TimR

How long is this pub? We played something similar a few weeks ago. We just played to the area where people could actually see the band. I'm not interested in performing to people who are not watching.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1479586375' post='3177714'] I spoke to a pub manager about this one night and he said the fact that he has live bands every week means that his customers keep coming back. Many of them come on nights that bands aren't playing and he believes that if he lost the bands he'd lose these customers completely. By 'investing' in music once a week he keeps his loyal customer base happy and, in a very competitive local environment, that's his livelihood. [/quote] Yes. It works like this throughout the year. Pubs make big money on Sunday afternoons in the Summer and nothing on a Wednesday night in the Winter. They also make huge amounts on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. Bands should operate on this model as well. Some gigs should pay more than others. I've played the same pub 4x each time it's had a different audience, but we still get the same amount. He didn't reduce our price when no one turned up and he didn't increase our price when it was rammed.

Our band doesn't do a full run through rehearsal, studio 'rehearsals' are always practices.

Is that c£5k for the band? For a four piece it works out at £1250 each? That's about £550/£100 per gig. What %age of the door do you get? How big are the venues? What's the predicted return? May be worth a gamble if these are known, it's similar to putting on your own gig where you have to outlay before the gig. However, you've got travel and accommodation expenses on top and you have to take time off work? Do the sums. I don't think this is pay to play as such, it's more of buying into a commercial project for a decent share of the profits. I would hope!!!

We should be aiming to produce well rounded people not creating a population of people who can just read and write english and be able to do maths. All subjects should be equally as important at a basic level. Other subjects (like the three R's) obviously should be studied in greater detail. Some subjects obviously need fairly decent sums of money invested in equipment, others don't. Effectively what the government are doing here is trying to prevent schools from cutting their music budget to fund other subjects (which all too often happens when their overall budget is reduced.)

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1479560993' post='3177474'] I can only speak about the area that I know and the kids I've met. So your experience is different. It doesn't make either of us totally wrong. The truth is neither of us has done a national survey. [/quote] The truth is yes, they can afford XBoxes and all the other stuff. XBoxes keep them in touch with their mates and give them something to talk about. When my boy meets a stranger in the park (because shock, horror, he does go outside) the conversation usually starts around gamer-tags. I could pretend I don't know what they are but I know enough about this being the equivalent of swapping phone numbers. When I was at school we talked about last nights TV programs. These things are just as important now to the kids as musical instruments are. However, it's not one thing or another. It's a bit like me saying all you do is post on BassChat all day long. I'm sure you only do this when 'your mum lets you' or whatever the adult equivalent for us is. .

What a bunch of f....ing moaners. Wind it in guys! £3000 a school A YEAR buys a lot of equipment that can be SHARED between pupils. Imagine what you'd buy with gas if you had £3k a year to spend. As for the moaning about all kids want to do is play on computers, you're the parents, stop them! I get sick of this getting trotted out in the media. Then when the kids play in the streets all the grown ups complain about the noise and whether their precious cars are going to get scratched. Unbelievable. Kids are not all stuck at home on computers all day. I spent a whole day at Olympia last Saturday at the drum show. Plenty of talented kids there playing drums and testing kit and bugging their parents to buy them £800 worth of cymbals (no son lets just get the hi-hats for Christmas and a set of sticks today.) Electirc drum kit for under £300 excellent for learning on. .

Have a look at some Elton John songs. They're horrendous for the number of chords he throws in. However, they're usually resolved into an I, IV or V fairly quickly. Are they strictly a chord progression or are they just created from passing notes?

Someone with more theory will help me out but: Say you're playing in C major. The only other major chords available to you are Fmaj and GMaj. The IV and V. You could play minor chords but that really affects the mood of the song. All the 'other' chords you bolt into a song after those 3 are really just inversions with added notes or passing chords leading to one of the three. .

Singers and guitarists also commonly display that trait. Playing in a band is a group effort where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Quite often less is more, especially when it comes to filling from keyboard players and drummers (and slap bass solos)

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1478766723' post='3171418'] I see this written quite a lot on Basschat (not really aimed at you Tim). Why are Keyboard players in covers bands playing Bass lines? There are plenty of things to cover, Keyboard wise - Like the Keyboard part for example. Or Stg/Horn section lines. If playing a cover that has no Keys part, just play light 'Pads'. Or just drop out and come in on the chorus etc...but playing Bass lines? [/quote] Usually because people are unimaginative and slaves to the original. What does the keyboard player do if you're covering a song originally recorded by a two guitar band? There are very few bands able to deconstruct a song and write their own arrangement. Those that can are refreshing to listen to. Doesn't just include bands with keyboards, includes any band who limit themselves to only doing covers of music where their line up matches the line up of the band that originally recorded it.

