achknalligewelt

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I do hear Money by Pink Floyd a lot. Is that common elsewhere, or is Leicester just a hotbed of 7/4 time? For my part, I always play Girls and Boys or Rio, just to keep the shop dudes on their toes. It helps in this discussion that I don't like either Muse or Fleetwood Mac.

My own Ampeg BA-115 weighs a ton, lovely though it is, and I just can't be arsed to move it if I don't absolutely have to. So I endure whatever there is to use, and make the best of whatever it is that the teenage metallers in there did to it before we arrived. The place my (occasional) band rehearses generally has something usable (An Ashdown or similar), and the other project I work with is willing to shell out for a nice place with an Ampeg SVT-7 and a proper Ampeg 8x10 cab. Do I sound like an Ampeg fanboy there?

I sing, arrange and am the only one who knows how to build the PA and lights. I also act as our soundman in soundchecks and during gigs. I think it helps that of all our members, I am the only one who can do basically everyone else's job too. Well, maybe not sing lead, but pretty much everything else. I'd have said that sounds like bragging until now, but by the looks of it we're all of the same stuff. If I could clone myself off a few times, I'd have the perfect band...

Do you play guitar? Knowing a few chords is a good complement to all the talk of scales as it helps you learn how a song works as well as how to play it. I learned bass form knowing a bit of guitar and then reading the tab for songs I liked.

Is there an equivalent list for guitarists?

Get a basic shape of what I want, then draft it thorugh several times. By then it's pretty embedded, though I tend not to play the same thing exactly twice anyway. If I could, I'd notate myself, but seeing as I read bass clef about as fast as I can read Japanese, I rely on my memory. Horific practice, I know, but it's the only way I can do it. I've been lucky that I have had understanding collaborators.

I have a half-dead left ear thanks to years of standing next to drummers in loud, echoey rehearsal rooms. But when I wore earplus, or we turned down, it just sounded anodyne. Like other posters have said, it's meant to be loud.

I do both, and they are just totally different disciplines. As people have said, the guitar is cheaper, much more common and you can play it by yourself, so it's the one that many people pick up first (I certainly did). the first chords you learn hurt the hands, and when you see then for the first time, chord diagrams and tab look like algebra, and standard notation may as well be from Mars. The first steps are challenging. But in the long term, it also encourages laziness, by which I mean that a distorted electric guitar can cover up a multitude of technical sins. An acoustic guitar is less forgiving, but even so, you can still disguise a lot of bad practice if you hit it hard enough. Style is always a very perosnal matter, and the greatest players all have their own sound, but still, a bum not is a bum note and any live guitar track is just full of them if you listen closely. The bass, on the other hand, looks easy. one note, bang out some 8ths and you're away. You can be gigging in a fortnight. But it is the least forgiving of instruments - one note at a time, locking the drums and guitars together. You only get the one note, so if you get it wrong everyone will look at you. The more you want to do, and who doesn't want to shine a little bit, the more exposed you are. Its simplicity of operation belies the total uniqueness of its role in a band, and if you f*** it up, you ruin it for everyone. I much prefer the bass.

What's good in USB mics these days? I'm after one for recording vocals and instuments in my home studio (corner of the loft, but don't tell my ego that), decent quality but preferably under £75 and definitely under £100. What does the hive mind say? Thanks!

Last night I had the deep joy to use a full Ampeg SVT-7 Pro rig. I don't need to tell any BCers what a big thing that is. But can I find anyone else to share that with? Can I explain to someone just what it felt like to finally reach this zenith of backline power and prestige? Why does no-one else care about these things like we do? Hold me.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1363786200' post='2017562'] Mmm, for me I want all that but with original music. It's the thrill of people loving what you've written that really gets me. Plus, in a cover band you never have any product to sell, no need to record anything. That's a huge part of the pleasure for me too. The joy of selling a record is a delight, knowing people listen to it in the privacy of their own home, or headphones, or playing it to their mates. [/quote] Sadly, in my experiece, no bugger does. But like I said originally, I'm in Leicester. It's not exactly New York City.

I hope I didn't sound too negative, because playing originals, when it went well, was great. Exercising our creativity and bringing our skills to bear on new songs was always a buzz. But it was always with the idea of getting spotted, getting fans, maybe even getting signed, and after a while, when none of those things happen, you get jaded. It's difficult to be able to have absolutely no-one show an interest and not get jaded. And then life just got in the way. I agreed withn the poster who said that a covers band is a good way to bypass a lot of the hard work and make people dance from the outset. it's what we all want, in the end. That, and to get paid. Sweet,sweet folding stuff.

