Nicko

IMO those are the same, and the problem is the other member just doesn't know when to accent. It's just as easy to say when you play the 7 bars of B accent every second bar as to think of it your way. I'm not trying to be pedantic here - I just don't see the difference.

I'm actually not sure why the alternative would be any different musically. Both are equally valid and as long as everyone is changing in the right place it's simply a case of how someone has written the score. When playing All My Life by the Foos does it matter if its alternating between 4/4 and 3/4 or if I thought it was 7/4?

Depends on what kind of band. If you're playing pubs once a week then no. Oh, and a half arsed amateur looking website is worse than having nothing. This is true for any on line presence though and whatever social media you use you need to keep it updated and interesting. Lemonrock and Bandcamp are OK. Facebook is not as popular with the youngsters but if your audience is mainly middle aged it's still a good way to post events.

My PC is in the loft while we try to sell the house. I'm missing playing around with music and wondered if it was worth signing up to Soundtrap so I can use my Chromebook to do some basic production as a temporary measure. I'd only be interested in the free version if its a stopgap, but I think I'd probably have to invest in a Behringer UCG in order to get bass and guitar into the Chromebook (there's no driver for my Focusrite unit in Chrome). I realise it's going to be more basic than the Cubase and Ableton software that came with my hardware but can anyone say whether its actually capable of producing anything worthwhile?

EQ on the vocals is a big thing for me and I sweep across the frequency range until I find something that highlights the best of my voice (rather takes the worst of my voice out) but as you say GIGO is fundamental.

I'm glad it's not just me that doesn't understand what to do once I've actually recorded the instruments. Like you I end up using the mixing desk to set levels and possibly panning tracks a little but any EQ and compression tends to be on the individual tracks. I know things could sound better if I knew what to do - I did a Soundcloud auto master on one track and was astonished at the improvement.

I had a problem with my Win 8 PC which has 8GB Ram. It wasn't the amount of RAM that was the problem it was the background processes using it all up and the CPU becoming overloaded. Obviously high CPU usage and high RAM utilisation are linked so I'd suggest having a look at the task manage to figure out what is using what you have. The culprit in my case was the antivirus software.

Some fantastic toonage again this month. Well done everyone.

I've been in at least one band that managed it.

This may very well be controversial, but I prefer the Kula Shaker version of Hush to the original, and think Deep Purple's version is the worst of the three.

I agree to some extent. However one band that I left carried on and were gigging maybe three times a fortnight. If that's your schedule then rehearsals are only for new material. Personally I enjoyed rehearsals more than gigging when I was in a covers band. The enjoyment of gigging never quite outweighed the derrière ache of travelling, setting up, waiting around and stripping down.

IMO there's also a small section of BCers that appear to dismiss people playing pub covers as somehow inferior to other gigging musicians. Something along the lines of pub covers = bunch of amateurs pumping out the same old shite every week, vs function bands = semi pro and play a wide range of styles.

That may be the case for most bass parts (although not all) but if you think that playing lead guitar on something like Sweet Child Of Mine is repetitive you'd be wrong. It's pure laziness on the part of singers that they have the lyrics.

I've been in a few bands and have absolutely no idea how the guitarists learned their parts. We agreed songs we would play and arrived at rehearsals having largely learnt our individual parts. Occasionally a chord chart would appear but that seemed to be so they could remember the structure of the song. As a bassist I would use tab if it was available or tab my own parts if it wasn't to learn the track but by the time I was at rehearsal I'd expect to have it largely committed to memory. Yes, there were occasions where members of the band had used a different recording to learn their parts put it really wasn't a big issue. Talking of people failing to learn parts, my experience is that vocalists often rely on the lyrics, whereas the rest of the band rarely need anything in front of them.

A Precision Bass is any old bass with a single split coil arrangement in the right place, in the traditional shape, two knobs, no fancy active nonsense and crucially it must be 34" scale bolt on. Choice of body wood is irrelevant, A single piece maple neck/fingerboard is preferable but a glued on rosewood board is acceptable. You can add a Jazz pickup but it's no longer a Precision. Ideally the bass should be played standing with an incredibly long strap such that the strap button on the upper horn is below the player's navel.

That's my fall back position of the BC community agree it's not worth having it professionally repaired.

Yes, the Blackline is made in Indonesia to reduce the cost.

I was about to put my Markbass Blackline 250 up for sale but thought I'd better check it was all working OK. It wasn't. The amp came on (so the power circuit is OK), and the clip LED lit up (so the input circuit seems to be OK) but there was no output. When I switch the amp on there is a clicking sound (a mechanical one - like a relay engaging) and when I switch off I get a brief sound from the cab - a bass sound not a farting sound. The manual says that this could be a fault on output impedance, but I tried with two different cabs of different resistance and two different cables and it made no difference. I'm guessing that even if I can find a specialist locally they'll charge me for fault finding even if it's not economical to do the repair. The question is whether it's worth trying to get this repaired given that it's a relatively cheap amp that won't sell for much.

It's a few years since I flew with a bass - but I have two differing experiences - both long haul. With one carrier I was in economy and checked with them beforehand. They allowed the bass in the cabin (they actually put it in the business class wardrobe) in a soft case. With another I was booked in business and they wanted it in the hold - fortunately it was cased but only in a standard Fender Tolex case. The Tolex suffered some damage in transit but the bass was fine. I was unfortunate enough to see them loading it and it was clear they weren't treating it carefully despite the check in staff having plastered it with "fragile" labels. On this basis I would never check in a bass in a soft case.

Sadly my house is about to go on the market and the makeshift studio has been sacrificed to revert to a dining room - apparently that's what "normal" people expect in a house. Therefore I won't be able to submit an entry this month. I may yet record "Can You Hear Me Calling?" a rant on the vagaries of communications reliability when living or working away from loved ones just for fun. I will keep an eve out for the voting thread and wish everyone great dollops of inspiration in the meantime.

If I were buying a bass from most online sources I'd probably want to check the bass wasn't stolen, and for that you need a serial no unless the seller has a sales receipt.

George Harrison nicked "My Sweet Lord" and got sued in the 70s. Rod Stewart accepted that he'd subconsciously stolen "D'ya Think I'm Sexy" and the Hollies have a writing credit on Creep by Radiohead who didn't even bother trying to claim they hadn't nicked it.

I refer the Council for the defence to the current trial of Ali Harbi Ali as an example of a QC defending a not guilty plea in a case where the defendant admits a killing. It will be interesting to see what the defence claims to qualify this as justifiable, or will they simply claim insanity?

Of course some lawyers bring cases which are designed to challenge existing legislation but the vast majority apply the law blindly even when it's patently unfair, or use the minutae of a situation in order to apply a precedent of a law that was never designed to apply to the case in point. Lawyers are required to represent their clients and will try to apply any precedent they can to win the case even when they know their client is in the wrong. It doesn't make the legal system better.

@kwmlondonbought my speaker cab. I thought it would be a collect but it turned out we were different sides of London. Undeterred collection by courier was arranged and the cab ended up going direct to Wales. Prompt payment and the whole thing was quick and easy.