scalpy

Really pleased to hear your children had a positive experience and your lessons sound remarkable too. Yes, still head of department although we’ve been restructured so I’ve acquired Art and Drama too- ‘The Creative Arts’ (as opposed to ‘The Non-Creative Arts’ 🤦‍♂️) I think lots of these anecdotes prove it is very much a relationship thing with a genre of music or the instrument, making it a moving target for teachers the whole time. We’re under constant pressure to be adaptive in our teaching now the days of concept of ‘my way or the highway, ruler to the back of the knuckles’ is very much gone, I hope. But we are dependent on who engages and finds that motivation. I have two yr11 bassists at the moment, I’ve tried to be as equal and provide the same opportunity for both, one on one before school lessons, play in productions etc. Both did our show this year, but one has done nicely and the other has bitten my hand off, found loads of bands to play in, got chucked out of jam nights for being under age and much to my great pleasure applied for the national youth musical theatre course this summer and got the gig as bassist for Our House. I didn’t even know he was applying!

Doesn’t seem to be as effective as it used to be for us. A few years back it was very helpful, the analytics were very helpful. Now, not so much, the same amount of money doesn’t seem to get the same number of people, with meta seemingly inventing categories of demographics to target at will.

Paul Bond- guy on the acousticaster last time round. Very interesting bloke, great player.

Next up for me is Snarky Puppy and Gregory Porter at Cheltenham Jazz festival, and I’m very tempted by Tool in Birmingham having discovered them for myself this week, 30 years too late to the party.

My friend is in guitar for that tour. Did the last one too, the infrastructure for it sounds incredible.

Having read this thread so far I strongly recommend you guys don’t see my band…..

No, it was called the unidentified flying object project by Simon Harris I think. The budget was crazy, when they recorded Dominic Miller’s parts they had AIR’s lyndhurst hall- just for the guitar. Opulent to say the least.

Whilst doing a session replacing an existing bassline by someone else I remarked to the client, the guitars sound great by the way. ‘They should do’ he said, ‘It’s Dominic Miller.’ ’Aha’ I said suitably chastened. Struggling for a reply I went ‘and as ever Tom sounds great on drums’ thinking it was the producers regular skins man, Tom Hooper. The producer leaned over and said quietly ‘That’s Dave Weckl’ It won’t be a surprise to learn I was eventually replaced on the session by Pino Palladino. The client was on a huge ego spending trip and had no interest in a Hereford Hillbillies’ input into his project. I thought Pino did a decent impression of me as it turns out 🤣

Those are my babies, one of the best purchases I’ve made for gigging. Apesticks by ApeLabs. I got a tour pack of 10 from Thomann, which means you can charge them in their flightcase, plus you get 20 small metal panels you can attach to anything suitable (I got a load of cheap photography stands off amazon) so the lights magnets can clamp on. You can operate them with a remote but I forked out for the wireless Bluetooth controller, which means you can control them via an app. The app will run 4 groups, you can assign the lights to any, and you can create your own colours and programs, then design a scene for each song. You can set the sensitivity to sound or speed a cycle runs in seconds. I’ve had a ball coming up with different set ups using the stands then having different moods for different songs, plus the controller will send DMX to other devices, so all our old up lighters match the scene as well. Here’s a few set ups I’ve used over the past year.

After last week’s shenanigans with the full 12 piece band, including the percussionist doubling on pedal steel, our most straightforward format albeit my least favourite, 6 piece with the horns on tracks at Tewksbury Park at a smallish wedding. Nice room to play in, easy sound to manage and a up for it crowd. Dep guitar did great, singer decided he’d DJ the end of the evening, everyone happy.

Very sorry to hear this, I still own a pair of Aguilar db112s he sold me over a decade ago (which he described on here as the ones that got away) and he was extremely helpful and friendly. Many condolences to his family.

That’s a great idea, will look into how we can do that with our set up.

Last night was our annual fundraiser for the local theatre, The Courtyard in Hereford. It’s tough as the arranger to keep coming up with interesting new stuff for the audience, takes me a year to plan, but managed a 15 minute country medley (named No O In Cuntry) and 10 minute dance music medley for this year. Some tech issues meant we didn’t have control of our monitor mixes so a bit isolating, some occasional mistakes on my behalf but all in all a fun gig and have to start planning the next one now!

Unfortunately you are correct. I like them for pit work and rehearsals where you don’t have to knock houses down. Same board and amp with my Aggie db112s has much more clout.

Short run of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at Number 8 Theatre in Pershore for the towns local youth drama group. Fun show to play, some interesting bass lines and the kids were superb. I have worked on having a super small rig for shows but needed the pedalboard and two cabs for this one.