Boodang

We organised Islamabad's biggest (and only!) open air music festival this weekend. Actually a very modest affair, I got 5 bands to play (there's only 6 bands here!), food vendors and fireworks although we couldn't do a bonfire as the pollution is so bad at the moment we were told we couldn't add to it. We held it on our football pitch and sold 300 tickets, for here not a bad turn out. Plus we put out bouncy castles and stuff for the kids, so quite chilled out. I'm in three of the bands, only hiccup was our punk band had to drop out at the very minute as our guitarist ended up in hospital with an IV for fluids... a bad case of 'pak-attack' that left him dangerously dehydrated. The Hendrix band went down particularly well as did our soul-blues band, had loads of fun playing those sets. Finished off the night with a band that uses backing tracks and plays all the disco hits. A great way to finish the evening with plenty of dancing and went for two and half hours straight. They're real pros, they get the audience going and keeping the energy there.

Squier jazz maybe? I had a MTD Kingston that I thought was excellent, only got rid of it because I had a cull of my collection, one of those would fit the bill nicely.

What a dreadful gig last night! The wrong gig with the wrong audience. Got asked to play an hour set at a halloween party, however turns out we were on after an hour of drum & bass from an overly loud DJ. After which an hour of punk went down like a led balloon. One guy sang every word of every song, so in my opinion worth it just for that, but the rest of the audience just went to the bar and waited for us to finish before going back to the duff duff moron beat of the DJ. Of course I’m in the minority here! Wrong gig at the wrong time really. Live and learn I guess but actually a good shake down for next week when we’re doing an open air gig with, hopefully, a good crowd.

As a drummer I'm just going to say that as a substitute for drums, cajons suck @rse!!

Just had a thought... do you record your gigs? I use a Zoom 4k stereo thing which I put out front (and hope someone doesn't steal it!) and it pretty much records the audio as the audience would be hearing it at that point. At the last gig I managed to put it on top of a light fitting (admittedly most of the audience weren't listening to the gig at that location) but it gave an excellent view of the band and we got the balance about right so we're actually using parts of it (the bits we didn't c@ck up) for a live recording.

Having said that I have found the SM58 beta has greater tolerance before feedback than the standard 58. If you’re pushing volumes to the limit then mic choice is important. I play drums as well as bass and I love it when we play smaller venues and I have to pay attention to dynamics and be inventive. Someone else mentioned that drums, and specifically cymbals, don’t sound the same unless you hit them hard… well this is all well and good if you’re say Benny Greb and the audience are there specifically to hear you, but otherwise you’re asking an audience to indulge the drummers whims which is not really the object of the exercise for most bands. I play everything from a large kit with shiny cymbals, small kit with dark cymbals (actually my favourite, which helps) to an ekit. Whatever gets the gig right.

I’m convinced that the older you get the harder it is to find a band. But when you do I’m convinced it’s worth it. Keep at it and don’t lose faith!

Two & a half years!! Two & a half months would be too long. I’m in three covers bands, in all of them the policy is A. Plenty of numbers in the bank so we can mix and match according to the audience and B. Constantly add new numbers. The later is for several reasons 1. We don’t want to bore ourselves 2. We don’t want to bore an audience who see us more than once and 3. There’s so many good songs in this world, why restrict yourself!

We had this problem with a drummer once. As he refused to do anything to reduce his volume we started playing gigs where we made everybody else in the band quieter than normal and refused to turn up, so the drums absolutely drowned out everybody. We ruined two gigs that way but the weight of opinion (from the audience as much as anybody) against him was so much he eventually saw the light.

Daisy chaining the power can lead to noise issues with some pedals. Getting a PSU with buffered outputs avoids this. I use a MXR DC brick and it works a charm. It also has an 18v output as well as 9v. For my bigger boards I use a Palmer which has 12 buffered outputs, four of which can output 9, 12 & 18v.

Xotic Super Sweet. Bought it on a whim and don't know why, except now it's always on. Initially tried it with the voltage doubler and it was ok but nothing special. Then tried it on 9v and ta dah! 9v has less headroom so there's a small amount of compression and in default mode there's a small amount of mid boost. Result is a defined but punchy tone. The photon death ray, being an optical comp, seems to just work on enhancing top end notes on the D & G strings and between the two it's my latest fav tone. Playing a MM thru the board and occasionally a jazz fretless which also benefits (especially from the PDR).

