4stringslow

[quote name='rushbo' timestamp='1469622530' post='3099778'] Hey everybody, it's a nice sunny day and as we've been stuck in here for ages, how about we go down to the park! I've got a football and a couple of Frisbees! Later, we could get ice cream! [/quote] Best suggestion yet. I'll have a 99, but only if it's a proper original Cadbury's flake

[quote name='MoJo' timestamp='1469636540' post='3099952'] My first ever active bass was a Westone Thunder 1A which used to eat batteries. [/quote] Is it possible to quantify that a bit more? Battery life is going to be directly proportional to how often it is played (more correctly how long the cable is inserted). It may vary between different basses with different active designs, but I'd be surprised if there was a very large variance. Basically, plugging a cable into the bass is what switches on the active circuitry. Cable in = circuit on. If you're not actually using the bass there really is no need to have it plugged in, but if you do then it will be draining the batteries. Does the manufacturer give an estimated battery life in hours?

But not theirs . . . which I suspect might surprise many fans of original bands. So now we need a term for original bands that write and perform their own material.

Ok, but if we go with that, what's the definition of an originals band? Did they write their own songs or not? How can the punters tell?

Indeed. Be careful what we wish for.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1469613670' post='3099692'] It's the only relevant part. The whole idea of a cover band is to play tunes that the audience knows. [/quote] Not really. It could be, but It's a narrower definition. A cover band plays music it didn't originate. There may be many reasons, they may only play a particular genre, they may play only a particular artists' songs, etc, but the common factor is that they didn't write the songs being played. Everything else is a variation on that theme.

Logo here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Home_taping_is_killing_music.png You're right, they had no idea how to handle the digital revolution either. Remember when they lobbied governments to introduce a levy on every blank tape sold, which they claimed would recompense artists for lost sales? Despite blank tapes having perfectly legitimate uses other than copying music. Besides, the vast majority of copying was of already purchased vinyl in order to make mix tapes etc, so the value of lost sales was vastly inflated by the industry . . . As it was when CD-Rs became available. In fact, the music industry failed pretty abysmally in managing the implications of the digital age and it was down to Apple, with iTunes, to really take advantage of the new technologies and new possibilities. Too many fat cat music executives without a clue having grown rich from their monopoly control over artists, production and licensing. Power to the people eh?

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1469569617' post='3099518'] ...and in widespread use in the broadcasting industry IIRC. [/quote] No, it wasn't THAT good. You may be thinking of Betacam - same physical tape cassette but an incompatible and higher quality recording format for professional use.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1469561694' post='3099425'] And don't forget to use directional cable. [/quote] yeah, I forgot that one!

Exactly. Cassette tapes traded quality for size and convenience. Slow running tape gave long playing times at the expense of frequency response. Compactness meant thin tracks and increased noise and crosstalk. It was most definitely a low-fi consumer format, but it caught on because it was the first really cheap and convenient format for home recording (anyone remember the 'home taping is killing music' hysteria from the music industry?) and enabled people to compile their own 'playlists'. The Walkman then enabled people to take those 'playlists' with them, anywhere, anytime - which the music industry also hated. But all those things are now possible, and to a dramatically better degree, on a mobile phone, so it's hardly surprising the format is effectively dead - along with steam trains, film photography and VCRs. Nostalgia can be alluring, but those things, and more, died out for good reasons.

My mum wouldn't.

Amongst jamming muso's, no question, but the population as a whole?

[quote name='paul h' timestamp='1469536795' post='3099086'] I don't see what's wrong with a little bit of retro fun. It doesn't make any less sense than the indie label 7" vinyl thing. In fact it makes more sense...it's something that a band can produce from beginning to end in the "bedroom". Some nice sleeve design and a cool label for the tape and it could look really good. Of course I do forget we are on ContraryChat so everyone and everything else is bollocks and full of lies. [/quote] I don't have a problem with 'retro fun' either . . . until people start preaching about how the good old days were so good and everything was superior to today. Can we honestly imagine a world where every new technology really was worse that the preceding one?

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469536336' post='3099074'] Back in the day the main purpose of audio cassettes for me was to record personalised mix tapes for girls in the hope of boffing them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Girls weren't so high-maintenance back then. Today I look upon Audio cassettes as dead-format shag-bait. It actually seems quite cute and romantic now, compared with today's methods - i.e. texting her a picture of your cock. [/quote] Yes, whatever happened to romance?

