Greg Edwards69

Look up frequency slotting. At the very least, put an hpf on the keys around 80-100hz. The low notes will still be there, they just won't have as much energy and keep them out of the subs, if there are any.

How did you get involved in that one, it looks a lot of fun (despite lack of dancers)? It would be a good one for us to do if they have a few bands on during the day.

Played for my Neice’s and nephew-in-law’s (is that a thing) wedding yesterday at the beautiful Creeksea Manor in Burnham-on-Crouch. Keen readers who may recall I had a particularly painful experience at last week’s gig will be pleased to to know this one went much, much better. You may also recall that last week was challenging due to personal reasons, that I have taken steps to address. As I was party of the wedding party for the day, I had to leave the other load in and do the majority of the setup. This massively helped me, not just my time being involved in the wedding celebrations, but also relieved some of the pressure I’ve been feeling lately with band stuff. So by the time the band had to make themselves scarce whilst the guest sat down for the wedding breakfast, most of the work was done. Just a case of plugging in my gear and a couple of mics afterwards and a quick sound check. Everything was still dialled in from last week, so soundcheck was quick and easy. The reception was a in a huge marquee, with a permanent DJ booth at the head of the dance floor, meaning the band were somewhat crammed in the corner, but still more space than we’ve had in some places. Usefully it also ment the soft drapes caught errant reflections and sounded great “straight out of the box”. Although it was quite a warm evening - somehow the thunderstorm the weather reports promised amounted to no more than a rumble and a couple of minutes of drizzle - but you could feel the mugginess in the air! Hazel, our dep co-lead singer for the night did a fantastic job, and worked the crowd well with Liam, our other singer. At one point they both got into the crowded dancefloor getting people to join in on Parklife which was a particular highlight. Another highlight was the bride’s brother sang Teenage Dirtbag (with my wife doing the girls bit in the middle). When the bride first asked us if he could do it ages ago I didn’t even know if he could sing. Turns out he can’t, but he’s very enthusiastic. Thankfully he was in time and more on less in key, but moreover, he love every minute of it and the crowd lapped it up. Two hours of rock, pop, party and cheese later we were done and knackered. I received a number of compliments from guests, including people who hadn’t seen us play before but had heard good things. So I’m glad we didn’t disappoint. A couple of people even said they were glad they had a good band as the DJ was rather lacklustre. Most importantly my Neice and new Nephew were over the moon with their day and evening, and I went to bed feeling a lot lighter in mood!

Yep. Exactly that. There are at least a couple of bands I know of that use a pair of 18-inch powered subs in the local pub circuit... and they use backline too! Sounds good, but overkill IMHO. (And yes, I do realise they have volume controls, so they don't have to be loud).

Just from purely personal experience and anecdotal evidence, I can see how bands might be louder than they were, maybe even just 15-20 years ago. A lot of bands like ours used to use modest backline to fill the room and a modest PA for vocals only. Whilst many bands have embraced modelling with silent stages and IEMs, the PA systems required for this are beefier and include subs to handle the full band, including micing up drums in a pub!. Not to mention, technological advances have made powerful PA systems more affordable. Whilst it makes things more consistent and arguably better sounding, we're capable of going a lot louder than we used to, and louder than we should do. In all likelihood, it's the subs that are causing the noise complaints these days.

Reading the article, it appears that it is aimed at new builds and new business only. I can't see mention of existing pubs and venues.

Thanks both of you. I really appreciate it. I have another gig this week that I’m leading on (my neice’s wedding), but after that I’m going to have to get the other to step up more. I need to speak to my boss too. I’m working on several massive projects at the moment. They’re doable, but just intensive, so not doing my mental health much good. Agreed to the second point. We’ve had a couple of technical rehearsals before, but the usual 4 hour slot just isn’t enough time to set up the full PA and drums and go through everything properly. I mentioned the other night about doing a longer all day session if we can in an appropriately sized room. It will make things much easier going forward if we have a better baseline to work from.

