BigRedX

It's not so much viruses but as has been said executables that are likely to be the problem. A less than scrupulous band might include something that would make your computer stream their Spotify catalogue 24/7 in the background. 

Having said that most short run CDs are on CDR these days. Even if you have them duplicated by a commercial outfit do they actually check what they are producing? Most of the services will ask for a DDP file which could have pretty much anything on it.

And even big labels aren't immune from including undesirable files on their manufactured CDs. Anyone remember the Sony Records root-kit that was supposed be for copy protection in the early 2000s?

IME having speakers at head height or at least pointing at your ears rather than your knees is always going to make it easier for you to hear yourself.

Until I changed to an FRFR wedge, the best rig I had for being to hear myself was a home-made Bi-amped set up. Not specifically because it was bi-amped, but mostly because the arrangement of cabs and amp/effects racks put a 2x8 cab which contained the treble component of my sound at head height. Everything also went through the PA so the bass side cabs on stage were essentially stands for the rest of my equipment.

13 hours ago, Jack said:

I just wanted good sounds, didn't really care about how authentic they were.

This is very much my thinking too. 

For the bass I rarely use any of the amp or cab sims and when I do it's normally a guitar one chosen for the sound it produces in context with the other instruments in my band. I've yet to use the Helix with the guitar, but as I'm selling my guitar amp this weekend that will change in the next few weeks. However given that there (IIRC) over 100 different amp models in the Helix I'm sure that I can find one or two that make my guitar sound howe I want.

As someone who has played in many bands where the drums are produced by non-human means and has shared the stage with lots of bands with human drummer this used to be a massive problem back in the 80s and 90s and we were always having to ask the drummers in other bands to turn their snares off so they wouldn't rattle along in sympathy with out backing track. However this thread made me realise that I can't remember the last time I had to make this request, so at least the drummers in the bands on the small bill as us are clued up to this now.

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

? ? ? 

Only the most naive of users would put a USB stick from an essentially unknown source into their computer. It's positively begging for your device to be hacked at turned into part of a bot net.

2 hours ago, Len_derby said:

My advice is to get out there in the real world. Open-mics, jam nights, local gigs. Talk to strangers. Offer your services to solo performers. Let people know that you’re looking for a band opportunity. Good luck! 

This.

8 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

Is there any mileage in customising a USB stick (format credit card, or key fob, for instance...)..? For a run of 100, I've seen prices of around £2.50 per unit, with colour logo, degressive with quantities, naturally. Pop the album, in MP4, FLAC, or Wav format, whatever on it; job done..? The graphics files could be on there, too, with photos, video clip, bio etc. Is that not already a 'thing' as merchandising..?

 

Have you watched "Mr Robot"?

I have an AirTurn pedal. It's fine if you use it with one of the recommended apps. However should you want the pedals do anything else other than step backwards and forwards through the pages on one of the supported apps, the interface is less than intuitive. Also on mine the actual foot switches are no longer as reliable as they should be in that I am now getting phantom double-presses.

On 04/05/2025 at 23:28, JoeEvans said:

It's hard to shift them but on the other hand, the sale of one CD generates about the same profit as having 1,377,339 people listen to the album on Spotify.

Thos figure are only for artists who have signed away most of their streaming royalties to their record label. Based on my streaming figures, for independent artists who are getting 90-100% of their streaming income, a sale of a single physical copy of a 10-track album on CD at £10 is the same as about 350 people streaming all the tracks.

On 04/05/2025 at 17:47, Wombat said:

I appreciate this has been ‘dead’ for 4 years but what is the current opinion? CDs or no CDs…?

We’re just about to release our second album and we do get asked for them at gigs. But whether that would turn into sales if we actually had them, whether we would remember to bring them (as others have commented 😂) or whether we’d ever get out money back is a constant conundrum!

Thoughts pls?

It's actually closer to 6 years since the previous post, and having read through what I posted back then, things IMO have changed very little.

1. Unless you already have a large and fanatical following or a video that has gone viral on YouTube, you or your band needs to be actively gigging in order to sell any physical product containing your music. My previous bands that were doing really well with sales of CDs and vinyl sell almost nothing now that we are no longer performing live. Each song gets a few hundred streams a year and occasionally I'll get some PRS songwriter royalties from radio play but that's it. As an example, I don't think I've sold any physical copies of anything by The Terrortones since 2022 and before that it was only a few sales each year before that since the band stopped gigging.

2. What you can sell at gigs will depend very much on the genre of your music and the age of your audience. You need to look at what the bands you are playing with are selling in order to make an informed choice as to what format(s) will be best for you. In my band's genre - post-punk/goth, CDs still sell decent quantities, vinyl doesn't appear to do as well. 

3. On the other hand IME you do need to have some physical product available to sell at gigs even if it's just a CD single. From experience as punter, if I enjoy a band's gig I'm likely to buy at least one of their CDs (which is my preferred format) at the end of the evening. If they don't have any music for sale in a physical format then at best they might get a couple of Apple Music or Spotify streams when I add their tracks to one of my playlists, and that's assuming I still like what I am hearing sometime in the next few days when I get around to it. Also as a band you need to stick around until the end of evening and be prepared to sign copies in order to maximise your sales. From experience a lot of sales don't happen until all the bands have played when the audience will decide what they are going to spend their money on. 

