Muzz

I had a very nice couple standing outside the venue one evening after we'd finished tell me there had been a great band on that night. They'd been sitting five feet in front of me for nearly three hours... 😐

A while back, I was running a Magellan which could go down to 2.67 ohms (=3 x 4 ohm cabs), and I had a pair of Berg AE112s. One was good enough for a lot of gigs, two could cover them all, really. I bought a third, mostly because it looked better as a taller stack, but it also sounded much bigger. I told myself I had the ultimate modular setup, but found I took all three everywhere, and if I didn't, there'd be a nagging 'I should have brought all three'. Then I realised I was carting 96lbs of cabs (albeit in three lumps) around everywhere, more weight than I'd carted since my 810 went... I sold them all.

Oh my...that sounds...unusual.. 😐

This ^ Simples. 😁

In the Brave New World of the newer project with which I'm involved, there's a capacity for live autotune on the vocals: we're not going to use it for either of the main vocalists, who don't need it, but it opens up the possibility of me singing backing vocals (mixed low, obv...)...

You can do pretty much all of the above these days with the right drummer/clicker*; we've played extended sections where the drummer's paused the click/backing (e.g. when the dance floor's full of people in the middle of something with a groove, like Long Train Running, Play That Funky Music, etc) and brought us back in again together a little later...clicks can also speed up when needed...and improvising can always be done within the song itself**. I'm not sure I understand the 'extra instrumentation which we had in our ears but the audience didn't hear' thing, tho: what was it? Whenever I dep, I watch the drummer more closely than anyone else...if he's playing to a click, I don't need to: I play with him, we're the rhythm section... * Overly technical description? ** Which hopefully reduces the possibility of an impromptu 32-bar guitar solo...

Can we have Dead Battery, or does that fall under 'Electrical Fault'?

Two, always, in a dual Mono gigbag. I've been doing it so long (40 years) that the minute I take only one, it'll break, if only because the Laws of Narrative Causality are just waiting for me to pink torpedo up...

Yep, always go with the singist, for better or worse...the disciplinary beating can be handed out after the gig...

It's all rather pathetic, really, the taking to social media to snipe when not everyone loves you...it's very needy, more than anything... I took my lad to a gig of ours a few years ago at a smallish festival, he wouldn't even stay in the same space as we were playing: I found him later wayyyy across the field sat on the grass reading a book with his headphones on...

I've played to an audible click (inears) before, and it's not my favourite way to do things, but I've also been lucky enough to play a lot with a very talented drummer (who's also a talented producer...yeah, I know...) who has always read and played to his own click (actually the flashing tempo light on his iPad), which means the songs are always right...he can be a machine if required, but he/we can also push and pull around it. We're in a new project that's going to involve a lot of clever live Logic/Helix Native/Mainstage stuff, with tone and patch triggers happening automagically, so that means a click...but again, it'll be him controlling it all... TL:DR - as long as you have a good drummer, only they should need the click: I don't see the value in having it for everyone...

Went to see Roger Waters Satdy night at the (insert current sponsor here - I forget) stadium in Manchester, on a last-minute cheapo deal from Twickets, and for the first time in possibly ten years the sound in there was very good, aided more by the layout than anything, I think: it was a central stage, and the arrays were in four sections, radiating the sound out to each stand; this meant that they were no more than 50-60 feet from the stand they were facing so they didn't have the whole length of the place to cover, plus it wasn't ear-bleedingly loud as the FoH engineer didn't try to hit 125db at the back wall... The rest of the gig was a Curate's Egg of a do: Rog is still furious at 79 (looking good and mobile for it, too*, tho it was a grin moment when he sat down at the piano with an audible 'Ooooof' 🙂), and still delivering. The Floyd numbers were spectacular, tho it's a very polemic/political gig, so if you think, for example, Julian Assange should be extradited, or that US Presidents shouldn't be on trial for war crimes, it wasn't your gig, but as I say, the good bits were very, very well done...apart from the solos that Dave Gilmour isn't allowing him to do: Comfortably Numb, for example, had a huuuuge hole in it without That Solo... Overall, it reinforced my long-held view that in general he did his best work with DG and the other two, but maaaaan, he can ramble on the mic: the encore was particularly painful: after the 'why is this in the encore?' rendition of Two Suns In The Sunset (which is just flat depressing) the band gathered around his piano (and an accordion appeared from nowhere, an immediate red flag) and he set off into an explanation of a new song about his brother, so I went to the loo in order to beat the rush, and when I got back to my seat he was still blathering on...we left halfway through that one, and it all ended not with a bang, but with a whimper... * I'll take his levels of energy when I'm 79...

