paulears

I thought the link would take me to a scam artiste website where crazy prices are charged for questionable products, but to my surprise, it's a sensible website charging sensible money for professional products - and considering how much some of the connectors cost, the made up ones are the kind of price that I'd buy rather than make myself! Impressed, and I shall bookmark it!

done but VERY strange questions and lots of assumptions that made answering quite tricky. Like pro or semi-pro. I'm a professional, making all my income from music and performing arts, but because I do more than just play bass that makes me a semi-pro????

What you get from China is very simple. Value for money. Of course there are production problems - the materials may be poorer. Chinese alloys can corrode quite badly. Some sheet material is very soft compared to a US or UK version. People do not build them, they assemble them and probably do not even know what they are making - so soldering is variable, occasional dry joints, poorly centred screws - that kind of thing. I had a guitar with a bolt on neck, that had used the wrong screws and arrived with a detached neck - the screws were 10mm too short! I've had great success with their kit - the products do the job very well - there's the occasional snag, but I can live with that!

Isn't playing songs in a different style just part of the fun? Back in the 60s, few of the artistes wrote their own songs, they just played other people's giving them a bit of a spin to their own style. We just added one song to our set list that the Beachboys did, but here in England, it's a Cliff Richard song - it has a new bit in the middle and is quite different style wise, and it's hard to unlearn a song you know so well, but it's just part of the job. If you like being in the band - stay in the band and grow a bit. Have fun!

We've lost perspective here. Our personal opinions are based on what we like, so in a way we are least able to view it objectively. Me, I dont like genesis output before the current lineup and I like the very tracks many hate, that's fine. From my experience working for TV, I have never seen a contract that guarantees any edit timings, and maybe much of hacketts material was cut because he simply didn't say useful things, good or bad. Until they speak, who knows what they'll say. Did it spin certain areas? Of course, that's what programme making is all about. Was it unfair to any? No I don't think it was. It was nice they included banks and rutherford's comments on how they viewed being second line, perfectly understandable. I bet Hackett didn't refuse his fee!

Anyone who leaves a band that does well without them is entitled to feel a bit miffed, who wouldn't, but in this example, what got me was that the Hackett and Gabriel era was such a long time ago, we've forgotten exactly how much time has passed, so on a timeline, their period is tiny. The tracks mentioned are truly ancient. I saw the band twice live, that's all, and the first time without Hackett and Gabriel was 37 years ago! Does anyone in their forties remember the Beatles first drummer, or quo's bass player etc etc? Die hard fans do, but I'd bet many people who like genesis perhaps don't even remember them having a different line up to the current one. Far too long ago, and hacketts style was kind of 'of that age'

I'm really sorry - but I have never understood how this works? Antique dealers of it to add (illegal) extra value, because people think distressed condition equates to age, and age in an antique equates to extra value. In a guitar, unless the instrument has a history, then a good condition old guitar always outsells a wrecked one. So it's down to image? Is it cooler to play a really worn guitar? I guess it might be. What I do note is an excellent distressing job, that looks very real - so I can appreciate the effort put in. I'd just rather play a new looking one myself.

The Muddy Waters clip is an example of how sloppy timing can become a feature. Who can tell who is actually 'right'. It's a mess, but it has a style and that is what makes it good. Timing wise, if you looked at that on a sequencer and tried to make sense of it you'd fail miserably. Luckily, most music is much tighter (but better?? depends) The worse music I've heard is that played by military bands trying to be 'cool'. I've got one lovely example. One track is the Police Academy March, and it sounds really great and tight, just like the movie version. However, another track is Michael Jackson's Thriller, and their amazing locked in sense of rhythm wrecks it completely. They can't swing, because it's just not how they play. Excellent technical musicians. Every crotchet is a crotchet, exactly, and two quavers are exactly the same as one crotchet, but it sucks musically. I've been working on a classical music project today with a concert pianist who just discovered Cubase. I've had to stop him looking at the screen and micro shifting each note to a grid line. He plays to a click, and is horrified to see how his timing is in his words, dreadful. It took a while to explain that real people do play before and after the beat divider. I convinced him to only use that screen when he HEARS a mistake, and real people don't have a metronome. For me, the Muddy Waters is too loose, and the military band too tight - but preference is individual.

