Jump to content
Why become a member? ×

BigRedX

Member
  • Posts

    19,600
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    7

Everything posted by BigRedX

  1. Dick Venom & The Terrortones will be playing at [url=https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Zanzibar-Club-Liverpool-Official-Site/133025810102296]The Zanzibar Club[/url] in Liverpool on Thursday December 18th. Also playing are Bad To The Bone And The Flaming Pumas plus The Swingin Bricks. Doors open at 7.30 [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Gig%20Posters/13828_999318420083898_7162628014510072457_n_zps10d135dc.jpg[/IMG]
  2. Dick Venom & The Terrortones will be playing at the [url=https://www.facebook.com/events/374439386052425/]The Adam & Eve[/url] in Birmingham on New Years Eve. Headlining will be Malarkey. [url=https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/buy_tickets/events/?id=10033288]Tickets are £5.50 in advance with the booking fee[/url] or £10 on the door. [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Gig%20Posters/1939454_999318256750581_3927522623692143332_n_zps45f3495e.jpg[/IMG]
  3. [quote name='BeardyBob' timestamp='1418368517' post='2629549'] Allow me to explain my viewpoint... So. Why did your comments alarm me so? Because I fundamentally disagree with the implied attitude towards an audience, gigs & music. It makes it sound so "functional" and "corporate" - terms I would never strive to attribute towards what I do. I've found honesty & personality such an important factor in connecting with an audience & "dead space" needent be "dead space" for that reason! How many times have you heard "Stereophonics were good, but they just played the set - no interaction" "Kings of Leon were good, but no stage presence" Naturally, music is still an overwhelming factor, maybe only as much so?! If you'd like to continue this discussion, please press 1. If you'd like to continue it with a little more personality please press 2. [/quote] Thanks for taking the time to explain your view point in a manner that I was able to understand. I think, based on what you've said above, we will have to disagree on what we think makes a band performance good. My viewpoint comes as much from the PoV of an audience member as it does a performer. I find a lot of things that other bands do deeply distracting from the performance which ultimately is what the audience have come to see. As a performer I want to try and cut out as many of these "faults" from my own band as I can. One that particularly annoys me is what I consider needless messing about between songs. It's fine if your band has a person who can engage with the audience in an eloquent and entertaining manner between the songs, but let's face it most bands aren't capable of much more than "Hello Birmingham! Are you reedy to rock!!?" Frank Zappa wasn't wrong when he described musicians as "people who can't talk", and who am I to disagree when I far prefer to express myself through music rather than words? IME musicians worry too much about making mistakes whilst they are playing (which go largely unnoticed by the majority of the audience) and don't pay enough attention to what happens between the songs when they are not. If you are able to grab the audience's attention with your music you have to continue to work to keep it during those moments when you aren't actually playing and by far the easiest way to do this is to keep them to a minimum. By all means have a couple of beaks rather than relentlessly pumping out the tunes, but fill those breaks with something useful and meaningful, and for most small bands (which covers pretty much everyone here playing originals) that means telling the audience who you are and which of the songs you are playing can be bought from the band after the show. What you don't want between songs is endless tuning up, fiddling with effects pedals settings and discussions happening between the band members on stage. So the last thing I want to be doing is adding to these problems and further breaking the flow of the set whilst I change a string or fix some other problem with my equipment. Sometimes musicians are so wrapped up in their own little creative world that they can't see the bigger picture when it comes to presenting the band to the public. As in point. I went to see a fairly well known band Six by Seven some years ago. They come on stage a launch into an impressive-sounding opening song that gets the audience up and enthusiastic. At the end of this song the guitarist goes to swap his Strat for a Rickenbacker to use on the second song. The Ric produces no sound and for several minutes little happens on stage other than the guitarist checking his pedal board and amp, while the rest of the band stand about looking sheepish. Finally the Rickenbacker bursts into life and the gig can continue, but by then all of the impact of the opening song had been lost and even worse than that - from out in the audience there is absolutely no sonic difference between the two guitars, so we were left wondering what all the messing about was actually for. Also in my opinion there is more to audience interaction that just talking to them between the songs. You can acknowledge that the audience are there simply by facing towards them and looking at them rather than be seemingly lost in world of your own playing. I'm a great believer in the Ramones ethos of always facing the audience whilst they were on stage. Maybe, if like a lot of bands I see where the musicians huddle around the drummer for comfort whilst the singer struggles to project any further than the end of the microphone, you need those gaps between the songs to try and engage the audience, but IMO it is far better to do it whilst you are actually playing songs - which after all is what people have come to see you do. I'm going to leave it here and let people get back to discussing the original topic (although everything that needs to be said has been) and if you want to take this further maybe we should start a new one about what bands should be doing between songs on stage.
