Count2Zero

We play mostly covers and a few originals and we need to improve our stage decoration.

For our first gigs, I had some large banners produced (about 2 x 1 meters) and we hung them up behind us or on the side or the stage.

I then saw another band that had their name lit in an LED neon sign. The singer told me it cost them a lot to have that made, so I decided to DIY it. I grabbed an LED strip, mounted it on a board, and had a friend print our name/logo with a vinyl cutter. The vinyl was put on a sheet of plexiglass, and the other side was covered in some milky white foil, so when the LED is on, our name shines through in a rainbow of colors. It cost me about 50€ and works great.

We have a c

So, here’s the story: My band (originally a cover band) has written a few songs, and we decided to record a few of them. My other band rehearses in a space that is also set up for recording (the whole drum kit is mic’d, and there are about 15 more channels available, all running into a PC with Cubase installed), so we signed up to use that room. It was a good deal – we were in there for about 5 hours, recording more than 20 different takes, and the whole day cost us less than €150.

The recording went well, and I took the stems home and started working on them on my laptop.

Our guitarist came to my place a few days later and we spent the afternoon recording overdubs out on my patio. (We ran

Last weekend, the guitarist from my band (who is also a pretty accomplished artist and painter) held a vernissage for an exhibition of his work in a nearby town. As part of the opening, he played about 1 hour of music with some other musicians. The singer from our band accompanied him on Cajon (and sang one song), while some old friends of his played bass and acoustic guitar.

His set was exclusively German-language songs, so he played several of his originals, as well as some covers from bands like Element of Crime and Rio Reiser.

A few of the songs he played are also songs that our band plays at our gigs. The one song where our singer took the lead is one of those songs. I was sitting the

Scenario: My band was playing a gig recently. We all play direct into the board (except the drummer). Because our floor monitors are normally "bass weak" I brought along my Rumble 40 and set it up facing me, and plugged it into the "other" output on my DI box, so I had a bass-only monitor in front of me.

At the beginning of the set, the balance was pretty good - I could hear myself, the guitars, and the vocals (all except my own microphone, for some odd reason).

But, by the end of the show, the lead guitarist had bumped up his volume so loud that I couldn't hear myself in my own monitor - all I heard was his screaching guitar.

So, I'm thinking ... screw this. I don't want to mess with

We had a gig last night: A birthday party for our guitarist’s girlfriend (so no income). We’re in the middle of a summer heatwave, and we were setting up in the middle of the afternoon – it was about 34°C (93°F). We had set up a pavilion (3m x 3m) over the band, but the sun was shining in from the left side (where I was standing). We set up our mixer, PA speakers, monitors, and I installed lights (learning from last time – the lights were aimed up at the pavilion, giving us more indirect lighting that didn’t blind anyone). Our drummer was half in a garage, and the pavilion was set up in front of him, so that he was sitting behind but his kit was half inside it.

We did the sound check and th

If I look around my kitchen ... toaster, air fryer, stove, oven - it's very easy (and doesn't require much technology) to turn energy into heat. Just run it through a resistor (nichrome) and the resistor gets HOT. Or, take any fuel source and ignite it, and it produces a hot flame as part of the combustion process.

But, why is it so hard to remove heat again? A refridgerator is a complex piece of kit, with coolant circulating through a set of pipes that pull heat out of one space, then pass through a compressor and expansion chamber to pass that heat back to the environment again.

Why is it easy to create heat, yet so complicated to remove it again?

I've always been a fan of rock music, growing up with Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rush, and many more.

However, I somehow never really took notice of King Crimson. I saw their albums in the record stores, but I never really listened to them.

Now, some 40+ years later, I keep seeing people talking about them, and how massively influential they were.

So, my question here ... where do I start to really understand King Crimson? Should I just go buy "In the Court of King Crimson" and start there, or is there a "Best of" compilation that would give me a better overview of their body of work?

Time to query the hive mind of reddit again.

I want to record the gigs my bands play. Sometimes we play during the day / outside gigs, and sometimes we play late nights in a dark basement. I want a camera that can capture video (and audio in stereo) from the gigs.

I had a GoPro Hero 11, but it crapped out on me after just a couple of gigs. The camera was tiny and had very little battery capacity, so I would connect it up to a USB power pack, which was a bit of a PITA, honestly. The video quality was good, and the sound recording was great.

When the GoPro died, I set up my Lenovo tablet to record one of our gigs. The video was good (until our guitarist turned one of our stage lights, and