Difficult one for me on friday evening at the Cricketers in Westcliff. I'm not sure I was mentally prepared for it. For a start the wife and I were away for a couple of nights before for her birthday and a friends wedding (on the same day), and we got back the morning of the gig. We also had a dep females singer with us, covering a couple of gigs for our usual singer. Me and Liam (the other singer) got there in plenty of time, drummer was late, which is logistically challenging to set up a PA around if the drums are not there yet. One of the guitarists was held up on traffic so bad we wasn't sure if he was even going to make it, which would have meant drastically changing the set. Then the dep singer arrived and called us to open the gates - the pub manager had said no more cars in the pub's private car park at this point and to use the public car park over the road. I went outside to tell her only to be met with a very distressed singer saying she's split up with her partner and has everything she owns in the car and can't leave it in the public car park. Thankfully, the landlord understood and let her in. At this stage, I wasn't even sure if she was up for singing, but she insisted on seeing it through. So we finished setting up. Dep singer doesn't like IEM's so we set up a wedge that kept feeding back no matter what I did. really struggled with getting a good in-ear mix. It shouldn't really change by this point, but both singers were using different mics to what we're used to, do gain stages were all over the place. In the end, she said not to worry about the edge and she'll make do with the FOH speakers. Finally finished soundchecking 15mins after we're supposed to start playing - then the drummer says he can't hear his overheads. Getting rather stressed by this stage. Having a digital mixer should make setting up and sound checking a breeze, but we're lacking so much consistency lately with either gear or band members. Finally start playing, Two song in and I notice my E string is massively out of tune. Drummer also says (and he was right) that the bass sounded really 'subby'. Admittedly, I was trying out a new preset I've been using in rehearsals that seemed but, but it sounded really bassy in the room, despite having low cuts on the IR block, mixer bass channel and main mixer outs. I ended up enabling the global eq on my helix and adding another low cut around 85hz! Something definitely weird happening. Felt like we'd settled in after a few songs, until the dep singers wireless mic packed up and we hastily switched her to a wired mic during a song. Kept ploughing through and ended up having an 'okay' night. the heat didn't help matters either. It seemed to sap us all of energy. I was glad to be finished by the end of the night. I felt tired, under the weather and stressed all evening. I had a chat with a couple of my band mates and said I'm really struggling lately. It feels like I'm the one doing most of the work behind the scenes. I've got a lot on my plate with work and family - I have my widowed mother staying with us, over from spain for a few weeks, and I still don't feel like I've properly grieved after losing dad back in February. It's all getting a bit much. Mentally exhausted and overwhelmed - I need a holiday.

Sledgehammer is about the only one I regularly play in my band that has a prominent fretless bass line. But it sounds fine on fretted - no complaints so far! PS, I used to love playing "Wherever I lay my hat..." and "Tears in Heaven" at home when the mood took me. Beautiful lines.

I bought a fretless Warwick Corvette around 20-something years ago from the old Bass Centre in Wapping (I miss that place!). Proper German-made bass, with bubinga body and ovankol/wenge neck. Lovely instrument, but I just didn't play it as much as I wanted to (if that makes sense) - a fretted bass just works better for what I play. Not to mention it was damn heavy (about 14lb on the bathroom scales) I sold it a couple of years ago when money was getting a little tight with the wife on post-covid-complication-related-long-term sick. Every now and then I get the urge to get another fretless, but I don't need one - I'm trying to keep GAS at bay by only owning and buying gear I actually have a genuine use for (I know - crazy talk!). But if I ever do get another one, I'll save some money and get a Harley Benton or similar. I mean, it's not as if I'd have to worry about dodgy fretwork!

If you think about it, the MXR is effectively a combination of pedals as well, stuffed into a single pedal. The presets are effectively like snapshots on the helix - adjusting certain parameters at the press of a button. Admittedly, I use the presets on a Helix LT, with more footswitches available, which makes it easier to switch effects in and out. For most presets, I use a combination of stomp mode and snapshot mode, or sometimes both, using the control centre. I think it's worth persevering with the IMA synth presets, though; they are quite powerful and sound great, but they need tweaking to make them work for you and your particular performance preferences. Spending sometime setting up snapshots may be the solution you need. PS I do wish IMA had programmed some snapshots into his synth presets - just for a little more variety.

