BigRedX

6 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

What irks most are regular punters who only buy tap water (not even a soft drink)

Not everyone wants to drink alcohol and most soft drinks are sugary shit that's probably even worse for you. If I went to see a band I wasn't having a beer for whatever reason I probably wouldn't have anything to drink.

14 hours ago, prowla said:

My work laptop is a Macbook Pro M4.

The screen is a bit small.

10 hours ago, Owen said:

The joy of the 14" ones are that they will run 2 monitors as well as the screen. Treat yourself!

All laptop screens are a bit small:

That's my work set-up. InDesign Document on the middle screen with the pallets to the right. Two word files which I am working from on the left.

And here's the same set up for music:

Logic arrange page on the middle screen. HX Edit or Logic mixer page on the right and plug-in editing windows on the left.

I ran a bi-amp system in the 90s, but that was mostly so I could put certain effects on the HF side only. Also the way I had my rig set up allowed me to have the HF speakers at ear level which allow for better monitoring and lower backline levels on stage. The dual DIs for the PA feed did tend to confuse some in-house FoH engineers so we ended up with our own sound engineer. These days it can all be done within a decent must-effects pedal and the results summed at the output for direct feed to the PA.

All about context. That tone wouldn't suit any of the music I want to play.

1 hour ago, TimR said:

 

Playing originals in a group is an essential part of learning your craft. It's evidenced by a load of originals bands who just don't understand either how arrangements work, nor what form is.

 

You can tell who has studied those aspects and who hasn't. 

I think you probably meant to say "Playing covers in a group is an essential part of learning your craft."

I'd been playing in originals bands for 10 years before I played a cover. The song in question taught me nothing about arrangements or form, in fact we altered the arrangement of the final verse to make it more interesting otherwise the song would have been an intro followed by 4 verses that only varied in the lyrics, each separated by 4 bars of identical instrumental.

IMO it is perfectly possible to learn about songwriting, arrangement and form simply by listening. You don't need to actually play anything, and certainly not in a band. Besides many successful songs are those that break the conventions of the time regarding those attributes.

4 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Pretty much ALL classical music is covers! No one disparages professional orchestras for their musical talent.

But for a lot of classical music the composer would be part of the original permanence, and if not it would have been written specifically for a particular performer or ensemble. It's only since the death of the composer(s) in question that music essentially becomes a cover.

3 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

It's down to execution. I saw a band on Saturday night. The guitarist wasn't that great a guitarist and was also playing keys and triggering sequences and samples. He wasn't a great keys player either. It was originals.

 

The singer was getting visibly frustrated that the audience weren't engaging. But to be honest they should have lost all the fancy extra production and concentrated on a simpler guitar part. Whatever vision the band had in their heads wasn't coming across.

 

Plus the drummer had a massive kit and was playing all the drums all at the same time.

 

The whole thing was just a noise. It was originals. And again the traditional hook, and form of verse and chorus were absent. 

It sounds like me that they were too interested in being musicians and not concentrating enough on the songwriting or the performance.

IMO if you can't put on a performance there is no point in playing live irrespective of whether you use backing or not.

That's hardly new. Unfortunately bands have been doing that for at least the last 60 years.

34 minutes ago, Burns-bass said:

The problem is that what you love then becomes a job, and inevitably you view it differently.

As someone who both writes and plays, the lucrative part is nearly always in the composition and not the playing.

I have a back-catalogue of 45 years worth of songs, and although most of the songs that aren't being performed by my current band only earn a few pounds a year, it all adds up, and it only takes a couple of songs to become popular either from my band or someone deciding to do a cover and I could be set for the rest of life. I'm certainly not going to be scrabbling around for paying gigs in covers bands just so I can pay the bills, because that would kill any enthusiasm for performing music that I have.

For me, income from writing a song is like buying a premium bond. I'm know that I'm very unlikely to win a big prize, but if I don't do it then my chances of "winning" are definitely zero. But each additional song is a very slight extra chance. And if by some miracle one of my songs does become successful, it doesn't affect my current musical activities. I can still continue to do what I want right now and not have to bow to the pressures of having another "hit".

54 minutes ago, TimR said:

For someone who's passionate about performing music they write, the satisfaction and enjoyment of doing that is going to far outweigh what they get paid.

I would like to be able to earn enough from writing, recording and performing music so that I could give up my day job and concentrate on it full time. The more time I have for music the better I think it will be.

Currently I'm posting this in between laying out pages for a very boring magazine that will take me most of this week and pay the bills for the next month. I would not be doing this if I didn't have to.