Some more hard facts:

Since it was released 6 months ago, my band have sold almost 50 copies of our CD single, all at gigs. That's compared with 10 Bandcamp download purchases and almost 7000 Spotify streams. However we need to sell 75 CD singles to break even on the manufacturing cost. For on-line the single has just made back it's aggregator fees, and overall for all our releases we are just about in profit, but that's only because the less popular on-line only releases are being propped up by CD sales and streaming income for the tracks that are getting 40+ streams a day. Even then, that's only because the recording and packaging artwork are all done by ourselves. If we were having to include studio time, mastering and sleeve design in the costs we might never reach break even.

We are currently working on an album for release later in the year when we have enough completed tracks to justify it. Whilst IMO it is possible to get away with small runs on CDR for single, an album needs to be properly manufactured in order get the longevity required (CDRs get less reliable as time goes on and you'll be lucky if they are still playable 10 years after you bought them). As a baseline the manufacturing costs for an album on CD in a Digipack with no booklet will be in the region of £700 for 300 copies which is generally the minimum run for replication with glass mastering. You can save about £100 for the same quantity in a Jewel case with a 4-page booklet. That's a unit cost of £2.00 to £2.50 which means each copy should make at least 100% profit. 

Things are less viable for small bands when you look at vinyl. 300 copies of your album on vinyl is going to be at the very best at least twice the price of the same number of CDs, and if you want either a gatefold sleeve or printed inner sleeve then you are looking at closer to three times the cost, which bumps up the sale price for a similar profit margin. Even if the profit margin is acceptable, and you think your audience will pay more for vinyl, £2k to stump up in advance may well be beyond what a lot of bands can afford. And again that's assuming that there are no recording/mastering/graphic design costs or that the you are simply going to write them off. On top of that vinyl takes 3-4 times as long to produce as CDs and there are various compromises that need to be made in terms of audio production, album running time and track order, to get the optimum audio quality for the medium.

Fake amps and cabs as stage props are fine if you have a nice big truck/van for all the gear, but since my band ditched all our backline we've been able to get the whole band plus all our gear for playing live and our roadie/merch seller in a single estate car.

In the days when I was still using a big bass rig the only thing that took up more room in the van was the drum kit.

Thanks for all the kind comments.

On 30/04/2025 at 10:55, Lozz196 said:

the poptastic remix really “eighties” the song.

The original mix is actually a re-purposed version of something I wrote back in 1984 for the synth-pop band I was in at the time.

17 minutes ago, W1_Pro said:

I've been following that heavy metal band from Doncaster (can't remember their name) who've been supporting Airbourne on thier European Tour. I think I counted twelve stacks (so 24 boxes) which most of the time they seem to have to carry in and out of the gig themselves.

I suspect that at least some (if not most) of them were empty lightweight boxes just for show.

There's nothing wrong with having an image and the wall of cabs is almost mandatory in some genres. 

16 minutes ago, neepheid said:

Also, frankly I'm just not that excited about amps and cabs. To me, they're a necessary component in order to make noise and that's about it. Apart from the 30W practice amp I started with, I've only owned 4 amps and 4 cabs in about 20 years, and almost always one at a time.

 

Amps. Cabs. Eh, I'd rather buy another bass.

Exactly. One of the many reason why I no longer use a bass amp and cabs and go straight into the PA. The big rig might have looked impressive on stage, but for most of the gigs I played it was at best a personal monitor and a lot of the time simply a big, heavy and expensive stage prop.

It seems completely backwards to me that the bass players who benefit most from having expensive amps and cabs are those who are technically on the lowest rung of the gigging ladder playing pubs with a vocal-only PA. That's an observation and not a slight on those playing pubs, but from experience the bigger the venue and stage the less important the personal amplification for the bass player becomes (see my experience above). Only when you get to play really big venues where there is room for acoustic screening around the backline and the cabs can be isolated and mic'd up, do expensive rigs start to make sense again.

For me any spare cash would be better spent on studio time for the band with a great producer.

Poster for our next gig:

10 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

 I agree, but Sound Techs vary.

Absolutely. The whole point of having your own Sound tech is to have a good one who knows how your band is supposed to sound.

A lot of the time the most cost-effective thing bands could do to improve their FoH sound would be to employ someone as a sound engineer for all their gigs rather than spending more money on gear. I've been in two bands in the past that had their own dedicated FoH engineer and the difference it made to our live sound was massive. The engineer for one band even used to attend rehearsals so that he was completely knowledgable about the new songs we had written and were rehearsing for inclusion into the set.

My Squier Bass VI has a business card shim as described above on it. Works perfectly well.

Only thing to watch is that on mine the fit of the neck in the pocket was very snug and removing it popped off a small piece of the body finish.

