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Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

41 by dontfeartheringo
I'ma tell y'all a story now about how I got fucked by something similar when I was playing drums for a Very Big Band:

During changeover, local crew killed power to FOH's board. The FOH engineer, who was in almost every way very competent, hadn't done a final save to her USB stick, so she only had the bare bones of the show saved. This was in the early days of digital boards.

So, the FOH engineer didn't have any analog buttons and faders that were still in their prior position, and the adjustments she'd made at soundcheck were just gone. She had to rebuild the show from memory during changeover. One thing that slipped her mind was the routing of the click track on the one song in the show that used it.

I had a minidisk player with a click in left channel and the marimba part for the band's Third Biggest Hit on the right channel. I had an eight count warning that the marimba was about to start that was supposed to fold back to my wedge.

This was a show in front of about 7000 people, give or take the people on the Tilt-a-whirl who could see into the venue at the apex of the ride.

I had "tick tock tick tock" before I was supposed to shout "ONE TWO THREE FOUR" to start the song.

I pressed the "Play" button. I had just long enough to think "That's weird, the click should have started by now" before the marimba part came BUSTING out of the mains, only without the rest of the band. I hit "Stop" and thought "A:LKA:SD)UU*R$OJINU%Y)@" or something similarly coherent.

I pressed "Play" again. Same result. I thought "Fuck it, these are professional musicians, I bet we can drop in on the beat" and I just counted everyone one. The Lead Singer waved me to a stop, marched up to the drum riser, and said, in full British fury, "Why don't we just go to the next one. You know that one, don't you?"

7000+ people were looking at me, over his shoulder, making the surprised Pikachu face.

Yes, I thought. Let's go to the next one.

This was the last show of what had been a fairly turbulent tour.

It was not sorted out what had happened until a few days after everyone got home. I still can't listen to that song without the tiniest twinge of panic deep in my gut.
tbone wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:58 pm I imagine at some point as a practicality we will all start assuming that this is probably the last thing we gotta mail to some asshole.

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

42 by zircona1
dontfeartheringo wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:29 am The FOH engineer, who was in almost every way very competent, hadn't done a final save to her USB stick
What is the purpose of a save in this instance?

FOH = Front of House, correct? Is that the person(s) at the mixing board?

I know nothing about this topic, but I've been checking in on this thread.
"Whatever happened to that album?"
"I broke it, remember? I threw it against the wall and it like, shattered."

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

43 by Garth
zircona1 wrote: What is the purpose of a save in this instance?
a digital mixer is basically a big computer or DAW. In the old days, even many of the top-of-the-line digital boards didn't have any sort of continuity of memory so if power is cut, it would not come back to where the settings were left, you would have to load the saved session. So since the FOH tech didn't save it...she was stuck trying to remember and manually re-set everything back up from memory

Most mixers now even on entry level digital mixers for the past 10 years or so, if power is cut, it comes back to where it was last set.
zircona1 wrote:
FOH = Front of House, correct? Is that the person(s) at the mixing board?
Yup

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

44 by dontfeartheringo
Garth wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:57 am
zircona1 wrote: What is the purpose of a save in this instance?
a digital mixer is basically a big computer or DAW. In the old days, even many of the top-of-the-line digital boards didn't have any sort of continuity of memory so if power is cut, it would not come back to where the settings were left, you would have to load the saved session. So since the FOH tech didn't save it...she was stuck trying to remember and manually re-set everything back up from memory

Most mixers now even on entry level digital mixers for the past 10 years or so, if power is cut, it comes back to where it was last set.
zircona1 wrote:
FOH = Front of House, correct? Is that the person(s) at the mixing board?
Yup
Garth is, as is his wont, perfectly correct.
tbone wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:58 pm I imagine at some point as a practicality we will all start assuming that this is probably the last thing we gotta mail to some asshole.

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

45 by Kniferide
zircona1 wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:38 am
dontfeartheringo wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:29 am The FOH engineer, who was in almost every way very competent, hadn't done a final save to her USB stick
What is the purpose of a save in this instance?

FOH = Front of House, correct? Is that the person(s) at the mixing board?

I know nothing about this topic, but I've been checking in on this thread.
FOH is person at the board

most (alot) digital boards don't open up to the last used state, but to the last SAVED state. so if you have made changes to the mix, it will be lost on power cycle unless you saved it. (if i'm not wrong, our Digico 338 actually does restart to last used state, but it cost as much as a house so it fucking better)

On a modern digital board, you can save your Show set up, as well as individual scenes for stage changes, performer moves etc.. and within those scenes you can save snapshots like eq, fader moves, mute/unmutes etc and fire them at will. You can even make scenes where all the faders are assigned to different shit. I used to make scenes so my main bank of faders would change to only the mics i needed to see and video playback, and for each group they would change the inputs to those faders. For instance, when I was traveling doing corporate work, I could be on a 4 day show, with 20 or more presenters on lav mics a day plus video and music playback. I'd save a "Show" file for the main setup, routing...etc and within that show file I'd save scenes for each day with eq curves/dynamics blah blah for each presenter, in the cases where there was a mic switch from one presenter to another or weird extra shit like a dj or something, I'd save snapshots within the scene for that day for the move. That's just how I organize it for my own sanity, other people do it diff. It is not uncommon to save multiple snapshot per song for things like fader moves, verse, chorus, ELECTRIFYING GUITAR SOLOZ! etc... its like driving automation for live mixing and can get really deep.

