scalpy

Completed a week of Me and My Girl at the Swan Theatre in Worcester for the ever excellent WODs. Properly old school show, which included the running time, full 3 hours with the interval and long sections of dialogue so concentration after the day job wasn’t always easy. This coupled with the fact the chart pretty looked the same for every song, every conceivable root fifth octave it felt like in every key. Love playing with the band though, great players and camaraderie, will be back for the youth show in August which is Addams Family. Obligatory gear shot- G&L LB100 with chrome flats and nordymute, little mark tube and db 110 cab, one trip to the car!

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.

Wow, old thread. The engineer/ producer I have worked with most often engineered this record at AIR Monserrat. I’ve pressed him for the gear over the years but all he can recall was each member of the band had a tape machine plus slave each and he used 36 mics on Neil Peart’s kit. Suitably excessive and in keeping with the times I think.

Yes, but thank you for the reminder. One of my students is mad keen on Cody Fry so I’d heard this track and looked him up, before going to the gig. Great playing but the material isn’t quite my cup of tea.

I did a session with an engineer who recorded Pino. Apparently Pino’s top priority was obtaining a suitable surface for his rolling mat…..

Watched it on YouTube and enjoyed it- thought the banter between QL and pino was not dissimilar to their musical relationship really. Most importantly for me, being a card carrying fanboi of the place was the fact that his first session was at Rockfield, just a 20 minute drive from mine.

Another +1 for your ASAT needed a once over electronically. Mine runs passive no problem, similar era to yours too. Battery lasts about 12 months hard playing.

My wife and I run a function band. She handles bookings alongside the other singer, and does all the logistics, marketing and dealing clients. It’s near as dammit a full time job. With regards to the old vs new topic- our experience is all of the newer stuff has the ‘wow, let’s charge to the dance floor’ but doesn’t keep them there, the songs run out of drama. So we rearrange them or put them in medleys and that helps.

We use p1s. What are the advantages of the p2s please?

Last gig of 2023! A Thursday night wedding- in the Christmas/ new year ‘Gooch’ as described by our drummer. Really nice venue, large crowd, still had some party vibes left in them. The room can be a bit troublesome sound wise but the sound guy was on it and everything ran really smoothly. As ever, our singers found a new way to make even bigger plonkers out of themselves in our titular song, all in the name of entertainment. Shake It Twerk.mp4

Two gigs last weekend, first a birthday party in a local pub we haven’t played for years (we haven’t done a pub gig for years!) then a early start for an hour in the centre of town entertaining the local shoppers. First gig was for a fitness/ dance class- they knew how to party and had a fully choreographed routine to Proud Mary which certainly freshened up proceedings. Had a enquiry for a wedding at the end as well, if they can cancel their current band. Sound guy insisted one sub would be more than adequate for both gigs and he proved 100% correct, no amp required. Did find the drummer had modified my in-ear lubricant much to everyone’s amusement.