WinterMute

I was singing in a school mates band and the bassist left, Steve said "you can play bass, it's only one note at a time" so I did. He taught me to play a major scale and a minor scale and I learnt a bunch of songs and just got on with it. I'm sure I could be a much better player if I took advantage of all the resources now, but the need has never arisen and I've spent the last 45 years playing on sessions and in studio based bands, mostly doing other stuff at the same time, mainly engineering and producing.

Both, onstage monitor is an FRFR cab with a parallel feed sent to the PA from a Helix floor unit.

In the serious playing years I'd have 2, a fretted and a fretless, and occasionally a 3rd in a different tuning before I started playing 5 string. For many years I had just 1 fretted 5 string, so that came out with a spare set of strings in the bag, which I never needed. If I gig these days it'd be back to a fretted and a fretless, both 5 strings, I reckon I could get through a gig on either one if anything went bang. I also used to carry a pre-programmed Bass Pod XT in case the backline gave up the ghost, I'd at least be able to get some sound into the PA... It's more useful to have spare cables, batteries, strings, gaffe tape and an extra strap, as these are things I've been asked for on more occasions than I've had equipment failure.

I've done many sessions with click tracks of all kinds, metronomes, loops, once the original song as a guide, and they all have advantages and disadvantages. I've come to believe that clicks of any kind limit the drummers to an extent, they constrain the performance, even if slightly. Even the best session players play better if allowed to keep their own time, to my ears. I started using groove extraction in Protools a while back, it allows me to lock the timeline of the session to the timekeeping of the drummer, allows them to set the tempo and dynamics and lets me keep programmed parts and loops in time perfectly. Obviously it only works in the studio and if you have a drummer capable of keeping good time, which isn't always the case...! Can't be done for live work, but a bit of time in rehearsal can set up a very similar "dynamic" click that can be used as the basis for a much more natural feel to programme-based tracks.

Add to that the velocity switch layering most decent drum systems have these days, BFD and Slate Drums being the two I habitually use if I have to programme drums, and you do get a much more realistic response. Interestingly this tech has been embedded in some of the triggering plug-ins too, the Slate version being particularly good at emulating the tone of an original drum recording. I still tend to layer triggered sounds with the originals rather than replace, but it all helps.

I'd really like my band to 1. exist and 2. be obscenely famous and rich and not at all dysfunctional...

It was ever thus before the age of affordable audio tech, the process of just making an album was prohibitively expensive, which was where the labels came in, and still do occasionally these days. It's a perfectly reasonable prospect to put some time into learning how to record and mix properly and putting together a system capable of returning good product, and it's usually cheaper than paying for an established studio. I think there's still an expectation that the "big studio" experience is the only way to achieve pro results, and that's simply not true now. If Stu Hamm wants to leverage his fan-base to pay for better facilities, he absolutely should, if I tried it I reckon I could get £37.50... I'm lucky enough to be able to record and mix, but I'm aware thats not the case for everyone, so the limited help that a label can bring is often the only route available. Labels have always been necessary evil, but some of the practices in the industry are pernicious and that drives artists to try different things.

Marillion haven't had a record label for 25 years, a band like them needed funding to record back then, and yes, it's very different today and I'm sure they take advantage of the available technology. Steve is still very much of the same opinions, and views the internet as a way to get away from the clutches of the labels, sadly the streaming scams have simply put the money back in the hands of the middlemen. Stu Hamm has a following, and he's leveraging it, more power to him, I don't think the situation for a new artist recently signed is much different in terms of label support and where the money goes, many of my producer friends have resorted to the so called 360 deal with artists, taking points from ticket and merchandise sales as well as releases, there are clauses for ads, films, TV. The reality is that everyone still wants a bite. I make my own music, I do it for pleasure these days and I release it privately, the tech means it sounds as good as anything I did in a studio in the 80s and 90s. I think this is a good thing for everyone, except for your last point about releases, the signal to noise ratio has worsened exponentially in the last 10 years, who can hear the music over the noise now?

Marillion have crowd funded albums for years after they were dropped by their label. You might want to look at Steve Albini's essay on the record industry and how the money goes almost anywhere but to the band/artist, and his later, more optimistic, comments about the internet. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albini-at-face-the-music-how-the-internet-solved-problem-with-music

Hence my comment "make of that what you will", peer review is not as thorough as it used to be and there are many bodies willing to publish suspect research,

I genuinely though that cooker thing was an April fools joke like the mechanical compressor mic stand or the concrete speaker cab with pre-damaged 11" drivers and mini tow bar.

I've used the studio spares splitter for the same reasons in a few studios, might be a bit overkill, but multiple headphones outputs is always a benefit. https://www.studiospares.com/mtr-8way-ps-8-headphone-splitter-440520.htm

Indeed.

The American National Institute of health appears to think there's some valid science at work... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/ Make of that what you will. Actually, on further reading there have been a ton of studies done, many of which report some benefits to earthing. Appendix to this study has loads of links, how well the studies are policed or reviewed bears investigation. For clarity, I know people who swear by grounding, but I've always thought it was new-age b*llsh*t.

Quite fancy a noodle on a Zon Hyperbass, shame they don't do a 5 string version.

Yes, the Vault has a CD drive for ripping and you can add files to the 2Tb HD over the network, it'll play FLAC, but you can set the rip to AIFF 44.1/16 if you want to and it''l play back anything up to 192/24 and even some of the "master" files kicking about. You can also access a bunch of streaming services, and it has the TuneIn internet radio app. Useful little box. https://www.bluesound.com/products/vault/

Anything that gets recommended or I stumble across gets some time in the Apple Music library, if it survives a week or so, it gets bought on CD and ripped to lossless in a Bluesound Vault 2 network player. The 1500 or so CD's I've got are all in there and are playable round the house network. I've even digitised some old vinyl for SnG's. I compress the lossless files to AAC for the iPhone as it gets used in the car and on trains. I can't abide most streaming services, the only good one is Tidal, but the quality comes at a price for a service I wouldn't use that much.

Whilst you don't actually need to like the people you play with, you do have to know they value you as a player and band-mate, that's always been the kicker for me. Of course it helps immensely if you all do get on famously, because it's much more fun.

Yeah a lot, it's very tactile and "woody" for want of a better word, but it wears like epoxy or ebanol.

here you go.

I had a Squire Jazz with an ebanol board, it was ok, didn't have any issues with it, I had an Ebony board on a Wal Pro 1 which I liked a lot, smoother to the touch but it cut up a little more than the Ebanol with round wound strings. I now have an epoxied rosewood defretted SR5 which is lovely, and I had Alan fit an acrylic infused lava bubinga board to my ACG 5 string, which is absolutely perfect, combines the smoothness of ebony with the toughness of both the ebanol and the epoxy coated board. I can't say I can hear much difference with the amount of processing I use, but the feel definitely changes between woods.

My neighbour has BA55 NAV, but he's not a bass player, or called Nav...

Geddy Lee's Tom Sawyer tone, I started playing bass after hearing Permanent Waves, and Lee will always be an major influence. Love the Ox's tone on that track although his tone evolved quite radically if you listen to the Live Aid version of that song. Tim Comerford's tone is always great, his work with Audioslave is under-rated I think. John McVie's tone has always been absolutely perfect for the band, and his line in Go Your Own Way is an absolute peach, plus his timing is immaculate. What stands out is how poor some of the tones in the metal bands are, and how bad some of the timing is. The engineer in me loves Cliff Williams tone, it'll work all day long in that band. Honourable mentions for Nate Mendel, Chris Squire and Rick Butler.