I've become a convert to IEMs, and often wear them not even plugged in because the sound level is so much nicer. What I don't like though is not being able to hear people's voices - when it's noisy, and I don;t have them in, I can hear the guitarist when he shouts at me, but when I have them in, even unplugged, it's more difficult. It's funny to NOT hear my ears whistling after a gig. If I ever have to do a show with wedges and no gizmos in my ears, the whistles afterwards take longer and longer to clear - and I have a couple of very quite permanent ones now.

Never, ever, insult an entire audience for one idiot - unless you are a comedian who does heckling as part of the act and is good at it - you just come across as a bit of a sh*t. Rise above it and ignore it - always. NEVER react, because getting one up on one idiot never makes a musician look good. I play in a tribute, but I'm also a production manager for a 1400 seat venue, and when a band doing a show there did something similar - and had a row on stage between themselves because the lead singer was an idiot - the first thing I did was cross off a prospective date next year, phone the agent up and tell him what they were like, and make sure that two other venues they were touring to found out what happened. The grapevine works very well - for or against bands. Looks like for you, this band's gone!

When I was 17, I had a Japanese Strat copy. I [s]wanted[/s] needed a real Strat. Two years later I bought one, on HP - with my old one as a part-exchange. It took me another year to realise the copy was a nicer guitar, and was easier to play, and suited my playing style. I could never get the Strat to be totally happy with the lighter strings I liked, and the tremolo mechanism never worked quite as well, or had the right adjustment, no matter how hard I tried. I eventually started to collect guitars, and the Strat, while pretty, and unworn, get played rarely! I'm a recent convert to a Jazz Bass, but the first on-stage ding to the headstock really hurt! My old bass was tired and a bit tatty. The audience don't even notice. Many can't even spot the difference between a guitar and a bass!

I hated gigging for 30 years! I loved playing, in the orchestra pit, maybe as a backing band, or playing to clicks - I loved depping, turning up and playing whatever was in front of me - plus the studio stuff. However, I got nothing from being in a band - I just didn't like it at all. Then, in a rash moment - I volunteered to be in my long term friend's tribute band. No idea why I did it. I love it, and really can't remember why I didn't like it before? However I don't get the rush many people seem to, and while I enjoy it while it's happening, when it's over, it's over. I can't remember many of the places we've been to, and it's just a bit of a blur. I read about people coming off stage and being on a natural high and exhausted. I come off stage happy, but just want to pack my gear and go. I'm a bit odd, I think.

Back in 1976 I got a fretless gig playing in virtual darkness for six weeks. I wish these gizmos had been available then. I actually filed marks into the side of the binding. Ruined the resale but I still have it. Never was a nice sounding bass, ended up sounding and looking bad!

I think the danger of memory v actuality is a potential issue. The Monty Python Arena show is a good example. The die-hard fans loved it, while new people, never having seen it before, compared it to other current comedy and couldn't understand it at all. Terrible acting, poor memories, and although following the original, more like a average tribute band, rather than the originals. Kate Bush's revues are a bit similar, but luckily she's still weird enough to interest new fans too, unlike Python.

Oldies but goodies! I've been a fan of Judie Tzuke since around the same time, and always go to the shows when she tours, and it's become a very personal thing between her and the fans - she pops up and asks for suggestions for new venues, and people suggest them, and they happen - she's been doing a song club for ages where we cough up for the CD price, and then she sends them out as downloads as they are recorded which is a great idea. Long live the oldies!

I guess that those that make their living from music won't see it as a good thing. If music is your hobby - that is fine. If a venue converts from paying the bands to them playing for free, that's somebodies living that has taken a nosedive. It isn't just music, it's society in general. If people start to get anything for free, it's devalued, and to a degree, worthless. If a hobbyist gardener started offering to do people's gardens in the area for free, what about the people who do that as a job? The American trend for businesses to get their entertainment for nothing is bad news for those who would write down "musician" on a loan form. People download illegal music, because it's perceived as free, and just 'music' - nothing to worry about. Playing for free because you want to do it is fine, but you playing for free INSTEAD of paying the usual bands is bad.

I do get this, but we all aspire to be better than others and to get better individually too, don't we? Even if it's a hobby, it would be good to be appreciated. Most of the clients we work with try to save money - that's business, but some just push too far. Some are kind and provide food and even some drinks. Others charge you for water, make you change in a toilet, and make you park the van miles away. The idea of playing in a venue that are taking advantage is what gets me. Play for free for fun but doesn't watching the owner stick cash into the till make you cross?

