How was your gig last night?

[neepheid]

Last night, played with Nine Lives at the Harbour Lights in Peterhead.  As intimated above, had a rather nasty summer cold which I had fought through the worst of, but still felt about 75% strength.  Still, the show must go on, sponsored by Lemsip and Kleenex if necessary.

 

Got an instant boost on arrival - the venue has hired a sound engineer again!  The last few times we played there, we had to rather annoyingly set up our own PA in front of their much larger tops and subs and do it all ourselves.  No PA lugging for us last night.  Instantly that perked me up!  We got greeted by a friendly lass who had been mentored through 7 shows but last night was her first gig doing the sound solo.  She did a great job and it made for an unusually quiet and civilised stage - our PA is vocal only for the most part.  Nice change.  My amp was my own personal monitor and it was barely on.  Got a great monitor feed, could hear everything, nice balanced FOH sound, fantastic - lass did great for her first gig by herself.

 

As you can imagine, having the sound basically taken care of us made for a very relaxed gig, and the adrenaline pulled me through enough to still get out there on the wireless and get up to no good.  New move unlocked - hitting a ball on the pool table with the head of my bass.  Need to work on that one because I muted the strings while I was doing it, but as I always say "people listen with their eyes" and I got a cheer for the audacious move.  The game of pool was over BTW, there were two random balls on the table and no white in sight - so I didn't eff up anyone's game.

 

Anyway, had a great night - it wasn't super busy but we did have folk up dancing and that's all you need.  While we were packing up, to say the heavens opened was an understatement - a monsoon of rain, massive lightning strikes and booming thunder.  Which thankfully moved on by the time it came to loading the cars.  But the storm had moved in the direction of Aberdeen, so I ended up driving into it like a storm chaser - rain so heavy I had to slow down to 40 or so on the dual carriageway - massive lightning strikes - even saw the shape of it one time and the thunder came almost immediately after so must have been close!  And my jammy luck didn't end there - when I got home proper, the rain was off again!  God bless Scotland and its nutty weather

 

Gear was a long, shaggy dog story plugged into a snotty hankie.  No, wait - it was the Yamaha BB1200 followed by the Burny LSB-80 into a barely awake Markbass rig.

 

[warwickhunt]

How do you reorientate videos?  LOL

 

 

[neepheid]

4 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

How do you reorientate videos?  LOL

 

I use ffmpeg (and google the arcane command line/incantation required every time) - other more friendly tools are probably available.

[Woodinblack]

57 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

How do you reorientate videos?  LOL

 

Depends what platform you are on. If it was recorded with an iOs thing, such as an iPhone, you can just rotate it with the rotate tool in photos. I assume if you are using another platform, similar tools are available. But you probably need to trim the 'pre-rotate' part of the video anyway!

[dmccombe7]

3 hours ago, BillyBass said:

I took part in my first gig in 18 months yesterday.  It was a battle of the bands in a secondary school and our band was one of the 'parent's bands'.  Anyway, we have our first gig under the belt.

 

It was outdoors so I got to use my full rig and this ended up being the kids' bass rig too.  Consequently, I ended up with bass tech duties too.  

 

This is my first gig playing with a drummer with an electronic kit.  There were no monitors and as well as not hearing the vocals, I could barely hear the drums.  We got through our short set ok though.  

 

My rig:

Bet you're glad to be bacck at it and that is one nice rig you have there.

What's the bass ?

Dave

[warwickhunt]

19 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Depends what platform you are on. If it was recorded with an iOs thing, such as an iPhone, you can just rotate it with the rotate tool in photos. I assume if you are using another platform, similar tools are available. But you probably need to trim the 'pre-rotate' part of the video anyway!

 

Ta,I'll go back to the original video taker and ask if they can do that.   

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, warwickhunt said:

How do you reorientate videos?  LOL

 

 

Sounds good and curious what the bass is ?

Dave

[warwickhunt]

1 hour ago, dmccombe7 said:

Sounds good and curious what the bass is ?

Dave

 

Good old (new) Sandberg Cali in metallic orange.

 

[Bluewine]

We played Summerfest yesterday.  There were some pros and cons.

 

It was one of the smaller stages. However it was an upgrade from the last two years after we lost our big stage contact.

 

It was 99° so Summerfest attendance was low.

 

We had an air conditioned trailer with a nice supply of cold drinks.

