HairyScaryMark

I have a coffee grinder but ran out of beans and am yet to replace them. Put ground coffee (either ground by my machine or pre-ground) into a filter coffee machine and let the water run through. I add no milk or sugar. Otherwise I use the espresso part of the machine but I reckon it is more sour than filter coffee and I usually prefer the taste of filter coffee over the Americano but it depends. Instant coffee, I don't bother drinking even if it is the only thing available. There is also a huge difference between the differnet sorts of coffee beans you get. Some I really don't like. Also, my mum foolishly bought a tesco own brand coffee machine and it made the coffee taste of metal. The machine we have now was only marjinally more expensive (35) and does much more (espresso and foaming milk as well as filtering). Single cup coffee filters are quite good but feel guilty becuase of how wasteful it is to use that much plastic just for a cup of coffee.

I would recommend checking out VHT amplifiers. VHT Amplification There is also a good Polish manufacturer of guitar amplifiers called Laboga. Laboga - Tube amplifiers

No it doesn't. I assumed that people generally want to become as good as they possibly can on their instrument. And by the fact the original poster said his muscles were in pain I assumed he was doing something that was physically demanding and therefore should add variety to his practice.

I haven't done that sort of practicing (4 + hours intensively each day) for a few years but now college is over, I plan to do that from when I get back from holiday onwards. It might become a chore but if playing guitar means enough to you, you should do everything necessary to become as good as you possibly can. It is going to be difficult to keep up motivation but it is necessary to practice technique to remove physical obstacles and suchlike. Make sure you practice a variety of things reguardless. If you only practice technique you are not really do anything very musical and it sometimes turns into a sport more than a musical instrument. If you only practice songs you probably wont improve as fast as you can and some songs require you to have a level of technical competanceto be able to play them fluetly.

I had a slight problem with this a couple of years a go, particularly when strumming. Your thumb should be low most of the time, but it also shouldn't be gripping onto the guitar for comfort, as it is quite easy to do. It should be free to move in accordance to the rest of your hand so you can gt from one part of the fretboard to another quickly. When I was a beginner, I gripped onto the guitar, expecting it would fall over if I didn't hold it hard enough. You should be able to move either hand away from the guitar without it falling. Also, with most of my guitar pupils. They tend to over compensate when I tell them to lower their wrist. They move their wrist forward (infront of the guitar) instead of lower. When trying to counter this I ask them to move their wrist backwards, the wrist goes up in the air, above the guitar. Don't know what makes people think up is backwards. I usually sort this by asking them to move their elbow backwards as the rest of their arm and hand follows with it.

If you are playing intensively for 4+ hours a day i.e practicing technique, stretching or playing at high speeds. You should stretch your muscles (as you would do before exercise) and massage them before playing. There is a demonstration of how to do this on the John Petrucci Rock Disciple DVD (or possibly found by searching youtube). Stretching your muscles should be done to prevent injury and is done in a similar way as you would do before exercise. Massaging your muscles will stimulate blood flow so you don't get any cramps and your muscles will function better. The single most important thing about posture is not to create any harsh angles at joints that will restrict blood flow and create damage to yourself. Also, don't waste your practice time playing out of time. Use a metranome as much as possible. If you find it difficult, that is the best possible evidence you need to show you should be doing it.

I rather enjoyed listening to Burning Earth and would like to see them. Boltdown remind me of Machine Head so I imagine they might be popular but aren't to my taste personally.

"This video is not available in your country"

Out of interest, have you ever been in a band? I've always found myself trying to organise people with bohemian lifestyles, many of which fail to turn up regularly and most turn up notably late. Absolute nightmare. If you want to manage a band. I suggest you find some people who have a band that have the potential to get somewhere (even without a manager) and then offer to do the administration and some of the work they might otherwise be doing for them. Don't work with people with bad attitudes or ones who think they have a God-given right to suceed..... At least not until they start paying you.

