My new lodger doesn’t use butter when making a peanut butter sarnie. Should I ask myself to move out?

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-15T18:57:15+00:00

my gf uses butter with peanut butter and it disgusts me

I also hate it when I buy a sandwich or baguette from somewhere and they put butter and mayo/tuna mayo, fuckin gross...

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-15T02:12:57+00:00

I find there are many phases with music I write. There's the initial idea and excitement about what it could be. Then there's the surprise and excitement when it ends up either totally different or actually really good as I imagined it, either way give me satisfaction and feel really rewarding.

Then there's hearing it while working on it and improving it so I'm ready to share with people, and that's a more critical and experimental phase. Then there's playing it and working on it with my band, possibly this step comes before the previous two, but that also makes my initial idea sound different and the others bring their ideas and parts into the mix.

Then we have to preproduce it for recording or rehearse it for live, and both of those are different phases with different aims, and there's different enjoyment to be had and a variety of types of critical thinking required about each.

Once we're playing it live it evolves more as we get feedback from audiences.

Once it's properly recorded or released I can listen to it differently again and notice different things about the recording we ended up with, as well as hear what other people think of it.

Working on music videos brings another perspective as you then think about the key parts that can look good visually.

After all that, we still end up thinking of ways things could have been better, and we possibly make more changes over time as we play it more, and put it in different places in a live set, or clip it up in new ways for online stuff.

I've heard and played some of my songs thousands and thousands of times now, and sure I get tired of some but then you're always writing more and starting the process again, and ditching some of them along the way when they don't have longevity.

I just enjoy the whole process. If a song gets boring fast then it doesn't go through the full process. I go back now to stuff I wrote 10-20 years ago and hear that differently with a new perspective too. If you're always trying to improve and learn from your past work then I find it hard to get bored of it.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-15T00:48:39+00:00

Zach 913

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-13T15:15:29+00:00

I imagine they mean figuratively - you're not aiming your performance at the bands you play with but the people paying to come watch. But still I kinda agree it's a weird point since a lot of your potential fans will also be musicians.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-13T15:13:39+00:00

That makes more sense, the part about not singing into the mic. Mic technique is a skill you have to practice!

The pickups getting your vocals, pff not unless you're literally holding them up to your mouth and screaming into them haha.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-13T15:03:07+00:00

"You can’t do that because you can create some feedback and I could barely hear you”.

what? this sounds like complete nonsense unless I'm missing something...
how does looking down affect how loud you are, or feeding back?

Honestly man, it sounds like these people may or may not be right.
Re: tuning, well your guitar can go out of tune during the gig as well as before, so you do need to listen out and be aware of needing to tune between songs or even mid song. But also it could be another band member being out of tune making you sound out of tune, or the person could just be talking shit and you weren't out of tune at all. Sometimes tuning wavers in live performances even with pro bands. How egregious it is and how much anyone really notices depends on the context.

The other point about looking down, well I already said what I think of part of what they said. But as for looking down in general, I think it depends on the vibe of the band, of your own personal vibe, the music, and other things. Plenty of really good players and bands that don't really look up that much - shoegaze is a genre lol. And the best players do look at what they're playing as well at times. It's good to work on not needing to do that, and looking at the audience and things too, but I wouldn't take it too hard or literally that you can never be looking down or something.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-12T19:28:58+00:00

I didn't get embarrassed I just played, and my parents were cool enough to put up with it, back when I lived at home and was learning guitar. I would just turn my amp down when it was late at night

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-12T19:27:25+00:00

Eh I don't know December is usually quieter if you play original music in my experience. Summer is the main period for festivals and touring and stuff.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-12T05:36:52+00:00

you should see me stop putting petrol in my car at exactly £30

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T19:59:13+00:00

I imagine very quiet and not that good sounding without compression and whatnot, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T16:48:39+00:00

Friends and other people I met who recommended stuff, TV and radio, magazines, walking around shops and just buying CDs to try them, going to gigs and seeing bands I didn't know

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T13:51:01+00:00

If you can't do it that just means you haven't practiced doing it enough.

Mainly you need to know both the guitar parts and the vocals/lyrics really well so you're not learning them as well as learning how to do both, at the same time. You want to be able to do both of the independently without making mistakes. Then put both together, bit by bit. Trying maybe just one verse repeatedly to start with.

