SimonK

15 hours ago, Vague consensus said:

Thank you all for your replies, it really is appreciated

 

Pleased to say I went with a Lakland Skyline 44.02

 

I felt this is the one to start my journey with and keep me motivated to overcome the inevitable setbacks 

...you may have just achieved legendary status on this forum going for that as your first bass! Either that or you work in the city and in which case legendary status is revoked.

6 hours ago, neepheid said:

Well well well, that's the first month done and dusted, and haven't you all been a good bunch of abstainers?  Mostly.

 

But what an odd January - no-one fell in the first week, so there wasn't a lot to laugh at.  Some interesting twists and turns in the whole justification racket (with some enjoyably robust debate - love it), and a few speculative "what if?" type queries which will be monitored closely.

 

January summary - 1 T1 fail and 1 T2 fail.  37 out of 38 still in (T1), 36 out of 38 still in (T2).  Well done all, I'm genuinely impressed, or sorry if you've been eating beans on toast this entire month.

 

February warnings - I don't know if it's the same in all local authorities, but up here we've got two months off the council tax Feb and Mar.  Don't let that extra scratch in your pocket lead you down the path of temptation!

I think you missed my T2 fail after needing to get some wireless IEMs (11th Jan on page 5 of the thread).

I suspect the effort that it may take to get AI to write a hit single might be similar to the effort of a person writing it from scratch...

But for remastering/recording/adding instrumentation I think it is a tool that is here to stay, and sadly will take people's jobs.

16 minutes ago, SumOne said:

 

That's very true for those that want to have pride in their artistic efforts. Unfortunately though, the goal for many isn't artistic integrity and having pride in what they've created - it's reaching the goal of making £ and presumably getting AI to fully compose music might be a way of achieving that. 

 

Perhaps this isn't true, but people are suggesting that companies like Spotify and Amazon music are using AI to create music and are promoting it on their playlists as they then don't need to pay royalties. e.g. Ask Alexa to 'play relaxing background music' and it is in their interest to play bland innofensive AI generated stuff they don't need to pay for.

If AI is destroying anything in music/media I think it is the online social media/content creator roles (and I struggle to be sympathetic about this!).

I find myself scrolling far less due to the sheer amount of AI related trash on facebook etc. While online marketing has helped many especially younger musicians over the last ten years or so, I think things may start moving back to the importance of a musician being someone who doesn't create glitzy and technically perfect 20 second online clips, but actually someone who plays real music to real people!

I'm increasingly teaching ethics and AI in a University. I use music as quite a good example.

We need to see AI as a tool, and like any tool it can make some work more efficient, but we must not mistake quantity with quality. Generative AI in particular can create large quantities of music etc. very rapidly, but that doesn't mean it is any good. Conversly, in the right hands, AI can help creators generate really high quality work - for me the main benefit of AI in music is more in recording/remastering than composing (for instance).

There's plenty of aphorisms about this but I quite like: "Those who are carried to a goal should not think they have reached it" regarding AI - it's one I use with my students and coursework!

On 27/01/2026 at 10:56, TimR said:

 

Interesting fact. Everyone's ear canals are different lengths and shapes (that should not come as a surprise) which means everyone hears things differently to everyone else. If you swapped your ears for someone else's, your brain would really struggle to understand what it was hearing.

 

The same is true for eyes. What one person's eyes present to the brain as red is different to what someone else's do. 

 

Which is OK, because we calibrate our ears so that an F# is an F# no matter who you are. It does mean that one resonant frequency for one person would be different for someone else. 

Philosophers call this "Qualia" which is loosely defined as the "what it is like" of experiencing something. The kicker is that we can never know what it is like to experience something from someone else's perspective, and thus the best we have is indirect evidence from others who act/report the same sort of things as we do for a given experience/stimuli. There's also the fact that while not identical, our biology is close enough to others to infer that what I experience as the colour "red" is most likely pretty similar to what you experience, but we can never know for sure.

Probably the most famous discussion on this is Thomas Nagels' "What is it like to be a bat".

But this is high falutin philosophy, with IEMs it probably is just minor differences in ear shape!!

1 hour ago, xgsjx said:

Sorry, but that sounds like a lame attempt at defending corruption, slave labour & paedophilia.  All heinous crimes of which Hillsong have been found committing. They've been caught multiple times over the years, yet still continue to act like a trump.

And yes, there are many companies, artists and organisations that I steer well clear of because of similar issues. 

More people should too, instead of turning a blind eye & letting them away with it.

What you have to think of, is that playing or buying these songs is funding them to do more of the same.

Would you go & help fund another convicted assailant such as Gary Glitter because you like their songs?

