BigRedX

I made a very effective isolation platform from stuff I had going spare - and old table top with quite a deep lip to it (about 3") turned upside down and filled with layers of old carpet underlay. Then a piece of 1/2" plywood rested on top of the underlay, but not touching the sides of the lip, covered with carpet. We were able to fit the whole kit on this except the drum stool which was heightened up to compensate. Completely removed the kick drum pedal "stamping" and all the other mechanical drum noises from the room below.

Electronic drums may not be anywhere near as loud as their acoustic counterparts but they can still generate a lot of irritating noise, especially the kick drum pedal which if the kit is located in an upstairs room will sound like the occupant is constantly stamping on the floor. I've rehearsed at home with a drummer using an electronic kit, and at non-neighbour offending volumes the sounds of the sticks hitting the pads was louder than the drum sounds they were generating through the speakers. Also we had to build an isolating platform for the whole kit to prevent the kick drum pedal and other mechanical noises from transmitting through the structure of the building.

Regarding plug-ins (VSTs). There's a great temptation when you first start to grab every free plug-in going and build up a sizeable collection. However AFAICS every DAW and many audio interfaces come with a good set of bundled plug-ins which should cover most of your needs. So start by getting to grips with those first, and only look for more once you've exhausted all their possibilities and you've discovered that you really need something that they can't provide.

It appears from this thread that most of the time when a cover is "better" than the original is when the original is not nearly as well known. Also it's very easy to consider a cover "better" when it has been done in a style that you are more receptive to than the original version. There's plenty of covers that I like a lot that have been done in very different styles to the original songs, but I can't in all honesty say that any of them are truly superior to the original.

Unless you already have suitable tools they are most likely going to be more expensive than the materials needed to build a bass. I've got a tool box full of stuff that's suitable for jobs around the house, but I don't think I'd want to use any of them for building a bass, without a lot fettling first. And while good power tools are not an absolute requirement, it's a lot easier and quicker if you don't have to do everything using just hand tools. You will however learn a lot about how to best sharpen chisels and plane blades.

Listen with your ears and not with your eyes. The great thing about modelling technology is that you can put the bass signal through anything without worrying about potentially damaging it. The worst thing that can happen is that the results won't sound very good. On my Helix most of my bass patches don't have any amp or cab sims in them, just EQ. When they do a lot of the time it's a "guitar" amp, and it's normally been picked for it's drive sound rather than the clean sound of the amp so it's being used as a distortion effect rather than simulating whatever amp it's supposed to be.

"Hanging on the Telephone" by Blondie. Makes the original by The Nerves sound like a bad demo. I also much prefer The Sunday's version of "Wild Horses" over the Rolling Stones.

Most of the providers that allow you to build a website without needing to know any coding (like Wix and Squarespace) allow you to create a free account and play with the options until you are ready to publish it, so try them all and go with the one whose interface and features work for you. A few things to bear in mind: 1. Buy a domain name to use with your website. It looks far more professional than using the address the provider gives you for free. 2. If you use Wix buy the domain elsewhere, as buying through Wix locks you into them for as long as you want to use that domain. 3. Also if you intend to use Wix, check first which domain extensions they support directly. You can use one of the others but it's a lot more faff to get it to work properly (.co.uk is one of the extensions they don't yet directly support)

So what (and how) do you want to compose? I've always found that the act of composing and the act of recording were two entirely different things and approached in entirely different ways. For me composing is done in my head or when I'm playing an instrument. Even in the days when I was playing in bands that used a lot of technology to produce their sounds, the recording equipment didn't get a look in during the compositional process. If I'm writing for my band, I just need to present the others with a basic idea of the main musical themes, and then we'll deconstruct it and flesh out the missing bits in rehearsal. Recording happens when we are ready to capture a definitive version of the song for consumption by the general public. When I've been writing on my own without a band or musical collaborators, I'll have the song almost completely mapped out in my head in both structure and arrangement before committing anything to tape or hard disk. I think the only time I've used the recording process as the composition was for one of the Composition Challenges on here where I wanted to use the inspirational picture as audio data, and therefore I had no idea how the composition was going to develop until I actually had produced the sounds themselves, and even then I went through most of the import options in Audacity until the data produced some audio that I thought I could work with. However it was more of an intellectual process rather than an inspirational one. If you are going to use the recording process as a compositional aid, the most important thing to remember is not to commit to anything in terms of structure or arrangement just because it has already been recorded. Instruments put down early in the compositional process will almost always need to be replaced as the track develops, because by the time you've got the main melody components recorded, you'll be able to hear better versions of them. Don't keep parts recorded early in the compositional process just because they've been "done" already when you can hear a much better version now that the music is more developed. Good luck!

