Monday, December 15, 2008

Gig Report - Dec 13th

Self Promoted:

Crashing at Dawn
aTiLast

I never would have thought before that a show with only two bands cold be a rough night, but there's a first time for everything.  My problems started with alternatively losing one side of Crashing's keyboard, getting that back, and then promptly losing the other.  This little exercise chewed up a big chunk of aTiLast's check time, and my issues were further compounded by me not having the good sense to pick a stage layout and snake patch that would give me flexibility.  We did eventually find physical and electrical space for everything, but that didn't solve all the problems.  I had some weird balance issues amongst the instruments, and I managed to start everything out with a muddy, over-bassy tone.  Yikes!  Big credit goes to aTiLast for being troopers, and pulling off their set with all the challenges (including some weird shorting issues on the main vocal mic - gremlins, I tell ya).  Thankfully, (mercifully, perhaps?) Crashing's set did not suffer from any major problems, although I got some gnarly feedback for myself in a couple places, maybe because I was running on adrenaine all night...

Wow - this post is big enough for two paragraphs!

I think aTiLast's set highlighted another issue, which is hard to have to acknowledge - but it's necessary.  There are just times where our FOH PA and monitor rig aren't enough.  We could definitely do with more inputs to the mixing console, and more SPL available from FOH - but those weren't the issue for aTiLast.  For them, I think the major issue was the linearity of the monitor rig.  There are some spendy wedges out there that can get incredibly loud without feedback, but those aren't the ones we have.  Consequently, I couldn't apply the gain required to put Taryn in the "right place" monitor wise.  I was at full throttle on the sends, but I didn't dare add any global gain, because taking somebody's head off with a screech of feedback is a really bad idea.

Actually, I need a bigger stage AND a monitor engineer...

I guess there is one good thing about having a night where I really struggle - I write bigger posts!

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