 

There is no excuse that can validate and nullify crimes against children. 

 

Sadly Christianity has been complicit in some of the most horrendous crimes of the last couple thousand of years, and indeed the argument that many people give about not wanting to have anything to do with religion for this reason and instead pursuing secular humanism is entirely reasonable on this basis. Furthermore, if you follow contemporary Christian worship over the last thirty years or so, almost every one of the big worship marques has had a scandal/fall from grace at somepoint (or if they haven't yet they are probably about to) meaning that we wouldn't be able to use anything.

For me, where art or technology are concerned, I prefer to separate the product from the author/creator, but nevertheless if you were in my congregation and specifically raised these songs and told me why you prefered for them not to be played I would absolutely, and prayerfully, consider the perspective.

Whenever we have preamp threads more people recommend the Tech 21 than anything else. Thus said I really like my Genzler Magellan pre because it has two very different "flavours" (foot switchable), a HPF, mute switch, and really powerful EQ settings. Not sure if it sounds like "tubes", but through the IEMs yesterday it sounded awesome (albeit I also add a Keeley compressor as well). 

2 hours ago, xgsjx said:

Yeah. I don’t quite understand that. 
Why would anyone still want to follow anything or anyone that’s been involved in paedophelia?

The problem is that people are weak and fail. If we didn't use anything because of moral concerns about the (human) creator we would have to stop using most technology, tools, art, music etc. As such there is a careful balance to be gained between sensitivity and practicality. I can see avoiding something if you know of a specific concern, but at the same time if you dig deep enough into anything I'm sure one will find moral reasons not to use it (and knowing what evidence can be trusted is also difficult)... so the upshot is that it is complicated, and difficult to be fully informed about anything. As such I would rather judge the motive of the user of the tool (e.g. song) than try to determine the history of the original creator of the tool.

I still play/listen to lots of the older Kevin Prosch songs - he was black listed for a long time, but nevertheless his songs were really meaningful to me during a period of my life, and I maintain the song and the singer are two different things.

48 minutes ago, Mokl said:

KZ LS10 pro is what I'm using. Find they did pretty decent, maybe not so strong in the mids as I'd like, and capable of sounding a bit boomy, but feel like a reasonable every point to IEM?

I was using the same yesterday and was having a problem (well minor annoyance) with the bass tom causing some type of resonance that sounded like a note - I think I worked out F# - which was really annoying, but something unique to my IEM mix as when I popped the ear pieces out I couldn't hear it in the room. I wonder if this was from the ear pieces or something else?

Interesting - been enjoying my late 90s streamer (posted a page or two back next to the Trace stack) but yesterday played a fully IEM gig using a Genzler Magellan pre as DI. Now normally I use the bass in active mode (as I figure more is more) but because I had the IEMs I was playing around with the settings and remembered the passive mode so thought I'd give it a try. My word, the growl that came out of the bass was awesome, so much so that at the moment I can't imagine myself going back to the active mode - I can see how having some onboard EQ is helpful, but at the expense of tone?

So this week:

• Couldn't make the Friday practice so just worked it out on the fly
• Used IEMs for the first time in a service
• Drummer used electric drums for the first time
• Tried a new router as monitor mix wasn't working (and it only sort of came on line)
• Used an ipad for the music for only the second time
• Had a keyboardist leading who seemed to make up his own basslines as we were going along

Was probably the hardest I've ever concentrated on a Sunday morning - only got lost once in five songs!

7 hours ago, Mokl said:

With much inspiration/guidance from this excellent thread, I'm now 4 gigs in with IEM, with the last being a silent stage at a venue with particularly tricky acoustics.

 

I'd say that so far the success rate in terms of my experience/sound in my ears is at about 60%. Areas I know can be improved are FOH chap not altering my levels mid set (!), seal of the IEMs (if I insert them just right, then there's a definite improvement, getting better at that), then finally the actual tone in my ears. 

 

The last point is the one I'm after advice on. DI from my amp sounds ok but very dry in the ears. It's not so bad when I've got stage sound as some of that leaks through to a fairly pleasing effect. Last gig and rehearsal before it I tried using my HX Stomp with cab and amp sim engaged to try and get a more pleasing sound to my ears (silent stage this time), but in rehearsal guitarist thought my tone suffered out front with the cab sim on, so I ended up running just the amp model, and it wasn't much really much different to my amp DI. No surprise there really.

 

My question is, what do you all do to get a satisfactory bass tone to your ears?! Would a decent DI with cab sim likely sound better than the Stomp, do I just need to experiment more with the Stomp? Answers on a postcard please!! 