  4. Unfortunately the over-inflated price of concert tickets is the cost of not wanting to pay for recorded music any more.
  5. [quote name='BeardyBob' timestamp='1418324040' post='2629227'] oh dear. then it's as I feared. he's a smugger. and my God... it's already spread to you. smuggers are a rare breed, cleverly disguised as creatives. cousin to the more common egosapians, both seek attention. remember: only smuggers truly believe they're owed it; the egosapian of course overcompensating for tiny, almost insignificant, genitalia. [/quote] I have no idea what this means. Would you care to explain for this of us who are less enlightened?
  6. [quote name='BeardyBob' timestamp='1418304359' post='2628960'] wow. and again, wow. insecure, much? "WE, THE GREATER, HAVE COMPLETED A FINE RENDITION OF OUR MUSICAL ABILITY UNTO YOU, THE LESSER. LAVISH US WITH YOUR LOVE AND MONIES." [/quote] I'd rather be thought of as being insecure, than so arrogant as to assume that the audience are going to tolerate or enjoy silence/the singer telling "jokes"/pointless "jams" by the other musicians while I fiddle about changing a string because I have come to the gig without a spare instrument. Although I see you only quoted the part of my post that allowed you to make your "point".
  7. What a lot of people conveniently forget is that Fender-style necks with maple or rosewood fingerboards are made in completely different ways and it's far more likely to be the difference in construction that they are hearing rather than the difference in fingerboard woods.
  8. I think the whole Warwick range is somewhat overpriced and rightly or wrongly the far-eastern models are seen to be far too expensive for their country of manufacture. In a way it's sad that where ann instrument is built is still more important than the overall quality of said instrument. I bought one of the Thomann discounted Star Basses although even I would have paused at the original asking price of around £1800 despite the fact that in many ways my MiK Warwick is a superior instrument to the German versions of the same model that I had previously tried. The woods might not be as premium but IMO the solid colours of the MiK models suit the Star Bass design far more than some fancy wood grain. Overall the fit and finish of the MiK was comparable with the German versions and the lack of sharp fingerboard edges that the German models sported was a distinct bonus.
  9. [quote name='allighatt0r' timestamp='1418213190' post='2627978'] "Matsumoku" Thunderbird anyone? [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1970s-Japanese-Made-MIJ-Matsumoku-Through-Neck-Thunderbird-Bass-Guitar-/291321517744"]http://www.ebay.co.u...r-/291321517744[/url] [/quote] IME 70s Thunderbird copies were a lot more accurate than that.
  10. I had one for a while. IMO it didn't really do anything that the controls on my amp couldn't do just as well.
  11. My reasoning for taking a spare bass instead of changing a string mid set is as follows: Firstly I detest dead space between songs. There should be enough of a pause for the audience to show their appreciation and for the singer to announce who we are/tell the audience how they can get hold of a recording of the song we've just played (or are about to play)/thank the audience for coming; and that is it. Secondly while I know that I could change a string in the comfort of my own home with all the tools I need to hand in about a minute, I am also realistic enough to know that on a darkened stage with the pressure on to be up and running in the shortest possible time it is going to be a lot longer. Especially since my first action will most likely be to knock the spare packet of strings down behind my amp. Also when the average length of my band's songs is just over 2 minutes even a minute of dead time is too long.
  12. I don't think that wanting to have an instrument that you find aesthetically pleasing makes you shallow. On the contrary it makes you a more complete human being. It's those who don't get it or don't care about looks who have something wrong with them.
  13. These days I rarely gig without a spare bass. Ever since I broke a string at one of my first ever gigs and didn't have a spare (bass or string) and end up having to borrow the other band's Grant Violin Bass copy that had pretty much nothing in common with my bass, I've taken a spare on stage. Over the intervening 35 years (and 100s of gigs) I've only actually needed to use it a handful of times, but I'm always glad it's there just in case. In the days when I played both fretted and fretless I used to have a spare for each.
  14. [url=http://www.olilarkin.co.uk/index.php?p=virtualcz]CZ VST plug-in[/url] also works as an editor for the hardware versions.
  15. [quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1418047440' post='2626250'] Yes, I think you have a good point, but when he's faced with this situation, isn't it down to the sound man to EQ each instrument? If the guitars have too much in the low-mids then this should be cut, surely? [/quote] You would think. However from what I could hear coming out of the amps on-stage (I was right down at the front) by the time all the low-mids had been cut you'd have been left with the sound of a gnat in a jam jar...
