TimR

Good post. Simple bodyweight exercises like planks and mountain climbers will strengthen your back and shoulders without too much impact.

Travelled 80 miles to a gig to find the place had shutdown and was boarded up. This was pre-mobile phones so not only had each of the band driven there but so also had a group of hard-core supporters.

Played a gig once where the locals were calling their mates to come down to see 'the band' while we were playing. The place was rammed by the end of the night. We got £500 instead of the £350. Never happened since. 😂

I'd avoid doing that. Legally you're on shaky grounds. If a business suffers from something you wrote, you'd better be able to defend your words. Plus when the place changes hands as they do regularly, the new owner is saddled with a bad reputation. So you've achieved nothing other than sending another potential live music venue down the tubes.

@solo4652 Might be worth a read.

Red light fever?

Intelligence measurement is normalised so that its an evenly distributed bell curve. Exactly half the population are below average intelligence. But it's like driving - some people are better than others, we set a lower limit and test, those that don't make the lower limit can't drive. Unfortunately there's nothing like this test for using social media.

I don't understand the question. What is 'home practice'? 😉

Actually to be fair when we do a cover version we do it in the style, rather than someone's version. We have guitar, bass and drums. So many songs are just what arrangements we come up with to approximate something recognisable. I tend to prefer our versions and I suspect that's what must of us do, even if we won't admit it. Going back and listening to the 'original' after we have been playing something a while is quite odd and can often lead to some confusion as to how 'our version' goes.

I'm not sure anyone is supposed to 'enjoy' it. It's done to serve a function.

YouTube is all about bringing attention to yourself. You won't get millions of people subscribing to a chanel where players are just playing roots or doing stuff anyone can do at home themselves.

That doesn't matter. As long as 80% of people can understand the basics. It's when they can't understand the basics and then question them you have trouble.

Doesn't matter. Popular is right. If you have a qualitative statement you want people to agree to you need weight of opinion to agree it. That's why education is so important. If the uneducated outnumber the uneducated you have a serious issue.

Pretty much all unsigned bands will be producing themselves. The engineer is just there to capture the noise. Then there's the mix and mastering stages... In my experience just leave the engineer to do the mix. Letting the band have any input will lead to everything being louder than everything else. As per my post of several pages back, the band must be fully rehearsed and know 100% what they're playing and have agreed what everyone is playing fits. Hearing the separate parts for the first time in a studio and finding out the guitarist is playing a minor chord instead of a major chord is too late. Especially when it then descends into an hour of studio time while everyone works out who is right and who is wrong.

The great thing about democracy is if you can find enough people to believe you are right, then you are right. The popular opinion is always correct.

Well I suppose as it's the Internet you can either only ever play root notes or be a flashy show off. I'm obviously one of those flashy show offs as I have been known to quite often play as many as 4 notes in a bar... I once played 8!

Tons of 80s tracks were taken directly from the 50s originals. And tons of 50s tracks were taken from the 30's originals. It's a tradition handed down through the generations in my house. My grandad told my dad what the originals were, my dad told me, and now I'm telling my son...

Struggled to help lift the large 2 seater sofa from the side room to the area we had been playing in. Then, I carried my bass amp 100m home. I got into bed and didn't get out of bed for a week. Went back to work, but I was just going through the motions for the next 2 weeks. Can't remember much of the gig. I'm pretty sure I had coronavirus. Took a month to recover fully.

Quite. Anyone not tuning to an electronic tuner nowadays would get some odd looks. I'm not sure I've ever tuned to a 'computer'.

In the mid 80s when he was playing with Steve Vai for Dave Lee Roth, it was ground breaking. They're still among my all time favourites. 'ten a Penny 80s guitarists' describes him quite well, but no kne was doing that on bass. Now it is a bit tedious.

That's specifically the point of the thread. Music is subjective and appeals to each of us differently. I went to see Richard Bona a few years ago with a group of bass players (in real life!). They were raving about him, I hadn't even looked him up on YouTube. He didn't come on until 9:30 on a midweek gig (doors open at 7pm). Half the audience left before the second set to get their last train home. 😂 That kind of primadonna behaviour didn't impress me. He walked up and down the balcony for a half hour from 9pm. I stayed to the end but really he didn't do anything different after the first 10 minutes. I still haven't listened to any of his recorded material.

Finding musicians who work together musically is hard enough, before you put gigs into the mix. People's lives change as well, when the join a band they may be free to play lots of gigs and happy to play for not much money, but I think what often happens is people are less free and so want more money to put off what ever else they (or their significant other) has planned. Also you have to factor in the people who want to be able to tell their freinds they're in a band, but don't actually want to be in a band. They're the ones who will do any low paid local gigs at the drop of a hat. Then there's the band leader who thinks the band isn't ready even after 10 years of weekly rehearsals where they change the arrangements each time a song is played.

When building a guitar why would you route the pocket at an angle?

If you're shimming the pocket to take into account of neck bowing then you have to have that angle, so just shim one end. If you're shimming because the whole pocket is too deep (in this case), then you have to shim the whole pocket.

Did everyone just ignore this? Yes, you need to shim the whole pocket in this case.