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Looper's Delight
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Hi there, In a message dated 06/28/00 7:43:02 AM, tquincy@sayhhi.com writes: >Any nightmares you could share and how you handled the situation would >be enjoyable and perhaps helpful. Well, my very worst musical nightmares seem to happen mostly in broad daylight. About once every decade or so I agree to do an outdoor gig assuming (always mistakenly) that whoever is doing the organizing (and providing PA/stage etc.) will also be sensible enouh to provide some shade for the performance area as well. Summertime heat is murder on gear and murder on the nerves in my experience. In direct sunshine you can't see LED patch indicators (and if they're LCD then they go blank when they get hot anyway). Heat sensitive gear like processors (and especially EDPs) in a rack full of other stuff that's ventilated well enough for "normal" use in an indoor setting starts to go haywire after only a few minutes into the set on a hot day. My most memorable catastrophe of this sort was just a few weeks ago at my employer's company picnic (I work as a graphic designer at a music gear catalog). Several employees (and their groups) were playing sets throughout the day, and (as one might expect) we had a pretty top notch PA setup. But nobody bothered to check the electrical system capabilities at the little public park amphitheater where the thing was being held. When temperatures began to rise as the day progressed we began to have power outages onstage about every five or ten minutes (this in addition to all the other outdoor maladies mentione above). My trio was the last on the schedule and had the worst time of all. I play MIDI guitar and use a couple EDPs and a vortex (along with several other odd processing gizmos) to do the thing that I do. Every time the power went out we lost what ever loops were playing. And when the power came back on my synths, multiprocessors and samplers all rebooted. We tried valiantly at first to "play through" these occurances as though nothing major happened. But after about the 4th or 5th time the spirit was gone and would not be re-invoked. In the end, I just had to look up and gesture quizically skywards and figure that sombody up there was telling me to turn it down (or off). The audience (though very supportive and sympathetic) seemed to understand my jesture as well. But, all the same, that's an experience that I don't plan on repeating again. T.Killian