Earbrass

Fun night at the New Cross Inn yesterday supporting Enquire Within and Call of Fenrir in an evening of viking metal and gonzo morris.

I'm sure I saw a youtube review of the 32" model that said they have neck dive.

We (Huginn and Muninn) had a great night at the 10th Renaissance Festival of Alternative Music at The Electrowerkz, Islington. Our set was well received, and I got to meet a couple of old friends I hadn't seen for around 25 years, who were also performing (Das Fluff).

Another thing to bear in mind is that analog synths (or rather synths with analog oscillators), while being very trendy these days, often need to be powered on for a while before their tuning is stable and some will continue to drift or fail to track properly over a few octaves even then, which might not be convenient in a gigging situation. I had an Arturia minibrute 2S for a while, but got rid because I found the tuning a nightmare, and the sonic sweetspots few and far between. I have owned a fair few synths over the years, including models from Novation, Nord, Dave Smith Instruments, Audiothingies, Erica Synths and Arturia, and the only hardware synth I have kept, and have no plans to get rid of, is a humble Microkorg. These are a bit marmite, with some hating the "toylike" feel, the matrix user interface and the minikeys, but it is actually a very powerful little machine, capable of a huge range of sounds, almost all very usable. You get up to 4 note polyphony, so simple chords or legato basslines are no problem. The minikeys are not the best, but they are velocity sensitive and you get a full 3 octaves in a very compact and lightweight body. I find programming it to be quite straightforward once you get the hang of it, and there is no real menu diving - almost everything is available right from the front panel. The fact that you can still buy them new 20 years after they were first released says a lot. There are plenty around 2nd hand - I picked mine up for under £200. Not for everyone, but definitely worth considering. There is a huge choice of synths at very reasonable prices these days - I'd say one of the very best of the newer ones is the Arturia Microfreak, if you can live with the weird "touch capacitance (?)" keyboard (not sure I could - maybe not ideal for gigging with). Given the huge variety out there, you might want to try buying 2nd hand, so that you can move one on and try another till you find the one you gell with. Good luck with your search, and have fun!

You've not lived!

"JUDAS!!!"

Yes, although at the other end of the price spectrum! I use a Chinese (?) Superlux R102 to record my nyckelharpa. I find it smooths out some harshness in the upper mids that I encountered when using a large diaphragm condenser. As it is an active ribbon mic, using phantom power, it doesn't require a lot of boost from the mic pre, so it's fine going straight into my interface. I seem to recall it cost about £100 a few years ago. No complaints so far. They often seem to be recommended for stringed instruments. If I were going to upgrade, the Rode NTR and the Sontronics Sigma both look interesting, but I'm not sure the (probably) slight improvement would be worth the expense (they're both in the £600-£800 range) for me.

Chris Square Was the bassist with Yeah Their guitarist Steve Ho Was a Chinese maestro.

On the contrary, many of the more extreme "woke" are themselves bigots, displaying very high levels of intolerance for those whose views differ from their own.

"How do I tell my wife I just bought another bass?" The OP has misspelt "why".

But if you insist that no comedy should ever upset or offend anyone, you are going to lose so much stuff, from Life of Brian to most modern stand-ups referencing sexual material, jokes about the Royal family, jokes against <insert political party / figure / philosophy here>, Dave Allen on religion, right down to the endless innuendos that form the basis of so much basschat 'humour'. We have social norms and taboos, and it has always been and will always be human nature to find humour in breaking them, and in mocking things we are "not supposed to" mock. Whether or not it crosses a line will always be a matter of judgement, and will depend on things like context and the nature of the audience.

While I wouldn't say that this was universally true, I think it's unarguably the case that a lot of humour depends on the breaking or testing the limits of taboos of one kind or another.

Interesting that nobody's mentioned The Sex Pistols, a band seemingly designed with the sole purpose of causing offence. Their lyrics might seem rather harmless and childish now, but at the time I seem to recall they caused quite a stir. Back in the seventies, many of the older generation had lived through the war, and had lost loved ones in the fight against Hitler; likening the Royal Family to a "fascist regime" was a lot more edgy then. Funny how things change; nowadays they are just a minor part of rock history, whereas some of the DJ's who were not allowed to play them on radio one because they were too offensive.....well, enough said.