I've done both in my time. Original material is, I find, a thankless task in a town like Leicester where there is no scene to play it on and never has been. It's not like we didn't try - all of my 20's were spent in various bands, writing the best stuff we could and getting support slots for other, more established bands when they came through. The result? A hurried 20 minute set with no soundcheck and a soundman who couldn't be arsed to do any more than turn the PA on ('I'll set you up on line' is always going to make your heart sink), someone else's audience stood at the bar talking and when you finish, a voice from the back of the room saying 'Thank God! f*** off so we can hear The Crocketts!' A decade of that will tarnish the shine on the most dearly held personal artistic vision. On the other hand, playing Beatles songs at weddings mean everyone dances, everyone can sing along and you get a few quid at the end. Art doesn't pay and takes up too much time - I am involved with an ongoing originals project ([url="http://snd.sc/ZSLTcz"]http://snd.sc/ZSLTcz[/url]) and though it's great fun, and it's actually very democratic about how the songs work and evolve, preparations for one gig have already taken a month. And that's without a divaish songwriter who won't countenance a bass note above 12th...

I have an Ampeg BA-115, and it's never let me down. Though it does weigh as much as an Austin Maxi.

It's a very wide range of song types - if your vocalist can handle all of them, she's a real find. The thing I've felt working with a varied setlist in this kind of band is that you shouldn't try to hard to mimic the sounds of the bands you're covering. We spent a while like that, but in the end just kept the famous bits, created the rest ourselves and went down so much the better for having a distinct 'sound' that we could really sell.

I'd say there's nothing wrong with asking for a chord sheet, and maybe a description of the kind of thing he's after. I'm sure he'll oblige. Otherwise he'll spend a lot of time scratching his head, asking 'what is it about these people, none of them can get what I want!' no harm in asking questions, and if he gets uppity at being asked things, guy's a twat, so leave it. My only other advice might be not to be too flash at first. I've dealt with players in orignals bands, and I must admit, open-minded and respectful as I try to be of other people's playing choices, the guitarist who put two-handed tapping into a two minute Beatles ripoff I wrote did kind of put me off him. Similarly, keep the huge FX rig at home for the first runthrough. Keep it simple, but always hint at the potential for more.

I started as a guitarist, but always liked playing bass, so when I was asked by a mate to join his band on bass because no-one else would do it, I said 'yeah, why not?' When I suggested early on that I could play a solo he was having trouble with if he played bass for that number, said no. Not, he was keen to add, because he didn't think I could play the solo, of course I could. His issue was that he didn't really know how to play bass properly. Nonsense, I said, we're all musicians here. So we had a go. It was [i]terrible,[/i] terrible in a whole new way I never thought possible. This man, who can hurtle through any Jimmy Page solo you care to name, could not hold down 8ths in time, could not find an octave, none of it. This is bass lessons, week 2 stuff, and he absolutely flunked it. 'See?' he said, 'I told you I can't play bass. What you do is impossible.' Felt good. That was six years ago. And it still feels good.

In my old band, we had a three song Rolling Stones block - Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women and Start Me Up. I would tune out, daydream for a bit and then tune back in 10 minutes later to find my hands had played the entire section without any input from my brain at all. I cannot communicate how much I [i]hate [/i]the Rolling Stones.

The bassline to The Monochrome Set is a holy text for me. Can I do it properly? No, of course I can't.

I think 'It's a G now, I'll try [i]this[/i] lick,' and I see what happens. I try and have a general idea of what I want to do for the whole piece before I start, though I am notorious for never quite playing the same thing twice.

I can't use my fingers at all. I get all confused and blistery.

Another [url="http://snd.sc/XkgjXJ"]one[/url] from our Woodman Stone album. This has the bass mixed a bit louder, but it is a punkier number. I wanted to be somewhere between XTC and the Boo Radleys. Incidentally, all of the tracks we did for this album were DI'd into the desk and an amp sim, played on a cheap Squire Jazz with a guitar pick. I'm not a gear fiend, partly because I like to let my fingers do the talking, and mostly because I can't afford to be.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1361282806' post='1983828'] I like that, nice jaunty number, well sung and well played. The bass seems to be mixed pretty quiet so although I heard some really nice phrasing and little runs, I would have liked it to be a bit more present in the mix. Great though! [/quote] Thanks a lot, and I hope BCers enjoy the rest of it too. It's released to buy on CD Baby and iTunes March 23rd (plug, plug, plug, 'cos I'm getting points - Papa needs a new pair of shoes).

The latest thing I've been doing has produced an albumsworth of songs with Woodman Stone, a sample (my favourite) is [url="http://snd.sc/YDBAIM"]here[/url]. It's me on guitar, too (bragging, but I was very pleased with it). It's so nice to hear Basschatters playing. Literally from the first items on this thread, I've loved it, even stuff in genres I wouldn't normally listen to.