Tuesday April 17 Lunch Report- U.S. Tax Day!

[bassman]

Lunch: OK I went to 5 Guys for a great burger and fries. - Don't tell my wife! LOL

Report:I have been busting butt to get my taxes and to help two of my kids with their taxes. No fun

I was distracted by the Discovery Shuttle flyover D.C. today. They relocated shuttle Discovery to Dulles Airport in VA but first flew all around the Washington metro area to show it to everyone. You may see this on tonight's news or on Youtube if you want.

First question: How many of you get involved with doing taxes for other family members or friends. I do and I am not an accountant, so I should know better.

Thanks for all of the replies to yesterday's report. I think Youtube is a pretty cool tool for promoting a band. i will try to do some more posting of my band Capital Blues Ensemble, later in the week.

Active electronics are very popular in bass guitars but not so much in 6 string electrics. So you find active tone to be harsh or is it really just like having a boost pedal built into your instrument?

How many of you are using Ipads in your musical lives. How are you using them? What do you think of the Ipad as a portable effects studio for your guitar?

Should G&L write apps for the Ipad featuring their pedals? Like A Boosta Grande app or a Sonic Maximizer app?

Has technology made music so cheap and accessible that live musicians have to give it away to play?

It seems that way to me sometimes. Its getting very hard to get paid reasonably in clubs.

Happy tax day to all of you US residents. I hope you all make tonight's deadline.

Take care.

bassman

[astutzmann]

I love 5 guys, good for you!!

I started sending my taxes to an accountant 10 years ago, could take em back now, but nawh, too easy to have him do them.

I just bought my first ipad, I resisted before that, but have an iphone so I have some guitar apps, really looking forward to exploring more.

BBE has a fantastic app that you play your songs thru, try it, you'll love it. Its like a pre amp,

[astutzmann]

its called the BBE sonic max pro, give it a go!!

[sickbutnottired]

Taxes are miserable. I certainly don't help anyone else. We barely get ours done, my wife does more than I do.

It is tough to compete with an iTunes jukebox. But I think it can be done, it seems to me that there are a good number of people who appreciate the different feel a club can have with a band driving and setting the feel of the place.

Ipad, no I live a happily Apple free life. I am pretty close to giving Microsoft the deep six, too. I had a tangle with iTunes about 7 or 8 years ago--that was all for me. I copied all my CD's (about 800, maybe more) to a hard disk to learn two things (1) mp3's sound like crap (2) i didn't want steve jobs (RIP) "managing" intellectual property that i paid a ton for.

The shuttle/747 looked really cool, I saw a video earlier. Bet it was great to see for real.

jeremy

[louis cyfer]

buying an ipad is pretty crazy considering the many much better tablets out there. android is a far superior operating system and you can also have them with full windows as well.

[darwinohm]

A busy day! I do not do taxes for my kids anymore but did for one some time ago. I didn't enjoy it, almost worse than doing my own. Like I said yesterday, I am happy to pay our accountant.

Active electronics are great in basses but too many of them do not have a preamp bypass like the G&L. They are dead with the battery.

I have a MAC and have owned and built several Microsoft based PC's in my day. The best thing I ever did was buy my MAC. Ginny sees me go from happy to pissed off instantly every time I have to work on her Windows software. I used to do a lot of Windows support and now realize why it does that to me. I was working with a friend completing one of our CDs a few years ago. I remember him using Pro Tools and it would crash with great regularity. He recommended that if I get Pro Tools, to run it on a MAC. It does not crash. Oh boy, this is getting like an Ed Roman Rant. RIP Ed!

Lets see, where were we? The music business has changed, mostly due to technology. Look at how many of us do our own recordings and some of them are decent quality. Ipads, Iphones and every one talk about apps. I also hear people complain that the batteries are going dead in a short time on their smart phones with the apps running. They are installing chargers for electric cars in St Paul. Next thing you will see dudes on the corner plugged in for a recharge to keep the apps running. I am happy to have none of this. I have Hi Fi ears and got them when I was 66 years old. Some of the young ones will be deaf by 40 with all the ear wear on the heads and subwoofers. I don't have a subwoofer on my Gold Wing because I want it, I NEED it! I think I just realized what my parents were trying to tell me when I was young. It is time for a cold one! -- have a great day, I am.--Darwin

[KenC]

I was too busy this morning and missed the shuttle, but some of my friends went outside to watch. The 747/shuttle did a flyover of my college campus in '86. I'm not sure why, unless an alumnus was flying the plane. Anyway, it was pretty neat to see then.