I play with a keys player who said "I like playing with you because you don't just stick to the roots and that frees up my left hand to do something other than the bass line." Bass lines are not just 'bass' lines as you're finding out.

Yes. That's a more comprehensive reply.

In the UK we have a different attitude to sickness. If we are ill we go to the doctor (paid for by the state) and have a day off (paid by the company/state).

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1478547624' post='3169828'] The local heavy hitters have an established stable of bass players they use. I guess the question is how you get in the stable. Keep in mind this is a clique of musicians that are native Milwaukeans that have worked together for years. Blue [/quote] You're completely missing what I wrote. Where do you get your drummer/guitarist/singer deps from. Get the details of the guys you want to play with and get them to fill in your band when someone can't make a gig. Although, from previous posts about the way you treat your band, you probably have no say whatsoever about this.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1478543220' post='3169777'] I've played shows with one of our heavy hitters, it hasn't been of much benefit yet. I wasn't really comfortable asking him to stick around to hear me perform. I know where your coming from because that's the way things happened for guys in the old days. Not sure that's the way it works anymore. Blue [/quote] But have you spoken to the other heavy hitter band members and got their details and asked them to cover players from your band when they can't do gigs?

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1478524012' post='3169587'] It doesn't work that way over here, your nor going to get a local heavy hitter to attend your gig if your not in their click. Blue [/quote] Hmmm. The way it works here is you pay a dep to play in your band. Once you've had a few different pros play with you they start asking you to cover when they need someone. Are you saying that 'heavy hitters' only play for big names? There must be a middle step between what you're doing now and backing Phil Collins on tour?

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1478052563' post='3166425'] I don't know much about the depping world. However what seems to be the case in my part of the world,its another closed clicky scene. Blue [/quote] Unfortunately. This means getting out socially to the places where these people are and being nice to them. Invite them to your gigs so they see and hear how good you are. When they come, make sure you buy them drinks and keep them entertained, not just with the music. Go to their gigs and complement them on what they're doing. Clicky scenes are not that hard to get into if you know how to socialise and make it work. Even BassChat is fairly clicky at a certain level. You have to give and take a bit and get a few decent posts in before people start listening and respecting your comments. .

Graeme, PM Trevor and ask for details on this. I'd really recommend it as a way forward. [quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1463435983' post='3051400'] Hey there Graeme, Long time! Didn't realise that you were hanging around here! We chatted SB700s many moons ago... On a slight tangent, have you ever thought of transferring the content of the site over to one of the free blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress. That's what I did with my Wal history blog when we changed ISP a few years ago and I lost the free 20MB of webspace. They are dead easy to learn and very intuitive and, best of all, free! If you just copied all the website pages back onto your hard drive via your FTP programme you could load them up bit by bit. That's how I rebuilt the Wal site. Anyway, just a thought... [/quote]

Whichever you chose make sure you have telephone support to the UK. I'm managing a website hosted on a 1and1 sweet. Contacting them is a complete headache/impossible. I can't find any numbers that aren't sales or any email addresses of their support team. Might be just me though...

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1478180047' post='3167322'] If it's an originals band, why would you bother with a cover? It's simply going to put your song up against something that people know, and so the perception is they prefer the song they know to your song. Pointless. I struggle with this in an originals band I play for, they have plenty of great songs, but still insist on putting in one or two cover in as 'crowd pleasers', what a waste of a song in a set that could be used to turn people onto your music instead. If you're a covers band looking for work, fine, I get it. If you're an originals band, I simply don't understand it. Si [/quote] It increases the audience. Unfortunately (watch XFactor) a large proportion of people are not open to new music and have to listen to a tune several times before it grows on them. On the radio new tunes are introduced alongside well known ones. If you play only unknown originals you limit your audience to a very narrow set of listeners.

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1478156007' post='3167117'] Thanks for the feedback My opinion as a writer of origonals is that I would l;ike to hear people playing my stuff. It's a tribute or recognition of your work by fellow musicians. On the other hand if someone was making a lot of money on the back of it I would feel entitled to some of it. No moral worries here and it sounds like no legasl worries either as our activity will be below the radar [/quote] It will depend on the copyright holder. If you try to YouTube Beatles numbers they're pretty sparse.

I created a video and used music from a CD. YouTube flagged it up, knew what the music was and verified that as it was already available on YouTube that it was OK for me to use. I'm guessing that the actual licence is with YouTube not the person who uploaded/made the video or the account holder. As long as you are not selling the actual video or song I would think you'd be ok.

Domain transfer. http://www.wix.com/domain/connect-domain

I can't see any Wix info unless I log on. Usually the host (Wix) will have an option for you to use your own website address. First you'll build your site using one of their free domains and then 'map' your own address onto that site. It's quite simple there should be a help page somewhere. Nominet handle all the domain names and the host (Wix) will update them for you.