BigRedX

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.

Just as well as we could pick three. I was torn between the track I liked best as a pice of music and the one I felt had best captured the intention of the inspiration image.

Loads of great Japanese bands, but you can start with anything by Shena Ringo or Polysics

Unfortunately the only nice thing I can say about Elites is that they were more consistent than Rotosound if you needed 5-string and alternative scale-length sets. I haven't looked back since I switched to Newtone strings is the early 90s.

BTW if you have the right phone you don't even need the SumUp card reader anymore as you can use your phone instead.

To the OP: there are IMO two ways you can go. 1. Buy a cheap Zoom (ideally second hand). It will get you started and you can work out what you like and what you don't like that will inform any future upgrade purchases. If you have little experience with effects pedals and none with programmable multi-effects you really won't know what is going to be essential and what features you can easily live without. 2. Alternatively buy the top of the range Helix, Kemper or Neural on the assumption that once you've got your head around the interface it will do everything that you are ever likely to need. I'm a Helix user and although I've been using programmable multi-effects for over 35 years now (and was a synth player before that) I bought the top of the range Helix on the assumption that if I bought a less-featured model I would discover things that I needed that my chosen device couldn't do. I was right although the features that I have come to see as indispensable weren't ones that I would have thought were important at the time of purchase.

I spent most of the 80s playing synths. I have owned a couple of 80s made Overwaters since then.

My direct experience is that if you don't accept card payments it will significantly affect your sales. Last year I was in two bands. One has a SumUp reader and although we still do cash sales the vast majority of our merch at gigs is paid for by card. The other band, despite me continually telling them that we need a card reader, was cash sales only and over the past 12 months our merch sales have been next to nothing. All the people I know using SumUp got them 3 or 4 years ago when the readers were cheap and there were various promotions where if you got a recommendation from existing user you got the reader for next to nothing and person who recommended you got a payment in return. Now that they are well established I don't know if that's still the case. Certainly back then it was the cheapest card reader and the smallest percentage on sales. It's also worth being able to accept PayPal, although IME it is often too much hassle. IME not everyone who uses PayPal has it on their phone. Also remember that if you are accepting cash you will need a healthy float for change as you can almost guarantee that first 5 sales will all be made with a £20 note payment. Regarding payments on card sales and PayPal, everyone takes a cut per transaction, so you will need to factor it in to your pricing, but since you ought to be making 100% mark up on each T-shirt sold, in the grand scheme of things the additional cost of card and PayPal payments should be close to negligible.

They've probably been at the NAMM exhibition so it may take a couple more days for normal service to be resumed.

Peter Hook has a whole range of "signature" instruments from Eastwood derived from his Shergold Marathon 6-string bass. Bootsy seems to have basically the same thing over and over again but from different manufacturers (although IIRC there was a Bootsy Warwick that wasn't star shaped).

Bootsy Peter Hook

On the other hand, in the pre-internet days when retailers only had manufacturers' price lists to go on my synth band were to do a straight swap with our very expensive, but also very crap Yamaha CS15D synthesiser for a second hand Korg MS20, simply because the list retail price of the Yamaha was about double that of the Korg in 1983 and the shop knew next to nothing about synths and their relative features. The Yamaha synth was still sitting unsold in the shop at the beginning of the 90s.

A P-bass wouldn't have looked as interesting.

On any of these devices with touch screens can they be used and edited without needing to actually have to touch the screen? I'm one of these people for whom touch screens often don't respond at all.

Music shops have rarely offered anything close to second hand market value (unless it's something very rare AND desirable) for PX instruments and equipment. I was able to buy an Overwater Original bass for £350 in the early 90s from Carlsbro in Nottingham. I dread to think how little they must have given for it in the first place, in order to sell it to me so cheaply.

Why would anyone buy strings from eBay? As far as I am concerned eBay is for buying second hand items only, and I wouldn't want to buy used strings.

I've had a quick look at a few of my most recent PMs and I can't edit any of my contributions. However as the most recent one is 3 months old there may be a point earlier in time when this is possible. I know another forum I use has a time limit on being able to edit anything. If it's a mistake you have made, it's probably simpler to send a new corrected message. If you are worried about some sending you a message and then editing it, the simplest thing to do is the quote their message in your reply as this can't be subsequently edited by them.

Even before the UK left the EU I found this to be the case. No mater when in the week I placed the order or what it was for, I wouldn't get a shipping notification until the Friday. Item(s) would be delivered on the Wednesday of the following week. The only difference now is that delivery/customs adds an extra day or two onto the delivery time.

Great stuff, but re-enforces the fact that once you stick any stringed instrument through a distortion pedal or overdriven amp it just sounds like an electric guitar.

Will the orchestral versions include brass instruments? If so the weird keys/tunings are probably to accommodate them. Brass instruments often struggle with standard "rock" keys.