BigRedX

It will be an earthing problem due to the PSUs for your pedals not having the same earth reference as the rest of the signal chain. I suspect that the metal earth pin on the Mooer PSU isn't actually connected to anything and is there simply because it's more robust (the plastic pin on the One Spot is notorious for breaking off). How are you connecting to the mixer?

First gig of 2025 for Hurtsfall will be on Friday 21st February at The Grove (on Avenue C in Sneinton Market) in Nottingham. We'll be supporting The DSM IV with Modern Coven opening. Tickets are £10 or £12 on the door.

Do your pedal mains adaptors have a plastic earth pin on the plug? Have you tried running them off batteries?

I won't know if I'm going to like a bass enough to use it on a regular basis until I've had it for a few weeks and done a couple of rehearsals and at least one gig with it. The last bass that I kept and used for any serious length of time having tried it in the shop first was back in the early 90s. The two I've been able to try first since then were both moved on fairly quickly, as although they seemed OK in the 30 minutes I played them for in the shop spending longer with them at home and actually playing them with my band revealed all sorts of problems that I couldn't live with. Everything else has bought on the strength of a few photographs and a description on-line or has been custom made for me. Of the three basses I currently use regularly, one was custom made and other two were bought on-line.

I thought the idea of RSD was to entice people into record shops and hopefully they will come back when it isn't a RSD as well. Otherwise they are going to need something like RSD at least once a month and not just once a year. If RSD continues to be the unappealing experience that it seems to be then it becomes self-defeating IMO.

There is also a danger that the RSD experience (as described in previous posts) could put a lot of punters off going into those shops at other times. I have to admit RSD is not for me. AFAIK none of the bands I really like have ever participated in it and if they did I don't think I'd be prepared to queue for the privilege. Even then I'd probably happy to wait until the record or CD surfaced on eBay or Discogs a few years later when all the fuss has died down and it was priced at a more appropriate level. Also I'd rather buy recordings directly from the band at one of their gigs

The reason that bands have become seemingly invisible to whoever wrote the text that was used in the OP (it certainly wasn't composed by @Bass4real) is that the charts are all about recorded music and for most bands the money is in live performance and not the selling of recordings. Certainly here in the UK, the charts have had less impact on the typical member of the public since Top Of The Pops was taken off the air. Also the current charts are even more artificial than ever before. Partly because of the demise of the "single" and mostly because it has become necessary for the chart compilers to apply negative weighting to streams and downloads of anything that isn't a current release otherwise those acts currently topping the charts wouldn't get a look in, as the top 50 would be almost totally dominated by recordings made over 30 years ago. There are plenty of new and interesting bands out there gigging for anyone who can be bothered to go and look for them, and while it has always been cool for bands to say that they aren't interested in the charts, these days they might actually really mean it. When the charts are all about selling recordings, but for a well-organised and entertaining band at grassroots level it's all about live performance, because that when coupled with T-shirt sales is where they can make money. Record companies won't take chances on new bands and because of this by the time most bands have got to the level where record companies start to take notice of them there is very little that a record company can offer them. When you can make a great recording on your home computer, a video on your phone and get them on all the digital platforms for about $50, the lure of the record company advance becomes less compelling. And the more successful a band becomes on its own the less important record companies become. No wonder they stick to young "solo" artists who are easier to manipulate and exploit. The problem for Rick Beato and his "sad old men club" is that the industry is no longer what it was 25 years ago and they still don't appear to recognise this.

It's rarely enough to just be a musician. The real money is in songwriting.

Why has the OP been typed as some kind of incomprehensible prose poem?

But you don't bodies into record stores unless they have something worthwhile to sell hence it is as much about the artists as it is about the shops. The problem with record shops is that no matter how hard they try they can't compete with the whole of the internet. They were fine in the 60s 70s and 80s when everyone's musical knowledge was pretty much limited to what the music press wrote about and what got played on broadcast radio. It was easy to keep on top of all the new releases. Even Virgin Records in Swansea were able to get most of the records that John Peel was playing in 1979. Also because these days the whole model of selling recordings on physical media in bricks and mortar shops makes the price of these recordings unnaturally high. For an independent artist it is impossible for your local record shop to sell your product at a sensible price. I know because I have tried it. The mark up that all the record stores wanted to add to our album (on vinyl) would have meant that even if we let them have have copies at cost they would have been at least 25% more expensive than the maximum price we could consider charging at gigs and through Bandcamp.

But if you didn't at least half believe that you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of typing it in the first place.

