skankdelvar

[quote name='MacDaddy' timestamp='1474317804' post='3137151'] Blue, if that post is a genuine reply to mine, then I have to say you are propagating the belief that American's do not understand irony. [/quote] To be fair, British music has a better export history than British humour. It's strange how the American people knocked back comedy giants like Morecambe and Wise yet have taken appalling, malodorous sub-humans like Ricky Gervais, Russell Brand and James Corden unto their collective bosom there to be rewarded with largesse and adulation. It's not a funny old world, really.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1474292326' post='3136872'] Is Oasis still relevant? Blue [/quote] Not so much, no. [quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1474297376' post='3136910'] I read history, for pleasure and to learn things. [/quote] The study of history is productively rewarding on so many levels, not the least of which is better self-knowledge. As someone once observed: “[i]If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree[/i]. ”

Couple of 'provenanced' basses I'd definitely have had if I'd known they were on the market: * Phil Lynott's #2 P bass went for £700-800 at a London auction about 20 years ago * Sparko's Gibson sold on ebay a couple of years ago similarly for about £800

37 years ago in a student union bar playing prototype ska-punk on an Antoria Les Paul knock-off.

[quote name='pmjos' timestamp='1473534039' post='3131086'] Guys its not about the look give me some Gibson lurve here................Where is THAT Gibson sound? What can't I do without a Gibson.........??? [/quote] You can't [i]not[/i] play the first 40 seconds of Alright Now.

[quote name='bassjim' timestamp='1473175754' post='3127695'] when we got signed it felt like we just got off the top rung of one big ladder and were now staring up from the bottom rung of the next even bigger ladder whilst someone was randomly dropping hammers down from the top of it [/quote] That's now in the 'BassChat Famous Quotes' thread. Sterling work, Sir

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1473113016' post='3127128'] All this selling tickets stuff, that's part of the originals band scene, right? Blue [/quote] [i]Selling tickets. [/i] Depends if we're talking about the band having to pay the booker face value for a slab of tickets which they then desperately try to re-sell to their unsurprisingly reluctant friends and family (a time-honoured ruse that covers the promoter's risk). Sometimes 'sell tickets' just another slang way of saying the band is sufficiently established as to be able to 'pull in a crowd', 'get punters through the door', 'put bums on seats', that sort of thing.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1472760270' post='3124060'] Cool, yeah my mom's was a black 2 door. Great days. She bought me my first bass, an imitation Hofner Violin bass made in Japan. Thanks for posting that pic. Blue [/quote] A black two door? Even better! Like this one?

Drum kit, PA, bass rig, guitar rig, guitarist, drummer and me in a Volvo 240 estate. I'd rather have Blue's 1967 Buick Skylark, though. [size=3][b]Buick Skylark[/b]: 1967 4 door version. (Drools)[/size] [color=#f0fff0][size=3].[/size][/color]

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1472497537' post='3121616'] You bastard! You complete and utter bastard!!! [/quote] You're entirely welcome.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1472590470' post='3122465'] [i]Sounds of drumming of fingers, followed by whetting of blades... Sudden 'Whelp..!' as Parkinson's belies rigor mortis, metal rings out from the stone floor, followed by low grumbling[/i] [/quote] You've been overdoing the James Joyce again. Stop it. Stop it now.

[quote name='seashell' timestamp='1472584794' post='3122404'] Happy memories, Mr Skank. I used to rouge my knees and cut a rug to the gramophone. If only one could still get the needles! [/quote] Have you tried a needle exchange?

Well that's good news. Enjoy your cornucopia of new toys!