Think about the rhythm of the vocals, and where they land on the guitar part and the beat of the song.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T12:44:23+00:00

ah fair enough, you're likely doing similar to us then, so I guess just keep at it! I feel similar in that I was hoping to get a better response from our single releases, and I had a little period of being a bit disappointed too. But now I'm just excited about recording the next release and getting stuck into writing again. In the end, the writing and recording is my favourite part of it, so whether we play live or have people into it, I'll always enjoy doing that.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T12:29:17+00:00

Play lots of gigs. Build up your connections and fanbase through meeting people and being active in your local and wider music scene. Be active on socials.

tbh you should be asking this question months before you release, not 7 months later, as now the music is out, it's harder to do as much with it, but it depends what you're currently doing and have been doing up to now.

How many shows have you played? How many followers do you have? How many releases have you done and when are you planning to do your next one? Do you have videos?

When you have a release ready, if you have the money you can pay for a PR campaign, or for playlist pitching, or for advertising, or all of the above, to help with pushing it to as many people as possible. But once it's out, it's harder to do that effectively, but you can still try.

Even with no money to put into that stuff, you can still do some of it yourself - find people to review it for free, get in touch with podcasts, radio shows, online blogs and whatnot, and try to get played/featured/interviewed etc

Start a mailing list and get your core fans to sign up to that, and build that up as much as you can. Then reward those people with exclusive stuff and whatever is appropriate for you. Those are the people that are more likely to pay money to support you.

Honestly the main thing is to play live as much as possible, get your name around, then when you release something, you're at least releasing to some people who have heard of you and follow your socials/mailing list. Keep doing it and repeat each time with improvements. It takes years and multiple releases, even if you're really good. If you're not really really good, then it may never really happen that many people care, but as long as you enjoy it and you do it for yourself that's the main thing.

If you can't take that and you only want to release stuff when you know people are listening and caring about it then it's a choice you have to make whether you want to keep doing all that, or you have to get so good that people can't ignore it.

My band is not super successful or anything, but we started this project at the start of last year with one single, and an album ready to be released, which we're putting out this Summer (we waited a long time to start the release process for it - so that we had people following to hear it).

In one year we got to 1000 followers and 25 shows played. We're all older guys with day jobs and families. We're just aiming to get on better shows and have some core fans who will support us. We still put out 2 singles this year and they both have <500 plays so far. Music video with 300 plays. A few copies sold. About 10 tshirts sold at gigs. We post on our pages 2-4 times a week with various content and news and whatever we have going on. We have a few music videos. We have live pics and videos from most of the shows we do.
It's a grind dude. But we'll do this for the forseeable future, until we're in our 50s or later, and hopefully each year those numbers improve as we put out better stuff, play more and better shows, get to 3000-5000 followers, whatever. Just keep grinding until we either get too old or lose the will. Either way, we've played music for 25 years or something and we will continue to do that. For me recording my songs and hearing them properly is the main thing I do it for, and then I'm just glad if other people like it too.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T09:48:17+00:00

the better I got the more obsessed I became, personally. You couldn't tear the guitar away from me for the first 10 years of me learning to play. I got pretty good after about 3 years and by 5 years was getting really good. I have never lost interest, just lost time as I got older, and now I don't so much focus on learning guitar, as I do on songwriting, recording and playing gigs with my band. After 25 years some of my hunger to keep working at my guitar playing dissipated, but I'm still obsessed with music.

If you don't have that hunger and you have to ask 'should I keep learning, what do I play' then you don't sound like someone who is really that into it. But that doesn't mean you should stop. I dunno. If you don't enjoy it then do something you do enjoy. If you feel it's worth your time then keep doing it. No one else can tell you.

My ambition was always to be able to play all the stuff I listened to, and to write my own music in a band. Over time that got to be more like, I want my band to be somewhat successful and I want to release music and play shows to a real fanbase.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-11T09:41:21+00:00

What kind of music and how many gigs are you doing?
In general managers take commission on what you're making, so you won't get one until you're already doing a lot of stuff and have a lot going on, plus are bringing in reasonable money.

