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RE: Strategies to Cover Onstage Equipment Failure
Peeps,
As someone who has probably seriously been in the running as "poster
child" for most unecessarily over-complicated music rigs, I suppose I
should weigh in here somewhere.
On the serious side, part of the mad method behind my convolulted and
complicated signal paths has been the concept of parallel redundancy as
a positive expedient in an emergency.
You know . . . the notion that . . . well, yeah, sure, one thing may
break but surely not everything at once . . . has saved my bacon on more
than one ocassion.
Then, on the other hand, there was that time in Santa Cruz a couple of
years back where two things went very south all at once (in different
parts of my rig) and I was totally dead in the water after playing only
10 minutes.
It happens.
I suppose the best strategy is to buy a few books on humor and learn to
tell a few approps jokes . . . or to lead the audience in an ambient
acappella sing-along of some sort (LOL).
But I've never had the luxury of having a clear enough head (in
mid-crisis) to devise such Plan Bs extemporaneously, nor to remember
ones previously thought up.
Mostly I schlepp my luggage off stage (tail between legs) and find a
dark corner to wimper in and feel sorry for myself.
My new lappy rig is complicated in concept (and control, with 12 EV-5
pedals) but nearly everything is running all in one program (Max/MSP) on
the Mac.
The vulnerability of **that** sort of scares me . . . if the Mac goes
down . . . I'm cooked unless I can quickly work up a shadow-puppet
routine.
Right now, everything is tripple-tested and well nigh bulletproof
playing in my own garage (and one little stint out at B-CIMF last
month).
I think my best strategy, should the very worst of the worst happen, is
to work up some all-acoustic instrumental pieces and be prepared to play
them if need be.
It's ether that or tell looper jokes.
:-)
Best,
Ted Killian