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1472568788' post='3122195'] In the Twenties, all of the 'in' people were heavily into rowing clubs, in flannels and boaters; the girls with long ostrich-feather boas . Roller-skating was all the rage, with rinks in every High Street. Kids aspired to become boxers, or wing-walkers for the less timid. The jitterbug was about to break. Times change, sometimes faster than one would like, but change they do. [/quote] Some of us may have spent our time scraping acquaintance with upper-class 'bright young things' but my memories of the 1920's are entirely at variance. It was the golden age of the British dance band. In my world pulsating jazz music filled ram-packed dance-halls such as the Hammersmith Palais de Dance, the Streatham Locarno and the Astoria Ballroom on Charing Cross Road. Compared to today, musical technology was white-hot. Entire swathes of the population were busily engaged in building their own radio set in order to listen to BBC broadcasts of the Henry Hall Orchestra and in a strange foreshadowing of modern rock & roll many musicians were experimenting with electric amplifiers. In fact it was I myself who brought together the aforementioned elements of terpsichore, radiodiffusion and electromagnetic sound conduction during a performance in May 1925 at the Kit Cat Club in the Haymarket when I appeared as a featured soloist with Mr Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra. On that occasion I wired a rudimentary pickup up to a cat's whisker crystal set and mounted said combination on my guitar . This early example of a 'wireless rig' permitted me to go walkabout in the club to the delight of the audience and the jealous chagrin of my band-mate the trumpet player Mr Lew 'Rubber Lips' Muscati. Poor Lew never really forgave me for stealing his thunder; shortly thereafter he quit the business, returning home to Naples to join Mussolini's Blackshirts and eventually dying of wounds sustained during the siege of Tobruk in 1941. Bitter-sweet memories, indeed. [size=3][b]Vincent Lopez Orchestra in 1925[/b]: Lew Muscati front 3rd from left, Lopez (standing, centre) with author to right[/size] [color=#ffffe0][size=3].[/size][/color]

Reaper is dead useful for batch rendering separate files. You can chop the file up, drop the individual songs into separate tracks and render in one pass. Or (bit more initial fiddling) using the timeline highlight the individual songs as [i]regions on the single file[/i], then render those regions as separately named files. Either way, one still to identify the start and end of the songs either by ear or (quick and dirty) looking at the wave forms. You can do [url="http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/splitting_a_recording_into_separate_tracks.html"]the same thing[/url] in Audacity, as it happens. But Reaper's got loads of useful bundled plug ins for EQ and compression which can help to tart up the final results. Edit: Not that they'd need tarting up, of course, ahem.

If you want to convert a WAV file into MP3 in Reaper you simply choose one of the variations of 'render to MP3'. At this point a window will open in Reaper saying 'mp3 encoder not loaded'. Then you go to lame and download the codec and stick it in the appropriate directory. It's dead easy; if you've used Audacity you'll have no problem.

In fairness to my good friend Mr Blue and as a clarification for the literally [i]hundreds[/i] of members who have contacted me via private message to express their 'shock' and 'disappointment' that I once threatened a fellow band member with instant death it has become necessary to lay the sordid facts of the matter before the world. As with so many controversies it all comes down to context. 'That thing' which so provoked my disapprobation was the guitarist's habit of visually enhancing his 'solos' first by extending and wiggling his tongue in the lascivious fashion popularised by Mr Gene Simmons. Upon reaching the prolonged crescendo of his extemporization he would abruptly turn his back on the audience and jerk his [i]derrière[/i] from side to side in a hideous simulacrum of the sexual act. These physical gyrations were - so to speak - a sort of 'proto-twerking' and entirely out of step with the social mores of the time. In my further defence it should be noted that the other band members had been so similarly horrified by the guitarist's actions that a secret vote had been taken, the outcome of which was that I was deputed to 'handle the problem'. Armed with this collective authority I took such steps as were necessary to maintain the band's reputation as a family-friendly act. I mean, try playing a Sunday lunchtime Wacky Warehouse 'kids gig' with a guitarist coming on like a filthy, pox-raddled gigolo. Unthinkable.

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1471968439' post='3117332'] Having said that, how many successful musicians have gone back touring only because they needed the money? From what I've read and seen about the reformed Police tour, the three of them could hardly stand the sight of each other, stayed in separate hotels and only actually met up on stage. [/quote] I've been in [s]several[/s] many amateur bands where we all lived in different houses, hated the sight of each other and only ever met up at gigs. On one occasion, mid-song I told a guitarist that if he did 'that thing' again I'd kill him where he stood. Savage enmity is good thing, actually. Stimulates one's creative juices, as The Who and The Ramones would doubtless agree. [color=#ffffe0].[/color]