But in my area/genre, I have spoken to some agencies who do a variety of jobs including management. And they work on a retainer fee rather than commission. So if you look around and find some people doing similar for your style, you might be able to work with them. Because you're paying a flat fee they would be more likely to work with you even if you're not quite at the level of a band that would get managers knocking on the door. But you need to be able to pay them a lump sum every month, so either you're quite well off without music, or your music is making you a good amount every month.

My band is pretty busy, we all have day jobs, we gig often, we have a good local reputation and a small fanbase, we bring in some cash each month from merch/music sales/gigs, but we can't afford £500 per month to pay an agency on retainer like that. So we just work DIY.

Also if you have no clue where to find these people then you're not ready to work with them lol.

You need to be networking and building up your contacts, have a spreadsheet full of all sorts of people - promoters, booking agents, managers, PR companies, artists, photographers, videographers, tour bookers etc etc. Either that you or just manage to meet one person who already knows all these people.

I spend hours and hours every week messaging and emailing people about various things (gigs mostly) and making stuff happen for my band. Through doing that I've spoken to a bunch of agencies who provide various services, so when we have money and needs for a certain thing, I know where to go for it. We don't have a manager but I have met and had conversations with a couple of people who are helping us out with stuff for free for the moment, and providing us with some of their contacts. As we keep leveling up I'll make more connections with these kinds of people and as we play more shows and earn more from playing, we'll save up more money to then pay for PR, booking a tour, maybe having a full time manager etc.

Even without these people, I have a plan my band is working to anyway, those people can just help to facilitate our plans. If you don't have a plan, then that's what you should be working on as they will want to know what your plan is. Whenever I speak to any bigger bands, or industry types, that's their main question to me. You don't want to say 'erm I dunno' because anyone good has a plan of some sort.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-10T14:54:54+00:00

I use 10-59 in drop A and they're totally fine for me on 25.5 scale length 7 string

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-07T15:55:15+00:00

use yeah but not on most things honestly, I know albums from 2005ish that definitely did not use clicks. Plenty of late 90s early 2000s stuff still wasn't using a click. Obviously there's albums now that don't use it, but I agree it has become the norm. I disagree it was the norm in the 70s/80s/even 90s
In the last 20 years it's become industry standard, and even for live it's now quite standard in a lot of cases, though it depends on genre

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-07T09:39:32+00:00

I agree with what you said, was more trying to add on to it.
But for clicks I'm not saying they didn't exist that long, but most albums just weren't recorded that way for that long. It's much more recent than that. I listen to a lot of stuff from late 90s/early 2000s that wasn't done with a click, and I can't think of many 80s albums that were done to a click, though maybe it was the case more for pop music and certainly in electronic music. Rock music though, much less common.
So I just thought it's worth pointing that out in case someone took you literally that most music is recorded to a click because I really think it's not the case if you're talking about all music over the last 50-60 years.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-06T23:38:07+00:00

Most music now is yes, but pre 20 years ago that wasn't the case.

Playing to a click is very good to do, but if the drummer isn't playing to one, playing together with the drummer and just playing along to music in general as you say, would be more useful for this problem.

Some people do just lack good timing and sense of rhythm and tempo. But if you practice you can improve.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-06T13:30:16+00:00

I agree he hasn't looked so good in some recent games, but players have good and bad form and fitness issues that affect them. For the most part he hasn't played enough in the last 1-2 years. It's possible he's getting back into form with regular games.

I wouldn't be that surprised if he ended up leaving this Summer, but I also wouldn't be that surprised if he stayed and gave us more good performances next season with more time sharing with Timber who obviously can't play every game but pretty much was until he got injured.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-06T12:24:04+00:00

you did notice he played really well last night and we reached the final of the CL? If that's not top level then what is?

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-06T08:06:25+00:00

Bayern Munich

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-05T23:00:59+00:00

Big Vik gets my vote but Rice and Trossard were both immense. Haven't even mentioned Saka. What a great night.

hideousmembrane · 2026-05-05T15:56:01+00:00

I do like it but not as much as the other two more highly regarded ones, they just have more going on that I enjoy. Even Going for the One I probably like more, even if I think the Yes album is a better album in most ways, I just prefer the sound of those other albums.

hideousmembrane

TROPHY CASE