  16. I think that a fair portion of the blame can be laid at a lot of "modern" bands and their choices for individual instrument sounds and arrangements, on a recording it might be possible to fine tune each into its own sonic space but live in an unpredictable acoustic environment it can be near impossible. I was in London at the weekend to see a couple of gigs. Firstly HIM and Fields Of The Nephilim at Shepherds Bush. Fields Of The Nephilim had rested the temptation to "update" their songs and consequently the chiming 80s goth guitars and the bass were perfectly separated and even Carl McCoy's lower range vocals were still distinct and audible. Compare that with HIM where the mix was drums, vocals, and then everything else as a low-mid down-tuned mush which were joined by any of the vocals not sung in the upper register. When the instruments played on their own (intros, break downs etc.) each was clearly audible. However all together it was just a tuneless mess and when the drums were going at full tilt they might as well have not even been there. There seemed to be so much bottom end on the basic sounds coming from the amps on stage for each instrument that it was unsurprising that the FoH sound was so undefined. The end result was that most of the songs were all but unrecognisable until the vocals started. Compare and contrast with the following night with The Human League at Hammersmith. Vocals were crystal-clear and all the other instruments mixed perfectly. Maybe when the majority of the sounds are synthesised it's easier to look at the overall arrangement and mix and tweak each into its own space, but IME a good amp and desk channel has just as much control, so it should still be possible with a more "traditional" band line-up. Maybe also now that PA systems are so much more capable than they were 25 years ago, we should be looking at mixing live music in a different way. Earlier this year the Terrortones did a small tour supporting German Rockabilly band Boppin' B. Their method of sound checking was an eye-opener to say the least. Rather than start with the drums and build up from there, they got the vocals loud and clear both on-stage and FoH and then mixed the other instruments underneath. I saw then use this method at three very different venues and they sounded great at all of them.
  17. Don't forget that the majority of covers bands need a reasonably steady supply of new original songs to keep their audiences happy. It's all very well saying that originals bands don't have the song writing skills required to compete with the "professionals" but IME most professionals are hardly turning out hit after hit, and remember that we only get to hear the songs that they consider worthy, which are generally only a small percentage of the ideas they actually come up with.
  18. [quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1417695177' post='2623093'] Yes. You'd be playing much better songs if the writers were Goffin and King. [/quote] That's entirely subjective.
  19. [quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1417689607' post='2623009'] If I were that bothered about my tone then I'd probably go wireless, with the added advantage that that brings. [/quote] A lot of the latest wireless systems have a control that mimics the effects of capacitance of a standard screened cable of various lengths.
  20. [quote name='blue' timestamp='1417648775' post='2622772'] [font=Arial]I have had a few guys from the forum come back at me and say[i],"Don't you miss the creative element?"[/i] For me, I was in some original bands, however It was never my material. I don't write songs. I don't have that ability.[/font] [/quote] Have you tried writing songs? I hear so many times from musicians that they don't have the skill/ability to write songs. IME it's something that is learnt just like playing an instrument. I doubt you were any good at playing the bass the first time that you picked it up, but you persevered and now you play at least well enough to be in a band and earning money. Those songwriters who seem to make it effortless as they pluck songs "out of the air" have spent ages working on them first and will have a whole load of left over musical ideas that are just waiting for the right other idea to slot them into.
  21. [quote name='discreet' timestamp='1417635699' post='2622574'] I don't know. This, perhaps..? [url="http://consumerist.com/2008/02/08/monster-cables-monster-ripoff-80-markups/"]http://consumerist.c...off-80-markups/[/url] [/quote] I was thinking more along the lines of [url=http://www.audioholics.com/news/monster-cable]their apparent need to try and sue any company that has the word "monster" in their name[/url].
  22. If you do a search you'll find that Monster have some very questionable business practices. Personally I'd never buy one of their products.
  23. [quote name='TimAl' timestamp='1417626909' post='2622431'] I have PM'd Jellyfish but I haven't had a reply. If anyone knows him please ask him to get in touch . . . [/quote] Fair enough. When is the closing date?
  24. [quote name='TimR' timestamp='1417614637' post='2622236'] Mic Pre amps and line level inputs use OP-amps and are expecting a specific voltage and the feedback gain is designed differently. OP-amp distortion does not sound like and is not the the same as transistor or tube distortion which compresses before you get to full distortion. OP-amps just suddenly saturate and make a horrible screeching noise. [/quote] But AFAICS and OP-amp is just an IC made of transistors resistors and capacitors, so overloading it is just going to produce the same kind of clipping as you would get with a discrete component circuit. Still don't see how feeding it too large an input signal can damage it.
  25. [quote name='TimR' timestamp='1417608045' post='2622134'] It's not the act of clipping that destroys the preamps it's the excess power that is causing the clipping that destroys them. [/quote] Please explain further. IIRC distortion devices work by boosting the signal in one part of the device so that they get clipped further down the signal path. Surely this is just the same?
×
×
  • Create New...