cheddatom

I have a real life situation here. A drummer based in Stoke started posting some pretty extreme things on social media. He would describe it as simply expressing his own opinions, but in a lot of people's minds he's crossed several lines. He's lost all of his gigs, been barred from a bunch of venues, and lost his job as a drum teacher. I have absolutely no problem with people who are opposed to immigration to whatever extent, as long as they can express their point of view without any hatred. I suspected this guy was crossing lines by accident. Because I like the guy, I imagined that he has some reasonable views about problematic immigration, but that he expresses them by sharing some unfortunate memes etc. So, specifically, he shared a meme about a convicted sex offender called Zainal Osman. The meme grabs a headline describing him as a yorkshireman, and then laughs at the idea that he could be from yorkshire. I thought I'd give the drummer a private message, just to point out that he could very well be born and bred in yorkshire. There's absolutely no evidence that I can find online to the contrary. This drummer just laughed at me and argued that he couldn't possibly be British. I explained the facts of the matter IE he could very well have a British passport which would make him just as British as the rest of us, and he stopped replying for a couple of weeks. Then he sent me another meme: I replied "I've no idea whether they're German. You can't tell by the colour of their skin, if that's what you mean?" and again he stopped replying So, publicly he's trying to walk the "I'm not racist, I just..." line, but privately, he's being openly racist. This guy has basically lost his livelihood because he couldn't turn off youtube, and I think that's a pretty sad state of affairs. What's worse is it seems more and more common. People around here are openly talking about how "islam is not compatible" etc. and it's all driven by social media. It's worse than crack!

if you're using it as a limiter (smoothing out peaks) and you place it between your bass and your distortion, then the distortion will not react to your playing dynamics as much. It won't get dirtier when you dig in harder, because the limiter will tame that. For that reason, I would like a limiting compressor to be after distortion in the chain.

I love your band so much

There's loads of information on this in the Effects sub forum, but yes it makes a difference where in the chain you put it. You might be using the compressor to add punch, or you might be using it to even out dynamics, which are very different applications. The best position in your effects chain depends on what you're using the compressor for.

Well I feel a little silly now. "use the search" indeed! 😂

I have both a squier musicmaster and a bronco and could do with a replacement bridge to give me adjustment on individual saddles. I've had a look around. It looks like either £15 on Aliexpress (never ordered from them before) or quite a lot of money. Surely there's something fairly cheap I can buy in the UK and drop in?

And another single...

On the videos I've seen you can clearly hear everything FOH at our Opera set. Obviously the phones have a built in hi-pass which will help with the old "Subs go brrrr" problem. For us it seemed like the stage crew couldn't be arsed. The monitor guy didn't turn up until 3:06 and we were due on at 3:05, which I think tells you all you need to know The acoustic stage is always a nightmare for sound, or at least it is since they moved it upstairs. I just get on with it. The guy running the stage is such a weird funny old punk, it's worth doing the gig just to have a good/bad natured argument with him back stage 😂

9AM start for me yesterday to pick up the guitarist and a bunch of gear, then a long drive through constant traffic to Blackpool. A bunch of jobsworth's checking the gear at the load in bay which is unusual for Rebellion. One lad stopped me "I need to put a tag on your hardware case" What's the point of that? "It's a security measure, it shows that it's been searched" Do you want to search it then? "No, I trust you, you don't have any drugs in there do you?" No mate, the drugs are in my other bag 🤷‍♂️ Then the stairs. So many stairs. All the way up to the Opera House to play our first set. It's such a massive stage and they barely even line checked us. The sound on stage was abysmal. They had the guitarists' amp modeller clipping so it was just a horrible fizzy mush. We struggled through but seemed to go down really well. I've seen some footage since and the sound was fine FOH so they must have had separate feeds on the guitar. Very reassuring! After that were more stairs up to the Almost Acoustic stage. So many stairs. For this "acoustic" stage, the only hard and fast rule is "no bass drums". I'm sure I've posted on here about this before but my work around is to put a mic in a tupperware tub and hit it with a standard kick pedal. It's so weird that they prefer to plug in this contraption than mic up an acoustic bass drum, but it is what it is, and we've done it loads of times before, so we cracked on. This room is a nightmare for sound. A very distinct slap back echo on everything. It's OK when I'm in charge of the groove but when the guitarist is on his own it can put him off. Anyway, once again, we seemed to go down really well Lots of new fans, sold loads of merch, and had a good laugh. So many stairs on the way out. Then the lift was broken at the carpark. I was on the top floor. My legs would like a rest now Ace to see @Leonard Smalls sounding tight AF, trousers in full effect!

