Post by tedrkillian on Oct 29, 2008 2:19:49 GMT
Hi there everyone.
I haven't posted to this list in a looooong, looooong time - mostly because I got all busy and forgot it was even here (until someone reminded me today).
Anywho . . . a little over a week ago I made my annual pilgrimage down to Santa Cruz to perform at Rick Walker's Y2K8 International Live Looping Festival.
All things considered (and without presently considering my own set) I had a splendid time . . . met many old and new friends . . . heard a lot of new music . . . and encountered a lot of new musical ideas to mull over.
If you ever have a chance to go to one of these things, it's like a combination of a music technology convention and summer camp . . . and it's all great fun.
Anywho, to cut to the chase, my set this time around did not go as planned.
Ugly, evil tech gremlins made their presence known.
To start out with, I lost about 2/3 of the sounds from my rig (I play rather over-processed and highly tweezed out guitar via VG99 and several other processors into a pair of EDPs) at the outset . . . due to a mere faulty cable (I found out later).
That held me up for a minute or two.
I tried (briefly) to discover what was wrong, but once it was apparent that a solution was not going to be found in the first 2-3 of my 30 minute set I decided to "d**n the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
When in doubt . . . play.
Nothing is worse than spending time in front of an audience with your behind in the air humped over a rack and a mess of wires trying to solve a problem while your lack of dignity is on full display.
Fortunately there is a lot of redundency in my rig and the remaining 1/3 of my sounds (all from the VG99, BTW) were enough to still play some nice music with.
If things had gone on from that point with no other problems I could've salvaged the set with what I had.
People often ask me why I bring so much crap to such gigs and the answer is (#1) plentiful sound options and (#2) the above scenario.
It is a lot of hard work and a genuine hassel to have to schlepp in a mountain of gear, set it up and fire it up in under 20 minutes for only a 30 minute set at one of Rick's festivals.
But when you gig is multi-textural guitar looping that's what you have to do.
My VG99 worked and my 2 EDPs worked . . . and that was enough for my set to continue.
However, that was not all that happened.
As it turned out, the power supply (wall wart) for my mixer (pretty much the heart of my rig) decided about 10-15 minutes later it was time to fry its brains out.
After that point, all sounds coming out of the PA were of a quality (or lack thereof) of a transistor radio with dying batteries.
It took me about 10 seconds to decide . . . this was not going to be pretty or pleasant for anyone . . . and I simply did my best to thank the audience and gracefuly bow out.
Situations like that are soooo very hard.
Heck I had already driven nearly 700 miles for this meager 30 minute gig in front of several esteemed friends and many total strangers.
But sometimes retreat is the better part of valor.
I wasn't going to "struggle on" and risk driving away the audience for the next act.
Decisions like that are hard . . . but ya gotta make 'em.
The selfish thing to do would've been to keep trying and make people watch as you (possibly) continue to flounder.
Sometimes you have to let go.
Anywho, I'm a fellow who has been playing this sort of stuff out live since the late '80s.
I have not always done the right thing when equipment irretrievably fails and have learned from the experience.
That doesn't make it feel any better when it happens.
But, stuff happens.
Anyone else want to share their on-stqage looping nightmares and/or their advice about what to do when seemingly EVERYTHING is going wrong technically.
Best
Ted Killian
I haven't posted to this list in a looooong, looooong time - mostly because I got all busy and forgot it was even here (until someone reminded me today).
Anywho . . . a little over a week ago I made my annual pilgrimage down to Santa Cruz to perform at Rick Walker's Y2K8 International Live Looping Festival.
All things considered (and without presently considering my own set) I had a splendid time . . . met many old and new friends . . . heard a lot of new music . . . and encountered a lot of new musical ideas to mull over.
If you ever have a chance to go to one of these things, it's like a combination of a music technology convention and summer camp . . . and it's all great fun.
Anywho, to cut to the chase, my set this time around did not go as planned.
Ugly, evil tech gremlins made their presence known.
To start out with, I lost about 2/3 of the sounds from my rig (I play rather over-processed and highly tweezed out guitar via VG99 and several other processors into a pair of EDPs) at the outset . . . due to a mere faulty cable (I found out later).
That held me up for a minute or two.
I tried (briefly) to discover what was wrong, but once it was apparent that a solution was not going to be found in the first 2-3 of my 30 minute set I decided to "d**n the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
When in doubt . . . play.
Nothing is worse than spending time in front of an audience with your behind in the air humped over a rack and a mess of wires trying to solve a problem while your lack of dignity is on full display.
Fortunately there is a lot of redundency in my rig and the remaining 1/3 of my sounds (all from the VG99, BTW) were enough to still play some nice music with.
If things had gone on from that point with no other problems I could've salvaged the set with what I had.
People often ask me why I bring so much crap to such gigs and the answer is (#1) plentiful sound options and (#2) the above scenario.
It is a lot of hard work and a genuine hassel to have to schlepp in a mountain of gear, set it up and fire it up in under 20 minutes for only a 30 minute set at one of Rick's festivals.
But when you gig is multi-textural guitar looping that's what you have to do.
My VG99 worked and my 2 EDPs worked . . . and that was enough for my set to continue.
However, that was not all that happened.
As it turned out, the power supply (wall wart) for my mixer (pretty much the heart of my rig) decided about 10-15 minutes later it was time to fry its brains out.
After that point, all sounds coming out of the PA were of a quality (or lack thereof) of a transistor radio with dying batteries.
It took me about 10 seconds to decide . . . this was not going to be pretty or pleasant for anyone . . . and I simply did my best to thank the audience and gracefuly bow out.
Situations like that are soooo very hard.
Heck I had already driven nearly 700 miles for this meager 30 minute gig in front of several esteemed friends and many total strangers.
But sometimes retreat is the better part of valor.
I wasn't going to "struggle on" and risk driving away the audience for the next act.
Decisions like that are hard . . . but ya gotta make 'em.
The selfish thing to do would've been to keep trying and make people watch as you (possibly) continue to flounder.
Sometimes you have to let go.
Anywho, I'm a fellow who has been playing this sort of stuff out live since the late '80s.
I have not always done the right thing when equipment irretrievably fails and have learned from the experience.
That doesn't make it feel any better when it happens.
But, stuff happens.
Anyone else want to share their on-stqage looping nightmares and/or their advice about what to do when seemingly EVERYTHING is going wrong technically.
Best
Ted Killian
