TimR

Yes. A few seconds to get your breath back and set the pace/tone for the next song, rather than overboard whipping people into a frenzy. That's never going to happen when it's mid afternoon and everyone is just getting started.

We played a local festival on Saturday. We are a pop/rock covers band and had an early afternoon set. Waiting to see the video, but think we played quite well. Usual problems of no soundcheck and 30mins allotted stage time. Just make sure you can hear most of what you need and get on with it. How do you strike a balance between taking time to engage the audience and just getting on with playing the songs. As a cover band, I don't see it important to play loads of our material to showcase the band. I think it's more important to play well and engage the audience. Singer seems to see it as an opportunity to play only her favourite tunes and the drummer seems to think we need to play songs as closely together as possible. I came off with the impression we had rushed through 7 songs, we had 2 or 3 minutes left, not enough to play an 8th but which could have been used to create a better 'show'. Next time I will try and emphasise my point of view. Usually we play for 2 hours or so, so finding 8 songs we could all agree on was pretty hard so I stayed out of that conversation. Audience thought it was good and lots of compliments afterwards.

That does depend on what level of Pro you're talking about. I deped for a band once where I'd never met the band before arriving at the gig. The band leader took one look at me and my bass and said "Keep it simple, no flashy stuff, stick to the roots and watch me for the changes." I hadn't even played a note. I was playing Jackson Charvel SB2. Since then I've bought something a bit less metal, but I've only just considered that he based his words on his first impression.

I was trying to have a similar conversation with our guitarist about vocal mics for our singer. IMO the only reason the Sure SM58 is the goto standard mic is that it's the standard goto mic. Plenty of other much better microphones. I'd suggest availability and ease of having identical and affordable replacements is high on the list of someone touring. Especially as there's not a lot of money around anywhere at the moment. My dad was selling an old Elka keyboard. A guy called up and said he collect it in half an hour, turned up with an envelope full of £5 notes. Turns out the keyboard player from Elvis Costello and the Attractions keyboard had failed and he needed a replacement of urgently that night. The £5 notes came from the box office takings. They're not the kind of instrument you have a spare of and as an obsolete instrument not possible to buy replacements easily. A Senheiser e845 is 70% of the price of an SM58 and sounds and performs better.

My local. That's what we call The Old Town. It's changed a bit in the last 20+ years I've been going there. Their other shop in Luton closed down a few years ago. In around 2000 I went in to browse and spotted a second hand Trace Elliot GP7 15" Combo that had just come in with a £300 label on it. I asked if that was the correct price, "Hold on, I'll ring the boss, he's not seen it yet and it's just come in." A bit later "Yes, that's the right price." "OK I'll take it now." 10 years later having played many many gigs, I sold it for £300. My current amp and one of my cabs was purchased at the Luton shop. That is a big rack of Fenders but not much second hand or budget end. Take your credit card. Always very helpful guys.

A high proportion of an audience won't even know the difference between bass, lead and rhythm guitar. Even more won't know what brand you're playing. And even more won't have a clue how much they cost.

Quality control of budget gear is very good. One major reason to use Pro gear is reliability and that's determined through the quality control processes during the build. If the reliability of budget gear is high, what are the other realistic considerations influencing purchases?

Sounded all right. I'd be more inclined to have stood at the back with the drummer and given the two guitarists and the singer more space along the front to move around a bit or chucked a rhythm guitarist back a bit. With a bit of movement and attention to visuals you can get away with a bit more of a less tight set.

The troublemakers didn't seem to be there for the bands.

The chaos that I've seen has been during daylight hours. I don't think they're even there for the music. Ultimately they need to drastically reduce the numbers attending to manageable numbers.

