BigRedX

It depends on what you mean by "heavy" when it comes to gigs. IME for most originals bands who aren't signed to a supportive record label, playing any night other than Friday or Saturday is a waste of time unless you are supporting someone popular enough to be able to sell at least 100 tickets at a 150 capacity venue on a week night. That of course will limit how many gigs your band can do in a year. I don't expect to be able to make a living out of playing songs that I have written, as I suspect it will entail too many artistic compromises, and I already have a creative day job where my client is the "king". However I do expect to make back any money I have invested in the band and after that initial investment for the band to be at worst completely self-financing. From what I have seen the reason most originals bands can't even manage that, which should be an easily attainable goal, is either because they aren't very entertaining or because they simply aren't organised enough.

As much as every band wants to be unique and original, genres definitely help you to find your audience. So if you're a bit punk/metal/rock put yourself in all three and just go with it. After all if you found enough musicians who were happy to cross genres to make your music there will be even more audience members who like the combination. Also don't worry about not headlining, but at the same time don't get bogged down in gigs with lots of disparate bands. Go with your genres and stick to gigs with 4 bands or less, if necessary, starting at the bottom and working your way up the bill as you get better known. IME playing just before the headliner is almost always the best spot. If they really are popular enough to be a proper headliner then most of the people who are coming to see them will be there when you go on, and if they are just "playing last" the band immediately before normally get the biggest crowd of the night. Then put on a show and have someone ready at the merch table to sell your CDs and T-shirts to the audience to moment you finish playing. IMO no band is worthy of a proper headline slot unless they have an album out and re selling significant numbers of physical product - CDs/records/cassettes.

Addressing the OP, it depends on how much effort you want to put into a band on top of playing the bass guitar. If that's all you want to do, then it might be some time before you find a band that you think is suitable for you. However if you want to be a bit more proactive then it should be a lot easier to find a band that isn't quite right but has the potential to be so after you have had some input. After The Terrortones stopped gigging it was over 12 months before I found another suitable musical venture. I put a very specific ad on JMB and was prepared to wait for the "right" band. They weren't 100% perfect when I joined, but over the next few years I subtly exerted my influence on the way the band developed and now we are pretty much exactly the kind of band I want to be in. Sometimes band are the way that they are, not because they are terrible, but because the existing members simply don't know any better, and all it might take is a push in the right direction to make them much, much better. And regarding getting paid, there is absolutely no reason for an originals band to lose money playing gigs unless they are deliberately playing for free or they are just badly organised. I think the last time any originals band I've been in played for less than £50 (unless we had chosen to play for free) was some time in the 80s. Even if the gig payment itself doesn't cover our expenses I would expect to make up the deficit (and more) from PROFIT on merch sales.

Unless it's for a permanent installation, make sure you can find a suitably robust cable to use with this. I have yet to find an ethernet cable that will withstand the rigours of being coiled and uncoiled even once a week at gigs for more than a year.

Bass > Line6 Helix > Mac running Logic > Denon Amp > Sennheiser headphones. This used for writing and practicing the songs my band plays. IMO there is little point "practicing" without using the correct sounds/effects on my bass, and without playing along to the programmed drums and synths we have as our backing, hence the set up.

IMO most bands are worthless without a great front person, and the rest of the band have to decide whether to put up with their foibles or be a bunch a musical nobodies (and probably without a band). I've been lucky enough to have been in bands with some great front people over the past 45 years. I've also been in the lucky position where as the main songwriter from a musical PoV, a lot of my bands have essentially been partnerships between myself and the front person who adds the lyrics and vocal melodies to my musical ideas. My current band is a great example of each member playing to their various strengths. Our singer/frontman is an essential part of that, and we acknowledge that without him we'd be nowhere near as popular. He's a great singer, knows how to keep the audience entertained between songs, and has a great image. Myself and our synth player write all the music (and come up with the initial song ideas) and I do all the drum programming whilst the synth player does to production work on our recordings. Without any one of us the band would not be able to function.

Is it properly rack-mountable?