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, but check out Ian Martin Allison’s “vintage synth bass” helix preset pack. It’s very similar to some of the presets he’s dialled in for the mxr pedal - especially the Phillinganes moog type tones. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKGCye6O_Ak/?igsh=MWVwOXZvcHpsZjJtbg== https://ianmartinallison.com/store/vintage-synth-pack

Not to mention the used market when people realise they jumped on something they didn't really need.

I wonder if there's a midi to TRS adaptor to control the CTR jack via midi? I'm sure some clever, enterprising so-and-so will figure it out in time.

I have a couple of IMA's synth packs for my Helix that are excellent (particularly his vintage synth pack). I'm not great at dialling in these types of sounds, so these are a godsend. He put a video together several years ago explaining how to get a variety of synth sounds from typical stompbox effects such as fuzz, octave, filter and chorus - his Helix presets are largely the same formula. It seems to me this new MXR pedal takes that formula even further, but with an oscillator added. If I didn't already have the Helix, I might be tempted.

I was there too with my wife. We were rear standing. Got as far forward as we could for the first part, not far from the mosh pit behind the mixing tent. Sound was so-so there, but could see bugger all of the stage. My wife started to feel a little claustrophobic towards the end of their main set, so we made our way to the back to get an overpriced drink from the bar. The sound at the back was a blurry mess, reverberating throughout the whole stadium. If we do a big arena or stadium gig again, I'll pay the premium for front standing or seating close to the stage like we did for Queen and Def Leppard several years ago - much better sound. Otherwise, the show looked great... what we saw of it on the big screens. We left just as the encores started to beat the rush to the train station - hundreds of others were doing the same thing - a bit of a shame, but we heard the ones we wanted to hear (although I would've liked to have heard the crowd joining in with 'Fear of the Dark'). We really enjoyed Halestorm's set too. I've never really listened to them before - the wife said she sounded like a heavier Lady GaGa... she's not wrong!

We've used bandhelper and a shared google account for ages. I upgraded our bandhelper account to a higher tier a while ago that includes a scheduler. It does things that google calendar can't do such as availability checking, which is easier than messaging people on a group chat to check availability, but so far it's been met with resistance. If you can get everyone on board, it's well worth the investment. Even only the lower tier without scheduling it's very useful for repertoire, set list and lyric management, along with midi features and attaching mp3s of songs for people to learn.

School Prom gig last night. Mid week ones are always a bit of a challenge, what with having to leave work early etc, but at least I got home at a decent time! Second time we've played this one (our drummer works at the school and his wife is headmistress) and second time we've done it without any of our usual singers. Keen readers may recall that one of our singers dropped out of last week's gig because of his ME. He was supposed to be doing this one with a dep female singer, but he still wasn't feeling fit, so she ended up doing the whole 2 hours pretty much on her own. We had a rehearsal on Tuesday, when we found out he was still unwell, so we hastily put together a new setlist to get through the gig. I ended up singing 4 or 5 songs as well to give her a rest. Under the circumstances, it went much better than I expected it too. Typical "gymnasium sound", but it sounded decent out front. In-ears were another matter. I don't get how the in-ear mix keeps changing from gig to gig, but I was getting pummeled by bass and kick drum and hardly any guitars. We definitely need to do some work with that. Teresa, the dep singer did a fantastic job. She was in a previous band over 20 years ago with the two guitarists, and I depped with them on their last ever gig before forming this band. I quite forgot how good she is with a crowd. It helped for this one that she's also a school teacher herself. You could tell how comfortable she was interacting with the kids. The school itself is a special needs school. It was fantastic to see these children enjoying themselves in a safe, nurturing environment. I feel they wouldn't have had the same opportunity to express themselves the way they did last night in a regular school. It's humbling to see them being encouraged by the staff to be themselves without judgment. So, yes. A good night in the end. Any anxiety I had about not having our usual singers quickly disappeared once we got going. The evening finished at 9.30 and I was home a little after 10.30. More of those, please! Although I was still aching when I got up for work this morning. Next stop, The Cricketers and a wedding both in July, with yet another dep singer that we've yet to rehearse with! It seems like the years of deps!

