lozkerr

Our punk guitarist often asks me for a pick, even though I've told her repeatedly I don't use one. I do have a few kicking about though, including a 2mm job. I'm going to do that next time she asks.

Apparently it's called blue sparkle. It deffo looks the biz!

I like boosted mids. Starting from flat, I usually have the mids about three-quarters full, bass about a third of the way up and roll off the treble a fraction. Having said that, I've only had it for a few weeks and I'm still experimenting with different tones. I'll try cranking the treble a bit more next rehearsal. Oh, and the Corstorphine branch of Guitar Guitar has the four-string in the same finish, if your credit card's feeling itchy 😉

It is indeed a very sparkly Stingray. Shiny thing! Shiny thing! 😉

Me at the Banshee Labyrinth a week last Thursday. First outing for the Stingray!

Opened a three-act punk set last night at the Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh. Lovely wee venue with a lot of atmos. My new Stingray had its first outing and I was very pleased with how well it cut through. We're playing there again in September.

It certainly isn't. Some cracking songs in that list though! I have Holiday in Cambodia and For Whom The Bell Tolls on my personal to-learn list, but songs for my bands have to take priority. Our 80s band has an additional constraint, in that we push our USP as covering post-punk and indie material rather than anything between 1980 - 1990. So no cheesy pop, S/A/W, hair metal and so on. This constraint - which we don't enforce too rigidly, BTW - might have cost us a few bookings, but OTOH when we do get gigs we know we're going to get a good crowd. We played a birthday party not long back and this was the set list: 1. Teenage Kicks 2. Somewhere In My Heart 3. Back On The Chain Gang 4. Love Will Tear Us Apart 5. Rip It Up (the Orange Juice song) 6. Love Shack 7. Town Called Malice 8. The One I Love 9. Call Me 10. Suffragette City 11. Happy Birthday (the Altered Images song) 12. Psycho Killer 13. Long Train Running (at birthday boy's request - dad rock isn't really our thing) 14. Dignity 15. The Whole Of The Moon 16. She Sells Sanctuary 17. Don't You Forget About Me 18. This Charming Man 19. Tainted Love 20. Purple Rain All in all, it went down very well. We had people up and dancing almost immediately (although we started long after the party did, so the punters were nicely lubricated) and we got a lot of applause at the end (or they could have just been relieved that we'd finished!). I think having the constraint in place helps to narrow things down when selecting songs, but it just reduces the disagreement problem rather than eliminating it completely.

Agreed. We have a Rubella Ballet song in the set, and there are a lot of songs that still hold up well. Great British Mistake by the Adverts, Young Savage by Ultravox, Oh Bondage Up Yours by X-Ray Spex - plenty of options.

That's what we did when building up the punk band set. We picked covers that were less well-known but good bangers in their own right. As time's gone on, we've eased some of them out as we've got more originals good to go. We'll probably keep the likes of Sacrifice and I Like F*cking in the repertoire, though.

As the OP asked for a tip, here's how I did it - I spent a while repositioning all the starting points for scales on the B string and playing two octaves across the fretboard for each one. It got a bit harder as I headed up towards the dusty end as my fingers tended to bunch up, and starting on the open B string used a slightly different fingering pattern but once I'd cracked that, the rest was easy. I then learnt a few new songs that used the new fingering, so my muscle memory wouldn't get confused. It took me just a couple of days to fully get the hang of it and I was playing confidently inside a week.

That's exactly what I do. It feels completely natural and works a treat as I know I have all the notes I'm likely to need within easy reach both above and below the home position.

Purple Rain, the C80s, the Grange Club, Stockbridge, Edinburgh, on my Fender Jazz Deluxe V.

60th birthday bash for a pal of our drummer at a posh cricket club in Edinburgh. We started at 9pm, so the guests were nicely lubricated and started dancing almost right away. We played a trick on birthday boy - while everyone was singing Happy Birthday at the interval, we went back on stage and when they'd finished we launched straight into the Altered Images song. It went down very well. I gave this wee Eden rig an outing as the venue was quite small. It was nice and loud, but I think another 112 cab or my 210 would have cut through a bit better. Something to try next time.

I think @Dad3353 nailed it. Our 80s band has quite a few songs with nihilistic and/or depressing lyrics - Town Called Malice, Suedehead, Love Will Tear Us Apart, In Between Days, Another Girl Another Planet and so on - and the punters seem to love 'em.

Horrible thing to play. I've appropriated the Girls Rock School Epiphone Thunderbird for teaching purposes as it's a bit mean to expect complete newbies to try to deal with the horrendous neck dive while they're learning the basics. Judging by the scrapes and dings on the end of the headstock, it's already hit the floor a few times - I'm quite surprised it's still attached to the neck. The Thunderbird looks seriously badass and sounds awesome, but it's a dreadful beginner's instrument. I think it's only surpassed in that respect by the Flying V. Just my 0.02.

Aaaannndd... I'm out. Snapped up a Boss RC-1 looper from my local music shop. Oh well, maybe next year...

Stage left for me too, even when I'm down the front. I find it easier to watch the drummer out of the corner of my right eye. Though I guess it might be the other way round if I was left-handed.

Opened for Queer as Punk tonight at Edinburgh's Wee Red Bar. First outing since our new guitarist joined the band. Also the first outing for our new song, which had people singing along by the second chorus in spite of said chorus being liberally peppered with f-bombs. I think we struck a chord there with the mainly female audience. The WRB's bass amp was bust - again - so I brought my Eden rig along. 118 and 210 cab underneath a WTP600 head. It sounded good but a sharper distorted sound would have been better, so I may drop out of the gear abstinence thread soon ☹️ But all in all, a great gig!

Rispek, bruv. I hate that song, too.

The Zutons original or the Amy Winehouse cover? I'm with you all the way on the Winehouse cover but the original's bassline is great fun!

I'm rapidly falling out of love with Blondie's Call Me because we've played it at every gig my 80s band has done, but I don't hate it, at least not yet. The two songs I really do loathe are Wonderwall and Frankie Valli's Sherry. Apparently the see-you-next-Tuesday responsible for that horrible noise wrote it in fifteen minutes - I reckon he must have had writers' block. I genuinely have to leave the room if I hear Sherry on the radio because I hate it so much.

That's pretty much what I do. Out of interest, I've just been through the songs in both my bands' current repertoires and found that only two need notes below low E - Song 2 needs low E flat and She Sells Sanctuary needs low D. But there are a lot more that I do use five-string fingering so I can stay pretty much in one place. It works out like this: Total songs: 62 Need notes below low E: 2 I use five-string fingering without dipping below low E: 39 Songs all in the higher registers or five-string fingering more difficult: 21 I really like having the flexibility and being able to stay in one place helps when I'm concentrating on singing.

I switched from a four to a five six years ago and I can't see myself ever going back. Once I'd got the hang of extending box shapes across the fretboard and re-positioned the starting notes for scales, everything just fell into place. I did go down the rabbit hole of thinking I had to play across the fretboard for every song I was learning though, and it took a wee while to break that habit. Five-string fingering very often makes things easier, but sometimes it makes things harder. Depends on the song. The only time I play a four these days is when I'm teaching the Girls Rock School Edinburgh bass class, as that's designed for rookies - it's more of a confidence-building environment for women than an attempt to discover the next Suzi Quatro - so four-string basses and tabs are the order of the day.

The Ghetto Blasters.

The Leg Warmers.