Getting into recording has never been easier of cheaper, than it is right now, and it's only going to get easier and cheaper. Anyone with a computer (and if the you the right ones a smart phone or a tablet) can run free (or very cheap) software that will emulate a far more fully featured recording studio than those used to make most of the "classic" recordings of the last 70 years. When my first band went into the studio in 1980 to record our first vinyl release, one day cost us £50 for the studio hire and the stereo master tapes. This was for recording onto a 4-track tape recorder and mixing to stereo via what appeared to be mostly repurposed PA equipment (mics and desk). The only effect available was tape echo (from an actual tape recorder). That was it. In those days home recording was mostly for the rich and famous, and even the humble 4-track cassette portastudio cost almost £1k. The only downside I see to the modern way of home recording is that you are straight in at the deep end with a steep learning curve ahead of you. No years of recording live in mono or stereo while you save up for a 4-track and 8 (or more) track system, learning bit by bit as more feature become available as you can afford the equipment that has them. Also remember that just because you might be a decent musician and/or songwriter doesn't mean that you also be a decent recording engineer. I learnt that the hard and expensive way.

If you pick the TNT option make sure it is actually being fulfilled by TNT themselves. The last time I used them the UK part of the journey (the parcel went to Japan) was done by either Hermes or Yodel.

Why are your instructions in German?

The MIDI 1.0 specification dates from 1996 some 13 years after the first devices with MIDI sockets appeared. I am 99% certain that when the very original MIDI specification was drawn up in 1982/83, XLRs were the preferred connector. It appears that only the Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 synthesiser used them though. In the late 90s I was playing in a high-tech dance/rock band that made extensive use of MIDI on-stage. Wherever possible we used XLR cables to make the various MIDI connections between the racks of gear we had. Inside the rack the DIN sockets were epoxied into place on the equipment so they couldn't become detached and then the cables terminated on patch panels with XLR sockets. This allowed us to use a single type of cable to make all the connections between the different equipment racks. Everything was properly labelled and I can't recall a single instance of cross-connecting MIDI and audio sockets. Edit: For some MIDI devices the DIN sockets were totally impractical as they simply were not robust enough for live use. The MIDI DIN socket on my Yamaha KX5 keytar was replaced within a week of buying it with an XLR as this was the only way of getting reliable connection and one that didn't produce stuck notes. This is where the connection momentarily failed between playing a note and releasing it, the receiving synth would get the MIDI note on command but would never receive the corresponding note off, and the note would continue to play until you either sent an "all notes off" MIDI command or played enough notes simultaneously to exceed the polyphony limit of the synth.

Of course just to add to the confusion the original MIDI spec called for the use of XLR connections with DIN being a low-cost alternative. Unfortunately almost no-one (including the inventor of MIDI - Dave Smith of synthesiser company Sequential Circuits) went with the XLR option, and the rest unfortunately is history. Despite being the same form-factor DIN as those terrible audio devices of the 70s and early 80s, MIDI devices use different pins on the connector and the protocol is for the transfer of digital performance data (and lots of other things) rather than audio.

I only really listen to music for pleasure. If that leads to an idea for a song that in turn leads to me having to push myself technically in order to be able to play this new song, then so be it. One of the many reasons I left the covers band I used to be in, was that dissecting a song in order to learn how to play it sucked all of the enjoyment out of listening to that song. There are now several pieces of music I used to like a lot, that I never want to hear again because of this process.

Remember there is a difference between writing and recording. For writing all I need is an instrument and my memory.

There's some nastier ones towards the bottom of the page.

They don't have any necks in stock at the moment, so it's difficult to say for those, although my gut feeling would be to avoid any necks with more than cosmetic faults. The bodies are definitely worth considering. However a there doesn't seem to be a lot of correlation between the price and the extent of the problems. There's a particularly nasty Strat looking body that is more expensive than some with seemingly less acute problems?

I think that you tend not to notice that the strings are wearing out as much, when you play an instrument regularly, and more so if you are not actually playing in a band. I'm sure if you fitted a new set now you would be surprised at how rubbish the old ones sounded in comparison.

With a decent recording and/or PA engineer they all end sounding like bass guitars in the band mix.

I don't have a problem with the shape, but the mechanical design leaves a bit to be desired as the positioning of the string retainers means that there are three different break angles for the strings. However the rest of the bass is so good I can almost forgive this...

It's essentially a straight copy of Hooky's Shergold Marathon 6-string bass, and having played one (not Hooky's and a long time ago) I'd say they got it pretty much spot on! It's certainly the right Bass VI for me until I have the cash to get Gus to make me one with the same string spacing.

The Axions (100 E) are under £20 (even with postage IIRC), and they work fine for me on the Burns Barracuda, although it does have a wider neck (but narrower string spacing at the bridge) than the Fender/Squier Bass VIs. If you want heavier then the GHS Hooky 6 set has thicker gauges on all the strings 105 to 30, but as you've found the neck width (or lack of it) may be a problem.

Yes, but it's still wider at the nut compared with all the other Bass VIs that I have tried - 50mm nut with 43mm between the high and low E strings.

As the standard LaBella round-wound set has a 95 low E, you probably went for a 100 and then scaled everything up from there. When you come to replace them, have a look at the Newtone Axions as they have suitably heavy low strings and slightly lighter high ones and are about a third of the price of the LaBella's.