Two much better photos from last Saturday's In Isolation farewell gig:

But those retailers chose which courier service they use. Therefore they are responsible when the courier service messes up.

My warning has now gone. Is it possible to find out what it was for? AFAIK I've never had a warning here on Basschat, and the section for the warning on Guitarchat doesn't even exist in my profile on Basschat. Edit: Still can't post in General Discussion.

+1 for using a bicycle box. Much more heavy duty than any guitar/bass shipping boxes. You will need to cut it down to size though.

I've reported my own post so hopefully it will attract the attention of someone with an answer. Not being able to post in General Discussion until I have made 5 posts elsewhere is a bit crap. General Discussion is where the interesting topics are. Does this restriction also apply on the current version of Basschat?

Unfortunately the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. Don't use Yodel or Evri because they are mostly crap. All the other delivery services except Parcel Force will charge a premium to deliver to many parts of Scotland and NI. Parcel Force can't be used because they won't insure musical instruments for the amount most people on here require. Sorry...

Just had a look at Guitarchat logging in using my Basschat profile. For some reason I can't post on any of the threads. Also in my profile I have "1 warning point - No restrictions being applied" but no indication of what it is for. No wonder hardly anyone is using the site.

Occurred twice today using Safari on a Mac. On both occasions the ad failed to render on screen properly, but at the same time it prevented clicking any of the links on the page requiring me to use to back button on the browser to escape.

Strange how people still think that the size of the individual speakers is the most important factor in how a cab will sound. While the combined driver areas in all your cabs plus the x-max of those drivers will be important in the maximum loudness achievable, the "sound" of a cab is more influenced by its design - overall size/volume, port size and design, rigidity etc.

The big advantage of the Virtual Drummer in Logic is that it is supposed to be able to produce new patterns based on the rhythmic elements of other tracks that have already been recorded/programmed. However as I said in practice the styles are quite limited to very mainstream genres.

Jamstix seems to get a lot of decent reviews. Make sure it will generate the sorts of drum patterns you want. In theory Logic's virtual drummer is a great idea; in practice it has yet to produce a pattern I would want to use for my music. I find the basic patterns are boring and the fills too clever. Also there doesn't seem to be any way of adding additional drummer styles. I still find it easier to find an existing song that has a basic drum pattern close to what I want and then convert that to a MIDI file (I used to use Recycle! but I'm now looking for a modern alternative) to use with my own drum sounds and build the rest of the drum part from that.

There's nothing big or clever about having cheap gear, and equally there's nothing big or clever about having expensive gear either. Use what you can afford and/or need and just get on with the important job of playing the actual music. I always put it into perspective by considering that when I was playing in a synth band in the 80s it would have been possible to buy a small mid-terrace house in need of modernisation for the same amount as we had spent on the musical equipment we took to gigs. In that respect taking £10k worth of instruments, effects and amplification on stage, when compared with property or even car prices these days, is peanuts.

Someone here 3D printing fixtures that replaced the feet and allowed the Helix the be screwed to the wooden base of a pedal board case.

Thanks. The video shoot was done in a single day in Melton Mowbray, December 2022.

Saturday was the last ever gig for In Isolation. Singer Ryan is calling it a day after 20 years, and with my other band being much more active I have been struggling to find the time to be in more than one. We were able to persuade the organisers of the Spellbound Goth Night at The Salutation in Nottingham to let us perform before the main event, so we had an early start of 7.15 in order to play an extra long set and be packed up before the normal club night opening time of 9.00pm. Probably the longest single set I have ever played in 45 years of gigging with 17 songs. I was more than a little relieved to find that all the songs were ones we've been playing for the last 18 months and that they had decided against dusting off some from before my time, I've been with the band almost 8 years but I am to a certain extent still the FNG. Based on the ticket sales and door takings there must have been close to 100 people in to see us, which was very nice, but it would have been nicer if they had all been regulars at all our previous local gigs (we played this time last year to just over a third of that number). There were several down the front who I had never seen at one of our gigs before but who seemed to know most of the songs! Played all three songs from the new EP which seemed to go down well and all 5 of the covers that we occasional add to the set including our version if "I Believe In Father Christmas". I'll miss playing our version of the Bauhaus classic "She's In Parties" because we really made that our own. I heard the original the other day and was pleasantly surprised by how different our version is! Here's a couple of gig photos and a short video of the closing moments of the set... I Isolation.mp4

