Nicko

No. Snobbery is believing that something is better simply because it costs more. Inverted snobbery is refusing to pay more for a brand that others have decided is the minimum standard, even if it's actually better. There's too many people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Not vastly expensive. More expensive and trendier brands are available. I have an issue with Levi's - the standard 501 doesn't fit my thighs and going for a relaxed fit makes them baggy around my ar5s and crotch. It's the same with a lot of the established jeans brands. £120 or so on (sadly no longer made) medium rise relaxed taper Diesel Larkee BEEX solves the problem. although I've bought a few pairs at reduced prices to keep me going. Previously GStar Raw were my brand of choice but they discontinued the style I liked.

I think that's a slightly different argument. A fancy car with superior performance often includes specific designs or technological advances that haven't got to the mass market yet. Many petrol heads admire the technology as much as the potential performance.* Compare that to a Fender bass which has no specific technology that you can't get on a much cheaper version and often doesn't feel or sound any better. * i don't think anyone should knock a fancy fast car until they've driven one, nor should they knock the feeling that some players might get when picking up a fancy bass. Those people should not judge others by their own preferences.

I tend toward inverse snobbery when it comes to instruments. There is nothing worse than seeing someone with all the gear who clearly should have invested in some lessons rather than equipment.

Surely this patently false statement is the whole basis of snobbery. It's possible to compare instruments in terms of quality of components. quality of design, quality of construction but ultimately a good instrument is one that the player feels comfortable playing and that produces the sound they want. The sales price of an instrument is largely driven by the cost of labour in the country of manufacture and the perceived desirability of the product. I write this as someone who recently disposed of a US P as I always end up using my Chinese Squier P. I have a Mexican Fender branded Tele (the snobs would actually have to look at the serial number to tell), a Patrick Eggle and an Epiphone 339. These all do exactly what I want and I choose to spend the savings on expensive jeans which fit me better than the brand leader.

Jackie Big Tits - The Kooks

Beds are Burning - Midnight Oil

Eternal Flame - The Bangles

I can't recommend getting a teacher to take you through the grades highly enough. A good one will go beyond the syllabus and explain the context of what you are doing. As I said earlier I went up to grade 5 but we covered a lot of theory stuff that wasn't in the books (creating scale tone chords, modal harmony and many others). I haven't looked at the bass syllabus but if it's like the guitar one I think you'll miss out without someone explaining why you are doing what they ask you to do.

Not on bass, but I took RGT courses on guitar when I was in my 30s and I'd been playing guitar on and off since I was about 13. They didn't make me start at the novice grade as they decided I already knew that. The RGT grades were rock focused and gave me a big boost in my knowledge and playing. It forced me to practice in a more focused way too rather than picking up an noodling phrases from songs I liked. I got to grade 5 and then it all started getting a bit too jazz/fusion for my taste. I believe they still do the RGT course for guitar and bass and you can look up the syllabus on line.

Dreadful lip sync to match the song.

Personally I find the neck on a J a bit too narrow when I pick one up. That's only because I'm used to a bit more space between the strings because I've been playing a P for years. My first proper bass was a Peavey Cirrus which was really narrow so I suspect I could learn to love a narrow neck again.

IMO those are the same, and the problem is the other member just doesn't know when to accent. It's just as easy to say when you play the 7 bars of B accent every second bar as to think of it your way. I'm not trying to be pedantic here - I just don't see the difference.

I'm actually not sure why the alternative would be any different musically. Both are equally valid and as long as everyone is changing in the right place it's simply a case of how someone has written the score. When playing All My Life by the Foos does it matter if its alternating between 4/4 and 3/4 or if I thought it was 7/4?

Depends on what kind of band. If you're playing pubs once a week then no. Oh, and a half arsed amateur looking website is worse than having nothing. This is true for any on line presence though and whatever social media you use you need to keep it updated and interesting. Lemonrock and Bandcamp are OK. Facebook is not as popular with the youngsters but if your audience is mainly middle aged it's still a good way to post events.

My PC is in the loft while we try to sell the house. I'm missing playing around with music and wondered if it was worth signing up to Soundtrap so I can use my Chromebook to do some basic production as a temporary measure. I'd only be interested in the free version if its a stopgap, but I think I'd probably have to invest in a Behringer UCG in order to get bass and guitar into the Chromebook (there's no driver for my Focusrite unit in Chrome). I realise it's going to be more basic than the Cubase and Ableton software that came with my hardware but can anyone say whether its actually capable of producing anything worthwhile?

EQ on the vocals is a big thing for me and I sweep across the frequency range until I find something that highlights the best of my voice (rather takes the worst of my voice out) but as you say GIGO is fundamental.

I'm glad it's not just me that doesn't understand what to do once I've actually recorded the instruments. Like you I end up using the mixing desk to set levels and possibly panning tracks a little but any EQ and compression tends to be on the individual tracks. I know things could sound better if I knew what to do - I did a Soundcloud auto master on one track and was astonished at the improvement.

I had a problem with my Win 8 PC which has 8GB Ram. It wasn't the amount of RAM that was the problem it was the background processes using it all up and the CPU becoming overloaded. Obviously high CPU usage and high RAM utilisation are linked so I'd suggest having a look at the task manage to figure out what is using what you have. The culprit in my case was the antivirus software.

Some fantastic toonage again this month. Well done everyone.

I've been in at least one band that managed it.

This may very well be controversial, but I prefer the Kula Shaker version of Hush to the original, and think Deep Purple's version is the worst of the three.

I agree to some extent. However one band that I left carried on and were gigging maybe three times a fortnight. If that's your schedule then rehearsals are only for new material. Personally I enjoyed rehearsals more than gigging when I was in a covers band. The enjoyment of gigging never quite outweighed the derrière ache of travelling, setting up, waiting around and stripping down.

IMO there's also a small section of BCers that appear to dismiss people playing pub covers as somehow inferior to other gigging musicians. Something along the lines of pub covers = bunch of amateurs pumping out the same old shite every week, vs function bands = semi pro and play a wide range of styles.

That may be the case for most bass parts (although not all) but if you think that playing lead guitar on something like Sweet Child Of Mine is repetitive you'd be wrong. It's pure laziness on the part of singers that they have the lyrics.