paul_c2

I thought that too but in fairness, "swing" has several meanings. One being the timing as described above; and another being a style (or era) of big band/jazz music. It seemed to explain the style quite well. It was a shame they didn't do section C and on, because I could have done my joke "what do you get when you drop a piano down a mineshaft".....but never mind!

When did the fees for selling on BC come in?

My observation is that many sellers consistently over-price their items. I can only guess that they don't really need/want to sell. This makes it difficult to gauge the actual market - you effectively need to dismiss those overpriced items - and it might give the impression that the market is slowing, for example if much less adverts appear (but it could be simply that while there's less adverts, a greater percentage have realistic prices and in fact more stuff is bought/sold).

How did you pay for the item? It would be interesting to see how the "Scam" works - clearly at least one of the listings is fake, and thus unfulfillable - in other words, you (or someone else) won't be getting that bass anytime soon. Whether both are fake, or only the second one is (ie they've swiped the pics off the first, good sale) I don't know. BUT eBay and Paypal have reasonable protection against that kind of thing, you claim back the money if/when its never delivered, or something else is delivered (a much cheaper/fake bass, etc, maybe?) That's there the fun begins...... If you've done everything right as a buyer, then any exposure to a loss should be minimised, but if you for example paid by bank transfer, or there's something not right with your Paypal account, etc then it may be where the fraud gets you.

Aaaah the old "Its all in the fingers"! Its partially true, but its a bit false to claim its totally true and that the equipment itself has a non- or minor role in the sound. Sounds like you'll be just fine - I've noticed that with decent equipment, the range of sounds from tone (ie bass, mid, treble) control changes are all pretty much usable, because the range is a sensible one; and with cheaper equipment, a lot of the range is a bit useless so you need to be more careful or lucky with the settings. By having everything flat and it sounding reasonable, you're well on the way to success. Bear in mind that the acoustics of the room will have an effect, so one bunch of tone settings which works in one place, might not in another. Also, I know you mentioned you won't be gigging (won't be playing with others?) but a lot of the time an alteration away from that "perfect" tone you might perceive when played on its own, fits in better with the other musicians playing.

I know you're kinda joking, but a few points worth making: 1) most of the time, the "tone" produced isn't that player-dependent. The note is fretted by the left hand and the right hand plucks the string. Yes you can pluck it in different ways, different positions, but a "normal" pluck is not in itself distinctive between different players. The tone is much more dependent on the strings, pickups, signal chain (if any effects etc used) and the amp. 2) You want a setup which gives a fairly "normal" even tone, for example you don't want to have anything weird going on with weird pickups, or tons of effects, or distortion, or compression in the signal chain. You want it so you can hear what's right and what's not. Playing with loads of compression (that might be from overdrive/etc) is not ideal for beginners because they don't hear the variation in dynamics they have themselves.

I think that's a bit of a generalisation - possibly true for the really small combos of around 10W-20W. Once you get into something around the 30W-50W range, then a decent sound (at a volume level suitable for home practice) can be achieved. I think its true to say that an amp has a "happy" volume range, beyond or below which in theory it can go but it loses a bit of its nice tone. Thus, a very large amp would probably not sound great at very low volumes, where a smaller one does better.

I know exactly what vocal warmups and sectionals are. You're not going to convince me that >80% of the time is spent warming up, for the remaining 20% playing together. And, with sectionals, they're done in separate (isolated) rooms at the same time, not one section then another in sequence in the same room.

Out of the ones owned by me: one was a few years old, the other was 3 weeks old, and the other (which went faulty at home) was an unknown age. The other 2 weren't mine, they were supplied backline so unknown (but bear in mind, both blew up at the same gig). Out of the 3 owned, the 3 weeks one was replaced (with a different amp) when I took it back, I fixed one and am unable to fix the other.

Nope its complete bollocks.

Sounds like your expectations are not at all matched here.

4 times and counting, in the past couple of years. The 5th time an amp blew up on me was at home, so I've had 5 failures in recent times. I think its all the travelling in cars which does it, I do about 3-4 rehearsals per week and the amp(s) inevitably are jiggled around during transport, I'm loathe to put them onto a car seat (will probably damage the seat) and if they're not, even if they're secured, then they're on the floor or the boot floor where the vibrations are transmitted through.

If you're going to choose 4 out of 6 songs to learn, make sure you choose "The Chain" as one of them.......there's this bit in the middle......

