Rosie C

We sort of do that - I use a stand when playing my medieval recorder music, and we made stand covers with our band logo, to make a point of having stands...

A revelation! With no gigs for the forseeable, and after following this topic, I've spent the last few days seeing if I can play the tunes we usually perform from memory, and so far yes I have a list of 12 and growing! So pleased I tried it - as you say it became a crutch.

Ah, there it is, you just have to write a song with the bass player name-checked in the chorus! (Ant Rap)

John Deacon John Paul Jones ?

One of the many reasons I play mandolin instead of 6-string guitar - every string has a spare 😉 (and apologies for making light of your difficult gig)

I've not had a failure on my bass guitar. On my upright though, collapsed end pin - at the biggest gig we'd played to date. I spent the set very carefully balancing the bass on a stack of plastic beer glasses.

The last couple of videos I've done I've used a square aspect ratio... seems a very backward step to 1920s TV but works well for social media. But back on topic, last night's gig was playing at the Equinox Boat Burn at Butser Ancient Farm. An awesome experience - still coming down from it!

Be careful - I had a run in with another courier (who I'm not going to mention). I had a parcel from Thomann just after brexit when customs charges weren't streamlined. They invoiced me £60 for customs. I paid by credit card, but the payment didn't show up. I had to pay again then a week or so later both payments appeared on my statement. Phoning them involved an hour on hold and a couple of calls didn't resolve the problem ("we'll have someone call you back"), so I disputed the change and my bank refunded one of the payments. A few months later the courier set debt collectors on me!

I ordered two cable from @Chienmortbb - great attention to detail, and stepped me through options I wasn't aware of. Result - two lovely cables to suit my particular needs that off the shelf cables wouldn't. Excellent service!

I took a pragmatic approach - transposed it to G, and I'll play it on octave mandolin with a capo on 1 or 2 to suit. 🫣

You've jinxed me! I've not played "Shout to the Lord" before, but it's on the list for this Sunday. I'm unsure whether in A or A♭ ... that can be a surprise for Sunday morning!

Just a little luxury!

I have promised this to the rhythm guitarist in our band - when we make it, I'm hiring a guy who just follows us around, tuning our guitars. That includes church on Sundays.

What is the roof made from? I have a shed which should be cosy and dry. But in fact it suffers badly from humidity and my tools have gone rusty. As far as I can work out it's the roof - made from profiled steel sheet, as the temperature changes condensation forms on the underside. Some days it's do bad water drips down onto the floor. I got some advice about insulating but they said I couldn't stop the condensation and insulation would just trap the water. The only option was changing the roof for a timber one.

Likewise, on re-starting studies at the Open University I received a Playmobile lookalike folk musician (right hand side, playing 'recorder'). Henceforth any item I advertise without my mini-me in the photo will be FAKE!

I was thinking the same about ibuprofen...

I have a guitar strap which has slots cut in the leather end to hold three spare picks. I found picks the same colour, so you can't even see my emergency pick stash from a few feel away

A friend asked me to make a pedal board for effects pedals for his *lyre*, and it's proving a useful project in taking a fresh look at my own pedalboard. I'm using a aluminium case with removable lid, and planning to power it with a PD power bank, through an adapter that 'talks' to the power bank and requests 9v. First, the woodwork though...

I recently removed these Wilkinson pickups from my 6-string "Vintage" SG copy, maybe useful to someone in a build project? Collect for free from Chepstow, or if you cover postage I can post to UK addresses.

I too had a bad night's sleep - and woke up early all wired and stressy. But all swept away with today's service. We had a full church for a baptism, and the hymns were chosen to appeal to younger members of the congregation: All Things Bright & Beautiful, Onward Christian Soldiers Pilgrims, and "Thanks for the Fellowship", to the tune of the Skye Boat Song. I learned all the bass parts, but with only two of us in the band today, and such nice tunes I played octave-mandolin instead, along with the piano.

After my local bass guy retired, he recommended "Martyn Bailey Luthier Ltd" (https://mjbl.co.uk) who can add adjusters to an existing bridge by mail order. It was about £120 from memory and the results were good.

... and the yellow Dunlop pick that's been recommended can be purchased in a rainbow set of red (thinnest, .5mm?), through to the thickest purple. I found it useful to have the whole range when I started using a pick. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016L291A0/ or possibly direct from the seller, but I couldn't find the exact item - https://www.dirtyriffs.co.uk/

I did have a pair just like this from a local gun shop. I was struggling to balance the volume of the drummer and horns in our swing band with hearing the conductor in between numbers. I found the sound quality through the mics was poor, and they suffered from mobile phone interference. They had a feature to reduce the volume when a gun went off, which triggered if the drummer in our swing band really went for it, and it shut off the sound at a certain point. Probably perfect for a gun discharging but for music a more graduated control is needed. On the plus side they were bright pink which prompted conversations and gave me many opportunities to talk to young people about protecting their hearing.

I took vocal lessons and found them really useful - they took me from "can I sing?" to performing gigs in about six months. One of the best things was increasing my range - I'd increased my top note 6 semitones after a year's lessons. I find it much easier to sing to octave mandolin which has similar pitch range to my voice. Lately I've been playing mandolin and that's much harder as I have to find my own pitch based an octave down. However, I think it's good practice as otherwise I rely on the octave mando too much. I also found it a great help to have a professional advising as I ended up with laryngitis twice, and a chest infection, and generally since I've been singing I've had to take much more care over my voice & lungs. Not like bass where I can just chuck it in a bag after a gig. Edit: I can't sing and play bass though, I don't seem to be able to carry two rhythms in my head at once. Singing to guitar/mandolin is fine though.

Not just the line selector, but a whole bunch of pedals. I have an Orange amp simulator now nestling in my basket!