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1469523221' post='3098923'] It does make a difference if what you started with was complete sh*te but you quickly reach diminishing returns with half decent cable. [/quote] Exactly!

Agreed, popular covers of obscure originals are not rare, but I don't think those examples are in the same league as 'Route 66', in terms of widespread familiarity or the number of covers . . . things that combine to create a 'standard' in the first place. Of that NME list, I'd say that only 'Hound Dog' could rival 'Route 66’ as a well known 'standard'. But there's plenty of scope for other opinions - as this 9 page thread on an apparently simple concept proves

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1469526910' post='3098961'] it is a bit weird, but then, imagine if this thread was about vinyl. I doubt post #2 would have gone down so well I have a tape player in my car and used to pick up tapes for 50p from charity shops. I have quite a few, but the more I play them, the more knackered they get [/quote] It would have gone down just as well with me - I don't miss vinyl either. Cassettes were fine in cars mainly because vinyl wasn't, plus cars are such a terrible listening environment that sound quality doesn't really matter that much. I'm surprised no one has mentioned 8-track tape cartridges. edit: Damn - Discreet beat me to it! And yes, nice list of 'been n gone' technologies - and gone for a reason.

I'm sure it's not, but how many 80s electronica covers have become rock n roll standards?

How about this for a song that pretty much everyone has heard through millions of cover versions (ok, slight exaggeration) yet relatively few know the original jazz trio version by the writer and performer. Well here he is . . . http://youtu.be/kLUYf6cekMA

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1469524206' post='3098933'] He is right about the chrome & metal tapes: they sounded so much better than the standard ones (assuming the source was good quality)... But, portability? Yeah, smaller than a CD, but you can put a lot more music in a CD these days. And let's not start with digital media players that can hold gigabytes of data... Durability? Unless you only use them in your high quality deck, you will get them chewed sooner or later, and your high quality deck won't be the 'portable' one, rendering the portability argument invalid. Who wants to listen to tapes these days, really? long rewind/forward, can't skip/find tracks, takes long to record... When our singer said tapes were 'cool' and he was going to look into issuing a tape version of our last album I thought he was joking! But one thing I see in common among all these tape enthusiasts: they weren't around when tapes were what we used everyday as it was the only really portable medium, and the only way to make your own compilations... I don't miss tapes at all. I still have a very nice Sony deck from 1995-1996. Maybe I should clean the heads and ensure the belts are in good condition and sell it to some crazy person who prefers tapes. I also have a VCR in great condition [/quote] +1 Kids always like something new and novel. If cassette tapes were so good they wouldn't have been superseded would they, for all the good reasons mentioned above. Besides, if people really want to 'go retro' cassette tapes running at a ludicrously low 1 7/8th inches per second were no match for my old reel-to-reel tape deck running at 7 1/2 ips, which was a big part of my teenage years - plus it had a Sound-on-sound feature that enabled multi-part recordings to be built up. Happy days, but no match for a DAW! Having said that, I've got a cassette player in my old Land Rover Defender - anyone interested?

Those 'most expensive' cables make me laugh - do you think anyone has ever bought them? The optical fibre one is the funniest. Firstly, TOSlink is a digital connection and secondly it runs perfectly well (ie no data errors) over short lengths of the cheapest non-glass optical fibre. I'd love to run a blind listening test with that $33,000 cable against a £5 TOSlink cable. "Hifi" cables are an even better scam than personalised number plates.

As well as the wire gauge, you need to make sure the conductors are made of oxygen-free, mono-crystalline, unobtainium otherwise your tone will be completely ruined.

Does this help? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cover%20band

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1469391770' post='3097985'] The Stones were a cover band 50 years ago. [/quote] Maybe, but that's not relevant to my disagreeing with your assertion [i]"I always think of cover bands as a band playing crowd pleasers"[/i] Besides, that was 50 years ago. No one would seriously call the Stones a cover band today. Sure, they'll play [i]some[/i] covers, but they are predominantly an originals band. Just like The Beatles.

[quote name='Chaos Daveo' timestamp='1469390579' post='3097971'] I struggle defining Jaffa Cakes though.. [/quote] You're in good company. It's a subject that has exercised some of the finest legal minds . . . and the taxman: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21961566