Rosie C

Our last gig of the year and traditionally our biggest. That's me on mandolin & vocal, though I feel little shame as we had a very talented friend join us on double bass for the night.

I took lessons for about a year - 30 minutes per week in school terms over a year, so about 15 hours. My teacher took me from being unable to sing to being able to front a pub band which got decent audience reaction and re-bookings. She taught me a bit of technique - having a solid support from the diaphragm, holding notes for the full length, hitting a note square on and becoming used to intervals. We also would spend some time working through songs I'd be performing where she'd point out where I was making errors. She also helped me control chest & head voice and helped me with higher notes adding seven semitones, so now on a good day I have a 2 octave range. At the school I went to one lady taught singers mostly for pop / rock / musical theatre. The other taught more along classical & choral lines. All in past tense as I caught covid a second time and within a couple of weeks I had a dairy allergy which has taken most of this year to figure out. I'm hopefully retuning to lessons next year. I have found the voice is a delicate thing. It's not like a bass guitar that can be played for 2 hours then chucked in a bag until the next a gig. I can't sing for 2x45 minutes like I did last night and expect to sing again today - though hopefully that will come with time and better technique. I seem to have had more colds since I started singing, though I think it's actually that because colds have such an effect, I notice them more.

Bass: John Taylor, Paul McCartney Guitar: Ritchie Blackmore

I'm having similar - I can post in some areas, but not the main discussion area

I did pop in, I play mandolin mostly these days, including a guitar-bodied octave mandolin and a Gibson SG clone converted to octave mandolin, but just found tumbleweed

I have a Squier 4-string fretless jazz bass. Sunburst with tort. Bought for around £350 just before covid lock down. It's been rebuilt by a local luthier, set up for me and I really can't see me ever buying anything else.

In the 1980s one singer in our high school band had an SM58. It was quite a cut above anything anyone else had. The other singer had something nasty by 'Realistic' or similar. I'm not sure how I first got into Sennheiser, but the E835 seems to suit my voice, though these days I make like Taylor Swift and use an ME3 headset.

I'd love one, but they are a bit pricey. I make do with a somewhat battered 1980s Hohner. That said, it feels like it's due for tuning, and at £500 a time, it wouldn't take much to get a second hand Roland, something like the FR-3XB.

Thanks again, it WAS in E. A simple bass line, but a lot of fun to play. Before the service I thought it highly unlikely there would be any dancing but the new vicar was indeed dancing in the aisle and waving her arms around, so there you go! We played "One More Step Along the World I Go" for the first time too, things are definitely getting more up-beat lately!

In some ways it's easier than changing key, providing the instruments can all change. I play piano accordion which is in A=440, and that just can't change. I gave up collaborating with a guitarist who didn't tune to A=440 and sent me recordings to play along to

E it is then, thank you both! 😊

We're playing "Great Big God" for the first time in tomorrow's service. Unable to contact the BL today, I'm wondering what key others typically play it in? No guarantees that's what we'll use of course, but E seems common in online charts, and I'm thinking to prepare a chart in E is better than no prep!

I'm on a Facebook group for my area for people hiring bands. Nearly all the adverts are for "singer with backing tracks". They don't even want a singer/guitarist. I play in a duo sometimes - male & female vocal with guitar and mandolin, but even that seems too big a band for most venues. Depressing really.

ha ha! No, not @Muzz's pool ball

I still have a Cortina, and yes, I also have the pool ball gear knob!

That worked a treat - the socket was open at the end. Not easy but I managed to slip a small flat blade screwdriver in and release the plug. The plug looks like it's not been manufactured properly - mangled around the tip. Lesson to self: only Neutrik in future!

I swapped my Behringer amp for Fischer on the understanding that Fischer has a limiter built-in. I'm not sure whether Behringer amps do? I used Behringer for years with my double bass without any problems, but I wanted to use my IEMs for vocals too and was nervous about getting feedback.

I just measured and they're 18cm. My bass teacher's fingers are each 1" longer than mine, and it's a similar story with my nephew who is a classical guitarist. I'm a bit of a Ritchie Blackmore fan, and I'm sure on videos I see him using his thumb to fret on the E string - which must make his hands huge-normous!

Undertones "Teenage Kicks". I was about 16. On stage at a variety show at high school. The rest of the set was Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

Yes, it's exactly like the one in the photo so I can have a look inside. I will report back tomorrow!

I wonder if anyone has had a similar problem to this... I plugged a guitar cable into my mandolin, which has a Fishman battery compartment and combined jack like below - exactly the same as acoustic guitars. But now it's jammed! It rotates fine, but won't come out. Has anyone any suggestions?

I usually play bass guitar at church (of course), but on a whim this morning I took my guitar-bodied-mandolin instead. I arrived at church to find the band leader was absent due to the floods and I was the only musician with an instrument. 4th Sunday is an informal service anyway and we sit in a circle, so a guitar worked OK. We cut the hymns down to two. O Worship the King started off badly - I think people are used to the piano playing the melody, but also I've not done this before and was 'leading' rather than 'accompanying'. It settled down by verse 3, and the final hymn, Majesty, Worship his Majesty went quite well.

That's what I do - my previous band had no interest in IEMs so I went my own way. A Boss tuner with 'output' and 'bypass' jacks on my pedalboard lets me split the signal to drive a Fischer personal IEM amp with ACS ambient IEMs.

It can do - my policy has both PLI and gear insurance. I'm paying about £75 a year as well, but we only do a handful of gigs each year, and they ask how many gigs you do. I have two accordions, a mandocello and a PA covered - total value about £4k.

I've just done it by downloading the images in each post, then editing the post to use the version I've just downloaded, which tend to be about 1/10th the size