Greg Edwards69

We played "Sit Down" at a gig a few months ago because one of the singers was convinced it would go down really well. We haven't played it again since.

Wedding gig last night for the daughter of one of the guitarists. As such, the band and partners were graciously invited to the whole day, which meant a rather early start in order to get in before all the guests arrived to set up followed by a very long day. Out other guitarist, who usually sets up half the mildly complex PA was also unavailable for this one as his wife gave birth to a baby girl the day before. We’d planned for this with my brother stepping in for him. He’s depped with us several times before so I knew he’d be okay, but this was his first experience of gigging ampless, relying totally on IEMs. I’m not sure he totally loved the experience and now wishes he had bought new foam tips for his old IEMs that he hadn’t used in years, as the silicon tips didn’t seal that well. I was also anxious before hand and got a little stressed during set up as I knew I had to wire up most of the PA more or less on my own. I think going forward, we need to give everyone individual tasks to do to make this process easier and quicker. The set was handpicked by the bride and groom (not something we usually let happen), but we agreed it just this once. They love alternative music so we got to play some heavier numbers with a few classic bangers. Luckily for my brother, it was a shorter single set of around 80mins rather than our usual couple of one hours sets as they had also booked a “superstar dj” who rounded of the evening with some old classic and modern metal. Totally broken by the end of the night and had a well deserved lay in this morning.

I’ve seen the same thing many times but on the other hand, I’m in one of those type of bands as well. I recognise that us cover band musicians a hard audience to please, but l also realise that’s not who I’m playing for. If those “cover band bingo” songs continue to get good reactions and keep the dance floor filled, then I’ll continue to play them.

My band fell into that trap years ago. We'd build up momentum and then lose the audience with a lesser-known, albeit great song, that we put in because we like it. We realised in time our job was to entertain the audience, not educate them. Songs like Sex on Fire and Mr Brightside are seen as something of a cliche amongst the cover band community, but, they always, always work, so we suck it up and play them! Another piece of advice we were given by an agent, from feedback they had received for all of their artists from a number of venues was skip the slow songs. Whilst the singer may love to belt out a power ballad, or the guitarist to get lost in a lengthy pink floyd solo, the audience will get bored. Get them up dancing and keep the energy level up.

Wedding this weekend. It's for the daughter of one of the guitarists (Dave... the guitarist's name, not the daughter's), and they've asked for some alternative music and a couple of special requests...so yay! We have songs by the likes of Volbeat, Linkin Park, Reef and Foo Fighters to play with. The other guitarist (Richard) however is unavailable for this gig as he's expecting a baby to arrive imminently, well, his wife is anyway. So my brother (Ross) is stepping into the breach to cover him. Only had a couple of rehearsals with him and he's done a grand job learning his parts. Richard usually manages the new digital mixer, however. But I have a pretty good understanding of it though, so we should be okay, setting up and sound checking may take a little longer and turn the air bluer than usual. Oh, and our super-sub Sophie is singing with us again. The whole band is invited for the entire day, so it will be a long one! Getting in the venue at 10am to load in and set up drums and PA, with my brother arriving after 11am as he has a longer drive, and do a line check to set his mind at ease as he's never gone ampless before. Hopefully, enough time to nip home and get changed in time for the Ceremony at 1.30. Speeches and food at 4pm by which time I'll be starving, but it should give us time for a quick sound check. First dance at 7pm then we're on playing up to 90mins straight through with a hasty pack down to make way for the DJ. I haven't felt anxious about a gig in a long time, but I am for this one.

Thanks for that. Very useful. Bookmarked for future reference.

We started doing the same thing a few months ago. We don't generally play venues that require a full mic'd drum kit, so for the last few years we had only been sticking a mic in front of the bass drum. But our drummer had been saying he's been struggling to hear the rest of the drums properly. So we plonked an overhead above the floor tom side pointing toward the middle. What a difference in the IEMs that made! And if need be, we can add a little into the FOH mix too. Our drummer is somewhat a professional. He's a grade 8 full-time drum teacher and used to be in a couple of touring originals bands - he's quite discerning and likes to get things "just right". He's said this is the best drum sound he's had in his ears, ever. FWIW, he's also mentioned a few times that in many venues, he's noticed drums are unnecessarily mic'd where they needn't be. So many times you'll see a bass drum mic, a couple of overheads and a snare/hi-hat mic, but nothing on the floor tom. The snare rarely needs any help in modest venues, and the bigger the drum - the more help they need. Not unlike bass guitars needing more powerful amps and cabs than our skinny stringed brethren.