Although your advice was valid I thought it best for someone who is not used to operating a PA system to start with something simple. Especially if you are going to be mixing from the stage, as part of the band. I suspect they woudl stuggle to use any sort of in ear or headphone mix without every instrument going through them? Possibly not the drums but I suspect you will get complaints about people not being able to hear what they want if they don't have the everything through their headphones. My experience with it has been.... give someone a wedge monitor, if they can hear the lead vocal, the drums and their own instrument they can usually cope with that. Give someone a pair of headphones and there will be a never ending list of requests of what they want changed in the mix. There is also the issue of how it looks to the audience. Depending on the type of earphones you get (and the cheaper ones generally aren't moulded to your ears or otherwise good at cutitng out external noise) and the hairstyles of band members. If you have a wire forbidding you from moving around the stage it also might impact on your stage presense. Also, most bands (i've worked with) consist of multiple cheapskates and if you ask them to spend 80 on a set of half decent earphones, they may object. It also means you feel further away from the crowd. You quite possibly wont hear any clapping, singing or cheering from the audience unless you use ambient mics. I said the EQ was probably adequit becuase I don't think it would be wise to bring in external EQ unless you have more time and experience of how to use it. They might be able to get reasonably good at using their system if they also use it for rehearsals but that really depends on where they rehearse and the time they have available. From my experience, people tend not to be very understanding if you spend a lot of time fiddling with settings at a band practice. Maybe they should concider it but I would suggest leaving it to a later date until they are familular with the rest of their system.

I want to go to this just becuase there is a band called Wifebeater.

I think that is too complex a setup for someone who is not used to operating PA systems. In ear monitoring requires every instrument to be mic'd up and is highly unforgiving. There is no way it would be cheaper when you account for the cost of in-ear monitoring systems for each band member as well as additional microphones. The cheaper in-ear monitoring systems also don't do a very good job at blocking out external noise. Feedback is primarily casued as a result of room acoustics. Point your PA speakers away from the walls and you will be less likely to get it. The type of monitors to get and how to use them really depend on your band and layout on stage. I would be tempted to say on the size of stages you are likely to play and concidering how little of the band you are poutting through the monitors, it would not be wise to start with a large number of monitors or monitor mixes. The number of wats is fairly irrelevant as it doesn't measure how loud the system is. The EQ on your mixing desk should be sufficent for your needs. Just turn down the bass on vocals and piano (if you have a piano player used to playing in sunday school i.e bottom heavy). There is a reasonable learning curve attached with using compressors. If you were to start using one, try putting it on your lead vocal. Set attack time ~20-40ms and don't make the ratio too heavy. If you get better at using them then you will be able to adjust to suit but you don't really get a very accurate impression of how it sounds from the stage. You might wish to put a little bit of reverb on your vocals but don't get carried away with this as you don't want it to be too obvious.

I believe it is going to be on Sky 1? If so.. Well gutted. No Gladiators for me

The finger does tend to get pointed at illegal downloading of mp3s. This may or may not be relevant but we must not forget that people are ordering CD's off the internet, downloading from Itunes, listening to music on myspace and spending hours watching (music) videos on YouTube. On top of that people often have 900 channels of TV, a playstation, x box and a mobile phone that can do most of the above things. To a lot of people, music is just another activity that competes for space in the day alongside the above mentioned things. Record shops are likely to face a hard time and the only way for them to survive is to adapt, sell more DVD's, expand internet sales and downloads.

Chris Hein Horns is a reasonably popular software option. Wizard Media Soundline Also, East West make some sample libraries which may fit your purposes East West Samples - Latest Releases such as their Symphony Orchestra bundles. If you must have hardware. You could try Yamaha Motif.

I want Battleaxe. I will defeat her.

That really depends on what you are after. Something like that tends to be more economical for someone starting off and gets you results that are reasonable. Also been a bit of an expansion in the market during recently years of type of devices as home recording becomes more popular. The device you pointed to earlier requires you to have something else to plug it into and has 8 built in pre amps.

Yet again, it depends how much money you have and if you have enough pre amps for all the microphones you want to use at the same time. As far as I understand. The SM Pro Audio EP84 can either be used as as a set of mic pre amps, connecting the line outs to another device used as an AD converter. More likely you would use the ADAT option then plug it into the ADAT input of another interface Some posibilities with ADAT connections are; Presonus Firestudio MOTU 828 MOTU traveller RME hammerfall RME fireface Mackie Onyx 1200 Apogee make stuff that is a step up from that, but it really depends how much money you are willing to spend. You are looking at quite a subtancial amount of money if you get this stuff so you need to make sure you are going to get enough use out of it to make it worthwhile. Also, buy yourself a good book about recording, as you will get better results if you learn more about what you are doing. I cannot recommend a specific book but I have been quite impressed by what I have read by 'Bob Katz'.