I'm old school and easily overwhelmed so I kinda run it like an analog board and just drive of Control groups and move faders with my fingers and shit. In theory you could almost mix an entire show just hitting the "Fire" button on a modern console, jumping through scenes and snapshots, and in fact that is exactly how giant theater shows do it on Broadway and shit where you get a thousand rehearsals to iron it all out.

sorry that was long
Was Japmn.

New OST project: https://japmn.bandcamp.com/album/flight-ost
https://japmn.bandcamp.com/album/numberwitch
https://boneandbell.com/site/music.html

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

46 by Barbo
So I think I may be misinterpreting both of these events but they seem to indicate FOH engineers’ big time screw up. For Mr. Jury, FOH should also have seen the missing direct bass signal and should have been shitting bricks the first note that was played. He should have known it was the line and immediately checked the phantom power as he would be familiar with the signal path. I am honestly appalled that this was not discovered and corrected almost instantly.

For Mr Ringo, if it was during changeover and the scene had not been saved, even if the power had not been cut, once the scene was changed to one corresponding to another band the file would have been lost. The headliner’s scene would have had to have been saved as it would have been altered by anyone that used the same scene or lost when switching to another scene. Also, and I know this may sound critical, but that is why you write shit down too. If you are working in front of 7000 people and you don’t have the signal routing memorized or written down, you are not doing your job. And to be clear, this was my job for a number of years (well, one of my jobs really). I realize in the early days of digital, that shit was scary. But I made absolutely certain I knew that desk and how to get back to what i needed quickly before I walked away.

Jon
Widespread Panic.

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

47 by TylerDeadPine
dontfeartheringo wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:29 am I'ma tell y'all a story now about how I got fucked by something similar when I was playing drums for a Very Big Band:

During changeover, local crew killed power to FOH's board. The FOH engineer, who was in almost every way very competent, hadn't done a final save to her USB stick, so she only had the bare bones of the show saved. This was in the early days of digital boards.

So, the FOH engineer didn't have any analog buttons and faders that were still in their prior position, and the adjustments she'd made at soundcheck were just gone. She had to rebuild the show from memory during changeover. One thing that slipped her mind was the routing of the click track on the one song in the show that used it.

I had a minidisk player with a click in left channel and the marimba part for the band's Third Biggest Hit on the right channel. I had an eight count warning that the marimba was about to start that was supposed to fold back to my wedge.

This was a show in front of about 7000 people, give or take the people on the Tilt-a-whirl who could see into the venue at the apex of the ride.

I had "tick tock tick tock" before I was supposed to shout "ONE TWO THREE FOUR" to start the song.

I pressed the "Play" button. I had just long enough to think "That's weird, the click should have started by now" before the marimba part came BUSTING out of the mains, only without the rest of the band. I hit "Stop" and thought "A:LKA:SD)UU*R$OJINU%Y)@" or something similarly coherent.

I pressed "Play" again. Same result. I thought "Fuck it, these are professional musicians, I bet we can drop in on the beat" and I just counted everyone one. The Lead Singer waved me to a stop, marched up to the drum riser, and said, in full British fury, "Why don't we just go to the next one. You know that one, don't you?"

7000+ people were looking at me, over his shoulder, making the surprised Pikachu face.

Yes, I thought. Let's go to the next one.

This was the last show of what had been a fairly turbulent tour.

It was not sorted out what had happened until a few days after everyone got home. I still can't listen to that song without the tiniest twinge of panic deep in my gut.
The quality of writing in the tech forum is always fantastic. Great story.

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

49 by dontfeartheringo
ErikG wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 11:08 am
dontfeartheringo wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:29 am II still can't listen to that song without the tiniest twinge of panic deep in my gut.
You will never shop in peace at Whole Foods again.
Ha ha! Joke's on you! I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods!
tbone wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:58 pm I imagine at some point as a practicality we will all start assuming that this is probably the last thing we gotta mail to some asshole.

Re: Guitar Tech-ing for Major Bands

50 by c jury
Just got the request to step in for another show in Canada- same band. Kinda exciting, and I won't miss any time from the day job. Main obstacles for this gig will be
A) that it will be for the rhythm guitarist, and I haven't dealt with his rig for 2+ years.
B) I didn't get a chance to see how his switching was currently set up (I was on a fly rig last time).
C) He does an A/B wireless, meaning I have to move the second pack to the next guitar each song
D) It is the only Canada gig, so he may be on rental amps and an untested fly rig. So we may be sorting this out together, day-of.

This is pretty normal. I make a list of obstacles/issues in my head before every show, then check them off as they are resolved or found to be not applicable. If it was as simple as unloading the truck, setting up, running thru the show, packing up and reloading, it would be wonderful...but that is almost never the case.
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