I know right? Bride and groom actually requested it! Not your usual wedding set list

A handful of songs for a wedding next month last day under the sun - Volbeat In Too Deep - Sum 41 Born in the USA - Springsteen Save Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry

Usually my Audio Technica ATH-M50x at home. Or I can use my Sennheiser IE400 Pro gigging IEM's if I need a quick run-through of something before we start playing.

I only use gigbags and the straps don't get in the way. I pull them taught and upwards behind the bass when loading them into their gigbags. Nylon and neoprene straps all the way. Not keen on leather ones.

I have the Dimarzio system on my electric guitar and it certainly is low profile. However, I would be concerned about the plastic clips damaging the OP's instrument finished in that location. Rubber washers here too. I had a moment of enlightenment after many years of using Schaller and Dunlop systems and getting frustrated with the strap button screws working loose... "If I have a strap for each bass, why am I removing and reattaching them every time I take it out of its gig bag?" I replaced the buttons on my basses with their original buttons and screws and permanently attached the straps with rubber washers. Rock solid

Yep. It's still a learning process for us. Some of the venue's we play have a stage with a little bit that sticks out in the middle where the singers stand, with the speaker stands either side. We have no choice but to put our single sub on one side. We set up in a rehearsal space of similar size to the typical venues we play at, and ran QSC's helpful calibration guide to find a baseline for sub and tops volume settings. This way if we have a reference to reset to if we ever find the sub is overpowering the room (like we did at the last gig. We run the sub from the mixer main output and the top from the subs, so for us it's easier to wire the sub in and not need it, than set everything else up only to find out we do need it. Our tops can't be high passed any lower than 100hz so we set the sub's crossover to 100hz as well. We noticed that the sub appeared directional when placed closer to one side of the room to the other - you could definitely tell what side of the room it was coming from (I wonder if this is due to the 100hz crossover) and sounded more consistent when centred, so ideally we'd like to centre it whenever we can. Which brings me to... Would putting a single sub at the back of the stage, up against the wall, centre-ish be an option? I realise the stage would be louder, although more felt than heard, and boundary loading would give it a little help too. I understand there could be a time delay, but we're only talking 2 or 3 metres front to back in the average UK pub. I high pass my bass at the subs corner frequency directly in Helix, and the bass drum on the mixer so we don't overload it.

+1. We went from vocal only PA and loud backline filling the room to silent stage (except for drums) with IEM over the course of about 18 months.

Indeed. I discovered this 'trick' after discovering Billy Sheehan. Whilst I've never run two separate amps for lows and mids+treble, I did used to run each pickup from my Attitude bass through separate signal paths (that included eq to trim the low end out of the 'top' path), and mix them into a single input on my amp. Doing this I was able to adjust the mix between the two signals on the fly to compensate for room acoustics. However, this specialised pedalboard meant I could only play one bass, one way. I moved over to the Helix several years ago to allow me to switch between different setups, but I've yet to get around to dialling in an stereo Attitude preset - I've been enjoying what it can do with a traditional single output bass. I do however retain some of that processing separation that I learned from my previous setup. I have a couple of split paths in my main patches. One is a crossover split centred at 200Hz that I use for drives and modulation effects to retain a full and clean low end. This goes into an AB split - one path with an amp and cab model that's skewed toward mid range and the other with a Noble DI model that provides a solid low end and crisp treble. Another variation I see commonly applied to bass, particularly in metal mixes is duplicating the track and applying a heavy scoop to one for clean lows and highs, and then a frown eq and distortion to the other for a grinding midrange. That said. I've been so impressed with the Noble DI model in the Helix, I'm going to try going back to basic and build a simple preset with as few blocks and possible and see what I get. It's always worth doing this when your signal chain starts getting complex to make sure you're not losing sight of what you're trying to achieve.

I had one of those. I bought it as a beater bass. Nothing special, just a basic PJ bass with a fancy chrome-looking plastic scratch plate - not like a real Traben where the bridge is part of the fancy metal scratch-plate.

Every now and then I get the urge to acquire a Keytar, even if only an inexpensive one. But then I remind myself that, a) I have no real use for one in a band context, and, b) I'd look a right tit playing one.

