Friday 28 October 2011
Thursday 27 October 2011
Friday 7 October 2011
Let's Stick To What We Do Best, Shall We?
This post will be followed by one on why/how musicians become divas. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that it sometimes is the only way to get things done to your satisfaction. Many a time we are screwed over, by event organizers, sound engineers et al...The compensation? An apology. What good does a half-hearted 'pole' do for a musician's brand? It is the musician who gets the backlash for a gig gone bad...anyway, more on that later.
Joe Were, aka Jay Dabliu,a gigging musician, aptly retells the story of a recent gig run by people who should otherwise stick to what they do best. It is high time we called out these bad habits. Here goes:
"So this is my first ever blog post and unfortunately I have been driven to write this due to nightmarish circumstances that every artiste/musician dreads in the hands of a “professional” service provider.
First of all, a little background on myself. I am a keyboardist and have played for various artists as well as Provided backline equipment (That would be Instruments, mics, cabling e.t.c) and also onsight Audio recording solutions. So I tend to believe I have a little know how and experience on the stage and how to solve problems as they arise.
Now that that’s out of the way…here we go.
Enter Wednesday 5th October, and I was playing with Just-A-Band, a popular Electronic Music band that just concluded a recent tour of New York, even getting rave reviews from the likes of Will-I-Am and Drum Magazine. So after the New York experience, this would be the first “back home” gig at the famous Tribe Hotel. The sound Provider for the event…Home Boyz Entertainment.
We get the call to soundcheck at 5pm on Tuesday the 4th…and we arrive 30 mins before…just to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be…plus I was carrying my pretty bulky Yamaha S90XS keyboard (just because I prefer using my own settings and am familiar with the sounds). When we get there…there is no evidence of any instrument setup going on…6pm…ummm, nope…7pm…still waiting…8pm…oh cool…a guitar amp has been put near the stage….9pm…no…just the guitar amp…so we decide to leave around 9:30pm and reschedule the soundcheck for the next day.
Wednesday, 5th October D-Day. We arrive somewhat late (a half hour late) for our scheduled soundcheck time of 4pm due to traffic. So we would imagine since we had an hour at least of slotted soundcheck time. We get there and the Instruments are on stage but no cabling has been done…so we wait…5pm…no…6pm…ummm, no. 7pm, I got impatient and decided I’m going to setup my keyboard myself.
About 8 Home Boyz guys in “Crew” T-shirts walk around with walkie talkies looking busy but if you really follow one of them, he’s literally just walking around. So I ask one of them to point me to the person in charge of setting up the instruments as we were supposed to sound check about 3 hours ago. He points me to one of them and I go to him and ask him where I should set up and which channel I should use and what not.
Bear in mind, on this night we had pretty minimal equipment by Just-A-Band standards…we just had to hook up the keyboard and a laptop which was hooked up to a loopmaster. We basically needed only THREE channels (Stereo output from the laptop and a mono feed from the Keyboard)
The main engineer asks me if I have a jack to jack cable. WAIT A MINUTE…even I, who doesn’t do this on a day to day basis, do not leave home without a jack to jack cable. If it’s not in the boot of my car, it’s in my shoulder bag if I’m not driving….It’s the sim card in your phone, it’s the water in your rice…it’s the hour hand of cables as far as instruments go…Home Boyz Entertainment did not have Jack to Jack cables.
I of course at this point was tired of waiting for them to sort the setup out so I obliged and went for the jack to jack cable…I get back and he asks if I had a D.I… at this time…jumping into the nearby pool with my clothes on seemed like a very welcome idea because my blood is boiling…
So I asked him if they received the tech rider that was sent to them earlier the previous week…he said he didn’t know…I asked him who would know…he didn’t know…I walk off to get my D.Is from the car…
So they hook up the laptop and they don’t have any feed on the main mixer… after fiddling with buttons and knobs they ask me if I have headphones! HEADPHONES!!!!! Mr, sir on the mixer…how were you going to monitor your mix in the first place? No problem…another trip to the parking lot to get my headphones from the car. At this rate, I’m so fit from the trips on the stairs at the Tribe, I think I might enroll for the next marathon.
It’s now about 10pm…no soundcheck…and we’re about to be called on stage…(well, we’re already on stage trying to sort the sound) so we decide since there’s no way we’ll use the laptop…we’ll play it full LIVE. Perfect…this is what I do baybie…let’s go. I, the client, am telling HomeBoyz, the service provider how to turn on Phantom power so that the keyboard feed can be received on their mixer…after fiddling with buttons they eventually find the right one…which I had showed earlier anyway.
So we kick off our performance with pretty poor sound quality with just the keyboard, drums and bass guitar!
Right after the first verse…the keyboard is MUTED….apparently they have no idea the keyboard cannot be heard…as I’m signaling the sound engineer and he looks right at me with a blank stare. The drummer and bassist do a pretty good job covering for the rest of the song…and as the song is about to end…the sound engineer comes onto the stage to ask if we’re OK…and I ask him what he thinks…and he goes like, “Oh, the keyboard is off?”
And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, HomeBoyz Entertainment should stick to doing what they do best..DJing!!"
Signed,
Gigging Musician