Silvia Bluejay

There are lefty uprights in our Marketplace occasionally, which you could use to try how you feel about vertical long scale before thinking about a DB if appropriate. I first of all bought a cheapo, righty, Harley Benton electric upright and turned it lefty (it has a solid body, so no need to mess around with soundpost and bass bar, I just had to file the nut and the bridge, which I was OK with doing myself). I played that for a bit, to get the feel, went "Oh Yes!", then bought a more upmarket electric upright (an NS Design NXT 5 string), then an Eminence (it's fully acoustic like a DB but smaller) and never looked back!

More lefty DB GAS from Thomann! 😱 😂

@Richard Jinman, remember to use the *correct* plucking technique. Plucking a DB as if it was an EB is a recipe for cramps, blisters and disaster. @Oomo, although I have never actually played a lefty DB, they do exist. Perfectly acceptable semi-acoustic or fully electric uprights in lefty flavours also exist, and are in fact relatively common. Being a lefty does not mean you'll never have the pleasure to fall head over heels in love with an upright and take your GAS journey in that direction. Don't ask me how I know...

OMG!! Did anyone remember how to use them, and what they're for? Did you sanitise them thoroughly before touching them? 😱😱😱

The very first time I did that was in early Sept 21, a few days after the official introduction of Concur to Greene King. I seem to remember that one of the steps requested less info, or info to be entered within that step in a slightly different sequence from what happens now. The pub we were dealing with had initially no idea what to do! But we all worked together and got to the end of the process reasonably quickly.

My impression is that pubs are also very confused about how it works. Also, I think the requesting/invoicing process itself changed between the first time I used the system last year and the second time I had to use it this year. We have at least one more gig paid via Concur, so I'll keep this thread up to date if relevant.

@Glyn plays bass, check out what happened at our previous bashes. 2019 bash 2018 bash 2017 bash

We used to have a website for one of our bands because we started it when social media was just a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye. We got rid of it several years ago and never regretted doing so. The bookings we got through it, even before social media, could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. I'm talking about covers bands. I strongly believe that originals bands definitely should have a good, up to the minute website, as well as presence on all existing social media, and work hard on all of them. For both our current bands, we find that Facebook (for those who are on it) and Lemonrock (for landlords/club managers and social media refuseniks) work absolutely fine for bookings and communication. Our rock and roll band has accounts not just on FB and Lemonrock but also on Insta, Twitter, Soundcloud, Vimeo and obviously Youtube. The only thing I refuse to touch with a bargepole is TikTok, which is in any case used mostly by the wrong target market for the band, so it's not worth bothering with at this stage.

We only make live video - we use no studio shot footage at all, with the only exception of Lockdown-time Green Screens on the band's originals for their EP.

Unfortunately being filmed on a crappy mobile phone is now a fact of life. As you say, landlords tend to do that, so they can livestream on Facebook, and that's as much for their own advertising as the band's. And if they do that, their punters feel free to do the same. There's no stopping the trend at this stage. Only at a wedding - your own - can you perhaps have the temerity to ask people not to film; even in that case, though, they may disobey, or secretly think you're bride/groomzilla. Our solution is to have our own videos of each performance, and flood the internet with those! At least in the case of the rock n' roll band, entering its name in Google, or on Facebook, Youtube or Instagram, will bring up the official pages where we post our videos of often the same songs as streamed by the punters - plus many others! - but with better quality audio recording and multiple camera angles. Also, we post the whole songs as opposed to snippets, which should get the algorithms to favour them when creating the results page for a search.

I've been reading both the Hate Gigging thread and this one, and not been sure where to post! I've now decided to post here. I would hate to gig in a band, because I really don't like performing in public and would never have fun while doing that. I really don't do being the centre of attention, even in those cases where the entire pub is ignoring the band - it's still too anxiety-inducing for my taste. However, I do love gigging in front of the stage, not on it, as the sound engineer and camera operator. I enjoy our days spent assembling new rigs to suit each place we take our bands to, setting up the instruments and the 'scenes' on the mixing desk, testing the lot in the studio, and even setting up and breaking down at the gig (with some exceptions). I also like gig-getting and doing the social media and marketing. As many have said, the real point of the exercise is to allow punters (or club members) to dance and have fun for a few hours. In those places where that doesn't happen, it's really not worth the effort, but you need to try them at least once to identify them, and cross them off your list!

