Stylon Pilson

1 hour ago, Len_derby said:

A disaster.

My originals band, Diamond Bridges , secured a slot at yesterday’s Oxjam Festival in Beeston Nottinghamshire. 
The headliners kindly agreed to me using their bass rig, Beeston is on the main rail line between Derby and Nottingham. So, I thought it’d be great idea to travel light and use the train.

Train cancelled due to points failure with no prediction as to when it’d be fixed. No time for me to get home and use the car, I’m thirty minutes from the station. No suitable busses. 
So, I never made it in time for our slot. Top marks to the other two guys in the band who played the gig as a drum n’ guitar duo.

As icing on the cake, yesterday was the first use of my senior railcard I’d shelled out for. 🙄

 

One of my biggest gig disasters was when I too figured that I could travel light and take the train. Turned out that there was no monitoring for the bass whatsoever. All I could hear of myself was the low frequencies coming from the back of the PA speakers. Oh, and did I mention I was playing a fretless? Yeah, I was playing a fretless.

S.P.

I played with my 80s covers band ("A Flock Of Eighties") at the Maiden's Head in Maidenhead last night.

Was worried about the size of the stage as when I've played here before with a 4-piece it felt crowded, but thankfully all 5 of us in this band are fairly economical with how much space we take up, so we made it work. We have 4 lead vocalists - the three of us along the front, plus the drummer in the shadows at the back. By process of elimination you've probably deduced that that's the guitarist in the back left corner. I've been recovering from a heavy cold, and was monitoring the recovery of my voice with some mild concern, but I think last night sounded pretty good, if I do say so myself!

The audience at this venue are always great fun. The pub do insist on playing their own 80s playlist before we go on and during the break, and I imagine you don't need me to tell you the inevitable consequence of that.

A nice chap did come up to me afterwards to talk about my barefaced cab. I'm assuming it was one of you lot. Come on then, which of you was it?

S.P.

I have a TC Electronic Corona Mini on my board. While I appreciate that it's slightly above your budget, I can vouch that it is well made and has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.

S.P.

I had two gigs this weekend, which is very rare for me, as I'm normally a two-a-month sort of person.

Friday night was at The Stag in Ascot. I've played there a few times before with a previous band. It's always a bit quiet for the first set, but usually we get a fairly decent contingent of happy dancing punters for the second set. This time, they were much more restrained, and only really danced for the last couple of songs. Ah well, these things happen. I don't think it was through any fault of ours. The landlord did ask us to turn down a bit at half time, as they were struggling to hear orders at the bar, so I understand his concern.

Second gig was this afternoon at Park Live. Haven't done an outdoor festival gig for a while! A fairly sedate and seated crowd who kept some distance from the stage, but we did get a gaggle of them up and dancing for a handful of songs, which was great. Having a dedicated sound engineer and monitor engineer was a luxury that I don't usually get, and it really does make a big difference. And I bumped into our own @Happy Jack who was also playing!

S.P.

Thanks, these look like good recommendations.

Pete

I'm looking for an instrument cable to fill the gap when 3m is too short but 6m is too long. Ideally a straight connector on one end and right-angled on the other, and a good sturdy build quality that won't let me down. Do you have any recommendations please?

S.P.

I've been playing and loving a Barefaced Compact 15" for about 13 years and it's definitely showing its age. I'm looking for suggestions for what to replace it with. Money is no object, but it needs to be light.

Obviously I'm considering replacing it with another Barefaced - the Super Compact looks like it fits the bill in terms of capability and weight, though in terms of being able to hear myself on stage, I do worry about it being so low down. The Super Twin might solve that issue.

I'm also finding myself lusting quite heavily after a GR AT212 Slim.

Any other suggestions?

S.P.

Is anyone running into problems when trying to get back into the rehearsal room, with respect to different band members' attitudes to risk? How have you solved these conflicts?

S.P.

A rucksack. Yes, really. Prior to lockdown, I had this big heavy holdall that I was using to transport all my cables, including a whole bunch of spares, and it was starting to annoy me, so I replaced it with a nifty little rucksack for the stuff I use at every gig, and then a smaller holdall for the things that can be left in the car because I (hopefully) won't need them. I was really pleased with this rucksack - it's exactly the right size, everything Tetrisses into place very nicely, and because it goes on my back it frees up a hand when loading in or out. Never had the chance to take it to a gig.

S.P.

He says it himself in the first minute of the video - videos of playing bass get very few views compared to videos of him being a memelord. I don't watch his videos myself, but you can't really blame him for how the "system" works.

S.P.

My band's starting to get contact from our regular venues again, though they're talking about autumn and winter, not summer.

S.P.

