TimR

Is louder but also is a supercardoid, which means its more directional so you'll get less feedback.

International Standard Classifications of Occupations disagrees. ISCO-08 2652 Musician. https://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/isco08/

Room acoustics (shape, wall materials, seating), position of speakers, position of players, number and positioning of people in the audience, and a whole host of other issues can make some stages simply unplayable. Blaming the type of bass guitar for a lack of bass is a bit of a cop out, but understandable if it 'appears' to be the only difference to the last time you played. Even though all the above will be different they'll be invisible to practically anyone who doesn't know anything about acoustics. Which includes a lot of musicians. It could even have been another instrument masking the mid or bass frequencies of the bass and/or being in an acoustic dead spot.

I'm not sure who decides someone has or hasn't got good technique and why that even matters. Listen to Geddy Lee and John Entwistle isolated bass and tell me that either of them have anything approaching good technique.

It is. But not in the sense of who can play the most notes in a bar, or who can make the best copy of something. The winners of the competition make millions of pounds and become famous. And there are millions of people competing for that prize and there can only be a few winners.

It's all part of the pantomime that is live music performance. It's the gig equivalent of "Oh no it isn't.", the audience know what to say and when, and feel warm and fuzzy. If you're taking playing covers too seriously, you're missing the point.

Some may be. Personally I get shell shock if a band is just rattling off tunes one after the other. It gets very waring. Particularly if they have their amplifiers set to stun. I just think performances should be a bit more considered.

We don't have enough time to practice the songs, let alone any talking between them. 😁

That's something that comes with practice though.

Yes. A few seconds to get your breath back and set the pace/tone for the next song, rather than overboard whipping people into a frenzy. That's never going to happen when it's mid afternoon and everyone is just getting started.

We played a local festival on Saturday. We are a pop/rock covers band and had an early afternoon set. Waiting to see the video, but think we played quite well. Usual problems of no soundcheck and 30mins allotted stage time. Just make sure you can hear most of what you need and get on with it. How do you strike a balance between taking time to engage the audience and just getting on with playing the songs. As a cover band, I don't see it important to play loads of our material to showcase the band. I think it's more important to play well and engage the audience. Singer seems to see it as an opportunity to play only her favourite tunes and the drummer seems to think we need to play songs as closely together as possible. I came off with the impression we had rushed through 7 songs, we had 2 or 3 minutes left, not enough to play an 8th but which could have been used to create a better 'show'. Next time I will try and emphasise my point of view. Usually we play for 2 hours or so, so finding 8 songs we could all agree on was pretty hard so I stayed out of that conversation. Audience thought it was good and lots of compliments afterwards.

That does depend on what level of Pro you're talking about. I deped for a band once where I'd never met the band before arriving at the gig. The band leader took one look at me and my bass and said "Keep it simple, no flashy stuff, stick to the roots and watch me for the changes." I hadn't even played a note. I was playing Jackson Charvel SB2. Since then I've bought something a bit less metal, but I've only just considered that he based his words on his first impression.

I was trying to have a similar conversation with our guitarist about vocal mics for our singer. IMO the only reason the Sure SM58 is the goto standard mic is that it's the standard goto mic. Plenty of other much better microphones. I'd suggest availability and ease of having identical and affordable replacements is high on the list of someone touring. Especially as there's not a lot of money around anywhere at the moment. My dad was selling an old Elka keyboard. A guy called up and said he collect it in half an hour, turned up with an envelope full of £5 notes. Turns out the keyboard player from Elvis Costello and the Attractions keyboard had failed and he needed a replacement of urgently that night. The £5 notes came from the box office takings. They're not the kind of instrument you have a spare of and as an obsolete instrument not possible to buy replacements easily. A Senheiser e845 is 70% of the price of an SM58 and sounds and performs better.

My local. That's what we call The Old Town. It's changed a bit in the last 20+ years I've been going there. Their other shop in Luton closed down a few years ago. In around 2000 I went in to browse and spotted a second hand Trace Elliot GP7 15" Combo that had just come in with a £300 label on it. I asked if that was the correct price, "Hold on, I'll ring the boss, he's not seen it yet and it's just come in." A bit later "Yes, that's the right price." "OK I'll take it now." 10 years later having played many many gigs, I sold it for £300. My current amp and one of my cabs was purchased at the Luton shop. That is a big rack of Fenders but not much second hand or budget end. Take your credit card. Always very helpful guys.

A high proportion of an audience won't even know the difference between bass, lead and rhythm guitar. Even more won't know what brand you're playing. And even more won't have a clue how much they cost.

Quality control of budget gear is very good. One major reason to use Pro gear is reliability and that's determined through the quality control processes during the build. If the reliability of budget gear is high, what are the other realistic considerations influencing purchases?

Sounded all right. I'd be more inclined to have stood at the back with the drummer and given the two guitarists and the singer more space along the front to move around a bit or chucked a rhythm guitarist back a bit. With a bit of movement and attention to visuals you can get away with a bit more of a less tight set.

The troublemakers didn't seem to be there for the bands.

The chaos that I've seen has been during daylight hours. I don't think they're even there for the music. Ultimately they need to drastically reduce the numbers attending to manageable numbers.

There's probably too much going on in that video. The girls syncro and lead singer is great. But there's loads of other stuff going on. I played in a big Soul band for a few years, probably loads of us did just after the Comitments film came out. You couldn't move for bands playing that stuff. Guess it depends where you want the focus. Certainly on instrument breaks you want the soloist to be visible and probably move a lot. As has been said, it's a balance and genre dependent. The lead singer needs to capture people's attention that's for certain, regardless of genre, but capturing attention can be done in many ways, some more subtle than others. Last week, we played our 3rd or 4th proper gig since lockdown ended. No matter how much you rehearse you need to gig before you know that you know the material properly. I tried moving around and smiling but mainly look like I'm concentrating far too hard in the photos taken during songs we haven't been playing that long.

JTQ have a new album out. Man in the Hot Seat. Songs entirely in the style of those 60s/70s TV themes.

There's a warehouse full of unsold Fenders. The whole supply chain problem and looming recession following Covid is really weird. Some companies have excess stock, some can't get parts and so can't produce stock. In both situations you won't be making new stock so the employees are doing nothing.

A million? Is that still, was it ever, true? Only a handful of UK singles has sold over 2million copies and I suspect less than 100 sold 1m or more. I suppose only a percentage of people who like a song go and buy it, but think success of a song can be measured by a much smaller audience.

As usual, it's the Internet isn't it. No grey only black and white. Considering the centuries of experience amongst us there's a hundred ways to skin a cat. As many PA set ups as there are bands. Mostly it depends on who owns, transports, sets up and operates the PA. How much cash they had to spend, what vehicle they drive, what storage options they have at home, what size gigs they're playing, how much they're making from gigging, who is in the band... Very rarely is it the best solution acoustically, quite often it's not, if the singer rides a bicycle and lives in a 1 bedroom flat, they won't own a PA, even if they're the only person using it. For someone to say- "you can't do that, it won't work", when someone is actually doing it, and it does, seems a bit ridiculous.

I thought it illustrated the nonsense of the arguments rather succinctly.