Yeah, I think for me the lack of an adult conversation is the unforgivable bit. Normally when sh!t happens in a band you get over it and move on, I guess in this case it’s because it wasn’t just a band it was friends, we hang out with other, support each others projects, play in darts teams together, in fact spent more time not playing music together. In theory no musical secrets at least, so came as extra surprising. But as you say, it happens in all walks of life not just bands. Still takes me by surprise every time.

It happens, I agree, and it's more than likely that they've found someone better, but they took the cowards way to sack me. And by doing that it's affected the friendship which is the point. If they had been up front about it I wouldn't have minded.

I use the tri mix at the heart of my board. Not only for parallel mixing but also to match gain structures for inputs/outputs. Some pedals can have sensitive inputs and this solve the problem. Plus pedals in parallel is an awesome option to have.

The guitarist, quite frankly lame, excuse was 'your strengths really are in playing the acoustic numbers'. I pointed out that even if that is the case I hadn't excused myself from the non acoustic side of the band and certainly not anything that was discussed. And I certainly didn't feel that he as the guitarist held executive powers in the band (of which I am a co founder) to decide which numbers I play on and which I don't. I did get an apology, of sorts, from the drummer who said sorry they didn't think it thru. The guitarist.... nothing. Still, in the meantime I have a blues band that's doing really well with musicians who do think about each other, so at least I have more time to concentrate on that. I suspect the blues band might have something to do with their behaviour but I've always been upfront about other projects and I've never let them get in the way in terms of commitment. Still, as has been said, move on and don't let anger be the main emotion, after all we did have some great gigs, so have to be grateful for that.

I think what's quite interesting when something like this happens is how special bonds are between musicians. When you play, especially live, you're having a musical conversation that's unique and then there's that extended band family. So when it goes wrong it's particularly painful to deal with.

..oh, as for where the old band stands, they're definitely a duo now! I have other musical projects to fry with musicians who are less 'complicated' to deal with.

We were actively looking for new band mates to get it going again. He found them... plus one extra! And in terms of the music it's the old band minus me. I guess it's the lack of communication I really don't understand. However, I'll move on musically, that's not the issue, it's more the friendship. What I can't get past is when he found a keyboard player and bassist, what he didn't say was, we need keys but we already have bass.

Yeah, he genuinely is surprised by my reaction. Also, I'm surprised that he's not surprised! It's a shame because I've genuinely lost some night's sleep over the loss of a friendship and the extended family that comes with it because let's face it, with a band there's always the wives/husbands etc that form the wider circle . Oh, and definitely not going to the gig but at least I would have got in for free!

We have had a discussion. We were doing some acoustic stuff in the meantime just to keep playing and he saw this as the band's new direction. However none of this was discussed and all this was done without any consultation with me. I think for me that's the issue as it was sprung as a complete surprise and presented as a fait accompli.

Don't worry, in my head I might think it but I wouldn't do that to fellow musicians and the audience no matter the circumstances.

I think they were told it's a new adventure, which is obviously not entirely true. The worse bit for me isn't so much the end of a band but the end of a two year friendship.

I don't think they are aware as they're new in town. However in a twist of fate I'm doing the sound for a small open air festival next month and I've been told they are first on. So I'll get the opportunity. Plus I'll make sure I give their sound special attention!

This hasn't happened to me this way since I was a teenager... and that was a long while ago! I formed this covers band with a guitarist two years ago. Recently we've been on a bit of a hiatus since fellow band members left (we're all here on temporary postings) leaving us down to a trio. Turns out my fellow guitarist during the lull formed a new band consisting of the trio minus me with new musicians, playing the exact set list from our last gig. Apparently I've not been replaced because the band has a different name, so that's alright then! Haven't been fired in such a cowardly for decades. I got invited to their first gig!

Good point!! Just using an old Laney 1 x 15 combo (160 watts and quite punchy), a Doc Lloyd Photon death ray comp and a combination of a Squier Jazz with custom pups and a Musicman. Around 150 people, didn’t want to be too loud but equally some of the Hendrix numbers can’t be too quiet. Seemed to get the balance about right as we could take the dynamics down to a whisper for things like Worried Life Blues (Robben Ford style) and Little Wing, and push it back up for the likes of Fire and Purple Haze.