Saturday was a surprise 50th birthday party, in the upstairs function room at Starr Sports, Canvey Island. The birthday boy’s wife booked us months ago after seeing us severaral times, including another party in the same venue. Apparently he is a huge back to the future fan, so they had an “enchantment under the sea” theme, including decorations, and we offered to include a couple of songs from the film in out set, as well as a couple more when Liam, one of our co-lead singers was also going to man the DJ booth. I say ‘was’, because we got a message Saturday morning on our band group chat to say that his ME was playing up quite badly which took him out of action. This meant revising the set list for Jenny, the other lead singer to do the gig on her own - something she hasn’t done for a some time, particularly this sort of gig - as there are a few songs she simply can’t pull off. There was also a few in the set that she doesn’t usually sing or hasn’t sung lead on them before, but was confident she could. I realised this also meant I was going to need to up my backing vocals game, and sing some parts I don’t usually sing… which is fun! This also meant the DJ service was said we would provide before, between and after sets wasn’t going to happen either. Luckily, I have some party playlists already set up in the Music app on my iPad (aka iTunes) that would get us out of trouble. I just had to find a couple of extra songs from the BTTF soundtrack to play at certain predefined points during the evening. I needn’t have worried though. The evening went without a hitch. Jenny did an amazing job on her own. I feel she sometimes relies on Liam’s confidence to interacti with the audience, but it seems to have rubbed off on her. This venue also has a lovely big stage area and she made the most of it (as did I), confidently moving around and interacting with everyone. My curated playlists worked fine (thank goodness for Bluetooth on our mixer), although I realised that I can't switch to BandHelper whilst playing music. That's a mistake I won't make again! I also realised during our first set that I hadhn't synced BandHelper before I left home. So I connected it to my iPhone whilst it was playing music towards the end our break so that it would sync when I switched back to BandHelper, not realising that a FB messenger notification would pop up... loudly, through the PA system. Another mistake I won't make again! Ooh, one last thing, as this stage is so wide, last time we played there I noticed the speakers being so far apart, meant the drums didn't quite gel. So I asked one of the guitarists to being their DXR10 speaker to use as a centre fill. Sat it on top of the sub, plugged it into an aux out of the mixer, with the same mix as the main, and set to post fader. Dead easy, and sounded great. Definitely made a positive difference. So all in all, a good night after, despite the anxiety of being a man down.

I seem to recall reading that basslines were played in a higher register decades ago due to the limitations of vinyl at the time, as well as playback equipment. Not to mention the limitations of early bass guitar amplifiers. I wonder if this led to more melodic bassline creation?

I popped into Bristol branch last year whilst on a short trip. I left the shop with the same feeling. Nothing for me there.

Even if the strings are new, a poor break angle / witness point could potentially cause this issue.

It's sad, but it's been on the card since the original owners sold up and cashed in. My local was the OG Pmt in Southend. I went there a bit, but I was never a fan and felt dirty doing do. Something bout the way they ran the business felt off, and their face-to-face customer service left something to be desired. Not to mention some of the horror stories I'd heard about their guitar setups. I used to quite like their original tiny shop, but they got too big too quickly IMHO as the "professional" bit in their moniker went out the window and successfully put their local rivals out of business by targeting the budget end of the market. Eventually, they simply didn't stock the things I was interested in and wanted to try. When they sold the business, the original owners retained the Southend building itself and charged the new owners an extortionate amount for rent. So the new management simply closed the store. It surprised me, but to be honest I don't miss it. There's other local shops I miss more - such as Honky Tonk - who PMT effectively put out of business.

I sold my G10s wireless and replaced it with a far cheaper Lekato unit for this reason. I don't need anything more advanced for the gigs I do.

From what I saw in the presentation, there's a DAW-like view for song stems that you can freely mix as you see fit. I think I saw a separate mixer feature as well for all the ins and outs. I assume you would be able to assign stem tracks to different outputs to make this feature truly useful.