I've also just switched to IEMs and this weekend had one of the best tones I've managed. I think having a really good DI might be quite important - I was going out of my Genzler Magellan pre with a little bit of EQ tweaking to taste.

Also, something I don't think anyone has mentioned on this thread yet (although I haven't read all 87 pages), walking around a venue with IEMs around your neck seems like the equivalent of walking around a hospital with a stethoscope in terms of how people treat you!

When I was a teenager myself and some friends used to busk regularly in Crawley and Redhill. We had our usual pitches that we would use all year, but then come christmas a whole bunch of others would turn up busking for "charity". When we figured this out we would get to the best spots as early as we could, but then would have arguments with the charity lot wanting us to move on so they could have a turn...

Bizarre to come across this thread this evening as I am weighing up whether to accept a charity gig in February where they are charging £25/head to come in. When I provisionally said yes I wasn't expecting to be asked to pay £25 myself as the email I got this evening has just requested.... hopefully it was a misunderstanding and they had just added me to the list of their attendees and bulk sent...

3 minutes ago, mep said:

OK, enough of all this talk about blues jams (go and create your own thread for that boring nonsense)

 

Dany rules, and this is our new logo!

Is this for those of us who need a few pints in the system before being able to play live at (blues) jams?

33 minutes ago, Mrbigstuff said:

I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s taken by all. This would be a very boring and entirely pointless thread if everyone just encouraged each other to give in.

...isn't that the point 😈 ?

Meanwhile Danny in Bradford is contributing this to the music industry (they may just be miming...):

...but I suspect with David Gilmour it is about the music. With some of these youtube creators currently being "outed" the intention seems more to be getting the acclaim (clicks & subscribes!) of coming across as being a virtuoso, when they are clearly not. As has been said this then makes life much harder for the real virtuosos to make a living, along with the normal mortals who suddenly can no longer compete. It is also the source of rather a lot of embarrassment when they are pulled up on to a real stage.

RE Ichika Nito, someone has tried an obsessive take down (one wonders about neurodiversity!) of him which I think Danny Sapko must have seen. I've linked the below to 34 minutes in which I think summarises what has happened in this case - Ichika has produced super virtuoso videos that are beyond his own ability to perform which I suppose is cheating, although not the "ultimate" fake guitarist. Mind you the most popular comment in the chat underneath is Jared Dines complaining no one has accused him of being a fake guitarist yet!

Just now, Cato said:

I've just seen a new Sapko clip about guitarist Ichika Nito who I'm only vaguely aware of because he has a very nice Ibanez sig.

 

This time the accusations are over editing his social media clips and nit being able to replicate his performances live.

 

All seems a bit more tenuous than the Giacomo plagiarismstuff to me but 'calling people out' seems to be a popular genre on social media tese days.

It's just psychology - everyone is interested in a scandal - more clicks, more likes = more money!

Thing is social media starts to take it too far and thus anyone making a living on it needs to play the game. Has anyone noticed that facebook is now full of posts with something that is obviously wrong - especially driving videos - simply to lure people into saying "they didn't do anything wrong" or similar? A really irritating genre.

Still these sorts of forums are probably one of the oldest form of online interaction (after list servers) and still seem to be maintaining their value.

40 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

As well as a stereo XLR.

 

 

For two you mean?

No I just got the single version in the neat little box. I think the double version was £20 more but it doesn't have the robust box.

OK - first trial of the Swiff WX520s today. Two negatives:

1) When you turn them on there is a distinct, albeit quiet, white noise hum

2) They need to be line of sight. I had a quick walk round and as soon as there was something between me and the transmitter the signal dropped out

But on the the positives they are a really neat, compact, design, they definitely work, and as soon as a signal comes through you forget about the hum. I also didn't realise they accept balanced xlr, 6.35mm mono or stereo, AND 3.5mm stereo - giving all the options. You can also switch between +4dBu or -10dBV or instrument level, the latter triggering a gain control for amp free practice. Finally the transmitter is also rechargable so you don't need to plug it in either.

All in all I think I forgive the two negatives as for £150 its a pretty good package.

...although if anyone gets rid of a Rickenbacker surely we should be encouraging them for having done something virtuous and thus give them some leeway 😀?

7 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Good ideas, the reason I asked is that I am about to host an Open Mic night and I want to reduce the amount of alien saliva reaching the microphones. The colour coding makes the case on its own. 
 

I cannot claim copyright on the term Mic Condom, a former band mate coined that term. 

Reminds me of when we used to do a layer of sacrificial icing on the kids birthday cakes to fend off the spit that came with blowing out candles!

I like them for outdoor use, and also if (as you say) people of unknown origin are going to use them!