 

We played a 45-minute set took an hour break then came back and played another 45 minute set.

 

The best part of the gig was we went straight from the stage into the shuttle van. That was cool.

 

Daryl

Edited 14 hours ago by Bluewine

[Norris]

 

Party in the Barn. This was a ticket do with hog roast included. I'll try to be cheery about, despite missing Iron Maiden (my wife and son said they were fantastic!)

 

So we actually had a really good gig. Nice to be working with a sound guy we knew and it sounded great. It was darned hot and humid though so I'm glad I took my fan. There were about 300 people there, around 200 of them that dragged their tables out of the barn to where there was a very slight breeze. It wasn't exactly the freshest of air though being a working farm 😂

 

A long, hot night but plenty of dancing. The Rumble was only just ticking over as on stage monitor as everything was through the PA

 

 

[Greg Edwards69]

Saturday was a surprise 50th birthday party, in the upstairs function room at Starr Sports, Canvey Island. The birthday boy’s wife booked us months ago after seeing us severaral times, including another party in the same venue. Apparently he is a huge back to the future fan, so they had an “enchantment under the sea” theme, including decorations, and we offered to include a couple of songs from the film in out set, as well as a couple more when Liam, one of our co-lead singers was also going to man the DJ booth.

 

I say ‘was’, because we got a message Saturday morning on our band group chat to say that his ME was playing up quite badly which took him out of action. This meant revising the set list for Jenny, the other lead singer to do the gig on her own - something she hasn’t done for a some time, particularly this sort of gig - as there are a few songs she simply can’t pull off. There was also a few in the set that she doesn’t usually sing or hasn’t sung lead on them before, but was confident she could. I realised this also meant I was going to need to up my backing vocals game, and sing some parts I don’t usually sing… which is fun!

 

This also meant the DJ service was said we would provide before, between and after sets wasn’t going to happen either. Luckily, I have some party playlists already set up in the Music app on my iPad (aka iTunes) that would get us out of trouble. I just had to find a couple of extra songs from the BTTF soundtrack to play at certain predefined points during the evening.

 

I needn’t have worried though. The evening went without a hitch. Jenny did an amazing job on her own. I feel she sometimes relies on Liam’s confidence to interacti with the audience, but it seems to have rubbed off on her. This venue also has a lovely big stage area and she made the most of it (as did I), confidently moving around and interacting with everyone.

 

My curated playlists worked fine (thank goodness for Bluetooth on our mixer), although I realised that I can't switch to BandHelper whilst playing music. That's a mistake I won't make again! I also realised during our first set that I hadhn't synced BandHelper before I left home. So I connected it to my iPhone whilst it was playing music towards the end our break so that it would sync when I switched back to BandHelper, not realising that a FB messenger notification would pop up... loudly, through the PA system. Another mistake I won't make again!

 

Ooh, one last thing, as this stage is so wide, last time we played there I noticed the speakers being so far apart, meant the drums didn't quite gel. So I asked one of the guitarists to being their DXR10 speaker to use as a centre fill. Sat it on top of the sub, plugged it into an aux out of the mixer, with the same mix as the main, and set to post fader. Dead easy, and sounded great. Definitely made a positive difference.

 

So all in all, a good night after, despite the anxiety of being a man down.

[dmccombe7]

4 hours ago, warwickhunt said:

 

Good old (new) Sandberg Cali in metallic orange.

 

very nice indeed.

Dave

[super al]

Played a dep gig for my old soul band. 

 

The set had changed slightly since I last played with them, Boogie Nights, Never Too Much and Let's Groove had to be learned and polished and then rejigged again with all the mistakes/changes the band have added 😂

Boogie Nights intro and outro had become my Achilles Heel, the bridge I needed to cross to enjoy this gig fully. 

 

The gig was a wedding reception at the Stones Hotel near Amesbury (more than a stones throw from Stonehenge, which seems a blessing on Solstice). We did 3 x 40 mins sets with 40 min breaks which were filled by a DJ.

I was a little apprehensive due to the heat that afternoon but the room was large with a high ceiling and a couple of stage fans plus the fire exit was open...cool as a cucumber!

Gig went well, the long breaks between sets was welcome and I was pleased how the new stuff went even if they didn't go quite to plan, any bumps in the road were dealt with calmly 😁. Even Boogie Nights went well!

