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First one of 2024 for me and it was at my local boozer, The Blue Boar (of Dr. Who Pertwee era "The Daemons" fame). Two hours of acoustic 80s alternative / goth from my duo. I started off on the mandocello before moving onto mandolin for our first set. I actually started the second set on my partner's acoustic guitar, for a new cover of Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy (slowed down and vocally dropped a few octaves!) before finishing up on my Squier Bass VI. The last instrument got a lot of comments and it's certainly something I want to explore more in 2024. We also found an old smoke machine so made use of that to great effect! It's only been three weeks but it's great to be back!

Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier A Design For Life Kevin Carter From Everything Must Go by The Manic Street Preachers. To think this is how the album after losing Richey starts, is just incredible. The swagger and confidence (and melancholy). One of the very rare true 10/10 albums, imo.

Got to see my original inspiration Friday night... https://i.imgur.com/dVyuY7s.jpg https://i.imgur.com/wQvQIdh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/kNqpnCh.jpg ...And he threw his wristband to my dad and I, which was a wonderful moment. When I was a kid, I had the 'Piece of Mind' album and Thin Lizzy's 'Black Rose' cassette tapes, which made me want to play bass. WASP's 'Crimson Idol' and Big Country's 'The Buffalo Skinners' made me pick up the guitar too. I don't listen to Steve (or Phil) much any more, because Jack Bruce and Chris Squire just took it that little bit further, but it was incredible and exhausting to watch him in action. British Lion as a band are incredibly polished live, but the dynamics came through in a way that the albums just can't capture (modern technology). I'd thoroughly recommend the gig if you get the chance to see them. So who made you pick up the bass?

It's for a banjo, so it doesn't count as a musical instrument.

Long Stain Runnin' ～ Doobry Brothers

We didn't have regular practice, instead we rented out a "production room" at Pirate Studios. There was a couple of big Yamaha speakers, a minor and a Focusrite Claret interface, plus a vocal booth. I wouldn't have wanted to record any vocals there. The bleed from another room was too high. It wasn't a terrible space to have a group review of my mixes for the EP though. I just brought my laptop and plugged in. A bit of good feedback and tweaks approved by all, so now we've finally got pre-master tracks for everything.

I tend to learn songs by ear using bass tabs or music. I also like to write out the music in full which helps me remember it in two different ways. I also like to know the songs inside out so that if someone else makes a slight mistake i can keep going and they are more easily able to catch up kinda thing. If someone does make a mistake and others follow i'm more able to adapt as i know the songs really well. To be fair i've been playing same songs for almost 5 yrs in one band and 2 yrs in the other with only minor changes over the years but i practice the full set at home at least once a week and always the afternoon of a gig time permitting. It gives me an air of confidence when playing. I've had situations where i couldn't hear either the vocals or the guitar very well so its paid off knowing the songs really well. I can more or less count the bars in most songs altho i don't actually do that but the notes i make are stamped in my head for instant recall Dave

Endorsements have certainly never cropped up before. I am inclined to think that an ongoing endoresment is sort of a business relationship, and should be outside of the scope. But setting up a new one as a way of getting round the rules is clearly dodgy. But so brilliant I would let it pass. 😁

Looks mint! Steve Harris was also my inspiration for learning to play bass over 35 years ago now. In fact I was having a bit of a rough time of things last week and ended up watching a few songs from Live After Death on Youtube which soothed my soul and took me back to being a wide-eyed teenage metal fan. I met him once at the British Music Show in Earls Court in 1997 - I queued up at the Rotosound stand for ages to get an autograph, but was then too starstruck to say anything to him!

That's a cracking bass, Alan's work is top drawer all round and he's a great fellow to deal with, congrats. My Krell fretless 5:

The first three tracks of The Joshua Tree: Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm looking For and With Out Without You. Mind you, Bullet The Blue Sky and Running To Standstill make it a run of five for me and the whole of side one for me.

Oh Donor - 10CC

Love Song For A Vampire - Annie Lennox

Holidays in The Sun, Bodies, No Feelings from Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols.

I can probably answer most of your questions relating to Trace Elliot products made between 1978 and the end of 1986.Fred Friedlein (MD),Alan Morgan(sales) and I (designer) were the founder members of Trace Elliot.designed all models up to then including GP 11 preamp, GP7 preamp and the AH 150 combo amps. The amp heads AH150,AH 350x,the biamp model and the most popular AH250 and AH500 heads. Stuart Watson.

We all have favourite albums and favourites tracks from them. But what is your favourite sequence of 3 songs from an album? Not just your favourite 3 from an album, but 3 consecutive songs. Mine are Manhattan Project -> Marathon -> Territories, from Rush's 'Power Windows'. They're great songs anyway, but the three together are just a stunning combination. Over to you, BC Massive.

Ashdown ABM600 with two ABM Neo 15s. More than enough for anywhere.