IMO £30 is a complete bargain for what we got. It's described as a "Lyric Video" but the animation makes it interesting enough to use as our primary video version. On the other hand we could spend a lot more money and make a "proper" music video. I won't clog up this thread with them, but go onto YouTube and have a look at the In Isolation videos for "Trappist-1", "Not Noticing" or "The Man Who Hides From Love".

Thanks! We started playing it after being asked to perform a Christmas song as a condition of playing a live session for a local radio show 7 years ago. We did consider doing "Wombling Merry Christmas" but "I Believe In Father Christmas" was thought to be more in keeping with our image. We've been playing it at any gigs in December ever since, and it was recorded during the summer heatwave of 2022. We'll be performing it for the last time this Saturday when do our farewell gig, as singer Ryan is calling it a day, and I will also be leaving as my other band is occupying too much time for me to be in both. And thanks again! IIRC the video cost us £30 through the Fiverr website. Our singer sorted it all out. They also did the video for "Tilting".

These are all the musical instruments I have owned over the past 50 years. The ones with an * are those I still have. Basses Atlansia Solitaire Fretless Born To Rock F4B British Custom Guitars 4-string bass (unfinished project) Burns Sonic Bass Burns Barracuda* Carlo Robelli UBD510 8-string bass Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 PRO * Fernandes Pie-zo Hello Kitty Edition Gus G3 4-string fretless Gus G3 5-string passive* Gus G3 5-string active* Hagstrom Futurama Bass Hartke XL-4 Bass Hondo Alien Kramer 450B Kramer XKB-10 Lace Helix 5-string fretless bass Lightwave Sabre Bass with fretted and fretless necks Manne Mandobass Overwater Original Overwater Original Fretless Pedulla Buzz Reverend Rumblefish 5L Roberts 4-string fretless bass prototype Sei Flamboyant Offset 5-string fretless bass Squier Bass VI * Squier VMJ Fretless Stagg EUB Switch Innovo Bass Tokai Talbo Bass Traben Phoenix 5-string Warwick StarBass II Washburn B20-8 8-string bass Washburn Force ABT B105 Wesley Acrylic 4-string bass defretted Yamaha BJ-5B Guitars Andreas Black Shark Baldwin 12-string FretKing Esprit V Custom* Gus G1 * Hallmark Wing-bat Harley Benton Stratocaster Copy Harley Benton V7 Series Barione Guitar Home-made solid electric guitar Honer TE Custom XII 12-string Ibanez Firebird Copy* Kimbara Acoustic Guitar* Shaftesbury Resonator Guitar Tokai Talbo Jr Guitar Yamaha EZ-EG Yamaha RGZ612 super-strat Synthesisers etc. Akai AX73 Akai S2000 Casio CZ5000 Casio CZ1 Casio SK1 Casio VL-Tone Cheetah MS6 Control Synthesis Deep Bass Nine EDP Wasp Ensoniq ESQ1 Ensoniq ESQM Ensoniq EPS16+ Etherwave Theremin Korg Monotron Korg MS20 Korg MS50 Korg VC10 Nord Rack Novation LaunchKey 37 * Roland Jupiter 6 Roland PC-2 Roland SH09 Simmons SDSV Simmons MTX9 Tenori-On* Waldorf Microwave XT Yamaha KX5 Drum Machines Alesis HR16 Bentley Rhythm Ace FR-6 Electro Harmonix DRM16 Hammond Auto-Vari 64 Hillwood HR2 Linn Adrenalinn Rhythm Ace FR-2L Roland TR-33 Rhythm Arranger Roland TR-55 Rhythm Arranger Roland TR-77 Rhythm 77 Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm SoundMaster Rhythm 1 Yamaha RX11 Other Instruments Home-made Electric Balalaika