Leonard Smalls

Aye... They just seem bland to me, no real spark, no excitement, nothing particularly musically interesting. I also felt the same about Sigrid - just little pop songs and an average band. But then I don't really like pop music at all as it's mostly about the singer, rather than the music as a whole. Same goes for Billy Eyelash! I quite liked Skunk Anansie - great phat bass tone! sean Kuti was good, but nowhere near Fela... But The Primals were their usual dull selves - they need some serious work live to get that Screamadelica quality... J&M Chain, exactly what I expected - not enormously exciting. Two I really didn't like were Yungblud (doesn't he just love himself?), and Megan Thee Stallion. Full marks to her for the cozzy, but it was sub-par rap over a tedious backing. I was hoping with the use of "Thee" there'd be the spirit of Billy Childish somewhere; Thee Milkshakes doing rap would be something to see! So best for me was Herbie Hancock. At 82ish he's got some serious chops - no-one's making excuses for him about being old! 2nd - Idles. Great performance, noisy but interesting. 3rd Amyl and the Sniffers. Great performance, completely crazed. And who doesn't love a poorly executed mullet?

Herbie Hancock is at least that, and seriously kicking it on the bridge/ runway with his keytar! Best I saw by far... Snarky good, but just a bit lacking in groove and feel - a bit too studied. Idles, attitude and bollox. Excellent! Amyl and the Sniffers - musically a bit duff but completely feckitandeverything. Saw lots of other filler, most just wet or annoying or average. Sir Paul was what I expected - strummalongs of some Beatles songs and Live and Let Die. OK but nowt to even phone home about...

Arguably! But it's like no midrange is allocated to the bass, so it's got no character. You'd think as he's got a Markbass rig he wants a slightly more upfront sound! And I'm listening through a Bow Technologies Preamp into Bryston 14 power amp and Leena Xavier speakers...

Snarky mix much better for bass than Herbie's was! Bass still a bit muddy, but not squished into a big lump with the drums. Shame the Snarkys, while excellent musicians, don't groove like Herbie's band!

Best band of the weekend! That lovely bass is kind of spoiled though by the muddy mix at the bottom end... Whoever's mixing has gone for that huge rock bottom end where bass drum, floor tom and bass guitar are largely indistinguishable. Not a BbC engineer - I'm ex beeb sound and we were most certainly not taught to do that! It was all about hearing everything in a balanced fashion.

Funny, because I found her nowt but twee, obvious and annoying! Still, each to their own... Apart from Yungblud - all I thought was "why"? Is there anything more annoying? Though the presenter with the fashion punk 'mohican' is also a bit whothefeckisthistwat!

Or even:

I was particularly pleased by Idles' use of a free jazz sax player (Colin)... And even more impressive was the fact the crowd were chanting for him. I'm looking forward to next year's headliners, now weird jazz is in!

Just enjoyed Idles... St Vincent just a bit dull, Robert Plant much more dull... Wet Leg ok for Their Song, Little Simz, vox far too loud - backing barely noticeable.

Just been investigating this... Actually it was 50% on Ableton's cpu monitor. Having checked in Resource monitor I see that, despite multicore being enabled, it favoured only 2 of the 14, and one of those was at 50%. RAM was at 8%! Seems weird that Ableton, who say that it will work with up to 16 cores, likes to only cosy up with just a couple rather than doing the whole orgy thing...

To be fair though, reaction videos are popular on proper telly too... Gogglebox is exactly that. I don't watch that either! But what do I know, I enjoy Place In The Sun and Corrie. Each to their own!

I spend lots of time watching the reaction videos of someone seeing paint drying for the very first time. It really helps me to understand both my own reaction to having watched paint drying on a video, and more importantly, how I should react in future when seeing paint drying on a video.

Sounds great! If you're playing that sort of thing around Hereford and The Marches I'll come see y'all!

Always liked this one... We have it on our garden centre playlist (along with loads of other dub, about 700 tracks, with hte rest being funk and jazz, with some classical...). And it entertains me no end when some old folks are browsing our pelargoniums, and suddenly, from nowhere, Duckie or Junior shout "Big Spliff"

I've got an Impulse 61, but they do smaller versions. It should work with Logic as that's one of the options in the DAW menu on it. I use mine with Ableton. Only problem I've had is that it's very fussy about which usb cable it'll work with!

I'm not much of a metal or prog head, but I do like these... About 4 years ago I walked into my local boozer, and they were playing in the bar!

Just rediscovered a song from my old band, 1991 perhaps? I thought this had been lost, but was hidden on an old DAT after another song...

I've just been in a studio with Kali IN8s plus sub. And they are pretty good, especially at that price! However, I agree with the Sound On Sound review that mentions a slight prominence of upper bass.

I bought a Line 6 Helix... It arrived on the Wednesday afternoon late. I quickly learned how to programme it, hooked it up to my PC to upgrade to the latest firmware, downloaded some possible patches, edited those patches to give 6 immediately useable ones including bass wah and pitch shift, then first thing Thursday morning bunged it in the car to use at Morecambe Nice'n'Sleazy fest that night. And it all worked!

It's a virtual melodica! There's about 5 more keys in there too - 2 different pianos, a pipe organ and 2 housey sequencers...

Here's my latest, about to appear in this month's Basschat Composition Compo! https://www.soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/babylon-is-everywhere

Slipped on some wet grass! And no, I wasn't smoking it...

That's bangin', man!!!

Normally I'm a bit (a lot!) slap-dash, with one take of everything. This time it was 3 days solid, with lots of fun had playing with delay times, ping pong feedback, phase and variable stereo imaging. Even the bass lines were practiced!!!

Being laid up with a broken leg has some advantages (arguably!) - I had time to produce a fine example (arguably again!) of "Doh" music (*). I suggest either headphone, or a big hifi to listen as it's dribbling with big 'ol stereo stuff. * Who knows what that means? Ask Doug! There's 4 Basslines, a basket full of keyboard and drum VSTs and more echo/delay/phase/reverb plug-ins than you can shake a stick at. Found the vocal sample at Loopmasters, plus various other places for some sound FX. Most keys by me, bass by me, most drums programmed by me (had particular fun with cymbals!). Don't think my old laptop could have coped with all the fx, plus 2 or more instances of Neutron/Ozone/ShadowHills on every track. Got up to 50% of the 48Gb of RAM!