I apologise if I'm being a bit thick, but what I'm looking for is a VST that I can apply to an already-recorded bass part to give it the feeling of having been played through a EHX Bass Mono Synth pedal or something like that. I'm not looking to create an entirely-synthesised bassline from scratch. As lowdown hit upon above, this is going to go into a video, and the end result needs to at least bear some resemblance to how we look and sound at a gig.

From looking at most of the plugins linked above, they don't seem to have the facility to operate in this way?

S.P.

1 hour ago, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

I find that bass synth sounds vary to an extent also. Some might sound off putting , and some great .  A lot may depend if you have a certain sound that you are after . 

I'm working on a video of Don't You Want Me with my 80s band. I'm not looking for something that exactly matches the sound of the bass on the original song, as I think that will look a bit weird when juxtaposed with video of me playing, but something that leans in that sort of cheesy direction would be great.

S.P.

I'm looking for a VST plugin that will give me an effect similar to a bass synth pedal. I'm just experimenting at this stage, so I'm not looking to spend money if I can help it. Does anyone have anything they can recommend?

Thanks,

S.P.

The one gig booking that wasn't flat-out cancelled was to be for tonight. The venue were considering going ahead with it outdoors. But they decided not to take the risk. With a second lockdown on the horizon, any tiny hope I had for any gigs before the end of the year has evaporated.

S.P.

11 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

How about just for the love of playing music with other musicians?

Fair point, but if the drummer can't enjoy the rehearsal because he's worried about covid then that will put a dampener on the mood a bit, surely?

Looking at OP's exchange, the drummer has been very reasonable, offering plenty of alternatives and options, and making clear what he is and isn't prepared to do. OP's responses seem to have been mainly just shooting everything down. I'm really glad that I'm not in a band with him.

S.P.

4EVER80s' lockdown video cover version of Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds:

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Our lockdown cover version of "The Power Of Love" by Huey Lewis and The News.

S.P.

My band mates are up for rehearsing again, but I've had to tell them that I can't, as I've got plans to see my mum at the end of August and I'm trying to avoid any unnecessary exposure before then. I'm assuming that pubs won't want to put on any indoor bands for the foreseeable future, and so if we start rehearsing again in September then we'll still be back up to speed well before our next gig.

S.P.

I've been reading this book ("Weekend Rockstars") on and off over the last couple of weeks, and finished reading it just now. I really enjoyed it, thank you!

S.P.

Just now, casapete said:

I always aspired to being a wealthy faceless musician - someone who could walk down the street / go on holiday / put the bins out without worrying any of the paparazzi. I've already had a lifetime of studying for this, so just need the dosh and I'll be happy..

I've already achieved that, but I'm guessing you were referring to music being your source of income at the same time.

S.P.

Radio Ga Ga by Queen. Simple, but effective. First run through will be at rehearsal on Tuesday.

S.P.

Likewise, the room was fairly empty for our first set as most of the punters were in the other room watching the boxing. Second set was much better though.

We had a trio of Christmas songs prepared but we ran out of time so only ended up being able to play one of them. It seems to be fairly common that we have to cut a few songs from our set list on the night these days - what generally happens is the drummer (who books the gigs) sends round an email saying something like "Okay, they've told us to play from 9-12, so shall we aim to get there at 7:30?" to which the guitarist then replies "I can't get there until 8". Inevitably we don't start our first set until 9:30, and so by the end of the night we are forced to skip a few songs. I'm not entirely happy about it - I pride myself on my personal reputation for being punctual. I think it's probably out time I raised my concerns.

The gig was a pretty good one, on the whole. I didn't get my EQ quite right for the circumstances (hollow wooden stage) but I got by. One thing I've noticed recently is that I seem to sometimes start a song in the wrong key. It seems to happen where we have two songs with a similar feel, and one's in E and the other's in Eb, and I get them the wrong way round. I think I've also been starting to get a bit complacent, now that I've been gigging lots of these songs for over a year, and I maybe don't practice at home as much as I should.

S.P.

We played in a small pub last night. The size of the crowd fluctuated a little throughout the evening but by the end of the night it was decently full. The audience were enthusiastic throughout, with lots of dancing and cheering in evidence. At the end of the night the landlady did speak to us and express that she hadn't been expecting us to be a four-piece (there were only 3 of us last time, as we were still looking for a new keyboard player) and that if we return, she'd prefer it to just be 3 of us. There's going to be a hefty internal debate about this - while the keyboard player doesn't mind us doing gigs without him, the guitarist feels quite strongly that the presence of the keyboard is inherent to his enjoyment of the gig, and while he'd do a 3-piece gig in a pinch, he doesn't want to actively seek out bookings for just the 3 of us. So we may or may not be returning to this venue. I think we're going to go back to the landlady and see if she can be flexible - after all, we honestly didn't take up significantly more floorspace with the extra musician.

S.P.

I use a rechargeable too - a Warwick Rockboard LT XL. What's nice is that it also has a USB out, so I can power a little fan from it at the same time!

S.P.