Except that Invapay is now deceased and SAP Concur has been chosen by Greene King as their replacement. There is a dedicated Concur thread on here somewhere.

Best thread title of the month.

I haven't had that yet. Check for any misplaced decimal points/commas, rogue extra zeros, spurious spaces between numbers and similar. If all else fails, get in touch with them, they were helpful when I did that for a different problem.

We did that for years, then we bought the roller banner and decided that the LED bar light I started placing at the bottom of it, shining upwards, was enough of a bother for our poor drummers, who have to sit right next to it or, when they're lucky, in front of it.

We have three bright Par cans, each with big LEDs, which we try to use at every gig. Similar to this. We also always have an LED bar placed upright at the bottom of the band's roller banner. Like this one, but shorter. If the stage is large, we have two additional, slightly less bright LED Par cans that we can use. Since all of those lights are too bright to shine directly on to the band, I place them upright and use the ceiling to reflect and diffuse the light.

Um, the acoustics there must have been interesting... And there was I thinking you had started a thread about places such as, say, The Red Lion in Brentford, the London Astoria or similar...

Very true. However we're finding that we get lots of compliments from the more discerning members of the audience about the sound and the balance of the band; that has to do with us having a soundperson our front, and also getting the right mix so that the instruments don't fight each other in the same sonic space. Those punters who have no idea about good sound or balance - i.e. the majority - and only drunkenly yell for Johnny B Goode (in our case), don't realise that they are enjoying the gig so much because the sound is perfectly mixed, balanced, EQ'd to the room and exactly the right volume for the room and number of people in it. That's totally fine by us.

Sheldon is an absolute legend. If he humanly could, he would spend 30 minutes talking to each and every visitor to his stand (or BD's stand in this case), and that would include when he exhibits at NAMM and when he was with BD at the LBGS, both very busy events. At one of the past LBGSs he also gave an excellent luthiery masterclass on (tone)wood and the physics of making a bass, and spent time to continue talking to us after he had officially finished. I have the impression that he genuinely enjoys being with fellow low-enders.

Very depressing to read your reports of what the show turned out to be like. I was hoping that we'd again be able to have a proper bass show in England, now that we seem to have lost the London one, but clearly this is not the way forward. Watch out for the poor turnout being used as the excuse to axe bass-centric shows. 😒

Weird - I'm not given an option to add an address if I click on the field for allowing email notifications. In theory, your page already has your email address, because you can't log in to FB without one. Perhaps that's why it doesn't work? Incidentally, you are using the 'new' style for pages, i.e. the style that malfunctions (of course...). I had to roll back the change on one of my pages and go back to 'old' style for all of them, because it was such a disaster. 🙄

I think you need to click on Manage on the top right hand corner. The resulting screen should look more or less like this: Scroll to the bottom of the Manage Page column and choose Settings, then Notifications, and you'll end up on the screens in my previous post.

I do receive notifications on my main pages, and only on the website, not on the phone or email. This is what it looks like at my end on the computer. Alternatively, you can download the Facebook Messenger app on your phone, and it will allow you to switch between your personal inbox and that of your pages, and will ping for each new message on any of the accounts.

You don't need anything at all to register, except give them your bank details to pay money in. If you earn enough from music to pay tax, then it's up to you to self-assess - Event UK has it in its terms that it's a payment bureau, not an employer and therefore has nothing to do with tax.

Signing up is no big deal. I've been a member for years but never, ever got a gig out of replying to their emails. We have gigs at a couple of pubs that pay through them later in the year, and that will be the first time we have any dealings with them.