mike257

[quote name='Gust0o' timestamp='1317378815' post='1390032'] I think I need to take charge more and start steering this thing. [/quote] That's the winner right there - if nobody is doing that, then everything just drifts. You don't have to have somebody ruling with an iron fist, but somebody has got to steer the ship!

[quote name='longtimefred' timestamp='1317326797' post='1389624']man its 4 dates, if it were longer than a week then i would suggest and agree with most of the sensible options here. But i would personally just get drunk and eat lots of dirty food for that amount of time and stay that way until you come home! With no pants on But if you want a sensible answer, i bought a little gadget called a Power Monkey, absolute live saver for charging phones and you can get some that charge ipods, laptops etc etc. Well worth paying for! But yes my proper answer is a LARGE amount of booze! Dont forget to pack your ego! lol[/quote] There's a dude halfway through the thread about to do a month round Europe! Thirty days of no-pants rocking out is going to be some serious chafing!

Oh, and if you've not got a tour manager going out with you, nominate one of you to be the sensible, business-doing, money-counting one - if you don't keep on top of what you've got and where it's going, you'll end up in all kinds of hassle!

[quote name='Gust0o' timestamp='1317297729' post='1389155'] I would almost say it's a combination - they're not very well worked, so I'll find he's not fluent playing them; so we take a moment for him to work it out; and then some more time for me and the drummer to work out what we should be doing. I'd love to show a clip, but it's embarassing. He shouldn't be so f***ing amateurish at this point. Thinking back to last night, when it became apparent his first riff idea would need some more work he just moved on to the next; and the next; so I think we left with five-or-so new riffs, none of which were recorded, and none of which he'll remember. Two of which I'm going to keep for myself and work on, as I think they could go somewhere with some effort. I think there's a learn in there for me - as I could have said something more productive; but chose to simply tell him I wasn't playing certain parts. Need to kick myself in the ass for that one, instead of taking charge I took a sulk! In terms of writing, it's me and him - and that's not necessairly the two of us together. He's quite hard to pin down, so if I have an idea I'll just write the whole thing and bring it along when it's complete... at least complete in the sense that it's structured, has all the constituent parts, and I know it fluently. We're, almost unintentionally, trying to conflate song-writing with general band rehearsals - the exact things you chaps are keeping separate! That could be a practical idea - though if he's still hard to pin down, is there much point? [/quote] There's nothing wrong with combining songwriting with 'general' rehearsals, and we don't draw any distinction in my band - when somebody's got an idea, we'll have a crack at it, or if something happens in the room, we'll run with it for a bit. It sounds like somebody (read: you, because bassists know best!) needs to just be assertive in driving it along from a riff into a coherent song. Is the idea a verse, a chorus, or just a riff? Where can it go next? If you can quickly thrash out a basic song structure, then everyone has the opportunity to settle in to their parts within a couple of run throughs, and you can move on to fine tuning the little things like the transistions between sections when you've got the general shape of it together. I think you should get out your 'producer' hat, pretend like it's pre-production for your mega album, and kick everybody into touch to focus on the writing process. It's good that as a band you're quite open-minded about how your sound is developing - the more you write together and settle into a process thats working, the more you'll sound like 'you'. I've seen people boot too many good ideas without letting them develop to want to go down that road myself - it's better to let the sound come out of how you write, rather than trying to write to a particular sound!

I think if you're going to throw in new riffs all the time in rehearsal, at least one of you has to grab hold of it and give it some direction - we'll quite often write around a new riff on the spot, but you have to kick it into the shape of a song quickly. If we have an idea we really like, we're not against spending the bulk of the rehearsal getting it sorted, but the basic shape/structure of the tune has to comes pretty fast. I think there's a lot of discipline in putting an idea down and moving on to something else if it isn't working. Sometimes it's best that you take those new ideas and work on them outside the time constraints of the rehearsal room, and sometimes it's better to come back to them another day with a fresh head. Jamming on something for three hours and not even having the bones of a song is a waste of expensive rehearsal time. Is your guitarist coming up with these riffs on the spot, or has he thought them up at home, but just isn't very organised about presenting it to the band in a way that encourages you all to write around it?

I've recently used UPS via Interparcel to ship a bass to Cardiff, so that's almost international No hassle at all, rang ahead when they were nearby, collected and delivered on time, great service.

[quote name='Ukelele Salad' timestamp='1317278600' post='1388865'] Top tip! My mate told me when touring in France there's only one thing you need - French. If you speak it, they'll help you. If they think you're just another elderberry stinkpoo rosbif you'll be in trouble. Possibly a bit harsh on the French... [/quote] True story, it's well worth having a go at the lingo, even if it's just the basics. Most places in Europe you'll find people have an embarrasingly good grasp of the English language (and often a couple of others!) compared to our apathetic 'everyone can just learn ours' approach, but it makes such a difference to just be able to throw a 'please' and 'thank you' around. Never found the French to live up to the stereotype, and people there have always been acommodating and helpful when I've struggled with the words!