Pity there's no equivalently easy way to make the neck wider...

Are you going to need to walk any distance with the gig bag on your back?

If so you are going to need to try it out yourself. No matter what anyone else says, what suits some people might not suit yourself depending on your height and build. Loads of people like the Mono bags but my M80 is massively uncomfortable for me to walk any distance with it on, as the bottom of the case slaps against the backs of my legs. It's fine for over one shoulder going from the band transport into the venue, but no use for the 30 minute walk to the rehearsal room, which for me was one of the reasons to have a gig bag rather than a hard case.

I'd also be wary about the "advantages" of lots of pockets space to carry other items. IME they tend to make what is an already heavy gig bag unwieldy.

Whatever you choose, your best bet is to buy on line and then you can return it if it isn't right for you

2 hours ago, warwickhunt said:

 

There is/could be an argument that the sound you are creating is 'your' sound and it is what you want the audience to hear, they have no say in how it should be... good or bad.    

 

I suppose it's a bit like your Helix generated tone that is sculpted by you, to your exacting spec.  The audience don't get to choose how that sounds, indeed you are reliant on the FOH for the final tone and I've seen many PA set ups that are a dog's dinner (hired in pub/club); we've all read that subs need to be placed 'x' distance apart or located next/on top of each other... yet I see more 15" mid/tops mounted on poles above 15" subs 20 feet apart.    However, we digress back to another BC favourite!  LOL

I've played in bands where various members seem to want it sound like the recording on stage, and I have a admit that in the past I was like that too, but now I've realised that so long as I can tell I'm in tune and in time with the rest of the band, that will do me. IMO it's more important to sound good FoH because the audience are the people who are hopefully going to say nice things about the band on social media, buy our merch, and come back and see us play again. If it sounds great on stage too, that's a bonus, but it's the great songs that fire me up for a performance not a perfect on-stage sound. We spend as much time working on the band mix in the rehearsal room as do practicing playing the songs together, so getting a good FoH sound is generally fairly easy. During the sound check I'll go out front and make some suggestions if I think there are obvious problems with the band's overall sound, but in a way I'm lucky in that I play both "bass" and "guitar" parts with my Bass VI and once the "guitar" sounds right the bass will be right too.

1 hour ago, police squad said:

actually that's a really good point

do the venues you play at, charge for using the kit

No it's normally part of the lighting rig and the projector will be hung from the celling with the lights. There might be a charge as part of the venue hire for the person/people running it (PA and lights), but all the gigs we do are through a promotor so they deal with that side. We just turn up and play.

Personally I wouldn't consider using projection of any sort at venues that didn't already have the required kit installed as part of the house system. 

37 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

Saying all of that, if you put 2 (or more) cabs together and you like what you hear, then that is an absolute result which nobody can argue with because it is what YOU are wanting to achieve/hear.  

But that only works if your rig is a stage prop or just for personal monitoring (with the FoH supplied via the PA).

However, if you rely on your rig to project your bass sound into the whole venue, then what sounds awesome when you are stood next to it may well sound entirely different out in the audience and not necessarily in a good way due to the different dispersal characteristics and the drivers and the cabs they are contained in.

Thanks! It's an Eastwood Hooky Bass VI going through a Line6 Helix with Compression, Chorus and the Roland Jazz Chorus Combo SIM (something that would be completely unsuitable for bass in real life) plus whatever additional studio trickery was applied by our synth player during the mix.

15 hours ago, police squad said:

The click track is on an ipad, some tracks are just a click and have no set length (drummer stops and starts) and some tracks have some keyboard augmentations on them and so are a set track

We only do gigs in venues that supply the PA and light systems, so proper venues but some have smaller stage areas than other

For example we recently played The Horn in St Albans. Fantastic PA and soundman but somewhat cramped on stage. 

Chinnery's in Southend is similar but a bigger stage

 

Thanks for chipping in on this too, it is much appreciated

So for some songs the click is just for setting the tempo and nothing else. Do these songs always have the same structure and length? If not that will lead to synchronisation issues with the video.

If you are only playing places with in-house PA and lights then you'll find that most of the venues that could support video projection will already have some sort of system installed that is appropriate for the size of the venue. You may find that some of the older set-ups will result in people on stage casting shows and obscuring parts of the screen, and you'll have to decide if this is an acceptable compromise for your performance or if at those venues you would be better off with no back projections.

Unless you can find someone to produce all the imagery and videos it's probably going to take several months to implement, so I'd start by asking all the venues that you are playing in the meantime how their projection system works and what inputs are available and what formats they support. That will give you an idea on how to proceed. You could test the water by getting the venues to project your band logo while you play. We have one that is included in our technical rider in various formats, and if it gets lost, our singer has copies on his phone that can be emailed, texted or AirDropped to the lighting engineer while we are setting up.

Here's a couple of shots of my band with our logo projected onto a screen behind us. This first one is from a fairly small venue and as you can see we are obscuring part of the screen and projection:

Of course that's not a problem if you play somewhere big: