TimR

Yes. And still have to do the boring stuff.

Steve Lawson plays gigs...

Possibly. But bass players? What does a bass player do who is not playing with other musicians?

Surely being a musician is the same as every job. There's extremely boring parts to everyone's job that we just have to knuckle down and get done. A load of people like to compare us to call out plumbers. I'm guessing a lot of call outs plumbers go to are unblocking drains or stopping floods. Hardly exciting new problems and creatively designing new installs.

My Spotify has no adverts. YouTube does have a play history but mine isn't limited to songs I've got to learn for the band. There's more than one way to skin a cat, I'm just suggesting one I find a lot more easy to manage and share. If we add a song to the playlist it automatically updates on everyone's list. Plus I can listen to an entire Spotify playlist or select a single track in the car via the car ICES, or even via google voice control. Not sure YouTube and diving are compatible.

The problem is you then have to keep a list of links somewhere and sit through adverts. I find YouTube a nightmare to learn songs through.

I have created a Spotify playlist. We use those songs as the reference songs and only those songs. However, it didn't seem to prevent the argument: "that version isn't the original one that everyone knows that's on YouTube that I already learned". Even though it was executed the same note for note. 🤦‍♂️

In terms of PA, there's a big difference to playing a pub or small club vs a dedicated music venue or theatre, or festival. I'm not sure anyone can generalise what other people should do, based on what they do, without taking into consideration the type of venue and band that they're in.

I agree with the hpf. Just turn down all his bass knobs on his monitor amp. But ideally you need to start thinking about your song arrangements more closely together. Rather than saying "Don't do this." you need to work together to find something that works on each different song. Sometimes the keys will be glad that they don't have to use their left hand (certainly some I've played with have said it's good not to have to play everything all the time.) Or maybe program bottom half of keys for string pads up an octave etc and just thicken the sound with one chord per bar type playing.

The DVLA have a database of registered keepers. And people do clone numberplates.

That could be any band in the world. It's the members of Pink Floyd, but it doesn't have the sound or feel of any Pink Floyd songs. Possibly due to the lack of Rick Wight's jazz influenced keys. Even the guitar solo is missing some kind of emotion. In a similar vein, The Who and Queen will be missing an essential part of their sound. The sum was always greater than the parts in certain bands. I don't know enough about the Worzels or UB40 to make much of them but I'd suggest the Beatles was John and Paul and pretty much anyone else could have backed them.

I thought the common scam was to nick your photos and advertise it somewhere else. If they also have the serial number it makes them seem like they have the article in their possession. If someone wants proof you have the article then send a photo of your bass beside today's newspaper. If someone asked me for a serial number I'd stop communications with them.

Oh and there's soft knee and hard knee compression. With hard knee that ratio is applied immediately you cross the threshold, a hard angle. With soft knee it's more of a soft curve from 1:1 to to the set ratio.

I'll add to what Ped says. A compressor compresses the peaks. Any sound that is above a certain level will be reduced. That level is the threshold. The ratio is how much that extra bit will be reduced by. So for a 1:4 ratio, you'll have the threshold level plus 1/4 of the bit above the threshold level. In addition there will often be 'make up gain' so the lower levels will have more gain added to bring them closer to the threshold. This results in a less dynamic output, but louder and more consistent. Depends really on the environment and music how hard you compress, how low you set the threshold and how high you set the make up gain. A limiter just stops anything getting any louder than that certain level. If you're playing loudly all the time above that threshold this will just result in distortion. The limiter is like a compressor where the ratio is infinite so all of the sound above the threshold is reduced to the threshold level. Difficult to explain in words. One of the most misunderstood topics. There's loads of YouTube explanations available, you just have to find one that you understand.

If you buy a bass and have a problem with it, do a Google and find loads of other buyers have exactly the same problem with it. You can either send it back for a refund, which you're unlikely to get if you've had the bass a long time, or you can swap the problem part out with a new upgraded part. I don't see how any potential buyer would be put of by a known issue that's been fixed and improved.

I drive home listening to the radio. When I have time to sit down and listen to Pink Floyd, I do. I probably haven't listened to the BC competition as it requires me to actively do so.

More water is consumed than wine. But I suspect as many people consume both just not in equal amounts. A higher volume of consumption can be fewer people doing it more often, it's not always more people.

But as far as the OP and gigging is concerned, memorable songs aren't your bread and butter. Funding 30 individual high quality memorable tunes that some people may or may not like, or won't bore your bass player, or are in the singer's key and range etc is further limiting your choice of songs. Especially when you want to keep your setlist fresh. Simple 4 chord wonders that people recognise and can dance to makes a big difference.

Rick is very good. I agree with the snap to grid problem but not every song follows the same progression. There's examples where he sits through the Spotify list with his guitar and despite what he's said before then disproves his assertion. But there are very few chord progressions that actually work. Most are 3/4 chords with any 5th or 6th ones being incidental. You're essentially locked to the chords as soon as you pick a key, you can't just pick a few at random. C major means you have to play a Dm,Em,F,G,Am,B. (Not being to be condescending there). Unless you're playing Prog Rock, pop songs are pretty much all going to have been done before.

Unfortunately my creative juices left with my teenage angst and rebellion. I may write something but think you need something to write about.

Everything written since 1950 is the same formula. It's based on Jazz which has set out forms. There's a reason, it's because repetition breeds familiarity. Get in with the hook and repeat it.

In my experience of playing in original bands, a lot of songwriters can get bogged down in tinkering with a song and try to polish it too much and try to make them too complicated. This means a lot of time (and emotion) is invested in their creation. A lot of the successful bands seem to have jammed something and created a song very quickly. If you do this and write lots of songs you can afford to bin the ones that don't really work. I found that a source of frustration when gigging originals, the song writer would still be making last minute changes to a song just before a gig. And as I wrote before, a guitarist turning up with a load of licks and determined to jam them all into one song, doesn't work either. I'm not convinced writing good songs is hard, more that peole make hard work of writing simple songs.

Is that the advertising blurb? There's a reason I put 'forces' in inverted commas.

A lot of the reason is becase everything is snapped to a grid and uses prerecorded samples. It's dehumanised. Writing material using garageband 'forces' you to use a cut and paste 'cookie cutter' approach and anyone can produce 'music' in their bedroom. All they're doing is create a collage from other people's work.

Popular songs follow the straight form of repetition with a hook. VCVCBVCC Within the verse the melody will repeat and the chorus will lift up and usually follow the same chords as the verse in a different progression. Get that right and by the second verse everything will sound familiar and people will enjoy what you're playing. Too many bands want to be 'original' and depart from this to be different. At a cost.