[quote name='Wooks79' timestamp='1317215585' post='1388178'] I'm sold on anything with maple neck and black blocks and binding [/quote] What he said.

You always need more t-shirts than you think you do. Pack spares or you'll have to start wearing your own merch - and unless you're in Iron Maiden that means you're going to look a right whopper. You'll always end up too hot in the van, even when it's freezing, so don't layer up for the travelling. Baby wipes, so you can have a festival wash if you can't get near a shower for a night or two. Take a cool box, stock up on road snacks at a cheapo supermarket - you can get enough food from Aldi to do a 7 hour drive for the price of a motorway services butty! We used to take bets on how much I'd spend on motorway food, I couldn't help myself. Goes through your tour budget in no time! Oh, and tour rules - the driver gets the best bed, and nobody f***s around with the sleeping driver. Everybody else is fair game. Sensible ones for the poster doing European touring - be aware of the road rules in different countries as much of mainland Europe requires you to carry warning triangles, hi-vis jackets etc in your vehicle. Oh, and the whole wrong side of the road thing too. Don't forget that.

I think Nate Mendel from the Foo Fighters plays some really great, melodic stuff that quite often goes unnoticed underneath all those loud guitars and showboating drummers (yeah, including the one at the front with the microphone ) Rarely, if ever, gets a mention on here, but a great player with some lovely lines under his belt.

Haha, just realised the OP was posted in 2007 - that's a big bump up it got from the fella above me!

Hi Steve, got a topic here, give me a shout if this interests you: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/151328-rock-bassists-in-liverpool/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/151328-rock-bassists-in-liverpool/ [/url] Mike

I've rarely used them, bar a bit of drive now and again. I used to go through love/hate phases with pedals for my bass, and just as I got into my last 'love' phase, I joined a band where they were totally inappropriate. I've never felt like I couldn't get by without them though - the drive pedals are just a nice touch here and there, and I think I've found one song with a sensible use for the CryBaby in about the last three years, and I've never [i]ever[/i] gigged it! It's mostly used for playing Rage Against The Machine songs in the practice room Now that I'm playing guitar though, I'm already being sucked into severe pedal GAS, planning multiple loops and switches everywhere. Time to book some tap-dancing lessons!

I'll have the patch leads mate. Any idea how long the guitar strap is? I could do with a realllly long one, due to liking my guitar at crotch height and being 6ft 2! Drop me a line anyway, I'll defo have the patch leads if they're still going

Played one of these in Cash Converters in Liverpool [i]years[/i] ago - given the location, it could well be the same one!

No experience of them directly, although I find it hard to see how it's going to take a stereo mix of a load of polyphonic instruments and extract any sensible MIDI data from them. I would think that the best you'll get is an approximation of the most prominent tones/percussive attacks that you will have to edit yourself afterwards to bring it into line with the source material. I've just been and read a couple of the websites offering these tools, and they do state you'll need to edit the results yourself. Might be easier to just hunt for some existing MIDI files on t'internet rather than trying to convert from another format.

Guy at Ashdown is ace, sent me out a replacement footswitch for my Hyperdrive free of charge, even though it was well past its warranty period. Mind you, it broke again, so I've just bought myself a heavy-duty one - so cheapo parts, but top customer service!!

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1317083847' post='1386607'] In ear monitors? [/quote] Better monitoring is a good shout - even if you don't want to stretch to running an in-ear setup, a powered wedge in front of you with a feed from your amps line-out will probably be a huge step in the right direction, without impacting too much on the sound out front.

I checked out the La Cabronita guitar a while back, with a view to building one similar for an old bandmate. I can't fathom what they're charging so damn much for - even if its the highest quality components, there just aren't that many components in it! The price of exclusivity, it seems.

Dan's just become the proud new owner of my Peavey T-40. He's a model basschatter, great comms, easy and hassle-free transaction - utmost confidence that I'm dealing with a proper gentleman. I'll have to buy the man a pint next time I'm in Cardiff! Enjoy the bass mate, she's a beauty!

I'm also having difficulty changing mine - the picture I'm stuck with was my 'profile' pic on the old BC, not my avatar. I'd updated my new BC settings to sync my facebook picture - this was appearing with my profile but not my posts. I've tried to upload a new picture from my PC instead, with the same results. Am I to be saddled with that gormless picture from 4 years ago being next to my posts forever?

A bump for this. Who wants to play some massive riffs and come and make friends with our kick drum? Sign up here!!

Haha, fair do's mate, viva la difference! I think there's a big Line6 M13 on there, and a DL4 too - too much tap-dancing for me with all that. I've always liked the driven bass tone he gets with the Grabber/SVT, think the guitarists have some lovely sounding setups too.