44 minutes ago, diskwave said:

Backing tracks, click tracks, some bloke behind the curtain pressing buttons. The live music scene has completely lost its way. I can name a good handful of three/fourpiece outfits back in the day who played all the chart hits and sounded amazing. Its all about musicianship and getting the general tone of a particular tune right.....You dont need to be in perfect time and you dont need every nuance of a recording to sound good. 

But music has moved on and you haven't.

Besides it's hardly new. I was working with bands using drum machines and backing tracks back in 1981. The Who used backing tapes in order to perform "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the 70s. I bet no-one other than the Musician's Union complained about that.

I would love to be able perform our songs without programmed backing but finding a drummer and synth player with the technical ability to do what we need is proving impossible. Also it would completely mess up the logistics of playing live. As I said in my original post we get the whole band plus all the instruments we need to play a gig into a single estate car. We can be set up and be ready to play in under 10 minutes from load in. We couldn't do any of those things with a drummer and second synth player.

Did the OP ask for a valuation?

If so that's the offending part. Please repost your original question but don't ask what it is worth.

We have the facility to extend sections of our backing track should we want to. However we have yet to use it at an actual gig. Likewise when I have been in bands that were totally live we rarely changed the length or structure the songs on the fly, and if we did it was because someone had messed up and it was a chance for us all the catch up and get back in sync, not because we thought the song could do with being a bit longer.

Currently my band is in the enviable position that we have more songs that we would like to play, and more importantly that our audience want to hear, than will fit in a typical sub-45 minute set, so we would much rather play another song than extend a couple of the others, and I think our audience would prefer that too.

11 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

If a band is being used as an attraction to make money, then the band should receive a cut of that profit. Either a fixed fee or a share of the ticket sales. 

Gigs can be expensive and hard work (especially if you have big amps) and there's a fair bit of boredom between sound check and gig. 

I've read that some headline acts are now charging support bands to tour with them, I think it was Disturbed charging $12,000 to support them on their US tour. 

Name bands have always charged support bands for tour slots, with a few notable exceptions. In the days when the tour was a loss-leader for album sales it helped keeps the losses down. Now that the live performance is the main source of income ofd most artists having a support band that pays is probably more important than ever for making the tour profitable.

Being successful at sport is almost always about being very good at it which is relatively easily quantifiable.

Music on the other hand is nearly entirely subjective.

1 hour ago, Owen said:

And when it goes wrong, it is grim. We did West Side Story at work (FE college). The Perf Arts dept needed a band. I was young and foolish. How hard can it be? I downloaded it all on MIDI files, tabbed it out through Logic and off we went. WSS guitar, bass and drums. But I had a piano track on CD becaue the potential for disaster was too much. I was not THAT foolish. We had a silent pit and the guy running playback/monitor was stoned. On the CD the tune before the Act 1 finale segued into "Tonight". The stoned guy heard the number before Tonight slowing down and ending so hit stop.The actual track continued on the CD, Tonight starting at 2:36. There was no way he could cue that up. There was a pregnant pause and I started to sing accapela. The cast did the whole routine accapela, dance moves to the non existent orchestral hits and all. In retrospect it was comedy gold. The on stage energy levels went throught the roof. 

That sounds to me like you were insufficiently rehearsed and put your faith in the ability of people who weren't part of the band and intoxicated to be able control the music. 

You'd have had an equally disastrous outcome if any one of the musicians had been intoxicated. 

When any of the bands I've been in have used programmed or recorded backing we practice for every contingency we can think of. For the bands where the backing is just "icing" we have practiced playing the songs without it. For the others when something goes wrong in rehearsal we don't stop but play on and work out how to get out of the problem, such as the singer missing their cue or coming in early, so if it happens at a gig we'll get through it and only those in the audience who know the songs inside-out might notice that something went awry. We also control the backing from the stage and have the ability to do so without it being obvious to the audience.

8 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

True in some cases, but there are more originals bands than there are decent venues to play, so supply and demand has an effect. A band with little to no following that wants to get its music in front of people has little choice a lot of the time. 

That's assuming that all originals bands are equal as are the genres that they play. Maybe if you play undefined guitar-based pop/rock that is the case, but if you fit into an identifiable genre, especially one with an active scene there are plenty of gigs if you are halfway decent.

I'd like to think that my current band are unbelievably awesome, but the reality is that there are plenty in the genre (goth/post-punk) that write more memorable songs that we do and have a better image, but we still manage to get plenty of gigs. We have multiple gigs booked every month between now and September and are in the enviable position where we can turn down offers that aren't appropriate or worthwhile from either a financial PoV or for putting us in front of a receptive audience who may not have seen us before. 

On top of that we made over £100 from Spotify plays alone last year and will probably triple that this year, which is good going when the average stream is a fraction of the cent...

