BigRedX

What exactly is wrong with the tuners currently fitted?

And at last, some much better photos of In Isolation from Saturday's gig:

To get back on topic here's a photo of the whole of In Isolation from our set at Whitby on Saturday:

8 minutes ago, SumOne said:

Unfortunately, these are the trials of multi-fx, lots of potential, but lots of potential faff too! 

 

The last gig I did was delayed as there was some very odd noise which we eventually tracked down to being because of the lead guitarist's multi-fx. And our last practice session was interrupted by the rhythm guitarist's multi-fx unexpectedly playing a drum loop. Another band I was in had trouble with a guitarist forgetting that a preset had a pitch shifter applied. I've tried to turn on the tuner of my Boss GT 1000 Core before (double footswitch press) but ended up just pressing one footswitch and changing preset to something inappropriate.  All these hassles are possible with individual pedals, but they usually seem more intuitive.

 

I'm sort of sold on the concept of Multi-fx, they can be great, relatively cheap, small, powerful tools. But they can also be a real headache. 

You've obviously never played in a band with a guitarist who seemingly had to recreate his pedal board from scratch every time he set up his gear, and often couldn't remember the order that the pedals went in the last time when he thought it sounded great.

Or the guitarist who insisted on turning all the controls on his amp to "0" before switching it off, meaning that he would spend at least 10 minutes next time he set up dealing in "his sound".

I, on the other hand simply plug my multi-effects unit into my FRFR cab and hit the footswitch for the Preset for the first song and I'm ready to go. For one band I have now programmed all the patch changes into the computer that is also our drummer and second synth player so when I call up a particular song my multi-effect unit automatically switches to the correct Preset and changes Snapshots as required as the backing plays.

17 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

@Dad3353 While I applaud your efforts to improve forum literacy, if this was aimed at me it is of zero use unless you also quote and point out where I have wrongly added or left out the apostrophe, and as I am mildly dyslexic could be interpreted as bullying.

Also in the grand scheme of writing on these forums, missing an apostrophe out or putting it in the wrong place is low down on the scale of crimes against literacy that I have seen inflicted here. However if you were to flag up every error you'd be sticking in some inane graphic after every other post.

My next gig is with In Isolation on Saturday May 11th at The Black Bull in Gateshead.

Saturday May 11th, it's Twilight Zone Day, and the planets have aligned over Gateshead as Liber8 and OTH present a Spring Special

In the bar: Liber8 and many other local traders will be on hand with uniquities, curiosities and all manner of goodies. More info about the awesome market right here

Also playing are Machiner. Bands on from 8.00pm. Tickets available here

15 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

It was, the ticket was on black paper hand written in gold ink, and you contacted them by email or through uk.people.gothic on usenet to sort tickets out.

It looks as though they'd moved on the embrace new technology in the two years since the first one where the contact details were just a house address and landline phone number!

I know this because I have a friend who is involved with the Whitby Museum archive and is in the process of putting together material from the very first WGW. As part of that he was at the gig interviewing members of In Isolation and Chaos Bleak as they were at the first one either as punters or members of the bands that played.

28 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Love the Gus basses - still keep wishing that one would turn up at some price I could afford at the time, but I suspect it won't.

 

Also shame I never got to the WGW. I was due to go in 1996, had the ticket for me and my girlfriend and everything but then me and my girlfriend had one of those not being together any more issues that stopped us going, then I moved to the states, so by the time I came back I was very out of the scene.

Unfortunately I think the era of cheap Gus Guitars is long past, especially since the Prince connection. I was lucky enough to get my G1 guitar and the G3 black 5-string bass back when the new prices were a fraction of what they are now. The red one in the the photos was second hand and just under £1k, but it was in dreadful condition and cost me almost as much again to have it completely refurbished by Simon about 15 years ago.

If you were going to go back in 1996 that would have been in the very early days, as this October is the 30th anniversary of the original weekend in 1994. The weekend has grown beyond its tentative beginnings, and although it could appear to have been taken over by people parading around the town in "costume", there is still a very healthy audience for the musical side of things as witnessed by this and other gigs around the town. The fact that Whitby has it's up and coming own goth band in Westenra has most definitely helped to keep the music current.

34 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

You have some cracking basses. Love the red and chrome bass. Looks amazing.

Dave

Thanks! The two in the photos are now my main basses.

