TimR

Industry line conditioners are not usually the sort of thing you can get into the back of a van. In the UK the supply voltage is must be above 220v to be in line with Europe, but usually it will be still 240v. Pro level amps will have electronics built into their power supplies to stop the spikes the power. The problem is that mains is dirty and full of spikes, not a nice clean sine wave. These spikes constantly hammer the electronics in your amp. Eventually your amp's power supply will die. Toss up betwwen replacing your power conditioner every few thousand hours or replace your amps supply every few thousand hours. Depends on how much you gig I suppose. You can't stop the interferance from strip lights etc, that's airborourne RF and is picked up by your -erm- pickups. I think some power conditioers will stage the outputs on slowly after a power cut so would protect your gear if the power is suddenly switched back on, before you get to turn your volumes back down.

[quote name='Linus27' post='627197' date='Oct 15 2009, 06:27 PM']HEHE well put, thats exactly what I have been feeling. To me, I am getting the impression, especially from the singer that he thinks the only work you have to do is make the songs good. In reality, that is a very small. The business side of the band, the networking, the communication, the admin, the planning etc is far more important yet they do not get this.[/quote] Meet with them. Tell them that it's now 3 months into your 6 month plan. Write down what you have achieved and what you should have achieved. Work out a plan to get you back on target by the end of November, meet again then. If things haven't improved tell them you can't do anymore for them and will leave when the six months is up if you're not all rich and famous. Take a back seat while looking for a new band and then leave.

[quote name='Linus27' post='626933' date='Oct 15 2009, 02:09 PM'].. I joined the band in March 09. They wanted somebody committed and who could dedicate time to the band as they wanted to move forward. Also, because I had been signed previously, I knew some of the things that needed to be done to move forward and they wanted to use my experience to do this. ...[/quote] Is this code for "We can't be bothered to do the hard work and want someone else with connections to do it all for us."? They are just another band who think that fame comes in an overnight success package.

This was discussed on another bass forum recently. Nickel is a dark silvery grey and leaves deposits on your fingers. Nothing to worry about. It should wash off.

Lots of chromatics and the keyboard parts tend to use inversions of major chords. So while the bass may be playing the root B of a B major chord, the keys may have a G# or E as the bottom note.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='616066' date='Oct 3 2009, 09:18 PM']Andrew Mckinney is a member of Basschat and in JTQ's band. If you need any tips on playing the lines, I'm sure he'd be very approachable.[/quote] Superb! This thread has just got me checking the Decmber dates at jazz Cafe. In all probablility I will be there. Maybe I will shake his hand and steal some funkiness I stole some of James' funkiness at Milfield, and now my bass lines all sound like I'm playing a hammond organ.

Not from the original film, but obviously inspired by the original soundtracks I would recommend The James Taylor Quartet. They're playing lots of gigs usually to <2000 people. I saw them at The Jazz Cafe and Milfield Theatre a couple of years ago. Here's their "Theme From Dirty Harry" also check out their "Starsky and Hutch Theme" Several good albums - In The Hand of the Inevitable, is a good one, containing an incredible version of Whole Lotta Love - Led Zep

If there is a buffet we always get a plate. If its a dinner dance we sometimes get a hot meal in another room while people are eating or at least sandwiches. At one club we played regularly we got free soft drinks all night and staff price for a meal if we wanted one.

I was thinking the same thing, and we need to do it gain. We went into a studio and recorded 2 four hour sessions (£90) each. The engineer set the mics up in about an hour then just left the levels and we played while the hard disk recorded everything we played. We only stopped if anyone made a major mistake and, depending how far into the take we were, we either started again or left it and move to the next song. We ended up with about 20 tunes worth selecting from. We chose the best tunes and I went back in and sat while the engineer mixed them. I then cut them down to a verse and a chorus. Next time we will do the same, but only one 4 hour session, record with electronic drums, re-do all the vocals and sax and overdub any mistakes at a later date. The problem with recording live is that once the 'tape' starts rolling people clam up and make mistakes that they wouldn't usually make. It can get very tense, its bad enough when you're paying for studio time, when you have to ALL get it right its even harder.

Too many. and if you include Mustang Sally... FAR too many!

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='606706' date='Sep 23 2009, 03:02 PM']At the risk of making myself unpopular (like a give a rat's...), I don't do it for 'fun' either. I think 'fun' is overated. That doesn't mean I don't get an awful lot out of it,; pleasure, satisfaction, an opportunity to express myself yadda yadda - but to compare playing music to knobbing about with a wii, sea-fishing or snowboarding devalues its potential massively. I don't do it for 'fun' either. I may occasionally have fun whilst doing it, but that is entirely peripheral. They'll be calling it a hobby next [/quote] I've been trying for 3 days to word something like this. +1

[quote name='LukeFRC' post='603264' date='Sep 20 2009, 12:51 AM']While bass straight from a DI sounds fine I don't think I would for electric guitar. I find mic the cab will sound better, you can use some kind of power soak to get the volume down yet still push the valves.[/quote] Normally I would agree, but our guitarist uses a very clean Vox amp. All of his modelling effects are from a digitech multi FX unit and we get an amazing sound just from that set up. I've even done some recording direct from his fx out.

