Zenitram

Kewl. So is he the actor on stage, playing live, or the muso in the pit, playing the other bits that need playing? Your friend, that is. And yes I wasn't very clear myself; I was referring above to non-muso shows where a character happens to play an instrument for a bit. But then, that can also be played live (by the actor, I mean) sometimes. So, er, it depends. Shows with characters who are musicians, well, it seems to be mainly live, backed up by the band in the pit, to give it oomph. And even the singing is recorded sometimes. That high note in Phantom is on tape, for example, in case the actress can't hit it on the night. Anything with lots of dancing and singing at the same time will generally be on a click with pre-recorded vocals (belting stuff out and making it intelligible, while busting a gut dancing about on stage like a loon, eight times a week, isn't practical).

Oh yes, it has to have a "live" band, but that means the band in the pit, off stage (usually). But the fact there's someone on stage strumming a guitar (or whatever) doesn't mean that's what you can hear. It's more than likely (as in very, very likely) that it's the guitarist in the pit doing the actual playing.

Does Jersey Boys advertise itself as having a live band, though?

[i]Once[/i] is also a show with proper actor/musicians performing. I haven't seen it, but it's supposed to be AMAZING.

A great "muso" show to watch is The Commitments, where there's a tricky balance between the band starting out a bit crap, but still being pleasing enough to sit and watch/listen to, and to have them progress as they improve. They're backed up in the pit by pros, but the chaps on stage do play live (most of the time) (and with help). The MD is a friend of mine. And the guy playing Declan, or whatever his name is, is just INCREDIBLE. He practically delivers up his innards each night on stage, he takes it that far. A nutter.

West End musicians dep in and out of shows so much (they have easily the best contractual arrangements out of anyone in musical ttheatre) that they never release the names of the "official" band, as there's absolutely no guarantee they'll be the ones playing.

I just gave the bass to the shop and let them worry about which nut to use. It's only a bit of plastic. If it's not right, it can come out again.

I took my defretted bass to my local guitar shop, and they charged me a tenner, all in. It's fine. Edit: to put a new nut in, that is. And yes it's very very low. The strings are almost touching the fretboard.

Right click on an image. Click on "View image". A new window or tab should open. Copy the resulting URL. Then do as I said above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odX4yVa8vXk

[$img]url of jpeg here, no spaces, and remove the dollar signs I've used to make the code show up[$/img]

Recent purchases: [b]E-mu Proteus 2000[/b]. 40 quid. Amazing, amazing little thing, considering it's nominally a ROMpler. But it can do so much. You could write whole tracks with it, with some very twisted noises. Countless filter types with silly made-up names. And knobs to control it, right there on the front, with a matrix for 12 controls. Yet it looks so [i]boring[/i]. Like a middle manager in a cheap machine-washable M&S suit. [b]Korg Prophecy[/b]. 120 quid. Wow. Mental mono. It's like... like an eccentric maths genius wrongly locked up in an asylum, or something. Looks like a 90s spaceship. [b]Novation Ultranova[/b]. 150 quid (new!). Very smooth and sophisticated, and seemingly rather polite. I've yet to delve much, but it's extremely routable (20 virtual patches, routing anything to anything), so I imagine it can go nuts as well. And it's an audio interface. And an Automap thingie. And bus powered. Yet it looks like a toy. Weird.

MS-10 prices aren't that high, around £350 to £400 for a really good one. In line with Ktmman's £10 bargain, I got my old MS-20 for free. It badly needs a service though. In that it's stopped working. Edit: hang on, I got the wrong end of the stick. No one mentioned an MS-10. It was the £10 thing that confused me.

[quote name='timmo' timestamp='1401469855' post='2463996'] If you get electrocuted from a dodgy fake, where do you go ? [/quote] To ground?

Zose craezzee Fhrench!

Is it significant that he was French?

It's also easy enough to convert an old acoustic drumkit into an electronic kit, for practically no money, if you can stand a bit (but not much) of drilling, screwing and soldering. The trigger bits are just those cheap little round piezo things. My kit has mesh drum heads with a piece of yellow foam from a kitchen scourer jammed under the head, with the piezo under the foam. That's all that is required. The piezo is wired to a jack. The jack leads go to a trigger box (Alesis Trigger IO), and that goes USB into the computer.

And Jobeky. And ddrum. And some others. It's about what pads/drums/mesh heads/cymbals the drummer feels comfortable playing (the hi-hat particularly, in my experience, as it's the most technically challenging thing for edrums to replicate), and about where the drummer is comfortable getting sounds from. VST is so, so, so much better than the modules that come with kits, but you are open to computer failures, glitches, etc. It depends on budget, technical know-how, whether a computer can be involved, whether you want them to look like real drums (Jobeky, for example) -- could the dummer play edrums but real cymbals? Is that a possibility? Etc.

So how easy are these things to make tuneful sound come out of? I understand midi very well in terms of synths, but I don't understand these things at all. What do you do, in terms of blowing, and in terms of making it play notes that are in tune? And do they work with any midi sound source? Or do you need a special synth/software/sound-producing device at the other end?