I have second Gus 5-string in all black which is a back-up for the red and chrome one, and hope to be selling my other two Bass VIs in order to buy another Eastwood Hooky.

The barrel is a choke and it's normally only present on USB data leads. 

Both Hurtsfall and In Isolation played the Goth At The Brewery Event on the 27th as part of WGW.

This is a free gig at Whitby Brewery on the Saturday afternoon of the Goth Weekend organised by Dominique from the band Westenra and over the past 3 years has grown from being fairly low-key to one of the major events of the weekend, and for those who attend WGW for the music probably as important as the "main" event at the Pavilion as it showcases the current generation of Goth bands. It draws a massive audience made up of people who are there for the music rather than parading around town in their "costumes" and is now so well attended that the main doors of the room are opened to allow people outside in the courtyard to see and hear the bands too.

This weekend was a "Nottingham takeover" with Chaos Bleak also playing.

Hurtsfall were on first at 2.00pm. We probably had the best on-stage sound of the afternoon, but even so there were problems with the monitor in front of me which kept cutting out. However due to the nature of the band we are well used to playing under less than ideal conditions, so it wasn't really a problem, and everyone we spoke to afterwards (including several people whose opinions I trust) said the FoH sound was excellent. The audience appeared to enjoy it, and we sold a decent amount of merch afterwards.

This photo was taken at the beginning of our set just before Sam, our singer, got everyone to move forward so that more people could get into the venue. Even after that there were still almost as many people outside enjoying the gig as there were inside (and yes that is Whitby Abbey you can see in the background):

And two more general gig photos:

Chaos Bleak probably pulled the best crowd of the afternoon due to both their time slot and their reputation. And then at 4.00pm I was back on stage with In Isolation. By this time it appeared that all the foldback had stopped working - There wasn't anything coming out of the wedge in front of me, and unlike during Hurtsfall's set I couldn't hear anything from the other two. Still we powered through our set even though it sounded weird on stage. Again we were told afterwards that FoH the mix was excellent, but it was unnerving playing some of the songs with longish intros on the backing tack where they were barely audible on stage, so having no clue when our drummer was going to count us in! Also we discovered that playing last in the afternoon isn't the ideal spot as people tend leave before the end so they can get ready for whatever night-time event they are going to. Still there were a decent number who stayed all the way through our set, and we even had to sign CDs at the end - something which always bemuses me...

For some reason there are a distinct lack of photos from our set on Facebook and this one of me was the only one I could find.

12 minutes ago, spencer.b said:

What's JMJ?

Jean-Michel Jarre? Or at least it is the accepted abbreviation on another forum I frequent.

Personally I wouldn't mic up a bass rig for home recording unless you have an excellent acoustic space to put it in and can turn up to gig volumes without annoying anyone.

On 22/04/2024 at 08:06, lemmywinks said:

Gruv Gear Gigblade (original version) might be an option?

That looks really uncomfortable and impractical for wearing any distance other than the short trip between the car and the venue. On the last wearing option you can see the case slapping against the backs of his legs with every step. Nasty!

On 21/04/2024 at 18:12, tauzero said:

It's rather a step backwards with a fixed signal path rather than the multiple building block approach that's been in favour for the last decade at least.

And no MIDI.

It should be compulsory for programmable musical devices ti have MIDI - and proper MIDI on 5-pin din connectors.

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

In the various bands I've played in, we've tried to run a merch table.  It honestly made me sick to my stomach when a punter would come over and ask, 'Have you got any vinyls?'  Vinyls.  Collective noun, plural.  Vinyls.

 

I mean, you simply wanted to walk around the other side of the table and beat the guy to a pulp.  "Look, we have t-shirts, little cards with Soundcloud/Spotify links, free stickers and a pile of signed CDs that we've all been burning for the last few days, but do you see vinyls?  No. F*ck off!"

 

Your average punter has no idea how much hassle it is to get records pressed, and yeah, we don't have vinyls because nobody will buy them and they'll haggle us down because they won't pay enough to cover our pressing costs.  I've spent days in the studio refining these recordings, why should I have them pressed on a format that sounds like we were eating Rice Krispies during the mastering process.

 

Vinyls.

Exactly.

The Terrortones vinyl sold well, but that's because we had an audience for it. Had we had a full year's worth of gigs after the album came out I'd have none left.