The big plus playing in this band is that I get to sit in the engine room with Dave, probably the best drummer I've had the honour of sharing a stage with. He is my rhythm version of an old pair of comfortable slippers, it all clicks with him (lovely shirt too!).

Overall a grand night and a good pay packet at the end of it 👍🏻

 

[Stub Mandrel]

9 hours ago, warwickhunt said:

How do you reorientate videos?  LOL

 

 

 

Handbrake if you use a PC. Does all (most?) other format/compression changes as well.

[BigRedX]

Hurtsfall played the Nottingham Craft Beer Festival in Sneinton Market on Saturday. If you are not playing covers these events can be a bit hit-or-miss and on top of that we were the last band playing that day, so we didn't really know what to expect. 

 

Sneinton Market is currently the "happening" area in Nottingham where all the interesting independent shops are situated in units in the old market buildings. On arrival we discovered that the beer festival had taken up the whole of the Avenues area and was entry by ticket only. However to allow people to still use the shops you could get in but didn't get a wristband which was required in order to buy beer. As performers we all got wristbands but I don't recall being asked to show mine before being served. 

 

There were two stages - one outdoors where unfortunately the performers seemed to be mostly ignored and also had to compete with all the other music - there appeared to be at least one DJ set up on every avenue, and the other in The Grove where we were playing. Probably the most convoluted load-in so far this year. There was only one entrance and some of the avenues were blocked off half way along the length meaning that getting all the gear to the venue involved not only negotiating all the beer festival attendees but also doubling back on yourself to get around all the blockages. Certainly not as easy as the last time we played at The Grove when it was possible to park directly outside the venue. 

 

Thirty minute turnaround between performers, whilst someone played on the other stage. No time for a proper sound check, set up, just one verse to make sure we could hear everything in the monitors and a couple of minutes to get changed and then we were on. Luckily there was nothing "miss" about this event. The venue was packed (that's not that difficult as it is really tiny) and it appeared that quite a few people had come specifically to see us play. Cue dancing, singing along to the songs and cheering in between. We even got our first proper encore. I'm a firm believer in both bands and the audience have to deserve an encore. None of this coming back on stage just because a couple of your mates have shouted "more". We were technically past the live music curfew but the sound engineer said do one more and so we did. Even sold some merch afterwards although at this sort of event you don't really expect to. Load out was much easier as the festival was over by the time we had everything packed up and we were able to leave by a much more direct route.

 

As usual here's a couple of photos:

 

 

Next gigs are on 10th July Supporting Miranda Sex Garden at Rough Trade in Nottingham, followed by Goths On A Field festival on Saturday 12th.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by BigRedX

[Huge Hands]

Saturday night was in a school hall playing bass for the local concert band and it's 25th anniversary concert.

 

Was good fun but a total sweat box, especially when the band committee insisted we all walked on stage in full uniform - ie shirt, tie, trousers and heavy band blazers. 

 

Luckily the jackets came straight off when we got on stage.....

[tony_m]

Sunday afternoon saw our (Rascallion) first live performance since August last year (long story!). 

 

The event (outdoors at a local pub) had originally been billed as "Country Music Day", featuring a local female solo acoustic singer followed by us, so we'd worked up a set featuring a few of the more country-adjacent tunes we've not done for a while, and added the 6/8 at 49 BPM delights of "Tennessee Whiskey" to our usual CCR / Eagles / Petty / Stones country-rockesque fare. Sometime over the last month, the event then morphed into a combined Sausage & Cider Festival and SSAFA Fundraiser, but we decided to stick to what we'd already put together, and it mostly went OK despite rehearsals being sporadic due to various members being ill or otherwise unavailable.

 

After Meg had entertained the crowd (and us) with two sets of country classics plus a few very good (and in one case very funny / raucous) originals, it was our turn to spoil everybody's afternoon. 

 

Apart from a number of on-the-hoof arrangement changes courtesy of Mr Singer (OK, maybe he was just testing out our recovery skills, but I suspect not... ), a couple of the carefully-crafted intros we'd worked up at rehearsal on Wednesday going to pot as various folks piled in before they should have done (think we need a few more counting lessons... ), and a few other minor moments by all of us, seems we got away with it judging by the amount of applause, outbreaks of (possibly cider-induced) dancing, and complimentary comments at the end!

