Worrying sign of things to come?

[odysseus]

A few bands seem to be following in the footsteps of bands like Animals As Leaders with 8 string guitars. Mainly proggy metal type bands though.. 

[Munurmunuh]

"So, we've two options. Either each of us get paid a 25% less so we can hire a chippy, balding guy in a hat who's never on the beat, keeps trying to add notes and bangs on about wanting to cut through the mix."

 

"Or....?"

 

"Or we buy this pedal."

 

[BigRedX]

All of the bands with "no bass guitar" still have plenty of bottom end in their sound. If you didn't know there wasn't a bass player in the line up you'd never know from just listening to the recordings.

 

IMO this makes them all "gimmick" bands. If they didn't make a big deal about not having a particular instrument the average listen would never be aware of the fact, and the "gimmick" is all that makes them interesting. Most have at best a couple of decent songs.

 

In Hurtsfall we try not to make a big deal about not having a guitarist. Obviously I talk about it on here, but that's because on Basschat we discuss the mechanics of making music and it's relevant to the instruments I use. However when talking to music reviewers we play it down, and I doubt that most of the listeners who haven't seen us live are aware of the fact and probably don't even realise that the more recent recordings don't even have a live drummer.

 

Ultimately it doesn't matter how you make your music just that it is entertaining.

[Ed_S]

23 hours ago, BigRedX said:

I think the problem with a poor live mix can be the presence of too many instruments on stage, often all fighting for the same frequency range.

 

Also, some of the digital modelling preamps I've seen seem to lure guitarists towards creating patches that in isolation sound like the entire guitar content, sometimes including bass, of a fully produced and mastered album. Very handy if you don't have the other musicians there, but risking a real mess if you do.

 

In a similar vein, sounding better because there's less to sound bad is one of the reasons that I went back to playing 4s. I was sick of certain house engineers making a mess of the low end so, rather than keeping on trying to bring it up and at best being ignored (at worst, 'offending' them and risking the vindictive mix), I just deprived them of the raw material to do it. Instant improvement.

[Nail Soup]

37 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

IMO this makes them all "gimmick" bands. If they didn't make a big deal about not having a particular instrument the average listen would never be aware of the fact, and the "gimmick" is all that makes them interesting. Most have at best a couple of decent songs.

That's only true if the band uses the line-up as some kind of USP or selling point.

For example, the couple of 'Riot-grrll' bands someone mentioned above don't make any kind of deal out of not having a bassist... they just don't. And plenty of people like their music on face value.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Nail Soup

[Agent 00Soul]

For the flip side, I was in a band without a guitar player for a couple of years.  It was mostly electronica influenced and a plenty big sound (3 singers, live drum programming, Nord keyboard, trumpet, sometimes congas/bongos, me on bass through a pedalboard of fx).  It certainly didn't need a guitarist and we never mentioned that we didn't have one unless asked.  And we were asked a lot, even by electronica fans who I didn't think cared about stuff like that.  The fact was, and we had to admit it to ourselves, that people like electric guitars and at least some people really missed seeing/hearing one on stage.