I'm seriously thinking of getting new labels printed for all the records I have left over and passing them off as the new album by one of my current bands. After all the sorts of poseurs who by "vinyls" never actually play them.

1 hour ago, Cat Burrito said:

interesting… I have always envisaged my music as LP records because it is the format that I grew up with. I am lucky enough to say most have been released on vinyl and sold quite well. My current band do small run CDs because I don’t think we have the audience to sell vinyl to. I wish we did but I don’t want hundreds taking up space here. 

My bands' audiences appear to be made up of people like me who sold all their vinyl and replaced the albums they couldn't live without with the CD version.

CDs still sell very well, vinyl form those bands that do offer it doesn't appear to do as well.

The only vinyl I still have are albums and singles that have never been re-released in a digital format that I haven't yet got around to digitising myself.

2 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

The Pulse 15 is best suited for use in a very large box, at least 200 liters. In a box the size of yours, or what I think is the size of yours as you haven't posted it, it's going to be boomy. My preference for a reasonably priced fifteen for average size ported cabs is the LaVoce WXF 15.400. It's not boomy, and it has higher sensitivity and mechanical power capacity than the Pulse 15.

The volume has been given as 90 litres earlier in the thread.

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Indeed! However, folks seem to be barely buying cds anymore - we've sold about 100 from our run of 250, but had shedloads more plays on streaming platforms (which has netted us about £8, though quite a bit more from Bandcamp downloads).

I spose the argument might be - will you sell more vinyl meaning that in the long run you'll make more?

As for test pressings, I have a vinyl system that is serious enough to evaluate them and where even end-of-side tracks sound excellent. Though whether any buyers will listen to it themselves is a different matter!

It really depends on what your audience wants. 

Originally one of my bands made decision to only release our songs as singles for download and streaming, and while this strategy has been successful for the most part, we've spent the last 2 years being bombarded by requests at gigs for a "proper" album release on CD which is what most post-punk/goth bands seem to sell. Therefore this is what we are working on.

My other band sold out of our most recent album on CD during last year's mini tour. When the few copies that are left of the two previous albums are gone, our audience will have to wait until the next one is written, recorded and released - right now we have 4 songs complete.

As for vinyl. I still have over 300 copies of The Terrortones album. Everything was selling really well (I have just a few copies of the 3 previous releases left) right up to the point where Mr Venom became too ill to do any more gigs, and since then we have sold almost nothing. As a result, I'm very reluctant to invest the kind of money required for vinyl again.

19 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Never!

😁

No thread where the word "record" is used will be complete without Big Red saying it's an inferior format!!

😆

Even as an artist I'm conflicted about the advantages of vinyl.

Part of me says that if this is the format that our audience wants to buy, then we should consider releasing out music on it. However it's massively expensive compared with putting out the album on CD. When I last looked I could get 2000 digipack plus 8-page booklet CDs for the same price as 500 12" albums in a single sleeve. And even if I looked at the price for 500 of each format, the savings made by putting the album out on CD would buy us a considerable amount of additional time in the studio, and that's where I'd rather be spending my money.

And that's not taking the practicalities into account like the fact that no-one in either of my bands has anything to play the test pressings on and there is no way I could contemplate producing vinyl without hearing and approving test pressings.

Additionally the compromises in the running order for vinyl would mean that the track we'd like to end the album on won't sound as good as it could if placed at the end of side 2, whereas there are no restrictions like that for digital formats.

I don't like vinyl. IMO it's an inferior format. I do like the bigger packaging, but only if the design actually makes proper use it.

Personally, I would only buy something on vinyl if it was unavailable in any digital format, and I certainly wouldn't queue for the privilege.

TBH the best way to get exactly the bell sound you want is to sample it. 

What is this for? A recording or live use?

Is it a free-form intro or does it need to be synchronised to certain points in the song and in time with the other instruments.

On 15/04/2024 at 23:38, alyctes said:

Can anyone suggest an effect which would simulate a bell?  Does it need a synth and/or sample, or is there something I could buy off the shelf?

Thanks

What sort of bell?

There's a wide gap in sound between what's on a cat's collar and Big Ben.

1 hour ago, dannybuoy said:

Personally I can’t stand clicking through menus on multi-fx. I’m a hands-on-knobs guy. This looks new one from Boss looks cool however:

https://www.boss.info/us/products/me-90b/

No MIDI. 

You need to paint it black though...