All of this happens because we work hard at promoting the band, and put on show when we do play. It's not difficult if you are organised and put in the required effort on top of your technical ability as a musician.

IME the only reason originals bands play for free is either because they have specifically decided to do so, or because they are too disorganised to ask for payment.

Similarly there is no reason why bands playing charity and benefit events shouldn't be paid. One of the better paying gigs I did last year was a benefit. We would have done it fro free because we whole-heartedly support the cause but the organisers insisted on paying us and the other performers for putting in the time and effort to do it.

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Yes to both I said so in the post 👍

You've been rather coy about what sport(s) you have taken part in, which may make a difference to my opinion, but broadly if people are paying to see you perform as a musician or sports person then I think I would want paying.

As a musician I've always been paid apart from those occasions where I have specifically agreed to provide my entertainment for free. The payment might not always have covered my costs directly, although when that happens the profit on the sales of merch normally make up the difference.

Most of the things that I have wanted to do with modular synths in the past can, these days, be replaced on any synth that allows MIDI CC assignment and tempo controlled synchronisation of the relevant  parameters. 

Also IIRC Emerson had a roadie to repatch his modular Moog while he was slicking knives in the Hammond Organ.

Do people pay to watch you play sport?

Does anyone other than the suppliers and manufacturers of the equipment and clothing that you use, make money out of your sporting activities?

1 hour ago, Terry M. said:

Are these individuals you ask this of other musicians? I think it's just personal preference at the end of the day. Some don't mind it and others do. There is no right or wrong. And is it a rhetorical question or not? Would you be able to budget for anybody who might say yes? 

1 hour ago, neepheid said:

Well, I wouldn't be so crass as to complain in person to you about it.  We're all musicians at the end of the day, you do it your way and I'll do it mine.  Anyway, if I was ever to attend one of your gigs, it would be check you out (musically speaking, not in a pervy way, lol), and the rest of it would be of secondary concern to me.

These "complaints" mostly occurred in the 90s with a band that went through numerous line-ups some that included a drummer and others that didn't, and therefore I assumed that the people complaining were drummers angling for a job. Interestingly no-one ever complained about the keyboards being on the backing which applied at all the line-ups but one where we had to drop quite a few well-loved songs because the the synth player, despite being a considerably more accomplished player than me, was unable to recreate several of the keyboard parts to the standard that was required to make the songs sound decent.

It's not been a problem with the current band because in the goth/post-punk genre some form of programmed or recorded backing is perfectly acceptable I come across more bands currently gigging with backing tracks than those who play completely live.

My band uses backing tracks.

It enables us to get the whole band plus all our gear and merch in one car for travelling to gigs. It means we can fit in spaces on stage that more conventional bands wouldn't. We've picked up gigs at decent venues supporting much better known bands simply because of our smaller than usual stage footprint.

Our backing replaces a drummer and a second synth player. While I know a couple of drummers with sufficient technical ability to replace the programmed drums neither are interested in playing our genre of music, and the synth parts are basically technical challenging but very repetitive or just the occasional sound effect/texture and are far better handled by a machine rather than a human being.

Besides most bands I see using programmed or recorded backing have far more on the backing tracking than necessary. IMO even with backing tracks playing live is not about perfectly reproducing what is on the recording. I'm always paring down our backing to just what I think is essential for us to preform the song live. Most of the songs only have drums and very minimal second synth.

I'm been in bands for almost 45 years now that have used some form of non-human element to play some of the parts. My standard response to anyone who complains about this is to ask them if they are interested in joining the band as a replacement for the tape/machine(s). Unsurprisingly I have yet to have someone take up my offer.

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

Of course Brian May has been using a single 30 watt amp on the biggest stages for about 50 years now. 

I thought he used 9, albeit in three switchable banks of three?

On 28/01/2025 at 19:47, W1_Pro said:

If anyone is interested in aquiring an Orignal, theres a newly refurbed early eighties one on sale on FB marketplace. He wants reasonable money for it but Its a nice looking thing and of course it has just been refurbed (by Overwater iirc).

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4888919827/permalink/10162410126259828/

..and I should say this bass is absolutely nothing to do with me, don't know the guy, caveat emptor, etc etc.

No DI output. That's strange. Both of the Originals ('83 and '85) I owned had DIs, although the '83 had the pre-amp replaced so the socket was no longer connected. Would make me wonder if it no longer had the filter pre-amp fitted which for me is one of the major attractions of this bass, along with the shape.

The rather confusing need to enable the "microphone" in order to be able to record external sources in Logic has been there a while, but it still caught me out when I upgraded from a 2010 MacPro to a Mac Studio. The Voice isolation mode appears to be a more recent development.

BTW if you are on Facebook you should consider joining the excellent Apple Logic Pro Users Group.