The only bass I could afford in the 80s was a 20 year-old second-hand Burns Sonic that had been heavily modified by a previous owner. It cost me the grand total of £60 including the original hard case and I managed to persuade the shop to throw in a free Fender branded strap.

@tauzero how busy was it? I've played there a few times and because it's not exactly in the centre of Coventry, and can be quite hard to find if you've not been before, the audience size can be variable. I have a gig there next month and hopefully it will be a better turnout than some of the times I've played. The most disappointing was when I was in The Terrortones and we had local bands Octogoth and Army of Skanks supporting. The place was packed during their sets and almost empty when we went on...

I'm sorry, but IMO that's just about the most stupid thing ever. Even if I was in a band that only needed one sound for all the songs I'd still be using my multi-effects because I know that one sound I've created with it would be the perfect one for that band. Whilst I may be using more of my multi-effects than most on here I'm still only using a fraction of its capabilities. Most of my patches are made up of the same 3 or 4 modules just with the parameter values tweaked to fit the rest of the arrangement. Every so often I'll try an alternative distortion or chorus or delay or flanger and then I'll go back to the ones I already use and like. And you know what? It really doesn't matter. Those alternative versions of the effects I use aren't for me. They are for all the other users who want something different out of a multi-effects unit. And that's why they are so great. TBH the only time I "play around" with my multi-effects is when I am working on sounds for a new song. I had a quick listen to all the built-in Presets the day I bought mine, decided that none of them did what I wanted and have never bothered listening to any of them again. When I am working on a new song I'll start by going through all the Presets I've created for the other songs we play to find the one that works the best for the new song and when I'm ready to actually create the Preset for that song it will be the starting point. I'll probably go through a few more tweaks once I'm in the rehearsal room with the rest of the band, but after that I'll only edit it again if we change the arrangement of the song. My multi-effects is a tool. A very versatile one but still just a tool. Use as much of it as you need a quit worrying about it. The only people who get close to using all the facilities of one of these devices are those who are being paid specifically to demonstrate just how versatile they are. They are not real-world users and you don't need to try and emulate them.

I'm a Helix user (but the principal is the same). I have a separate Preset for each song with Snapshots for each song. Admittedly I play Bass VI and I'm alternating between bass and melody parts with our synth player, but I'm often using two or more different bass sounds as well as "guitar" sounds for different parts of the song. For instance on the song we are currently working on: Snapshot 1 is a "lead guitar" sound with a bit of dirt and lots of delay which is used on the intro and the middle eight, where the synth is holding down the bass. Snapshot 2 is the verse bass sound but it has an octave "guitar" part generated from a pitch shifter which is a muted version of the sound in Snapshot 1. Snapshot 3 is the chorus bass sound which a Cure/Peter Hook style high part with rhythmic delay and is doubled up with a more conventional bass sound an octave down. Snapshot 4 is for the last chorus to create a lift and has a more pronounced flanger effect to Snapshot 3 whilst still keeping the same relative level within the mix. I use MIDI to control the Preset and Snapshot changes which is run from the computer the is our drummer and second synth player, so I don't have to worry about my tap-dancing skills, as some of the Snapshot changes come very quickly - we have one song with a section where each part is only 2 bars long and another where the there are changes that only last 2 beats at 171bpm! Because of the electronic nature of the band even if I was to use the same sound for all the bass parts, each song would still need it own EQ, drive and volume tweaks for it to sit in the correct place in the mix with the other sounds that are being used.

There is little point in "conventional" one gig every night touring these days unless you already have a sizeable and enthusiastic following. Most tours by indie/small bands now consist of a month of Friday and Saturday gigs with the occasional Thursday and Sunday at venues that have a reputation for getting the punters in on those nights. Mid-weeks gigs for relatively unknown bands are IME poorly attended as those with jobs are more concerned about their "careers", students are trying to get VfM out of their loans and debts, and everyone else is too poor to go out. These days the smart way to gig is to be an a band that doesn't have a drummer or use backline, or to just do gigs where the drum kit and cabs will be supplied and you can cram the whole band plus their instruments and merch in a single car.

Low C is only a semitone higher than low B on a 5-string, where I would consider 125 to be the absolute lightest string that has any chance of sounding decent. So I would suggest ditching the 110 in favour of a 120 and see how that sounds and feels. Also try lowering the pickup slightly further away from the lowest string as the chunkier strings are more affected by the magnetic pull.

A P-Bass that doesn't look like a P-Bass?

