Earbrass

I listen to, go to see, and also buy a lot of new music - almost all of it Nordic folk and folk-rock, which I only really discovered in the past decade or so. When it comes to rock, I stick almost entirely to the pre-punk stuff I grew up with. I never listen to music radio.

Do you have any datums to back that up?

I also knew Jim slightly in the early 90's, as I composed some music for his (then) wife(?) Alison Edgar's one-woman show about the Shakers. Lovely bloke, and I'm very sorry to hear about his accident. I remember embarrassing myself trying to play rounders on Clapham common with the two of them and a bunch of other people one weekend. Happy days. Hope his new show is a great success.

I believe the Q49 supports MIDI over USB. If that's right, you don't need an interface - just connect the keyboard to the laptop with a USB cable.

My "gateway drug" was Henry Cow. Discovered them when I was about 15, back in the seventies, and was totally blown away, although, to be honest, I enjoyed their written pieces more than the totally free-improv sections. Here is the last 7 or so minutes of the live version of Beautiful As The Moon; Terrible As An Army With Banners - the fabulous reprise of the main theme starts around 4 minutes in, after a version of Robert Wyatt's "Gloria Gloom" Here's their version of Robert Wyatt's "Little Red Riding Hood Hits the Road", with Wyatt on vocals. Some sublime bass lines.

fixed.

I remember seeing Fred Frith and Phil Minton playing together back in the late seventies, when the Mike Westbrook band and Henry Cow played a joint gig at the Roundhouse, Camden in a benefit for the Communist Party of Great Britain. They played some of the Blake material as in the above clip - it was a great gig. I recall that there was an older member of the party there who had to give a brief speech of thanks to the musicians and audience for the support. My impression at the time was that he was clearly out of his depth and baffled by some of the more avant-garde elements of the performance and made some stumbling remarks about how good it was to see "young people taking an interest in politics" or some such. Happy days. Lol Coxhill is great too - seen him a few times, though many years ago. His album "Fleas in Custard" is a classic of the genre. Evan Parker I find quite hard going, though.

Phil Minton is an interesting bloke. Very good trumpeter, and baritone singer - you can hear him in more conventional mode with the Mike Westbrook band, for example on his settings of Blake:

Mike bought a Flashback delay pedal off me. All went swimmingly. Recommended.

Great basses (in unmodified form).

Sold a reverb pedal to Tim, all good, would definitely recommend.

Cheers for that. I scored an Arturia Minibrute 2S for £470. Bargain!

Not random, amateur or "hit n' miss" at all. A lot of folks on here give the impression of being far more interested in collecting / swapping / playing with / showing off their toys than in music. No shame in not being one of them.

I find the turn that this thread has taken rather bizarre. While one might reasonably claim that the gender of an instrumentalist is, or should be, of no relevance to their suitability for any given band, this cannot be said of singers. The male voice is, in most cases, intrinsically quite different from the female voice in range and timbre, and a band seeking a vocalist might well have good reasons for preferring one over the other. It would be odd then, surely, for a vocalist advertising their services not to specify their gender. In the case of transgender women, the situation is a little complex, as vocal reassigment is one of the more challenging parts of the process. This is what the (US) National Association of Teachers of Singing has to say on the matter: A transgender woman will have gone through puberty as a male. Her larynx enlarged and descended in the neck, the vocal folds became thicker and longer and the voice deepened into an adult male voice. Once puberty is complete, there is nothing that can reverse the process so she may choose voice therapy or phonosurgery to sound more feminine. Voice therapy should be undertaken with a speech-language pathologist qualified to work in this area. Voice therapy goals include raising the average speaking pitch, usually to an androgynous pitch area and modifying voice quality, resonance and inflectional patterns. There are several phonosurgical procedures used to raise speaking pitch and eliminate lower pitches. However, these are controversial, the outcomes are mixed and they don’t address other vocal characteristics, such as resonance or voice quality. (https://www.nats.org/cgi/page.cgi/_article.html/What_s_New/Training_the_Transgender_Singer_Finding_the_Voice_Inside) For the advertiser to describe herself simply as a female singer could therefore be misleading. Quite reasonably, she has specified her gender as "transwoman". As has already been pointed out, this is in no way a description of her sexuality, which is of course entirely irrelevant. The fact that she has felt free to describe herself in this way could be seen as a positive and welcome sign of increasing acceptance of trans people. Some here, however, perversely choose to interpret it as evidence of intolerance. There seems to be a view that any suggestion that a transgender person is not in all respects the same as someone born to that gender constitutes some kind of hate-speech. It isn't; it's just an acceptance of reality. Maybe one day medical science will advance to the point where that view is justified, but we are not there yet. The fact that this issue has triggered an intolerant hate-filled rant against an entire generation just shows that when it comes to self-righteous bigotry, there are some amongst those who consider themselves "progressives" who could give any US evangelist preacher a run for their money.

I think the poster is irony-impaired. The fact that the advertiser is trans-gender could be highly relevant if their vocal range is closer to that one would expect from a male singer. Of course, that could be a point in their favour - it all depends on the band.

Put your experience in his feedback thread. At least then others will know what to expect, and will possibly feel less aggrieved if they receive similar treatment.

As my current roles both involve me playing an unamplified nyckelharpa, I'm going to have to say "no". However, when I last played bass in a band I used a Peavey Milestone, so a squier would be a step up the poshness scale.

This is all too often the case. Blaming the (non-) punters for being "lazy" is ridiculous. The onus is on venues and performers to provide an experience that is appealing and attractive.