Drew Rules. His set was absolutely stellar. His set is what my set needs to be. His sound is much more polished, and he has the crowd connection that I just don't have.
I think that overall my set went well. First of all, I think I should have done a better sound check. I need to get more and better experience at listening to my stuff on The Big Stereo, and be able to extrapolate how the rest of my set will sound.
Sick Right Here Dude
This really is one of my favourite stories, and one of the classic examples of why I love Live PA. This guy walks up to me in the middle of a song change so all I had going was the MC-303 doing a BOOM BOOM BOOM, and the x0xbox doing a bassline. He says "You know what would sound really good here, is a killer breakbeat!". Really, I was only to happy to oblige. He freaked out, the crowd freaked out, and life was sweet.
I also need to get more interaction happening. This set was much more interactive (see the sidebar on the right for one of my favourite examples).
Hardware considerations for next time:
- Fix the fucking knobs on the A3k
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- Get a rack system - For the longest time I have had some interesting PVC pipe ideas. It is about time that I sit down and design something that will work. A self contained table would be ideal, something to make sure all my devices are accessible, but also where I am visible would be optimal. If PVC works, then I could permanently snake midi and 1/4 inch cables through it, as some kind of combined rack/patchbay. I'll need to flesh this out more.
- Set Details. Write some kind of Scheme program to deal with, and display set details. BPMs, pattern numbers, that sort of thing. It was really handy having a backlit notepad, but the display was kinda wonky and hard to read using the goofy little database program. Huge letters is where it is at.
- Get important small gear. Here is my shopping/DIY list in order of importance:
- Proper Mackie 1604 Balanced 1/4 inch -> XLR cables - I'll have to solder these myself, but it could be pretty fun. And this is something I could do. I should probably be smart and go stupid long, like 30-40 feet.
- Proper lighting - Using flashlights/leds kinda suck.
- Cable Tester Not 100% necessary but would be nice.
- Get important large gear. Again here is a shopping/DIY list, in order of importance:
- Compressor - Actually, probably more of a limiter. Or maybe both. Really, something to make sure I don't completely overload the main output, and something else to compress the x0xb0x.
- Distortion Unit - This can be made easily with an opamp, and some basic components. I already have good ideas for making it modular too.
- Line conditioner - Something to take the sketchy AC power, and make it nicer. Much nicer.
- Sonic Maximiser - Or some kind of sweetener. You know, a black boxes of sound that just make it all better.
- Equalizer - A multi-band graphic equalizer would work in the short term. A parametric would rule.
'Soft' Considerations
- Start Programming Channel Change messages into my sequences. The more I can give my knobs on the A3k A Break, the better. It would also help with any song-change-over-badness that happens.
- Bassdrums on channel 13, Basslines on channel 14. Time to start moving to purely sampled bassdrums. I already made some 808ish and 909ish sounding ones. (with realtime control to boot.) Throwing the bassdrum and the bassline on their own channels on the mixer is just a smart thing to do. And because bass is omni-directional, I only have to really use one channel.
- Reformat and Rebuild. A stupendous amount of my music is spread all about my samplers HD. Time to backup, and rebuild from scratch. Better and more organization.
- Smooth Out the Tempo I need more options in the 145-160 BPM range. Time for more music. This is never bad.
- Shells Song
- Chu Chu Chu Chu Chu Chu Chu.... NA NAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NANANANANANA NA Na Na Na Na NAAAAAAAA! Either you get it, or you don't.
