TimR

I heard a guy singing and playing an acoustic guitar once. No bass player. No Drummer. Not even a PA.

I switched from violin to bass and my guitarist friend played both cello and guitar. You pick up a different instrument and your brain switches automatically. It's odd but it's a powerful thing the brain.

Definitly need a monitor for the vocals. You can set the main speakers up behind the band but really need the vocalist to have a different and adjustable level to what the audience is hearing.

Blast from the past. Pre Spotify. JTQ were first band I saw after lockdown. In 100 Club Oxford St. Anyway the Lalo Shifrin Dirty Harry album is on Spotify.

Arthur and Fred apparently.

We rehearse at our guitarists House. He has some workshop style outbuilding. It usually heated by a small electric heater in the winter. In the summer the windows and doors are closed to keep the sound down for the neighbours. The room tends to be also used as temporary storage for his family's junk. We are noticing a big difference in the sound in our rehearsal space seemingly depending on the weather and/or how much junk has been stored. Last night the guitarist told me to turn down, but all I could then hear was guitar. I messed around for quite a few songs trying to get my volume right. We moved some junk around. None of my tone controls had been or ever are adjusted. All my EQ controls are always centred at zero. We discussed how inconsistent the sound was, and I suggested it was all the junk that was changing the acoustics of the space. He seemed to think it was the weather. Eventually he looked at his amp and adjusted his bass knob saying he'd turned it up while practicing on his own at the weekend. Everything went back to normal and I could hear everything and it sounded much better. At the end of the rehearsal he commented on how the sound had strangely improved since the beginning of the evening. Thought I'd share.

Your ears can only deal with so much volume before they give up trying to make sense of what's assaulting them.

The 'problem' would be trying to convince the manufacturers that bass players would understand what they're looking at. The plots would be easy to produce. But as the two previous posters have explained. Add in cabs (which have different impedance at different frequencies) and all other aspects you're onto a loser to start with.

Look at the actual specifications of any amp. They should give the number of Watts and reference that to a frequency and the amount of total harmonic distortion. So 1000w at 1kHz with 1% THD. It wouldn't be too difficult to supply a graph showing the amount of distortion it varying frequencies for each power output. It's done for component amplifiers.

White gaffa or a line of lights is definitly a sensible plan to create a notional barrier.

Just remembered hiring out a hall as an 18 year old in the mid 80s. I just signed the council's form. Never gave it a second thought. 1. I had to eject a guy from the kitchen who was weighing and selling drugs. He didn't even threaten me with knife he was carrying. Just said sorry and left. Bizarre. 2. Someone stage dived during our set, the crowd parted and he hit the deck, hard, was a good 2 minutes before he got up and joined back into the mosh. Was a good night. Before I owned a house and had wife and children depending on me not being in prison.

I do wonder at what point the members of a band would be considered guilty of some kind of incitement if they failed to calm the music down or even stop if a crowd gets violent.

What if you come a cropper due to someone else's lack of attention to detail. Aforesaid drunk punter knocks those lights over and they give you a serious injury meaning you can never work again? Who pays the legal bills? You? The drunk punter? The event organiser? The band? The barman who failed to stop serving him the drinks when he was obviously drunk? Let alone who pays for your ongoing medical care.

Ultimately if the floor is awash with drinks, stop the show and get the organiser to clear the floor, stop people bringing their drinks on the dance area, let people cool it, and then restart. Drinks on dance floor should be a basic no no right from the off. Write that into your contract. We all get a bit carried away, but at some point someone has to take responsibility. Next thing will be someone pours their drink into the monitors.

I'd be looking at how easily it is to topple stuff over and have a real think about that. You now know that it can be toppled easily you need to prevent that happening in future. Even if it means buying different gear. A tripod only works if its legs are wide apart and the centre of gravity can't easily be moved outside the base of the legs. Having a sub that's only 12" Square then having tops on top doesn't sound stable at all in the first place. Maybe get the tops on tripods. Also sounds like the stage wasn't fit for purpose if it can be knocked enough to be moved. Even more concerning is the lights are in a position that the punters can swing off them! Redesign your stage layout and put them somewhere else. If someone legal asks you if you've had near misses in the past, you're in trouble.

This is why I have 2 2x10" cabs stacked vertically. You can turn it right down and still hear everything perfectly. Plus it's a lot easier to carry around.

One should never forget that Jimmy Saville did loads of charity gigs just for the exposure...

Band members who complain you're not playing any gigs, but don't go out and get any and don't provide dates for when they're free... ...and then aren't available when you get offered a gig.

Actually have just remembered the first time I'd ever heard Living Next Door to Alice was at the aforementioned gig. Busking along root fifth and listening for the changes with the whole hall singing along. Was like taking candy from a baby. 😁 Enough to give you imposter syndrome - except it hadn't been invented then... Absolutely awful song. You'd never listen to it by choice.

If you're in a function band that's getting gigs then you're playing tunes that entertain people. That's all that really matters. That's pretty much why they become standards, loads of bands have already done the trial and error to find out what goes down well. It also helps immensely when finding Deps which is important if you're doing well paid work. You can play non standard songs as long as they're entertaining, and try fresh new material, and often it'll go down really well. But it's a risk, which should be fairly simple to minimise by watching the charts closely and seeing what gets airplay on stations like Virgin. Just because you find a song boring because you've played it twice a week for the last decade, doesn't mean that your audience will be, because, well, they won't be watching a live function band twice a week.

Just because they're not in the news everyday doesn't mean they're not doing anything. They don't give out Kinighthoods for just being famous. There's a long list of criteria and a process. https://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/mick-jagger

I think you'll find that they need to do an awful lot more than just set up and run a worthwhile charity to be considered for a knighthood. His list of charity endeavours and support is very long. Ranging from Land mines to Animal Cruelty...

Another Tuba player here. If you're going to play a brass instrument you're pretty much going to have to learn how to read the dots. Although a lot of the dots I was given were treble clef so my bass clef is still a bit rusty. Mainly because the Tuba players had graduated from originally drinking shandy and playing trumpet.

You'll be lucky to narrow it down. I once depped for a band who I'd never met until the night. The only interaction I'd had was with the band leader by email when I asked for a setlist. He replied, it's all standards, you'll be fine. I spent the whole evening working very hard playing 3 hours of tunes I had never heard before in my life. "This one is in E. After 4..."

Quite. And in the UK Engineer isn't a protected profession. Anyone can be an engineer. However a professional engineer is something different to an 'engineer'. They will have a degree or a similar level experience based qualification. So let's not get bogged down in semantics based on proffessional snobbery. As I say, it's 'recording' engineers trying to make the band sound like they do on the 'CD' or maybe MP3 or Radio. Everything louder than everything else. Maybe it is the problem with the musicians not playing dynamics and making the music actually come alive. I rolled my eyes again last night as one of my band members said "We need to play it faster as it's lacking any energy." Maybe if they learned some internal dynamics and concentrated on phrasing instead of turning up to 11 it would have more life..