Silvia Bluejay

@stewblack, I remember this particular night as being an effing nightmare with connections to tablets and phones. Spot the culprits all over the marquee's roof... You can even see them flickering in the vid, as they were spooking the cameras as well! 😱

1 hour ago, stewblack said:

Hi. I'm having the weirdest issues with my X Air.

I use an external router (always have) and I have the official app, and the Mixing Station app installed on android phones, on android tablets and on a laptop.

I never know which of these devices (if any) will actually find and connect to the desk.

Last week an ancient Hudl I keep as back up connected first time, this week it just stuck on 'searching' but the laptop connected so it was ok. None of the other phones or tablets found the desk this week. 

No rhyme or reason, I never know which device will work, if any. 

Any ideas?

 

Off the top of my head:

a. The router might be going west

b. Interference. There are places where the connection is faultless throughout, and places where it's a constant struggle, and it's not the router's fault.

In addition to the actual WiFi routers in the venue, we found that WiFi printers may interfere, and LED lights (especially the decorative ones you can route all around marquees etc.) seem to have a bad effect on the connection too, when there are a number very close to the unit or even worse, when they're plugged into the same circuit or an adjacent socket. Unfortunately, unless you have a residency in a certain venue, there's no way of testing.

We are now using a Soundcraft Ui 24R and we've occasionally encountered similar problems, but to a far lesser extent.

Great to see you back, Yolanda! 🎵🎶💛

3 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

It wasn't any worse than BassChat but there were a few heated posts when some of the venues cancelled gigs at the last minute or refused to pay bands. Mac was trying to get the venues to join at the time so he obviously wasn't comfortable with that. I offered to be a moderator and I may have 'volunteered' a couple of other people like @skidder652003 as others who might have helped.

 

Coming from the not-for-profit sector I'm predisposed to think its a good way of organising a small venture like Lemonrock or BassChat. The people doing all the work can be paid the going rate for the job and volunteers can add value.  The collective nature of the enterprise means that in difficult times people are more willing to donate to keep something they love alive and thriving. It also offers a way of the organisation surviving when the initiating group moves on. 

I hear what you say, but he doesn't seem to have that approach even now, he's still the one who does most of the work, I don't think he has a large team around him, and those who are there are probably admin and perhaps a coder (Mac is the main coder still, as far as I know). When discussions and arguments arise in a forum about venues cancelling and/or not paying, the main potential problem is probably libel/slander and life's complicated enough without having to firefight stuff like that....

I think Mac had to close the discussion forum because of the increasing number of trolls and spammers, and he had no time to moderate it as well as running and improving the site itself.

You guys are correct re. Lemonrock being very much limited to, basically, London, Beds, Bucks, Berks and a bit of Herts. Fantastic resource if you're in or around those areas, pretty pointless otherwise.

Definitely worth googling to see if there are one or more equivalent websites/communities in your particular areas. You will obviously find a lot of agency type websites who only look for tribute and function bands and members for function bands' ever-rotating line-ups, and they cost a fortune to join, but there may be non-agency ones that more closely resemble Lemonrock.

Yes.

Re-post. @Happy Jack's toys. Nuff said - and I'm his missus.

@TimR - Snap! Some engineers never walk out front, they only look at the signal on their tablets or screens. In the past I have had to go and yell at them that, say, there were no backing vocals, or bass, or whatever, and at first they didn't believe me because the signal was there! There's one particular festival where the guys are lovely but really can't be ar$ed to work and we always sound cr@p....

@MB - Cheshire - When we have to use the venue/festival's sound engineers I go equipped with all sorts of Stage Plans and Tech Specs. I even stay in the vicinity of the desk, waving the relevant bit of paper in the guys' face when some drastic intervention is needed. But as above, most of these people try to do as little work as they can possibly get away with, once they've erected the stage and set up the PA, especially if they are part of the organising team. They know that bands won't complain, as doing so will kill their chances of playing on that stage again.

3 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

I play with a pick, I think a pick players nearly always cut through better live

True, but playing fingerstyle should not mean you sound muddy or don't cut through. It's all down to the sound engineer.