If your PA has subs fine, otherwise don't bother. Learn to use the EQ on your amp and work out best positioning for your cab. ie In a corner as close to a back wall as possible. Depending on what type of music and the size of venue 180 watts should be ok for less than 100 people, any more than that and I think you will struggle. You can take a line out from your amp to the PA, just make sure you plug into a line-in input on the PA as opposed to a mic level input. If you have a PA with balanced mic inputs ie 3pin XLR then use the DI. We always put our guitarist through the PA by taking an output from his amp effects send jack to a line in on the PA. This means we can control his stage level and room level much better.

[quote name='Les' post='601203' date='Sep 17 2009, 12:16 PM']Glad thats settled. It's the bloody drummer, isn't it ?[/quote] I'm not sure that it is. The guitar seems to be playing the first beat freely with 2,3 and 4 on the beat. Its then up to the drummer to come in strongly where the first bead 'should' be and hold the beat. The guitar is then shifting around the beat quite a bit. I think (without playing it) that the drummer might be getting confused by thinking the guitar is playing in time on that first beat, and the guitarist then thinking the drummer is comming in late and out of time. This is another song all about feel. You can either play it or you can't. I HATE songs where people go mad and jump around like lunatics, I played in enough metal bands to be bored by the whole thing. All that happens is all my gear gets covered with beer. I prefer playing strong dance tunes that fill the floor and have everybody dancing rather than rioting. We have a similar intro problem with Car Wash and the claps, which are on the off beat, but seem to mark out the beat. Confuses the drummer nicely. We count him in when were bored with the clapping.

The punters like it. Our singer suggested it a few weeks back. During the last song of the night at our last gig a rather drunk bloke came to the side of the stage and asked me if we would play it.

Its counter intuative, but adding the shim does not significantly raise the heel of the neck up. In effect it lowers the neck at the nut. I'm using simple figures for illustration. Pocket 100mm. Neck 1000mm, card 1mm. The neck pivots at the top of the heel, where the neck meets the body. The card raises the body end 1mm, but (using similar traingles and the demonstartion figures, imagine a lopsided see saw) this will lower the nut by 10mm and hence significantly change the angle of the string from the nut to the saddles. That is why you can then lower the saddles. In reality the card is much thinner so the nut is not lowered so much, probably around 3mm. With this in mind it is possible once you have settled on the right thickness of card that does the job, to actually plane a wedge OFF the back of the neck, equivilent to the wedge you would put in. Although the neck is no higher, the nut is much lower and has the same effect.

So are there any tracks you specifically avoid listening to because your band or another has covered them and completely destroyed them?

[quote name='witterth' post='597093' date='Sep 13 2009, 10:11 AM']2. When listening to the albums the songs came from I was struck by the amount of 'filler' on there. For every rock classic there was at least 3 rather predictable and tedious blues workouts that did absolutely nothing for me. Even bands like The Who, who had always struck me as making their own unique way through the 60s and 70s had a tendency to slip into the clichés of the time when they weren't writing hits. damn right, now you mention it !![/quote] With the advent of single track downloads, I wonder how long the album will last.

Lie your bass on your kitchen table. Pluck a string and see if the table amplifies the sound. If it does that is an indication that the table is picking up vibrations from somewhere. The only place it can pick them up from is the body of the bass as this is all that will be touching the table. If it didn't vibrate there would be no way the table top could vibrate. The length of time (sustain) and the resonant pitch of the frequencies will depend on the density of the wood. If you need proof of this clamp big bits of wood to the body of the bass and see how that chnages the tone. The pickups are embedded in the body and so will also vibrate. Alex. Are you intending to use Power Point at any stage? I think a blackboard and chalk would be more suitable.

I'm not even sure if we play any tunes that I would have on my iPod if we didn't play them. They're all great songs, good to dance to, the audience love them and great to play, but they're just not what I would chose to listen to outside a party environment.

Our singer complained she could never hear herself in certain songs and had difficulty singing certain phrases in others. We recorded them and guess what, eveytime there was a beak in the music to allow the vocal to stand out, the drummer would fill it.

I was going through my iPod library last night. I usually download songs we are going to play and drop them into a playlist so that I can find them easily if we need to reference them at practice and so that I can listen to them in the car when trying to learn them. It occurred to me that once we have learned them, I may listen again after a few months just to see if I missed anything, but in general I never listen to the original tunes again once we've learned them. So how many people actually listen to the originals of songs they play.

I've had a SR400 in natural mahogany for a few years. It has PJ pickups, is active, sounds and plays fantastic. I wasn't keen on the Bartolini soap bar sound. The only thing I changed was the strings. It came with Elixir and I've but Bass Centre Stadiums on it. Fantastic sound. Oh I've changed the battery a few times as well

Troll 1/10

[quote name='TimR' post='584406' date='Aug 29 2009, 12:20 PM']I've just designed ordered a shirt for myself. I'll report back when I get it. £14 isn't a lot for a t-shirt, I can always wear it round the house if it's rubbish.[/quote] T-shirt arrived today. 4 working days as it was bank holiday Monday. I used a jpg and it looks like they put it on the shirt at 150dpi. The design is printed directly on the shirt using the colours in the jpg. I used a picture with a black background onto a black t-shirt and as the black of the jpg is different to the black of the t-shirt, you can see the border. I didn't take a screen shot of the screen after I finalised my design. I did scale the image but not by much and I can't be sure that it exactly matches what I submitted. I'm happy with the result.