 

Used my 1997 CIJ Jazz, faithful old Ashdown MAG300-C210T combo (acquired from @karlfer of this parish about 15 years ago, and which doesn't get to see much action these days), plus the usual board of Micro Thumpinator > NUX tuner > Ampeg OptoComp > Ampeg Scrambler > Ampeg Liquifier > Ashdown 12-band Graphic EQ/DI > Behringer DI600P DI. I somehow contrived to play the whole of the first set and a chunk of the second with the sub-harmonic engaged on the amp having omitted to disengage it after our last rehearsal, but I don't think anybody noticed. 🤫

 

Anyway, that's hopefully got the rust knocked off prior to our next gig this coming Saturday at our spiritual home of Anderby Village Hall.

Might have some videos to put up later, if I can manage to get them off Mr Rhythm Guitar's phone at rehearsal, but in the meantime here's the setup, and a combined "Post Your Pedalboard / Footwear" shot.

 

 

 

[casapete]

Acoustic duo gig yesterday evening at a local pub - birthday party for a friend’s wife.

 

We played in a room at the back of the pub which used to be a brewery, with a flagstone floor

but very uneven. We both spent all the gig balanced precariously on stools with one foot on the

ground, not ideal but no alternative. I had to put wedges under our PA speakers on one side

to prevent them from falling backwards!

We did our usual request format and had some good ones. Because there was no room for dancing

it meant we could play more slow tempo tunes, including ‘Sweet baby James’, ‘Rotterdam’ and 

‘Let’s stay together’. Bad planning meant the buffet was served during the start of our second set,

but we ploughed on regardless as we were due to finish by a certain time. Didn’t seem to matter,

and we went down well so all good. Load out in the rain but meant it was quick!

Got two more gigs this Tuesday and Wednesday, then a week off, phew. 

[Len_derby]

4 minutes ago, casapete said:

Acoustic duo gig yesterday evening at a local pub - birthday party for a friend’s wife.

 

We played in a room at the back of the pub which used to be a brewery, with a flagstone floor

but very uneven. We both spent all the gig balanced precariously on stools with one foot on the

ground, not ideal but no alternative. I had to put wedges under our PA speakers on one side

to prevent them from falling backwards!

We did our usual request format and had some good ones. Because there was no room for dancing

it meant we could play more slow tempo tunes, including ‘Sweet baby James’, ‘Rotterdam’ and 

‘Let’s stay together’. Bad planning meant the buffet was served during the start of our second set,

but we ploughed on regardless as we were due to finish by a certain time. Didn’t seem to matter,

and we went down well so all good. Load out in the rain but meant it was quick!

Got two more gigs this Tuesday and Wednesday, then a week off, phew. 

This one makes me think of a micro pub near me that’s in an old workshop. The cobbles are so uneven that a regular who comes on his mobility scooter shouts his order from the doorway and they bring his ale out to him. 
It’s a pain when the buffet gets served during the set. No only do you lose people’s attention there’s a chance they’ll be no grub left. That’s apart from the drool running down on the bass. 

[casapete]

1 hour ago, Len_derby said:

This one makes me think of a micro pub near me that’s in an old workshop. The cobbles are so uneven that a regular who comes on his mobility scooter shouts his order from the doorway and they bring his ale out to him. 
It’s a pain when the buffet gets served during the set. No only do you lose people’s attention there’s a chance they’ll be no grub left. That’s apart from the drool running down on the bass. 

We normally try to strategically time our playing with food service so they don’t overlap, but sometimes

its just impossible, especially if there’s stroppy kitchen / venue staff involved! Weddings are the worst

for this, and it can often be best just to go with the flow. However, when our meter is running to finish

by the agreed time / cost then it can be annoying. Goes with the territory I’m afraid! 
 

 

[dmccombe7]

19 hours ago, Bluewine said:

We played Summerfest yesterday.  There were some pros and cons.

 

It was one of the smaller stages. However it was an upgrade from the last two years after we lost our big stage contact.

 

It was 99° so Summerfest attendance was low.

 

We had an air conditioned trailer with a nice supply of cold drinks.

 

We played a 45-minute set took an hour break then came back and played another 45 minute set.

 

The best part of the gig was we went straight from the stage into the shuttle van. That was cool.

 

Daryl

Looks great Daryl.

Oddly enough i don't see you working there at the back of the van or were you getting the beers in. ? 😂🍺🍺

Dave