Just now, Dad3353 said:

If it's important to you sound, you'll need your own sound person. A generic sound person will do what he/she thinks is best for the occasion, taking into account many parameters. Some will have enough feeling, or experience, to do exactly what's required so that 'your' sound' comes across, but it can only be guaranteed if you bring your own. The band is responsible for the stage levels, the FOH person is responsible for the FOH sound. 'Bring your own' is the answer.
There's added benefits, as 'your' tech will know the repertoire, and can add or remove Fx such as del

You usually can't have your own sound engineer for your performance if it's an event organised by a pro team. They won't let you touch their equipment. We have done festival gigs with our own PA and in that case, yes, we sounded as good as ever because I already know what I'm doing.

Being a brash southern European, I have no crippling British politeness whatsoever with fellow sound engineers, so when we play outdoor festivals I tend to befriend the poor sods, who have to deal with engineering 3/5/15 or however many different bands in a day, introduce myself as our band's sound engineer and offer to make suggestions for the finer details in the mix. This is usually well received, although my suggestions are not always actioned on.

However, I always assume that they know best about the overall volume level of the PA - in theory they should have tested and adapted the system to the intended location and radius - so I've never made suggestions about that. For indoor venues we have to assume, being in London and the Home Counties, that their settings will have been checked with/approved by the local council etc. for excessive noise, and I probably wouldn't choose to interfere with that either, even just to ask to turn down.

I'm quite surprised to read that your festivals appear to have free reign on volume levels indoors. If that's the case, I totally agree with you, it would cause me to walk out even when I'm wearing my earplugs. Bass and bass drum in a live setting indoors should not produce too much low frequency, as it reverberates and makes the sound horribly muddy. The lower the frequency, the longer the waves, which need bigger rooms to sound acceptable. No wonder the bass players are desperately trying to cut through.

The sound engineers should reduce the volume and gain, up the mids and low mids, use the HPF properly and give everybody a break. (That obviously goes for the other instruments, of course, with their particular frequencies.)

3 hours ago, Doctor J said:

Anyone who has heard her sing in the last 5 years knows there'd be a lot more complaints if she did sing live. Get used to it. There is too much potentially compromising footage taken at gigs and instantly uploaded for all the jackals to pick at. It's too much of a risk to put on an actual live performance at that level anymore. Most of the starlets half her age do it too, it is the hallmark of "performing" now. It's complicated dancing and looking fancy, that's the show. The whine fetishists will always find something to give out about but if you want actual live music, don't go to see any pop music.

Singing properly while doing complicated and spectacular dancing for most of the show must be impossible - having to choose between doing one or the either, Madge clearly went for what she still excels at.

She never was the best singer in the world anyway, but that can be said of so many music stars. However, you're more likely to get away with that if you're male, not if you're female and over 50 and certainly not if you're Madonna.

Assuming the first gig was a cracker and we see no reason why the booker wouldn't chase us with their diary open, we suspect the following.

- We're judged to be great but too expensive and the booker/manager doesn't want to say

- The repertoire is too niche and the booker/manager is aware that their regulars are fickle, so next time there won't be any novelty value and far fewer punters.

- Another similar band is offering their services for less money (even if the booker/manager can afford us - they are going for the lowest price, not the best band)

- Power struggle within a club's commitee

Preposterous reasons we've been given:

- We were NOT deafeningly loud on the night, unlike the DJ we shared with. (We wouldn't have wanted to go back there anyway, due to the noise levels!)

- Booker/manager decided before even hearing us once that our genre would not go down well at his venue. (We finally persuaded him to try us and guess what, it went down a storm and we're getting re-booked!)

@Happy Jack may add to the list if I've forgotten something.

1 minute ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Follow the manage settings button. It's accessible from the Orange Tab.

Not at the time I posted it wasn't!

I think it might be less intrusive if it had been set up to slide out only when you hover/press on it, while simply appearing as a thin orange line at all other times.

What grates most is that, in any case, we haven't got complete control over the cookies we're having to put up with from this new, intrusive collaboration, so having constant access to a fundamentally unsatisfactory Privacy Settings panel looks very much like a joke being played on us.