There's probably too much going on in that video. The girls syncro and lead singer is great. But there's loads of other stuff going on. I played in a big Soul band for a few years, probably loads of us did just after the Comitments film came out. You couldn't move for bands playing that stuff. Guess it depends where you want the focus. Certainly on instrument breaks you want the soloist to be visible and probably move a lot. As has been said, it's a balance and genre dependent. The lead singer needs to capture people's attention that's for certain, regardless of genre, but capturing attention can be done in many ways, some more subtle than others. Last week, we played our 3rd or 4th proper gig since lockdown ended. No matter how much you rehearse you need to gig before you know that you know the material properly. I tried moving around and smiling but mainly look like I'm concentrating far too hard in the photos taken during songs we haven't been playing that long.

JTQ have a new album out. Man in the Hot Seat. Songs entirely in the style of those 60s/70s TV themes.

There's a warehouse full of unsold Fenders. The whole supply chain problem and looming recession following Covid is really weird. Some companies have excess stock, some can't get parts and so can't produce stock. In both situations you won't be making new stock so the employees are doing nothing.

A million? Is that still, was it ever, true? Only a handful of UK singles has sold over 2million copies and I suspect less than 100 sold 1m or more. I suppose only a percentage of people who like a song go and buy it, but think success of a song can be measured by a much smaller audience.

As usual, it's the Internet isn't it. No grey only black and white. Considering the centuries of experience amongst us there's a hundred ways to skin a cat. As many PA set ups as there are bands. Mostly it depends on who owns, transports, sets up and operates the PA. How much cash they had to spend, what vehicle they drive, what storage options they have at home, what size gigs they're playing, how much they're making from gigging, who is in the band... Very rarely is it the best solution acoustically, quite often it's not, if the singer rides a bicycle and lives in a 1 bedroom flat, they won't own a PA, even if they're the only person using it. For someone to say- "you can't do that, it won't work", when someone is actually doing it, and it does, seems a bit ridiculous.

I thought it illustrated the nonsense of the arguments rather succinctly.

I heard a guy singing and playing an acoustic guitar once. No bass player. No Drummer. Not even a PA.

I switched from violin to bass and my guitarist friend played both cello and guitar. You pick up a different instrument and your brain switches automatically. It's odd but it's a powerful thing the brain.

Definitly need a monitor for the vocals. You can set the main speakers up behind the band but really need the vocalist to have a different and adjustable level to what the audience is hearing.

Blast from the past. Pre Spotify. JTQ were first band I saw after lockdown. In 100 Club Oxford St. Anyway the Lalo Shifrin Dirty Harry album is on Spotify.

Arthur and Fred apparently.

We rehearse at our guitarists House. He has some workshop style outbuilding. It usually heated by a small electric heater in the winter. In the summer the windows and doors are closed to keep the sound down for the neighbours. The room tends to be also used as temporary storage for his family's junk. We are noticing a big difference in the sound in our rehearsal space seemingly depending on the weather and/or how much junk has been stored. Last night the guitarist told me to turn down, but all I could then hear was guitar. I messed around for quite a few songs trying to get my volume right. We moved some junk around. None of my tone controls had been or ever are adjusted. All my EQ controls are always centred at zero. We discussed how inconsistent the sound was, and I suggested it was all the junk that was changing the acoustics of the space. He seemed to think it was the weather. Eventually he looked at his amp and adjusted his bass knob saying he'd turned it up while practicing on his own at the weekend. Everything went back to normal and I could hear everything and it sounded much better. At the end of the rehearsal he commented on how the sound had strangely improved since the beginning of the evening. Thought I'd share.

Your ears can only deal with so much volume before they give up trying to make sense of what's assaulting them.

The 'problem' would be trying to convince the manufacturers that bass players would understand what they're looking at. The plots would be easy to produce. But as the two previous posters have explained. Add in cabs (which have different impedance at different frequencies) and all other aspects you're onto a loser to start with.

Look at the actual specifications of any amp. They should give the number of Watts and reference that to a frequency and the amount of total harmonic distortion. So 1000w at 1kHz with 1% THD. It wouldn't be too difficult to supply a graph showing the amount of distortion it varying frequencies for each power output. It's done for component amplifiers.