Dan Dare

The Polite

A good drummer makes the whole band better and the reverse is equally true. Which is why the good ones are so busy/hard to get.

You must be psychedelic. Or psychic. Or something.

No point. You've said what you think and so have I.

I'll stay off my high horse if you stay off your low one, mate. Yes, it's irrelevant. A lot of pop music was never all that great to begin with. Pop music is part of the paraphernalia of our youth, together with the fashions, friendships, etc, etc. Listened to critically, it's often not up to much. That's not the point of it, mate. For a lot of people, going to see the musicians they loved when they were young is an enjoyable trip down memory lane, a chance to reconnect with the days when they had hair and their face left an imprint in the pillow, rather than the other way around. If you don't like it, that's your right, mate. But stop sneering at those who do, mate. I guess you must be deeply unhappy and want everyone to be as miserable as you are, mate.

Your point has not been missed at all. Whether or not anyone can "still do it" is irrelevant. So is the reason that people continue to go to see them. If they wish to "cling on to their youth", that's their business, not yours. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to buy a ticket. There are plenty of things I don't like (including acts that were popular 30 years ago who are still cranking it out), but I don't call for them to be stopped. It's a free country.

Who appointed anyone on here as the official arbiter of when musicians and bands should pack it in? If they want to keep going and enough are willing to buy tickets, it's their business what they do. Nobody is forced to go and see them.

I assume you're talking about the plucking, rather than the fretting hand. Two should be sufficient for most things. The ring finger is the weakest and, because it shares some tendons with the second finger, does not operate entirely independently of it. It may give you "more speed" in theory, but probably not in reality. I spent some time a few years ago attempting to learn to use it and found it wasn't worth the effort. YMMV.

Chic's Good Times has to be on the list, with that bootiful golden bass line from Bernard Matthews, sorry, Edwards. The song ain't much, but it's a killer bass part.

The loss of a partner is very affecting. It took me a couple of years to get my mojo back after it happened to me. If she was the person who encouraged you, then the bass is a reminder of her, so it's hardly surprising you find it difficult to pick it up. If you can stand to, I would suggest is making yourself do it, even if you're only picking up the instrument for a short while. The slough of despond is like quicksand. It can take some effort to pull yourself free from it. I hope this doesn't sound glib.

I think Neepheid has it right. I would be a little surprised if someone asked me to bring an amp to a lesson. An instrument and cable, yes, but an amp seems a little odd, especially If he has half a dozen. For low volume lessons, I would have thought you or he could use one of the guitar amps. You aren't going to blow it up at lesson levels. If you have one, take your SVT plus fridge along. It'll be a laugh getting him to help you lug it up the stairs. Also, the assertion that "tab is what is generally being used now" doesn't fill me with confidence. At the reading jobs I do, I am given conventional notation, not tab. I've never been given tab. I wonder whether he might he not be a reader himself.

I feel your pain. The thing I really can't stand is drummists who add kick drum beats in the cracks all the time. They think it's clever, when in reality, it just bucks up the feat (to quote Dr Spooner).

I know I say this every time someone asks for advice on gear, but do go and try stuff, rather than buying on the basis of recommendation. Most people selling used gear won't mind if you ask to come and try it out (if they do, that's a red flag). Ditto retailers. Having said that, the fact that you like your BFTwo10 makes their One10 an obvious choice and both will combine happily to give you a potent rig when the occasion demands it.

Being competent will do for me. As long as I play the right notes in the right order, I'm happy.

I feel your pain, although, tbf, my current band is an exception in that they are all PA savvy. Re. feedback in monitors, I find it very helpful to use a decent parametric eq in the feed to the monitors to tame problem frequencies. Better placement is always the best solution, but sometimes, the size/layout of a stage (especially if it's a bit cramped) prevents you from putting mic's and monitors where you'd ideally like them.

I wouldn't say our playing is limited by our tastes. It's more that there are only so many hours in the day and it's very difficult to cover all the bases/become proficient at everything. It's pretty well inevitable that we will focus on what we like/wish to play. Over the years, I've picked up a reasonable variety of styles, but I don't see the benefit in devoting a lot of time to learning something I'm unlikely to ever use, although there are odd bits of technique that I've made the effort to work on because I felt they would be useful.

Good advice. Leaving aside issues such as latency, it's a lot cheaper to get quality results with a wired setup. Unless you practice whilst running around, the fact that you have a cable running to your cans is not a problem. I'd recommend closed rather than open back cans. I use a mixer to drive mine when practicing, which allows me to combine my bass with tracks and play along with them. A small, basic used passive mixer can be had for little money.

That's a useful combination and should give you a solid start. You will have the feel for timing and know which are the important/strong beats in the bar from playing drums (you often look to lock the bass in with the kick drum, for example). Your guitar playing will give you knowledge of where the notes are. In your shoes, I'd take a few lessons to equip you with some fundamental techniques on the bass and take it from there. There's plenty of useful instructional free stuff on YouTube. I wouldn't bother signing up to any of the subscription teachers who offer to "propel your playing into the stratosphere", etc.

Are you new to the bass or new to playing a musical instrument? If the latter, then definitely go to a teacher to start with. If you play guitar or another stringed instrument (I originally played the fiddle), you have a better chance of teaching yourself via instruction videos, books, etc.

Many engineers tend to be one or more of the following: 1) Jaded. Understandable in a way. They've spent their lives schlepping gear and probably working long hours for relatively little pay and/or thanks, so their hearts aren't in it. Befriend one of these, buy them a pint, explain what you want and they'll usually try their best for you. 2) Gear heads. Little chance with one of these. They want to show the world how those subs can rattle the foundations and those horns can slice your head off. They frequently have extensive technical knowledge, but Van Gogh's ear for music. In their free time, they listen exclusively to horrible electronic music, not because they like it but because it tests the limits of their sound systems. Ask them to mic' up an acoustic instrument properly and they haven't a clue. 3) Think they know best. A close relative of the gear head and equally little chance of getting what you want from them. 4) Deaf. 30 years of monitoring on loud cans and blasting audiences' ears off have wreaked havoc with their hearing. Again, little chance of a result. They just can't hear well enough, especially if they're getting on in years and have lost the ability to discern frequency extremes. 5) Resentful/frustrated musicians. "That could have been me playing, you know. Kids these days don't know what good music is", etc. Lost cause. 6) Not too bright. Any combination of the above. The remainder aren't too bad generally.

All's well that ends well, hopefully.

If the impedance is mismatched, it may well still not sound right (you mentioned getting a dalek vocal sound) even if you can reduce the level sufficiently. Is the singer just handing you a connector and telling you to plug it into the PA? You need to look at the base unit. The outputs are on the back. There should be a XLR and jack. If the singer doesn't have an XLR cable, I assume you carry spares. Either that, or is his wireless a very old or cheaper Shure model and not a SM58? That might not have an XLR out. Google "SM58 wireless mic" and you'll find plenty of pic's of the unit.

I'm a bit mystified that you say the singer's SM58 wireless doesn't have an XLR connector, just a standard jack. The 58 base unit has both - a low Z output on an XLR and high Z on a jack. The MA400 should accept virtually any low Z mic'. Are you taking the feed to the PA from the 58 base unit XLR and using the line level/jack output on the base unit to feed the monitors? Shouldn't you be feeding the XLR out from the base unit to the MA400 input XLR and routing it to the PA via the 'thru' XLR on the MA400? You can then route the monitor output on the MA400 to the monitors and control the level it sends to them using the 'Mon Level' control.