am I missing? Why would an ordinary DB player in a band need thumb position otherwise?

I find that the skills needed for each and both types of basses complement and improve each other rather than being in conflict. Neither is a distraction to the other. Try it, you won't regret it.

There are lefty uprights in our Marketplace occasionally, which you could use to try how you feel about vertical long scale before thinking about a DB if appropriate. I first of all bought a cheapo, righty, Harley Benton electric upright and turned it lefty (it has a solid body, so no need to mess around with soundpost and bass bar, I just had to file the nut and the bridge, which I was OK with doing myself). I played that for a bit, to get the feel, went "Oh Yes!", then bought a more upmarket electric upright (an NS Design NXT 5 string), then an Eminence (it's fully acoustic like a DB but smaller) and never looked back!

More lefty DB GAS from Thomann! 😱 😂

@Richard Jinman, remember to use the *correct* plucking technique. Plucking a DB as if it was an EB is a recipe for cramps, blisters and disaster. @Oomo, although I have never actually played a lefty DB, they do exist. Perfectly acceptable semi-acoustic or fully electric uprights in lefty flavours also exist, and are in fact relatively common. Being a lefty does not mean you'll never have the pleasure to fall head over heels in love with an upright and take your GAS journey in that direction. Don't ask me how I know...