WinterMute

45 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

But as the OP points out you need to get the original money for a musical project from somewhere, and since very little is forthcoming from record labels these days where can it come from? Venture Capitalists? A Bank Loan?

 

Crowd funding is all very well but you need a crowd in the first place to fund from, and unsurprisingly the majority of artists making crowd funding work for them got their crowd as a result of being signed to a "big bad" record label.

 

For all their faults I can't see any other institutions taking over from record labels and taking the same financial risks that they used to. Can you imagine how you would word a business proposal to raise sufficient money to allow you and the rest of your band to take a year or two off work so that you could concentrate full-time on the music, at the same time providing the funding to make an album, a couple single and video to go with them, buying the band onto a couple of big-name tours in a support sort, plus all the other promotional activities needed to generate an audience big enough to make the venture self-funding by the time the original investment ran out?

 

OoI has anyone on here successfully crowd funded an album release? I've been in bands that discussed it but my stance was - what if it failed - there's nothing sadder than a band who can't even raise the cash required to put out a album, and whose failure is there for everyone to see. The Billy No-Mates of the musical world.

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.

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

Ignoring the fact that both Steve Albini articles are so old as to be totally out of date (and first now totally irrelevant in todays musical environment), they also conveniently avoid pointing out that people like Steve Albini and Marillion are still able to exist as musicians today because they have built up suitably sized fan base under the old (bad) system. They may not have made a lot of money under this (or so they claim), but at the time they were relatively big fish (pun not intended) in a relatively small pond, they should have had the whole and very extensive weight of their record company publicity machines behind them; and that is what is now allowing them luxury of continuing the exist musically.

 

Similarly for the album in the OP. The crowd-funding model only works because Stuart Hamm has already built up a reputation in the 80s and 90s. I do notice that his costs are relatively modest, although I wonder if he did look at getting any of the work done up front for free in exchange for a share of the profits? Especially that given his reputation he should be have no problem generating sufficient money from this venture.

 

Nowadays when there are somewhere between 40k and 100k new tracks being uploaded to Spotify EVERY SINGLE DAY. How can a new artist ever hope to be noticed in order to be able to build up a large enough fan base to be able to make crowd-funding work for even the most modest of projects? I wonder how many of upon here playing music we have written ourselves would be able to raise the kind of money that Stuart Hamm is looking for through a similar system?

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?

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Start of the rant.

 

There's something strange in that crowdfunding system especially coming from well established people like Stu Hamm and many others.

 

My main question is: What the heck did he do with all the big money he earned if he can't afford to record a new album?

 

For a start-up, that's ok, for established people, there's a big problem.

 

If I can afford to record a new album, why couldn't he?

 

End of the rant.

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

51 minutes ago, Beedster said:

No it doesn't, no more than a library argues for the validity of any one of the books on its shelves

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,

16 minutes ago, itu said:

I think that the dirty electricity is the reason I have to vacuum weekly! Maybe my cats are producing that dirty electricity by wandering round my flat?

 

But as the heading was about gilt OFC cables, I need to remind you all, ladies and genitals, about the must-have Cable Cooker:

www.thecablecooker.com/

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

6 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

 

And anything that uses "Quantum" in their marketing and blurb is usually a purveyor of pseudo-science...

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.

1 hour ago, How1 said:

You say ‘ripped in’? So does that rip and store as a standalone device?

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.

1 hour ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

Bridge can be adjusted. I think I have got at 18mm atm( can't remember really but I can measure it ) . The top horn is solid as rock , not sure what would you have to do to snap it 

I've played 16.5mm most of my life, Warwick Thumb 5's, the SR5s are 17, (might be 17.5 actually), the ACG is 17, it's comfortable for my small hands...

Yeah they're built like tanks those Pedulla's, it just looks a bit odd to me.

One of the best sounding fretlesses on the planet, without a doubt.

3 minutes ago, nilorius said:

Looks like ebony. Did You like it ?

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

6 hours ago, ezbass said:

That's a good description, not that it affected my playing of the bass, I actually miss that one. 

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to see a photo of that.

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.

Always loved these basses, but the 19mm spacing and the fact I was always expecting the top horn to snap off put me off a bit.

Beautiful bass, hope you decide to keep it.

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.

Lovely work and the tone fits perfectly in the track.

If my bass sounded like that, I'd be breaking out the new Rotosound swing bass...

My garage conversion studio follows BigRedX suggestions pretty much exactly, except for having a floating floor and false ceiling additionally, the conversion includes a baffled A/C unit for ventilation, as the very last thing you want to do is punch holes in your isolation for vents or fans.

This is not a cheap option, but it works.

Don't neglect the door/window fit if you have windows, decent double glazing is OK, triple glazing is more expensive and doesn't actually help that much. commercial installers won't know how to isolate the window frames correctly to prevent flanking.

A well fitted fire door will help as they are naturally sound isolating, but the frame will need to fit tight and have seals installed to the rebates, mine is an FR120, and it's very good for isolation.

8 hours ago, steantval said:

I would think it’s a scam.

Yup, that sh*t's getting deleted without being read, that's if the spam filters haven't got it first.

Turning Japanese was not a song about emigrating to the Land of the Rising Sun.... Apparently.

Much like my old mate Bartleby I use the same name on most forums, it just saves time having to thing up yet another name, it's from a William Gibson novel Neuromancer.

I've fronted bands while playing and have done BV's in others, I find it much easier to achieve with original material than with covers, as you tend to write the parts to fit your ability/natural rhythms.

I've tried to play Rush/Cream etc. stuff and it's very, very difficult to get it right.

I remember Geddy Lee commenting that the first few weeks or Rush rehearsals sounded like a Rush tribute act, and that the most oft heard phrase was "I can't f*ck*ng play this".