I have an Ipod that I connect to the car stereo for long trips and sometimes wear when I exercise. That's my only Apple product. For making music, I prefer analog. The only digital stuff I have are a couple of delay pedals I drag out when I'm in the mood for self-oscillating noise or infinite feedback loops.

Ken

[repoman]

I hate doing taxes. Started bringing them to an accountant about 10-12 years ago. I consider it money well spent.

I have an iphone but have no plans on getting an ipad. I am no fan of the itunes software. I find it bloated and cumbersome. My next phone will probably be an android. But I do have a few music/guitar related apps on the phone. If I had a tablet I'm sure I'd look into some apps for that. I've seen a few fx/amp emulator apps for tablets, can't remember their names, but they did look cool. I imagine their use will only increase with time.

I'll have to search out the shuttle fly-by. Sounds cool!

Jeff

[willross]

Get my taxes done by a pro. The Shuttle flyover is sad, but was never the plan anyway. Instead of Lunar and planetary exploration, we just settled for circling the earth and putting-up satellites...

Ipad, no I live a happily Apple free life. I am pretty close to giving Microsoft the deep six, too.

You should go this route then... http://www.raspberrypi.org/


Cheers,

Will

[RickT]

Fortunately for me, my kids do their own taxes. I filed my Federal at the beginning of the month and put my state taxes in the mail on monday since I owed money.

I saw John Macglaughlin a couple of years ago. He uses a MacBook for his guitar sound and just feeds the output of that to an amp. He played very well but I wasn't impressed with his tone.

I recently purchased an app for my iPad to write out tabs. It lets me just finger the notes on a virtual fretboard and then creates the tablature. I use it to collaborate with our other guitar player for lead harmonies and other guitar parts. I can send him the tab via email, which he ignores and sends me back something completely different.

Regarding the clubs. Most of the club owners around here are indifferent if not down right rude. They aren't interested in booking a good band, they just want to know how many people oyu can bring with you. The money has been reduced as well. Our solutuon is to scale from a quartet to an acoustic duet format which works out most of the time. So far this year, we've gotten a lot of quartet bookings at new clubs and we've gotten repeat bookings from those shows.
RickT

[Kit]

I haven't done anybody's taxes for them and this year I got close, in a sense. My sister had a mess of transactions on some mutual funds due to averaging in, and I told her that with turbo tax she can enter "various" for acquire date and then the actual date of sale. That simplified her filing which she appreciated.

Years ago my daughter and wife both bought ipods. I hated the software on a Windows machine. It's like your parents telling you how to do everything; I just despised it. I bought myself a plain old mp3 player where I can drag and drop music onto, easy as 1-2-3.

My hobby band played once for free a couple of months ago because 2 of the guys will do anything to get to play for an audience. We will be playing again for free in a couple of weeks because they just can't get enough of it. At least this time we are playing for a non-profit organization and we hope to raise a little money for it.

Kit

[zapcosongs]

Hey Bill.

Don't get me started with taxes! Grrrrr.....

Is RAGS still active? Haven't seen much from them/you of late. I was going to tell you that recently, the Green Turtle in Germantown seems to have begun featuring live music. Might be worth a shot if you're interested.

Look forard to checking out the Blues Ensemble regardless. - ed

[yowhatsshakin]

I am the only one of my family living state side so doing their taxes is not my problem. Not that they have to do taxes anyway. In the Netherlands it is rather rare to file for a tax return unless you own your own business (and/or had a big event like getting married). I believe my parents have never filed a tax return in their life. Guess Tax Day, and all the hoopla and grunting surrounding it, is one of these kinda Americana things that make this country dare I say adorable. Many are complaining but unfortunately with little exact knowledge/awareness on how much they are actually using things/services that are (partially) funded with tax payer's money. Not your money nor my money as so many always erroneously claim, but our money. I paid my membership dues to a free, civilized, democratic society last month already by filing my ID10T form early. I know I get to keep at least $0.65 of every dollar I earned which is way better than in the NL for an equivalent income. You don't hear a complaint from me!

I am still using only basic guitar stuff. I have and use pedals but most of the time it is just the amp with a hint of reverb. Good enough for me.

Must have been pretty cool seeing that Shuttle being ferried around above DC. When I heard in the radio this morning I was reminded of an event in the late '70's/early '80 when the Shuttle Enterprise, the first Shuttle ever built and the one that never flew into space and will end up in NYC, did a goodwill tour around Europe. It was ferried along the Dutch coastline on its 747 transporter and I remember being mesmerized by it. Very, very cool!

- Jos