I think anyone sensible would understand that you cannot dedicate limitless time, to the detriment of other areas of your life, to a band/music/etc. Its up to you to find that balance. I'd not try to overanalyse it, instead focus on the tasks in hand and try not to panic or worry about the required work. As said before, there's a "knack" to learning songs quick, its a skill which can be developed. Just do your best - you yourself will know if this is the case - it doesn't need an internet forum to tell you. If you've done your best, then you have a good chance (you've got the tryout, after all) but realistically whether you can "join the band" is somewhat outside your control - its the decision of the existing ones in the band - so I'd not worry about it. Approach it positively and even if you don't get in, use it as a learning experience.

Don't worry its cool, its your opinion etc. Maybe I'm more risk-adverse - what if one of the 2 songs you chose to not worry about, was the favourite song of the band leader etc? I can only say what I'd do personally - I'd be sure to roughly know all 6, if there's additional time left I'd look more and more at possibly some over others but I'd be sure to be able to play, in a reasonable way, all 6.

I've been in similar situations, I've always put the necessary amount of work in, to be "on top" of the situation. I'd say on about 20% of those occasions I needed to rely on that work that I'd put in, but on 100% of the occasions I was glad I did - it just makes it more comfortable, you can relax and enjoy the event or occasion more etc.

I think if you didn't know 2 of them you'd inevitably be caught with your trousers down.

There's definitely a knack to learning a song into memory quickly. I can't really do it, but I can read music, and all the situations I play in allow me to read music. I suspect my answer "I'd just read it too" isn't applicable here so my best advice would be just learn the outline/structure and do your best to fill in the gaps. Its up to you if you err on the side of caution or go a bit flamboyant with the filled-in gaps. I'd definitely look at all 6 though, rather than do some but not others.

There is a school of thought "all publicity is good publicity" but its kinda short-lived if its soon revealed the actual level of talent is low. So I'd argue that its never good to rely on that kind of publicity, and at the end of the day you need to be able to do it.

My reckoning is that the manufacturers know that if they revealed proper specs (first) which conclusively showed they are less power than their similarly-priced competitors, then they'd lose sales off of that. More lost sales, than if they keep quiet and duck questions such as the above. This is why in other products, for example vacuum cleaners, cars, etc there are more and more legal requirements on displaying the proper specs - for "consumer protection" reasons. I am not sure if we want more regulation on amp sales - maybe it would be a good thing, if it were done properly. I am not that bothered with the actual power rating, so long as its "loud" enough but unfortunately that's something of a mystical figure - I'd not know, even if there were an agreed scale, what number the amp needed to meet/exceed!

Apologies, I should have possibly made it a little clearer. Having now looked at Facebook (I don't normally 'do' Facebook stuff) there's 2 areas I'm focusing on - "Likes" for a particular group and "Interested" in (there is also an "Attending") a forthcoming event. On both of these you can click through to view the profile page of those who have liked/marked interested but of course you'd only see their basic info viewable if you weren't already a friend (so you may not directly know their accurate location if they chose to hide it). Clearly in the Threatin case, it would not have taken too much effort to do a little digging to see that the likes were either from far far away (Brazil) or all had their location hidden (and possibly no other publically-viewable info, so it would not be easily possible to determine the location). Whether further digging is easy/possible/needed, and whether its blindingly obvious its a fake account or its possible to obfuscate it somewhat, I don't know without further looking. However my broader question was when its not a case of generating fake interest (ie say you were in the band....and knew that you or other band members hadn't generated the fake interest) but you see a growing number of likes or "interested" or "attended" marks, how do you correlate this to genuine interest/attendance/support/fanbase?

Agree, its fairly easy to tell if its fake. But if it wasn't fake, and it just appeared to be genuine interest - it does happen every now and again, right? Also I forgot to say in my first post; of course any amount of publicity is only that, it might get people through the door once, but there's no easy shortcuts and it needs to be genuinely decent/interesting music etc, with a following probably built up gradually over time.

I predict the 2nd amp would just buzz loudly, being only distantly related to the bass guitar input; and that the 1st amp would PROBABLY be okay if it were only for a short period of time (I've seen valve amps suffer a loose connection to the speaker, the connection be fixed and then still work okay afterwards).

Putting the joking to one side, it does raise an interesting point though - when trying to promote something in the public eye, how do you translate (for example) Facebook 'likes' or "I'll attend this event" style posts (which are a single click, right?) to an approximate number of attendees? Clearly its not 1:1 but I think some weight must be given to genuine likes; and of course unless you have bought those 'likes' in a bizarre self-defeating publicity stunt, I guess you can only assume these likes would be genuine; so the ratio is more than 0:1 too. And of course you'll get gig attendees from other avenues such as word-of-mouth, posters, venue's own publicity, possibly passing footfall etc.

Having had 5 bass amps blow up, I think there's a lot of validity in the above. If a guitari amp/whatever, singer mic or keyboard packed in mid-song, personally I'd carry on. Drummer would still have something to hit too, normally.