We've not been as busy recently, feels like ages since I've posted! We were supposed to have a big slot at Northern Kin festival on Sunday but that festival, along with a load of others, went bust. We managed to put together a show a Billy Bootleggers in Nottingham instead. One support act, then our 30 minute "acoustic" set for Rebellion Festival next weekend, then our latest album in full, then another 10 songs. We arrived at 1:30. The sound engineer was outside, "no staff here until 2pm". Apparently this was known to our front man so god knows why he wanted to get there so early. He was desperately hungry and went to order some over priced pizzas while we waited. Then it turned out the staff had locked themselves out of the venue so we had to wait another half an hour for someone else. Finally load in at 2:30 in the world's smallest lift. I was soaked with sweat by the time I'd set my drums up. Boiling in there! Sound was fine and the venue was rammed by the time we went on. The acoustic set was fun, but I really was soaked by the end of that. Everyone else got a nice 5 minute break while I re-jigged the drums for the "proper" set. Our latest album has some very intense and difficult drumming on it, for which I can only blame myself, but after playing it all the way through, and then another 8 songs from our back catalogue, I was absolutely done. I could literally wring out my t-shirt. Anyway, absolutely wonderful gig in every way but I really, really wish I'd booked today off to sleep and hydrate.

What's the bass drum setup if you don't mind? It sounds like something I could use

It's never worked like that. You share the calendar with your own google account, and it appears (or not if you like) overlaid on your own google calendar. I have loads on mine

A jubilee clip came off a pipe under the bonnet of our old band transit. A lad fixed it for us with a ratchet strap from his pickup. I assumed the boss had had it fixed but I asked him about it a few years later and apparently it had sailed through 3 MOTs before he swapped it for a new transit

couldn't you have a little lamp on the floor pointing at your pedals and set list?

The album is out now! Streaming links here: https://headsticks.ffm.to/thebestthingontv CDs, Vinyl and bundles here: https://headsticks.co.uk/shop And the only other video we've managed to do so far...

you listened to Vulfpeck and didn't find anything remarkable about the bass playing? Wow!

Very late here, last week we did Wednesday 6pm and Thursday 9pm at Bearded Theory Woodland Stage. It's a big festival and really suited to us. I camped over for the weekend after the Thursday set which was loads of fun. Great crew, great sound, great crowd, doesn't get better

Sometimes you just have to leave before the end of the gig. I think there's a polite way to do it. Say bye to the band(s) before they go on if possible. Should be common courtesy really.

I'm on drums in Headsticks but our bassist is awesome. He's playing a Fender American P into an Ashdown Rootmaster into a Barefaced stack. Impeccable timing, tasteful fills, a proper bassist's bassist. The full album is out 1st June but there are a couple of singles out already. Here's God Song featuring the legendary Steve Ignorant in the video P.S this is recorded, mixed and mastered by myself and I always welcome any constructive criticism

Yeh, same line-up for almost 14 years now! I think the main reasons we've done relatively well are 1. We're all pretty flexible with our jobs so we can finish early to get on the road and take random time off etc. 2. Our frontman makes and sells merch for a living, so in the early days, he'd sell the merch to the band on credit giving us time to build up cash. He's also constantly changing designs etc. so merch became a big thing for us, and brings in the cash to fund the physical product. We've been keeping the diary pretty clear the last year or so hoping for more support slots to bigger bands akin to BigRedX. Unfortunately it's not paid off for us. The one offer we had was a full tour for £80 per night. We're too old to be sleeping in the van so it'd cost us circa £500 a night for hotels, fuel, food etc. Worth the risk in some opinions but we didn't take it in the end.

Yeh it's frustrating Paul. Bearded Theory went great, then they put us on on the Wednesday afternoon this year! We played Beautiful Days a few years back, went down a storm, never asked back. etc etc. I think maybe we're just too old to really get anywhere. Anyway, it's good fun and pays for the beers!

Extensive gigging for decent fees means we've always had the cash for physical products. We're a very lucky band in many ways!

hah, nice one, I should probably go see it for myself, it's only round the corner!

The album is going to be distributed physically through FOAD Records, not sure what the deal is there but I think they made the vinyl. 100 each of 3 colours. CDs are through a company called Birnam https://www.birnamcd.com/ I'd guess we went for 1000 of them and it'll take 18 months to shift them all - that's been the case for the last few albums I'm not sure about costs sorry, as you can tell, I don't get involved in that side of things.

The guitarist and bassist are fine, obviously, it's just the frontman who has an unusual sense of time. We often have to follow him if he skips half a bar etc. but keeping the drum fills simple, with snare hits on the backbeat, tends to help a lot.