If you give away your 'worth' then you are spreading the problem. If band ABC play for free, then the venue expect XYZ to do the same, and it's a downwards spiral. I liked the comment where security people at the venue get paid, and so do the bar staff. I like the musicians union stance on charity work. You get paid the same as if it was a normal gig. when you get the money, you can, if you wish, give it to charity - and many do. The point, however, is that you get paid for working. Working for free, and bringing your mates along is just you lining somebody else's pockets - who's making the money? Not the musicians. It devalues what we do. Doing a gig at a posh venue and being charged for food really gets me too - especially when they charge the band the same as the public.

It's a horrible scummy US system that is leaking in over here. If your band are worth hearing, they're worth paying. Bands are not some commodity that should be traded. We have a full price. We have a bottom price below which none of us consider our effort balances out economically. We will do freebies when we consider it worth while to us all. Playing in a venue who really don't want you, just want the place with people in it is unrewarding and just something we won't ever do. We get loads of enquiries from our web site and when they say we're expensive, they often say their budget is maybe 20% of what we quote. It's unrealistic, but understandable. To be asked to do it for nothing stinks of exploitation. If you want to do the gig, that's fine, but remember that that client is NEVER EVER going to pay you the going rate in the future. You played for marbles once, and they'll assume you will do this all the time.

Isn't the problems we have whenever this subject is raised that there are two aspects - the physics, which is pretty well absolute and the magic 6dB people often quote. The other aspect is perceived loudness, and that's completely variable because loudspeakers couple together. Look at a line array, they speakers combine in one direction so they can produce a beam that is very wide, but not very high. The loudness isn't wasted, it's directed. So depending on how your two drivers, or cabinets are combined means the output, that from one driver would be a cone of sound, becomes a squashed cone. aligning them vertically makes the beam wider, but not spreading as much vertically. So if you stand in one spot, it will seem louder - because it is. If you have two cabs side by side - the cone shape is distorted the other way - it's less wide, but taller. The issues with impedance and solid state and valves just cloud the issue - Watts and impedances just being employed in different ways due to the electronics differences. It's perhaps made worse by the way specs are produced. 500W into 4 Ohms and 250W into 8 Ohms etc - this gives the impression extra power suddenly appears by magic. I like to use my own experience in a venue we look after. By amp power rating I had 12KW of PA permanently in the building - which was in fact 2 almost identical systems. My band needed a PA urgently one day, so I took one system out, leaving them 1 6KW system. Apart from maybe half an inch on the master faders, nobody noticed!

I was scratching my head on this one. I remembered the girl I saw with Jeff Beck but had to google it to find her name and then somebody mentioned Suzy Quatro. Sadly, I can't name any others without more Googling. That's not right really, is it?

I've never been able to play with a pick, but my nails are tough, and on the songs that a pick would be best for, I pretend to hold a pick, finger shape wise and use my nail, with my thumb pressing firmly against the side of my first finger. I can't imagine not being able to use my fingers, the variety of different things you can do with them, I'd really miss.

wet wipes! I just read that and realised how many I got through - and no idea who's they were that I used. Defo on my next list. Other useful stuff is a torch, and extra stands for guitars - often nowhere to put them down.

If you have specific needs, especially monitor needs - make sure they know in advance, and remind them nearer to the gig. Earlier in the list is actually better, because over-runs haven't yet started to squeeze setup time. We're a tribute band, and our music is fun and light, and we like people dancing about and happy. If we are scheduled to close the event, we actually don't like it much, because sometimes they have a heavy but popular music band on before us, and it doesn't suit. The other thing with being nearer the end is that over-runs mean you may have less setup, and a noisy and keen crowd urging you to get on and play - faffing with monitor levels and other tweaking is frowned on, even if you really need it. If you haven't played a festival before, it's great fun - because you can see everyone's eyes - something you don't get playing indoors where apart from the front row, everyone is in the dark. I love playing festivals in the daytime. It's not so 'theatrical' the lights doing very little, but the atmosphere works for me. I hope you have a great time. Oh - and you can get very wet, if the roof leaks! Two minutes after we finished, the heavens opened and it poured, getting the van packed in the rain, across the mud, in pitch darkness isn't quite so rock and roll!

Four hours! Our longest shows are 2 x 60 minutes, but 2 x45 far more common, or like this weekend, just a 60 minute set. The MU, not that many belong any more, would actually do a 3 hour max, while actors get a 4 hour max. We couldn't keep it up for that long anyway. We all sing, so we'd have no voices left to do a four hour stint. Money would have to be seriously good for me to consider doing that much work!