The simplest way is to treat it just like a normal pedal board. Find either a blank patch or if there aren't any, one that you definitely don't have any use for and delete everything in it. Then start populating the slots with modules in the same way that you would a pedal board made up of individual devices. Start with your most important effect first probably compression, distortion or chorus and work your way through the options to find the version and settings you like the best, and once you are happy with that start adding the other effects you need. One important point is not to discount any module that isn't designed specifically for the bass. In the real world this is normally because they can't cope with bass frequencies at gig volumes. With digital devices and modelling the worst that can happen is that you won't like the sound, in which case you can simply try something else. The only thing you will want to consider in advance is if you are going to be changing sounds mid-song in which case you will need to be looking at Snapshots and to build your Presets with this in mind. Basically what a Snapshot does is to allow you to turn individual effects on and off and change selected settings on the effects in a Preset with a single foot switch press without any glitches in the sound. Good luck.

Looks as though just to top section of the bridge has either been replaced or modified.

But audiences tend to like things they are familiar with. IME lots of musicians tend to be "too clever" when it comes to song writing because they are deliberately trying not to be "formulaic" and end up with nothing for the typical audience member to relate to.

That will definitely get your foot in the door as regards getting noticed. However it is my experience that you have more chance getting your music played on proper broadcast radio if it is available in a physical format as well as on-line, and in your case with having reasonably well-known people in the band might even work against you if there is no CD or vinyl version. People receiving notice of your album may well be asking themselves why a band with known musicians in it has only gone for an on-line release. There's only so many slots available for new bands on broadcast radio and unless they REALLY like your music they may well favour another artist who has enough faith in their music to pay to have a couple of hundred CDs or records pressed. It is also my experience, now that everyone can make up their own minds about your music in seconds by checking you out on Spotify or some other streaming service, that reviews are of little value other than good ones being gratification for your egos. Certainly with my bands over the last 10 years no matter how good the reviews have been there is little reflection of this in immediate increased sales or streams. TBH these days there are very few bad reviews for new music. If the reviewers don't like you they simply ignore you. Edit: As regards money, if you have song writing credits on this you need to be a member of the PRS. Unless you decided to go for a physical release where the numbers are in the 1000s rather than 100s you are more likely to make money off the performance royalties than you are from sales of the album.

I like that a lot! What you need to do will depend on what you want out of the project. If you are happy with simply lots of people listening to your music and don't need any real financial reward then short-form videos like the one above and streaming is the way to go. You'll need to get your tracks on popular playlists which will probably mean searching out ones where you think your music is a good fit and contacting the people who curate them and ask for a track of yours to be included. It's most effective if they are actively looking for new tracks to add. Otherwise you are going to need to get out there and play gigs and have physical product available to sell at those gigs ideally in vinyl form, although TBH if you just want to make money you'll be better off producing an eye-catching T-shirt and sell those instead. For both approaches, my experience is that unless you are very lucky you need to be doing lots of promotion otherwise it's just vanity publishing and no-one but your friends, family and few people on here will ever get to hear it. Even for bands that in the past have been popular I've found that the moment you stop promoting whether that's through playing live or being interesting and entertaining on-line the number of listeners you have will rapidly decrease. Once The Terrortones stopped gigging our sales of physical product and number of streams dropped off very rapidly. At our most popular we could have been out gigging every Friday and Saturday had the money and logistics been right (as it was we were playing at least 3 times a month) and we were selling serious amounts of T-shirts, CDs and vinyl both at gigs and on-line. These days it's down to a handful of streams each month and nothing else.

So much music I can't even begin to list it. Last time I looked somewhere between a third and quarter of the music I have on vinyl or CD was missing from Spotify. Most of it was from Japanese artists and indie bands from the late 70s and early 80s, but there are also some surprising modern artists missing too. As a punter streaming services are useful for checking out artists I haven't heard of before, and as an artist I see it as free advertising for the band. Until our debut album is released later this year the only way you can listen to my current band is streaming, buying download, or coming to see us play live. We did a limited CD run of our last single simply so that we would have some music on the merch table, but we have also made a deliberate decision that we will only sell it at gigs, and bonus track that comes with it will only be available on the CD. Looking at our Spotify streaming figures, most of our audience is not in the UK. When the album does come out we will be selling physical copies on-line so it will be interesting to see how many people are prepared to pay international shipping...

The last time I had a gig in January was 2019... However this year is looking pretty healthy already with 8 definite gigs between now and July and a few more still be confirmed.