My Selmer clarinet. Nothing special and I haven't played it since I finished my A-levels 30 years ago. But it has sentimental value. My mum and dad didn't have much spare money when I was growing up but they made sure we had a good childhood. Like many other kids I learnt to play the recorder in junior school which sparked an interest in playing music. We had a couple of toy pianos and a Bontempi reed organ (bright orange I seem to remember), but it was learning the recorder and reading music that really got me interested in wanting to learn to play an instrument. I said I wanted to learn to play the clarinet - my mum and dad loved Acker Bilk at the time and so did what they could to source one for me. I can't remember the exact details but I believe they swapped a spare double bed they had acquired after my grandmother died with an extended family member, who needed a bed and had a clarinet she hadn't touched in years. My parents took it to a music shop, got it overhauled and bought some reeds and an 'A Tune a Day for clarinet' book. I taught myself to play the first bit of 'Stranger on the Shore' on the first morning. My mum tells me I came up to her crying in the afternoon because I could play the high-register notes. I continued to teach myself and had several lessons at junior school until the teacher told my mum I should go to the local evening music school. Honestly, I wish I hadn't. I hated the teacher. I probably frustrated her because I had developed some bad habits that I couldn't break. But she had no skills working with young children. It sucked the joy out of it. So I stopped going and later started having music lessons when I went to secondary school. These were much better and constructive and brought the joy back. I joined the school orchestra and the local youth orchestra as first clarinet. Then A-levels came round and once again I had a teacher who tore my technique to shreds. I sometimes wonder how I even passed the practical as I no longer had any confidence in my clarinet playing. The day of the practical exam was the last time it was taken out of the case and played. But by that time I had been tinkering with bass guitar for a couple of years and had several gig under my belt. I realised my passion lay. Bass guitar was 'me'. I've considered selling it. But it's not worth much financially and I know my mum and dad would be upset if I did as they did everything they could to help start my musical journey.

Maybe you've inadvertently changed "mode" without realising. Hit the mode footswitch and see if that brings them back. The Helix has various modes, stompbox mode and snapshots, or stomp on one row and snapshot on the other etc. Or you can use the command centre you can create your own hybrid per preset. I hate to be "that guy", but with the Helix, you really should take some time to read the manual cover to cover.

I'm no expert in recording, but a couple of thoughts come to mind to think about. Are you listening to the clanky bass isolated or in the context of a full mix? You would be surprised how many iconic bass lines and tones are actually clankier than you realise. That high end content can help the instrument cut through. Some people would say get it right at source and I'd largely agree, but recording methods have changed a lot over the years, and it may be preferable to record with the tone wide open and then surgically fix it. You can't put back what isn't there. The rule of thumb with eq is cut to fix and boost to shape - this should hopefully avoid it getting overly bassy. Use a parametric eq to hone in on the clank. Boost the gain and sweep the frequency selector until the clank is at its most annoying, then reduce the gain until the clank is tamed. Try using a narrow bandwidth (q) avoid cutting too much either side. Alternatively, try a multiband compressor. You can set this up similarly to a parametric eq, so that it only triggers and clamps down on the clank when crosses a volume threshold. Lastly, think about how you would approach and fix this in a live environment. I'm assuming you would use an amp and cab? A DI signal is synonymous with an unprocessed raw image from a camera, whereas the sound coming out of your amp and cab is coloured and more like a processed jpeg. There's a plethora of great amp sims out there, many of which are free that you could try.

This is the one thing I don't like about KZ iems in general. Their signature sound is quite painful in the upper mid/treble region. I've seen a few articles here and there showing how people have been able to tame the top end with some carefully placed surgical tape over the nozzle. I was going to do that with mine until I got my Sennheisers. I still might try it anyway, as they're my backups.

Back at Shoeburyness Conservative Club on Saturday night for the first time since covid started. Decent venue for bands as the stage end of the room backs onto the carpark, so it's a nice and easy load-in. The stage it a little too small for us though, so the singers go in front on the dancefloor. I don't know if it's like other Con Clubs, but it always seems to be a "challenging" audience to crack. They seem quite content to sit and watch for the first half of the night and then you'll get a handful of people up in the second set - and if you're lucky, they'll start line dancing as well - to anything. All of us made brain-fart errors in the first set, but they weren't too obvious and we managed to cover our tracks okay. I put it down to being extraordinarily warm in there - as after persuading them to turn on the aircon before the second set, we played far better. Bit of a break now until a wedding gig in July. My brother is depping on guitar for that one, so we'll need this time to get him up to speed on a few things.

Regarding value, I'm reminded of an article about the new eye-wateringly expensive iPad Pro's I read earlier today on Medium "No matter how I put it, cost is about value for money and anyone finding the new iPad Pro too expensive perhaps isn’t getting enough value out of it, and therefore should opt for a cheaper model. Pro devices are intended for professionals who use them to deliver work and projects, things they can bill for and easily make that money back. Good, top-of-the-line tools cost serious money, regardless of what industry you work in."

We don't. Despite some of the band members hailing from Canvey, and playing there quite a bit, Dr Feelgood music would fall on deaf ears at the venues we play. Anyway, there's already a fantastic Dr Feelgood tribute doing the rounds in these parts.