That is because it is at the wrong level. Line level is about +4 DB whereas mic is -40db. You need to record at line level so you need a microphone pre amp to bring it to the correct level. The PC 'mic' socket really wont be up to the job. I have not heard of AdrenaLinn III before. The popular software amp modellers are IK multimedia Amplitube and Native Instruments Guitar Rig. You are better off saving up your money for a good 'real' amplifier and recording it but these amp modellers sound better than a low quality 'real' amplifier. There is also some free amp modellers around that you could try out. I have never used any but some of them are meant to be good. This would be a good starting point to look Who needs pirating...Best free stuff - Harmony Central Musician Community Forums

Some good advice so far. This is what I would do.... Download reaper. It only costs 20 and has a free trial that never runs out, apparently. It is also said to be better than many of the ones you pay real money for, in some ways at least. REAPER | Download Download this pack of plugins for free digitalfishphones.com - free audio effects plugins Get an SM57 or similar and some form of condensor mic. Also get an interface with built in microphone pre amps. This one will do the job to start you off TASCAM and is little over 100. If you have a bit more money, baring the future in mind you might be better off getting something like a Presonus FP10 (previously known as firepod) for under 350 PreSonus It would allow you to record a drum kit and possibly even an entire band (with some compromises) at once.

You could experiment with overdrive, distortion and fuzz on some lead sounds or some pads. Also could sparingly use wah for lead. Delay is also a good idea. Chorus is worth a try but be careful as it has a tendency to lead to excessive naffness. Also, as far as I can see. Modern synths are increasingly coming with all the built in effects you need so less external ones are being used.

I am fairly sure they don't becuase I tried to go to it. They had a fairly good cheesey/varied rock night on mondays that was busy enough when I went, i assume attedence decreased as it is not on the go anymore. They also had a rock/metal night on tuesdays which I only went to once and it was very quiet, unfortuatnly. Pity these things usually get put on during the week as a lot more people could go otherwise. I remember there was a rock/metal night in Metro a couple of years a go but I only heard about it after it had stopped running. Also. I was not aware this Elizium night existed until this post. I think I know people who may be interested in that..

I might be able to help you out here. I believe I have one lying around which is still in original packaging.

I think it's being going downhill as a nightclub pretty much since I started going there in 2005 but the process has speeded up since Barfly bought it over. The carpets aren't nice but I don't care about them that much. Same with the toilets. The music would benefit from more variety. The standard thing on Friday since I started to go was to play Rock Club Clliche's virtually every single week i.e Killing in The Name by Rage Against the Machine, Down by Pantera and Enter Sandman by Metallica. Then about half of the other songs are usaully emo songs. I assume the reasoning for this says emo is what is popular with young people at the moment. They must remember however that a large proportion of emo fans are under the age of 18 and therefore not able to go to the clubnight and there is also a significant trend to not drink any alchohol. Also tends to be a fair bit of the mainstream American Heavy Rock/Metal stuff like Trivium and Machine Head and then some of the 'alternative electro' or whatever it is called like Penjalum and Nine Inch Nails. I don't have a problem with them playing any of these types of music but they need to cater for all varieties of rock fans. They are only going to suceed as a rock club if they cater metalheads, goths, punk, glam, thrash. grunge and people who just don't like the other clubs. They appear to have gone out of their way to appeal to what they think is popular with young people and at the same time the attendence has declined. Not playing requested things when they really aren't that radical is not going to please your customers. I know people who have requested stuff like In flames, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Dragonforce i.e popular metal bands and it practically never gets played. Also the prices of drinks has risen big time recently. 2.65 for a pink of Grolsch and 3.80 for a Kopperburg? Makes it much more of a concideration to actually bother going to moshulu. Paying 4 to get in and then drinks are more expensive than most places I might otherwise go. As with the during the week metal nights? As far as I know there was only a handful of these on Thusday last year and most of us have work, university or college on Friday morning so not able to go. They could have been better publicised also. I believe a similar style of monthly event is suceeding nicely in Glasgow at the Soundhouse. I have seen many posters, flyers etc. for it the last few times i've been in Glasgow whereas with the Thursday Metal night at Moshulu I got given a flyer one night and most of my friends didn't know about it. One really positive thing Barfly has done is get back to booking some good touring bands and they also upgraded the in-house PA system to a turbosound one, which is about as good as it gets really. The end result of Moshulu and rock places in Aberdeen generally vanishing is metalheads just stay at home playing world of warcraft rather than going out.

I heard this also but I know the guy and I don't think they actually look all that similar.