For every 'amateur' (in the sense of doing it for the love of it) who eschews certain unpaid gigs for reasons of inaccessibility, aesthetics or the potential for mob violence one might produce three other amateurs who will enthusiastically embrace such gigs [i]despite[/i] their shortcomings. It is indisputably the case that this forum is peppered with threads where one of our number plaintively asks: 'The singer's got us this [i]awful[/i] gig in a dreadful sh!thole and there's no money in it [i]and the other guys all want to do it [/i]but I don't. Should I tell them to poke it or what?'. And is it not equally the case that professionals might evaluate paid jobs in the light of personal satisfaction or potential inconvenience? Do not those in all walks of commercial life at times reject certain offers as being not worth the candle? Of course they do. The contention that amateur status uniquely confers upon the holder a flexibility of approach denied to others is superficially attractive. Yet the proposition is undermined not only by its equal applicability to professionals but also by the frequency with which amateurs embrace horrible, unpaid gigs, the experience of live performance supervening all other considerations in their minds. Indeed, I would consider the 'selective amateur' as occupying the worst of all worlds, being sufficiently committed to forsake remuneration yet failing to enjoy the experience enough to perform under any and every possible circumstance. One's mileage may vary, of course. Other options are available.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1471880168' post='3116650'] Oh well. I'm couldn't care either way to be honest, I can't stand them. [/quote] Well, I'm 50:50 on the band's output but I find tedious minutiae like this [i]horribly[/i] fascinating. It is weird, though. At one moment he's recording with the rarest kit imaginable, the next he's using a Marshall Lead 12 solid state practice amp and making it sound like the seven trumpets of doom.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1471814877' post='3116151'] On "Eliminator" his guitar tone was almost entirely due to using Rockman gear, not a valve in sight. [/quote] There's been a fair bit of heated debate about this, in part because Gibbons [url="http://www.woodytone.com/2010/09/28/gibbons-eliminatorafterburner-the-rockman/"]once claimed they'd[/url] 'combined that direct (Rockman) signal with a number of other traditional setups – amplifiers in the studio'. Terry Manning the engineer on Eliminator offers a different view: "There was absolutely no Rockman used on this recording. Not a little bit, not a tiny bit, not any. I don’t know how these stories get started". Manning goes on to [url="http://www.woodytone.com/2010/09/30/engineer-billy-gibbons-eliminator-gear/"]say[/url]: “The amp used, almost exclusively, on Eliminator was a Legend. This was about a 50w hybrid unit, employing a tube/valve preamp and a transistor power amp. “Legend were later bought by, or at least distributed by, Gibson, but they were independent when we started using them. I still have this amp – it is almost new. A couple of years ago I plugged one of the Eliminator guitars into it, just to see…there was the sound!" It is agreed that a Rockman was used as [i]part[/i] of the signal chain on Afterburner but as a component of a much bigger rig. [url="http://www.woodytone.com/2010/09/28/gibbons-eliminatorafterburner-the-rockman/"]Gibbons[/url]: "We built this thing that was nicknamed the Amp Cabin. This was a pile of Fenders and Marshalls that were stacked up on top of each other and then supported to provide a roof and four walls, and we just stuck a big microphone in the middle of it and turned them all up as loud as we could get them". Perhaps the most significant thing about Eliminator was Messrs Beard and Hill's almost complete absence from the sessions. In a strange foreshadowing of recent events Gibbons played some of the bass parts on a Moog. [color=#ffffe0].[/color]

Perhaps the world's greatest tone-hound is Mr Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. For studio work the hirsute Texan assembles a breathtaking variety of vintage and custom guitars designed to afford the widest possible sonic palette. He runs these Holy Grail guitars through a carefully honed combination of rare, gorgeous valve amps with highly distinctive tones. In concert every one of his many guitars is EQ'd to sound [i]exactly[/i] like his '59 Les Paul and shoved through a JMP1 MIDI pre-amp and a Valvestate SS (!) power amp. I think he probably knows something most of us don't.

Close scrutiny of the picture suggests the guitarists are each sporting a Burns Vibra Artist and young Hector appears to have a complementary Artist bass. The Tuxedos must have been earning good money in their day to afford that visual synergy; band uniforms and matching gear wouldn't have come cheap. [size=3]Vibra Artist[/size] [size=3]Artist Bass - Who wouldn't want one, eh?[/size]

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1471553390' post='3114015'] That's completely plausible, considering that a fair few Marshall valve heads have a solid state distortion circuit (think Boss DS1) in the front end, and their Yngwie Malmsteen signature head incorporates a DOD 250! [/quote] A chum of mine who fixes amps always smiles quietly when someone brings in a JCM800 and mentions that they don't use dirt pedals because they 'don't need to with an all-valve head like this'.

[quote name='Jazzneck' timestamp='1471507976' post='3113470'] Another for your delectation without bass - it certainly motors on.... Recorded live with Baby Face Leroy playing guitar and bass drum simultaneously with vocals whilst Muddy Waters and Little Walter do their thing. [/quote] Why, thank you! I'd not heard that before. Quite the pocket rocket, isn't it?