BigRedX

Actually it is my experience that many of the people who claim to like everything only have a quite limited knowledge of music, so while that statement may be true within the confines of the music that they are aware of, as soon as you introduce them to music outside of that, you generally find that their tastes are just as narrow as anyone else's. There is so many different styles of music available to listen to these days that it is truly impossible to like "everything". I confine myself to being open enough to want to listen to anything, but also focused enough not to want to waste my time with what I have already heard and don't like.

IME unless the musicians in question are incredibly technically accomplished and have spent a long time working on their arrangements, you wouldn't want to capture the live sound because generally it's not going to be good enough to withstand repeated listening. And while they are at it would they like to include the less palatable aspects of the typical live performance like inaudible vocals, unwanted feedback and additional compression to mimic how your ears are behaving at gig volumes? I've mostly been in bands that were firstly studio bands and secondly live acts and our problem was the opposite - how to recreate what we had done in the studio at a gig, and tending to fail just as badly doing that as the band that wants to capture the "live vibe" on a recording. I've finally come to accept that the recording and the gig are two different things and although they have large areas of overlap should be approached differently. There's no need to include every aspect of the recorded version in the live one, you can make up for those missing things by being excitingly loud and giving the audience something interesting to watch while you perform. Conversely you need to make the recording aurally "interesting" to compensate for lack of gig-level volume and the fact that here the music has to stand on it's own.

The first question you have to ask yourself is why you want a bass from a particular luthier? IME it should be because they offer something different to what you can get from a mainstream manufacturer whether it be something visual or a combination of design features that are unavailable "of-the-peg". Remember that these days there is such a wide variety of basses available from the various manufacturers that you have to have a particular reason to go for a custom bass in that it can't easily be fulfilled from what is available from the mainstream manufacturers. As I've already said in the previous post intros thread don't get bogged down by thinking that you have to make a decision regarding every single aspect of your instrument. That's what the luthier is there for. If you go them with the look, feel and sound you want, they should be able to put together an instrument to meet these criteria. If they can't you should look elsewhere.

Actually it was the change in arrangement and the juxtaposition of the vocal with a different synth sound that made a previously fine-sounding vocal performance appear to be a little dodgy in places. I've noticed previously that some synth sounds (particularly from digital synths or samples that have been pitch transposed) can contain weird harmonics that have the potential to make the other instruments (and vocals) sound out of tune even if they sound perfectly fine with the non-digital instruments. Several times I've found that a particular musical part only works with a very specific synth sound, and that changing that sound makes the notes being played sound completely wrong. In this case it was far simpler to make tiny tiny changes to the pitches of some of the vocal notes than try and track down the errant harmonic in the synth sound and correct them without changing the feel of the track. IMO the end result is the most important thing not the process used to get there.

Which is why it's important to have a songwriting credit agreement in place fairly early on when starting a new band.

Scale length? If they are short scale they could be Rotosounds.

I think the idea that the song can be defined by the melody line and lyrics stems from the early days of commercial song writing when songs were produced by a composer and separate lyricist and then made available to the public by a publisher through printed sheet music, each party normally taking an equal third of the royalties. Certainly when I joined the PRS in the early 80s new songs were registered with them by submitting a score containing the main musical themes (essentially the melody) and the lyrics. This system also leads to the example where a main musical theme for a song ends up not being composed by the person who is credited as the songwriter. "Every Breathe You Take" is classic example of this. Sting is credited as the songwriter have written both the lyrics and the main vocal melody. Andy Summer's guitar part was just incidental at the time of composition, until some samples that part and since he's not credited as the songwriter, String gets all the royalties fro the sample usage. It's all down to what has been agreed by the band members. At the other end of the scale U2 used to add their manager to all songwriting credits. I've certainly been in bands where the composer for the purposes of the songwriting credits has only been the person who came up with the vocal melody or main instrumental idea and the other members contributions don't count towards the songwriting credits. I've also been in bands where all the band members get an equal credit for all the songs that were written while they were in the band irrespective of how great or small their actual compositional contribution actually was. The reality is that these days that songwriting credits can have little correlation to the actual contributions of the musicians/songwriters involved. Also exactly how much each of the named songwriters actually earns as a proportion the songs is unknown - there no requirement for everyone to have an equal share.

The part in question was a complex harmony vocal with several notes held for a couple of bars. At the time of recording the vocal sounded fine, but during the production process I changed the arrangement of the backing which made in more obvious that a handful of notes were slightly out of tune. I could have got our singer back in to redo the vocal but that would have taken the best part of evening to set up and do the recording, and we might have had to redo more than just the "wrong" notes if we couldn't match the timbre/sound of the new vocals to the original recording. In the end it was about 15 minutes work with Autotune to "fix" the notes I didn't like the tuning of, and then I was able to get on with the final mix. The track in question is actually the one I linked to earlier in this thread regrading the use of "groove quantisation". See if you can spot which notes have been Atotuned.