I've had pickups set right up close to the strings and as far away as possible.... I find I prefer the further away end of the spectrum... But like Doctor J prescribed I have learnt to use my ears over time, it seems to me you get a bit less boomy bottom when set like this or at least how I play.🤔

Lady E Lenor - Lindisfarne

Still one of my favourite tunes... Comfortably numb - Pink Floyd

Hey! My bass is as ugly as sin (and is crap in all sorts of other ways) but it sure sounds good!

Been offered a Epiphone Thunderbird for £100. I'm out.

My short scale Krell - Best bass I have ever owned bar none . Truly a masterpiece.

So my lunchtime has gone down the tubes and I am still trying to pick a best set of three songs in a row from nearly 50 years of collecting records. Curse you @Rich!

Persilephone - Wishbone Ash

It's not just a case of learning the part, certainly for myself and doubtless for ithers too. Not being hip and down with the yoof means that for me it's often a case of learning the song first. Once I know the tune and it's reasonably well wedged in my cranium then learning the part is generally straightforward, usually by music but sometimes by ear. I'm OK at reading music but far from the best at it, and I'm not good enough to play along to a song I've never heard, but once I've heard the song a few times... If its songs I know then ten in a week is, probably, doable. If I don't know the songs then it simply ain't.

Trying to properly learn 10 songs is too much, although if it's mostly songs that you all already know and just need to get them together as a band then it might be feasible. To use my own band as an example, when we formed a few years ago - some of us had played together before in other bands. We had to get it together quickly, as we already had gigs in the diary - inheriting the diary of two members' old band. We came up with a list of about 30 songs as our initial setlist, and we did get through about 10 per week. However, we had a fair amount of standards in amongst that - Honkey Tonk Woman, All Right Now and nonsense like that. It got us out gigging if nothing else. After that initial phase, we started adding some more interesting numbers - normally 3 to 5 at a fortnightly rehearsal. That's definitely the optimal number for us. Typically we'll know after one or two run throughs whether a song is going to work. George

I could take any 3 song run from Pixies' Doolittle as it's the greatest rock album ever...IMO ....including Monkey Gone to Heaven/Crackity Jones/Mr Grieves, the opening trio of Debaser/Tame/Wave of Mutilation and La La love you/No. 13 baby/There goes my gun Stranglers' Rattus Norvegicus runs it very close with a cracking start...Sometimes/Toulouse/London Lady and a strong final flurry with Grip/Ugly/Down in the sewer

This is the way I worked with a band I put together to play a one off gig last year. We were all capable musicians and we needed to get 15-20 songs together over about 6 weeks. We agreed to work on 6-8 new songs per week in rehearsals that lasted about 2 hours. The format was that everyone worked out their parts in advance and the rehearsals were for taking the rough edges off, sorting the arrangements and working on vocals. We kept it loose and usually managed to do what we needed to do on as many of the songs each week. Sometimes we got 8, other times we only managed 3 or 4. Weeks 2, 3 & 4 started with playing through the previous week's songs and by week 5 we had the makings of a set. A couple of songs were dropped and new songs added along the way. We had an extra 'dress rehearsal' in week 6, by which time we'd sorted the set order. The gig went well. My only regret was that we didn't have more time to get to know each other so that we could include some improvisation along the way.

It was the first rehearsal of 2024 for the Hulla band last night and the first time we'd played since 10 December. A medium sized pile of rust accumulated at my feet as we dusted off a few oldies, of few regulars and some I'd never played before. The first hour was largely catching up (they all live in a village the the drummer and I are 'outsiders'), so between songs there were great gaps as we settled in. But overall it was a good night with few glaring errors and nothing that won't be put right by the next rehearsal. I was using a new pair of earphones for my IEM; when I first started using it I tried the 'phones that came with the kit (a cheap Gear4Music set) and they didn't work for me - too tinny and low volume. I took to using a pair of Sony noise cancelling earpieces, which were fine. But over the break I tried the originals again and found that I hadn't been fitting them correctly and once I'd made the effort (in other words, pushed them in properly), they were much better. Last night was the first time I'd tried them with the full band and what a difference! Clarity, volume, more isolation and more comfortable to wear. In fact, so much more isolation that I'm going to have to set up a mic to pick up the drums to feed into them.

That's walking distance from me. 😀 I'll try and get to them - if you're at the Vivian Arms at all, that's crawling distance! 🤣