There's a bassist chap comes to our regular Jam Night who's six and a half feet tall, I handed him my Westone Quantum the other week, just for the look of the thing... 😁

It's not the watts that's the issue, it's only a single 12 in smallish box is the problem (well, my problem - as can be seen above, lots of folk are fine with it) - I replaced it with the same amp (a LMIII head) and a 410, and that was night and day. My 'big rig' these days has a 300w head, and that can go stooopid loud... I also had the same head in a 15 combo, I used that with the 15 extension speaker...which was plenty.

In a bit of a YMMV, I found the 121P struggled at gig volumes...It'd be fine for what I'm doing now (112 for stage monitoring, plus DI to the desk), but without support I thought it wasn't enough.

I've been in several 'no hits, no wonder' bands...

I don't play through an amp at home, ever - I use my iPad with Jamup Pro and a SonicPort to play along with stuff (and faff about with amps and effects), but even then you can hear the difference immediately between a pleasant solo sound and something that fits better played along to a 'band'...it makes for a good learning curve instead of having bandmates stand around while you fiddle with your EQ...

Where did you get one of those? The wife, I mean...

I use a pick mostly (Dunlop Nylon 88s, always), but when I switch to fingers, I just put the thing in me mouf...can backfire, though: we were playing a festival over the weekend and the geetard/singist was last to arrive (from a solo set elsewhere), so I set his geetar up...and realised I'd put his pick in me gob while twiddling leads...ew. 🙁

Played an outdoor festival - one of those 'back of a flatbed HGV' setups, and used my 100w 112 as a monitor (bass dialled out, just some mids and highs) on a tiltback 'point at yer ears' stand, with the rest through the PA. Admittedly, the PA was close by, but it sounded immense; it's an odd thing how your ears focus on the location/direction of the highs and mids and attribute the bass to it, too: it sounded like I'd defied the laws of physics, and it was all coming from a tiny box... 😀

Nail -> Head here from Lozz...if you need any convincing, then have a listen to some isolated bass tracks (a delve on YouTube will locate some) of famous bassists, and their isolated sound is always somewhat harsher (genre dependent, obv) than it sounds when the whole band's in...Mids are your friend...as is judicious use of compression...but that's whoooole other box of frogs... Way before I moved to digital pedals (I had a MS60B, now I have a Stomp) and was just using an amp, I had a Schroeder cab that was the smallest 2 x 15 in Christendom, and as such sounded harsh and honky and boxy when played in isolation...but with the band, it just worked...

Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that... 😐😁

I was never a Goth, but a lot of my good friends were...my favourite and most-frequented club in Manchester back in the day was the Banshee, which was generally Goth downstairs and Hair Metal upstairs, plus on a Monday at the Ritz it was Goth night. I went with a friend who was going there for the first time, and as he watched a full dance floor (and it was/is a sprung dance floor, so even more amusing) of Goths, he said: 'Errr...are they having a good time?' 'Yeah, course.' 'How do you know?' 🙂

Good luck...and don't forget to glare at the drummer if anything goes wrong... 🙂

Promo from a little while ago, shot at a posh Do in Cheshire, hence the Sparkly Jackets...sound is captured live, then remixed...and who says you can't play modern dance music on a Fenderbird? 😀