Silvia Bluejay

All the best, and keep us posted. 🤞🙏

It's absolutely true, and we hate it.

We use a bit of compression on all channels on our live set for both bands, but especially Damo And The Dynamites. I started from the default settings recommended for each instrument, then trusted my ears while adjusting the knee, attack, release etc. I'm not an expert, so it helps that the tablet allows me to move graphic representations as opposed to having to enter numbers. Yes, I've sort of learned the recommended numerical values, but I'd rather not have to be thinking of those while I'm mixing the band live, on the fly, in a windy car park or in a crappy room with poor acoustics that always sound different from the previous time we were there.

Over 30 years ago, when I lived in Italy, an engineer was someone who had a degree in Engineering (mechanical, chemical, electronic, whatever). Anyone else was a technician. That person behind the sound desk was therefore called, in show credits etc. 'Tecnico del suono'. In this country I've always noticde that everybody's an engineer. For instance, I book an 'engineer' to come and fix my washing machine here in the UK. If I had tried to do that in Italy 30 years ago I'd have been laughed off the phone. Perhaps it's a bit like the idiotic fashion of calling all women 'ladies', as if being called a woman is an insult? Perhaps being 'only' a technician is seen as an insult? I don't know. So what am I? The sound girl? The sound woman? Or God forbid, the sound lady? 🤦‍♀️ I have a couple of uni degrees but neither is in engineering, and really, I'm not fussed whether I'm described as the sound engineer or the sound technician.

Where I come from, if a woman marries Mr X, she'll be Mrs X to friends, family and teachers of her children's school, but always keep her name in her official documents, alongside something along the lines of 'married to X'. My mum never had to legally change her surname for any reason. The Spanish are even better. If I understand correctly, each spouse keeps their surname and they give both surnames to their kids. 👍

Silvia Bluejay is my nom de plume which I use for journalism, PR and music-related work. I haven't changed my real name, but I use it only in official documents. I've always been appalled at the very idea of a woman being forced by law to change her surname when she marries, and I wouldn't have done that even if I had got married in my twenties. Nowadays, instead, it's a choice, which is fine. I know a few men who took their wife's surname rather than vice versa. That's cool.

The new subforum is under Items Wanted, as per link below. There may be teething problems at first, but it mostly seems to work. https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/22-items-wanted-no-trades/ https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/119-double-basseub-items-wanted-no-trades/

Primark 'body bronzer', around £4. (No, I have no idea what a body bronzer is.)

Sound engineer then! 👍

You could suggest she picks up one of your basses and learns to play too...

Wearing specs is the bane of video work, on both sides of the camera! The reflection of a bright spotlight is even worse than that of an LED ring light. Usually the spec wearer in front of the camera is asked to lower their specs on their nose a little, or switch to contacts if they can.

Do you mean Youtube stuff, or green screen video, or band promo video? During lockdown we did a series of green screen videos which we lit with some of those LED ring lights which are currently quite cheap. They are dimmable, and you can use them with a proper camera and not by putting the camera in the centre of the circle, like you can with a mobile phone. You can simply have the camera on a tripod and direct one, two or three ring lights towards the subject(s). They don't dazzle and produce soft shadows. We have four of these, for instance, plus a smaller one that can change colour, if we need to add some interest to a dull background. Obviously not suitable for proper band promo videos, unless you are deliberately going for the home-made look.

Best place for it - you can't put that big violin under your chin, can you? 😱

High enough to reach all the frets, low enough for the top horn not to hit or squish my right breast (I play lefty). Yup, gender-specific setup. Heh. 🙄😎

No, no, no! Get your trolling right. It's Paul McCartney and/or, or vs., Mark King. AND only a sunburst Precision with tort pickguard. And Jaco only needed four. Not good for metal. There you go.

I've seen too many unpredictable things happen to instruments at gigs where I've helped out with photography and/or sound. Straps and/or straplocks irretrievably giving way, guitar jack sockets suddenly developing a terrible hum, strings breaking, machine heads becoming stripped, guitars and basses hitting the floor, cables being pulled out of speakers, in the process breaking the speakon or plug... I could go on. We gig with as many spares as we can carry. Regarding being disliked by the sound engineer if you have more than one instrument, well, it's the sound engineer's job to make you sound good no matter how many different instruments you play. He or she is not meant to sit there staring at his/her phone and complain if s/he has to do some work! For Damo And The Dynamites I have to change the level and EQ on the bass channel every time @Happy Jack moves from bass guitar to double bass and back, and I also have to change some settings on Damo's guitar channel when he breaks a string in his main guitar (at least once every gig) and quickly switches to his backup, which sounds different. The frontman/guitarist in The Junkyard Dogs gigs with three guitars, all different, with one set up for slide. But adjusting it all is perfectly feasible on the fly at a gig.

Pah, all this when for once I wasn't actually wearing a mask at all! (What with us being outdoors etc.) It has also fought off several attempts by other bassists to buy it. No, it's NOT for sale. 😉

Next time, hopefully, we'll also be able to record a stereo DI track directly from the desk, which we couldn't do on Sunday. That will give us the sound of exactly what we are sending to the PA, but without picking up the punters' orders being barked at the waiter, the kids' screaming, the noisy motorbikes roaring past. etc. etc. which inevitably happens with the cameras.

However, it's somewhat less than good for metal.

You can get yourself tested. The 'passports' have so far been suggested (by the Govt, not the hysterical press) only for mass events such as football matches, sold-out theatres and cinemas, and similar. Nobody has - as yet - mentioned requiring a Covid passport to go to the pub, and presumably that covers also playing music in a pub.

Without turning this into a spurious debate about 'what's really inside these vaccines' and similar crap, I am one of those people who has strong reasons to believe they can't have the vaccine due to allergy. (I am awaiting a call from the hospital to carry out tests to ascertain.) Whenever vaccine passports or similar have been mentioned, the metaphorical small print of the news articles always explains that having taken a recent negative test, and in some cases having had Covid recently, would be just as valid. That's in order to avoid being discriminatory to people like me, to pregnant women, and to people with other conditions. In my opinion, most of the insistence on 'Covid passports' (which I think is the term the Govt is actually using, as opposed to 'vaccine passports') is aimed at having as many people as possible panic and get the jab, which is the main point of the exercise. The more of us are inoculated, the closer we get to that fabled herd immunity - new, vaccine-resistant strains permitting. All this caboodle may very well end up being quietly dropped, except perhaps for foreign travel.

From what I understand, the UK Bass Guitar Show has nothing to do with the former LBGS, now UK Guitar Show. But if the latter really has relinquished any pretence to be catering to bass as well as six-string guitar, I'm happy that an alternative is being offered. I won't be attending, though.

LOL I'm female, don't do Precisions or 4-stringers, and hate cats. I'm with @Maude on this... 😉

My head hurts...

Anyone mentioned Metallica/The Four Horsemen? Although they swapped instruments only occasionally.