I haven't posted in a while, not because I've not done anything but I've been trying to understand the various menu libraries that Arduino systems can use. I spent a lot of time trying to work through the ad-hoc, hand built, unsupported, poorly documented, over the top, over complicated, under specced, version tied and generally not fit for purpose menu libraries before giving up and writing my own. I'm sure there are good ones out there, but trying to find a lightweight library (Arduinos don't have much code space) that actually works, is properly documented and works on my simulator is harder than doing it yourself. So I did it myself. I currently have nine options that need to fit on a 20x4 LCD screen. You can see below that the screen is showing options 1-4. As I am an ex C-developer, everything starts at row 0 which is right and proper. The green and yellow buttons will be end stops that I haven't wired yet. I have two digital inputs left but can't be bothered yet. int noRootMenuItems = 9; SimpleMenu_t rootMenu[9] = { { "0Run " , { INTEGER , { 123 }} } , { "1Number of Loops " , { INTEGER , { 123 }} } , { "2Winder1 Steps " , { INTEGER , { 123 }} } , { "3Winder2 Steps " , { INTEGER , { 123 }} } , { "4Bobbin Width " , { DOUBLE , { 1.23 }} } , { "5Wire Width " , { DOUBLE , { 3.21 }} } , { "6Set Left Edge " , { DOUBLE , { 7.89 }} } , { "7Set Right Edge " , { DOUBLE , { 9.87 }} } , { "8Stepper Direction " , { DIRECTION , { CLOCKWISE }} } , }; The above is the rootMenu setup, the numbers at the start of the char* will go, it's just for me to check. Eventually this struct will be enlarged to handle functions, but I'm struggling with how Arduino compilers declare and pass arrays of structs around. A simple C compiler would let me pass a pointer and thats it, the Arduino compiler is not playing ball and keeps refusing to compile what I think is valid code, a pointer to an array of structs. I may bring out the big hammer shortly and declare a void * to teach it a lesson. I've written compilers so this should be easy, but I must have forgotten something important or the compiler is a lot stricter. Anyway, each line has a type attached to it, INTEGER, DOUBLE and DIRECTION. When you select a line using the 'D' character, it moves to a sub-menu and allows you to edit the value thats passed. I've written the code to edit integers, I'll use that as a basis to input floats/doubles and the last one will be to change the wiring direction, CLOCKWISE or ANTI_CLOCKWISE. The aim is to parameterise everything so adding new features is just a new line in the menu declaration. We'll see how that goes I have all the looping sorted out, keypad entries seem to work, but no idea if they debounce in the real world. I also have printed most of the parts for the winder, including my first simple bobbin. I have most of the winder parts sitting on my desk, but am away skiing from Thurs to Monday so nothing is going to move forward for a few weeks yet. If anybody has any spare broken pickups they are happy to provide, it would be great to see how they are made and understand more about each of them. I don't really want to buy lots of working ones to break apart. Thanks Rob

Also why is his crotch miked?

Indeed. Some people actually find singlecuts attractive.

Mean Mr Mustard Polythene Pam She came in through the bathroom window Abbey Road

The opening three tracks of Manic Frustration by Trouble, the way each runs into the next, just sublime

Busy weekend with the Phil Collins tribute act NO JACKET REQUIRED. Fab gig Friday at Dorking halls where I used’the beast’, my faithful old wal and tonight’s ( ok last night 🤣) gig at the Hazlett theatre in Maidstone. Decided to use the ken smith for a change, such a comfortable bass to play and sounded great! Audiences at both shows were very receptive and really got into it!! All in all a very enjoyable couple of shows and a pleasure to play with such a nice bunch of people 😊.

I'd recommend using a decent recording interface, and not use an amp at all. Most bass is recorded directly into the desk. Just my tuppence-worth.

I had a very similar experience at a fan club event in 1989.

A lesson learned: I didn't have a monitor and could only really hear the drums and my Bass (the rest of the band have in ears and PA but I use a cab), it caught me out on a few songs: not hearing vocals and guitar meant I missed the structure for things like when to go into the chorus. I immediately blamed the equipment ('I must get in ears, or a wedge for monitoring'), but really, I should be able to play all the songs to a metronome (let alone drums) so am going to up my practice regime.

The ability to learn fast is a skill to be learned. Now I have experience of jam nights (playing things blind with modest expectations) and depping (learning or refreshing 25-35 songs, with limited time, maybe no rehearsal with expectation of a quality performance) my attitude to bands learning songs has changed. I left a band after a year of honing things forever... The blues rock band I'm in, we will try and rehearse a song once or twice before playing it, but sometimes we will just jam something. This is largely down to knowing each others' style and habits so we can react on the fly; somee of our well rehearsed stuff is often different every time, although things like Radar Love are pretty much note for note every time. For more standard covers stuff, I think four or five new songs is perfectly reasonable for anyone, assuming a modest period to prepare. Ten is doable, if people are willing and able to put in the time, but some will struggle. Just two or three is barely worth the effort. As for number of rehearsals, just make sure they are for getting polished and used to playing together, not learning (the exception is if you all agree a new song and gave a shot at busking it).

If you were hoping to fraudulently sell a non-existent amp, it could be very useful to have a legitimate serial number to help convince your mark. Maybe he was trying to prevent this kind of fraud.

Years ago, a friend of mine sent me a text message to let me know of the sad news of his father's death. He tried using 'passed away' but, unfortunately, typed 'Dad pasted away this evening', which made it sound like he'd done a bit of wallpapering before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Oh hang on, this thread is 7 months old 😂