3 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I bet many of the folks up in arms put up with far worse from Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. because they don't realise how much they are being cookied.

Not me. Strict Firefox and Adblock on everything, no Facebook, Amazon, Ebay etc. apps on my phone, no logging into anything via my social media. It's all actually far less inconvenient than those sites are trying to make you believe.

I share everybody's displeasure at the situation. We do not need Ezoic to ruin our enjoyment of this site.

My default Privacy panel on this site was almost completely unticked by default - which is OK - but had a few ticked items that can't be unticked - which is bad.

I have unleashed both Adblock Plus and Firefox against this plague, but I'm still feeling very uneasy.

Firefox:

Adblock Plus:

2 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

It just occurred to me that outside of BC and any band I might be in I very rarely have chats about music with anyone else, particularly women and never ever on any first dates I've been on. Does anyone else find the same?

LOL the last time I was single, in my mid-40s, music was my obligatory topic at dates. I don't mean I wanted my date to be an accomplished musician or able to discuss the finer points of musical composition, but music, as a player or as a listener, had to have some role in his life. No interest whatsoever in music? Next please, don't care if you look like/are worth as much as Brad Pitt.

If something is important to you, you do need a partner who can at least understand, but preferably fully share it, whatever it may be.

I'm now married to a musician and only a small number of my friends are non-musical. Even those I've known since childhood are fans of bands and sometimes go to concerts, so we talk music even if they may not share my own taste. It's rarer for me not to end up talking about music with someone than the opposite.

 

Plus one! : D

@Paul S, I may have been thinking about your solution, rather than a drumkit modification. Thanks for adding that info on here.

@Rosie C, @Paolo85, incidentally - and sorry if I sound prescriptive - with anything long scale and held vertically you should always use the proper double bass method of plucking and fingering. Never play an upright like a normal bass, your muscles and tendons will soon let you know that they're not happy. Hence, as you both note, the need for the damn thing to be comfortable to hold.

In theory I could get away with playing my NS NXT like an oversized bass guitar when the action is low, because it's been designed to basically play itself (like butter? Let's not go there!). However, I deliberately raise the action a bit and play it like a DB. Just to be safe.

@Paolo85, if you can get hold of the tripod from an NS Design (or similar) and adapt it, or even modify a tripod from a drumkit - as a BCer* once did IIRC - you can attach any cheap EUB to such contraption and simply have it stand up of its own accord with no effort or contortion required of either your plucking/bowing or fingering hand.

Some will say that the beauty of playing double bass is hugging the body of the instrument in order to hold it in the most comfortable position.

-- slightly OT --

My experience:

Since I'm so small that a 'proper' double bass would have to hold me upright, rather than vice versa, I have one of the abovementioned NS Designs (an NXT 5) and an Eminence. Neither, I'm afraid, would qualify as remotely 'cheap' as per your request. The former I simply couldn't afford to buy new now, as I did in 2011, and the latter is a present which, in any case, does need a spacer bracket; however, being slimmer and shallower than a DB, it's less hard to keep in place in a comfortable position, at least for me.

Good luck with your search, don't give up on playing upright.

* Can anyone remember who that was, or even better find a link to their thread?

Just now, wateroftyne said:

Who said anything about no way out?

 

 

Good. But I don't see any reason whatsoever to change the current state of affairs. 👍

Please don't default to most recent. That's exactly how I do NOT use the forum. If you prefer to add a setting that allows each user to choose their own default opening page when they log in, that's fine, but please don't impose such change on everybody with no way out.

I'm usually completely uninterested in what the latest threads are. I tend to either have a quick scan (with mod hat on) or go to my favourite threads, which I also follow by email.

While I see your point, guys, in that there will always be scope for tinkering with the exact positioning of the PA forum - and possibly others! - I think we can stop fretting (😉) for now and leave the subforum where Steve has put it. While the PA is definitely not an Other Instrument, it's usually made of (power) Amps and Cabs and speakers etc. For someone looking for PA talk, finding the forum now is a slightly more logical process than before. Let's see how it goes. 👍