The last time I actually used Autotune myself (as an engineer/producer), the pitch correction was done by manipulating a pitch graph where the audio track could be pushed and pulled into (or out of) tune as required. Correction could be applied to just those parts of the audio track where it was deemed necessary and the pitch correction didn't have to be "perfect". As with all these tools it's up to the person using them how they are applied. Of course if you have little talent as an engineer it's simple to slap on one of the preset corrections onto the whole track and leave it at that. It's the same as using any other correction tool or effect. There's probably a preset that will get you close to the result you want, but to do it properly takes time, effort and a decent ear and actual talent.

IMO you can't beat this K&M stand.

The interview in question no longer appears to be on line, but IIRC Simon Farmer of Gus Guitars once said that he earns approximately £10/hour making guitars after all his expenses have been taken into account.

The OP is all too familiar. I used to be in a band with a singer like that. She was a very good singer and excellent front person, but seemingly very insecure if any of her friends didn't like something that we'd written or recorded. She very much wanted to be a "star" and it was the rest of the band's job (and me in particular as the main composer/programmer/producer) to make it so, as long as she didn't have to do anything other than sing, front the band write the occasional lyric. A lot of the composition was done "in the studio" once we had worked out the basic melodies and song structure, I'd spend several evenings doing the programming and production which could be often wiped out in seconds at the next practice with a "I don't like that" or "I played the demo to such-and-such (usually some second-rate DJ friend) and they think we should be doing this..." usually something completely outside of the genre of the rest of the songs. One of the latter type comments led to us having a blazing row at a rehearsal which finished the band for good. Personally I wasn't that bothered as I'd told the rest of the band I wanted to call it a day 6 month previously and had been talked out of it mostly by the singer... Since the band folded she has done next to nothing musically.

Really? The clap sound (along with the "cowbell") was the sound that made the Roland TR 808

If you need to be able to create your own monitor mixes for the purposes of recording you parts (i.e. you need some parts louder or quieter in order to be able to play your part better) and to save the hassle of having to re-render multiple takes into single stems, you could also look at AAF or OMF exports. However they will struggle with plug-ins that are native to a particular DAW and any third-party plug-ins that are not shared between the different platforms, but IME it is worth a go to see what will happen.

No it's not my thing either. For me playing in a band is a serious commitment and in the past I have made some lifestyle choices that other people would find unpalatable simply to be in a situation where I could give my band commitments the importance I thought they deserved. However it has been my experience, especially in covers bands, that this is how a lot of other musicians treat it. Which is one of the many reasons why I don't currently play in a covers band.

Which are two entirely different basses. All very confusing. It appears that if you buy one of these you aren't actually buying any of the instruments shown but placing an order for a custom made bass of your own.

Doesn't look very fretless to me.

That's crap because he's doing it wrong. Instead of correcting every drum hit to the nearest equal grid point, he should have built a new quantisation grid from where the important drum transients actually are. In Logic this is called "Groove Quantise" but there should be an equivalent function in all decent DAWs. You then quantise any errant drum hits and all the other instruments with hard transients to this grid. As it's based on where the drums actually are rather than strict 8th/16th etc. notes, all the feel of the original is maintained, the only difference is the whole arrangement becomes super-tight. Also it's a lot quicker to do that the process shown in the video, although it might be necessary to create a separate template for each important section of the song where the feel is noticeably different.

The thing you have remember is that for most musicians, unless it is their main source of income, playing in a band comes a long way down the list of priorities such as family, work, sport, sitting in front of the TV, and IME many simply view it as something that fills an otherwise empty evening once a week. You can't expect these people to have any kind of serious commitment - especially for a covers band where it simply regarded as a bit of fun and hopefully some beer money.

It's still a fixed beat. Just not one that has been set to equal 8th/16th/32nd note intervals. Here's one of mine - everything except the vocals and the legato guitar have been quantised to the beat points of the main loop

I would as well. The features appear to be decent, but I'm a little worried about how flimsy it looks especially for live use, and the fact that it uses non-standard connectors for MIDI. IMO DIN connectors are pretty terrible for gigging applications (last time I used a lot of MIDI gear live they were all replaced with XLRs) but still preferable to mini-jacks.

You must have grabbed it in the hour between me seeing it was for sale and deciding I wanted to buy it.

If your DAW is any good you can quantise to anything - it doesn't have to be simple 8th or 16th notes. In the days when I was creating music using loops, I'd take the loops into Recycle, extract the timing information from them and quantise the rest of the instruments to that. If I used different loops in different parts of the song I'd either change the quantisation to fit each loop or re-quantise the loop itself to fit the main quantisation pattern.

I think this describes my musical tastes as well. I'm always suspicious about people who claim to like almost anything or have a very broad musical taste as IME it makes them too undiscriminating. I want the musicians I work with to have definite likes and dislikes and not be afraid to express them. Someone who claims to like most things generally has no taste at all (IMO).

The argument I always see for having lots of controls on your bass is that it makes it easier to make mid-song adjustments to the sound. My opinion is that so long as the bass is actually making a noise, the band will sound worse if I stop and fiddle with the controls then if I wait until the end of the song and then make adjustments at my amp or pedals.