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[Craig Leerman]

I just did a stage, backline and sound system for a small festival.

One of the opening acts asks me where the “Outlet” is for the PA system. I point to the closest quad box laying on the deck in plain sight. “Not power, a sound outlet” he says. “What in the world is a sound outlet?” I asked.  “You know, where I can plug in my guitar” he says standing about 2 feet away from a 65 reissue Twin that is part of the shared backline for the gig. “You can use the Twin” I said, “the promoter rented the backline for everybody to use.”

“But I need the guitar in the PA, where do I plug into the PA?” He says almost knocking over the mic stand holding a Shure 56 that is pointed at one of the Twin’s speakers.

Next band a guy comes over to me and says “We brought our PA in case you need something”. I look over and see that they have unloaded 2 Harbinger beat up cabinets and a Behringer 6 channel mixer along with their instruments. “I’m all good, but thanks” 


I did get to meet Ray Aberle at a large Furry convention. He brought a nice rig and I got to see the infamous Monster drink fridge!

Probably the nicest crew I have worked with in a long time on that gig, aside from Ray of course,    hehehe. Nice to meet you in person, buddy

I also do not have a fursona, but my spirt animal is a disgruntled sound tech!

[RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS]

Just finished up a festival with 10 bands and only 15 minutes between bands.  7th band's drummer starts setting up his drums.  I walk over and say that the drum kit is back one and that he will just need his cymbals, snare and kick pedal.  He starts bitching and whining like a three year old.  Says he refuses to play through my $2500 kit. (His was POS)

I go to festival promoter, tell her of our issues and met her deal with it do I don't have to cause a scene..

The drummer played the Backline kit and was a whiny baby the whole time.

Band leader makes him apologize to the festival promoter but he refused to apologize to us.  The band leader will never be truely  successful with a guy like that in his band.  The other bands on the bill knew of his issues and had discussed the liability with the band leader in the past but he still hasn't fired the drummer.

Yes you will play the Backline drum kit and no, you don't have the clout to refuse!

[Tim McCulloch]

Yes you will play the Backline drum kit and no, you don't have the clout to refuse!

"You have the clout to get your boss and your buddies fired from the gig.  Keep bitching."

[David Winners]

Ugh.... My wife had surgery yesterday so I sent my helper to do a small lawn chair show on his own today.  It's his first solo show.

They added an opening act.  4 teenagers with a cover band trying to get out.  It may be their first time on stage.  They are moving everything on him, trying to get better sight lines for a video they are trying to shoot.  Amps on 11.  Drummer has corps sticks.  Bass player wanted to run out of the Speakon connector to the board, and kept referring to it as the "jpeg" connector. Guitar player almost knocked a QRx112/75 on a weighted stand over trying to look cool.

At least it's a short set, and then on to the headliner that he has mixed several times before.

Ya gotta learn sometime

[Simon_Barrett]

Ugh.... My wife had surgery yesterday so I sent my helper to do a small lawn chair show on his own today.  It's his first solo show.

They added an opening act.  4 teenagers with a cover band trying to get out.  It may be their first time on stage.  They are moving everything on him, trying to get better sight lines for a video they are trying to shoot.  Amps on 11.  Drummer has corps sticks.  Bass player wanted to run out of the Speakon connector to the board, and kept referring to it as the "jpeg" connector. Guitar player almost knocked a QRx112/75 on a weighted stand over trying to look cool.

At least it's a short set, and then on to the headliner that he has mixed several times before.

Ya gotta learn sometime

Ouch! That’s one that’d make me angry!



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[Scott Olewiler]

This just happened, but I'm sure it's happened to everyone. Choir director hands us a cd of backing tracks.

Did sound check with choir, no issues.

Show time and choir is second act. I am out front, wife is stage side. Performance time for choir comes, wife hits play on backing track, choir director tells her " that's not my cd".

This one was our fault. The wife didn't start track over but picked up where we had stopped during sound check.  Choir director insisting it wasn't her CD just confused my wife even more as she gets into  a "discussion" with director over whether or not it's the correct CD.

Whole incident only lasted 90 secs or less before they got it straightened out but it reminded me how many folks on this forum have stated in the past that they insist the talent operates their own backing tracks.





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[Mike Monte]

This just happened, but I'm sure it's happened to everyone. Choir director hands us a cd of backing tracks.

Did sound check with choir, no issues.

Show time and choir is second act. I am out front, wife is stage side. Performance time for choir comes, wife hits play on backing track, choir director tells her " that's not my cd".

This one was our fault. The wife didn't start track over but picked up where we had stopped during sound check.  Choir director insisting it wasn't her CD just confused my wife even more as she gets into  a "discussion" with director over whether or not it's the correct CD.

Whole incident only lasted 90 secs or less before they got it straightened out but it reminded me how many folks on this forum have stated in the past that they insist the talent operates their own backing tracks.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I just finished providing the rig(s) for a local ACS Relay for Life.
Regarding tracks, I used to provide a means (gemeni mp3/cd/memory stick player) for singers' backing tracks when the above gig's "Relay's got Talent" activity happened.  It was a popular part of the evening's events.

About five years ago people started bringing in tracks in so many different formats that my player would not work with them...
so
I began to insist that each singer bring their own source (laptop/iPad) and I would provide the 1/8" male to DI cable/box to interface the music.
Two years ago I told the organizers to have the "talent" bring their songs on a cellphone...that made things easier...

This year I told the organizer to have the talent bring their songs on a cellphone and to also bring their phone's "dongle" just in case it's needed.

Next year...who knows what it will be lol.

BTW: Since the Relay's got Talent activity had a two-minute maximum performance time, the tracks needed to be edited, the talent always provided someone to start/stop the tracks.

[William Schnake]

This just happened, but I'm sure it's happened to everyone. Choir director hands us a cd of backing tracks.

Did sound check with choir, no issues.

Show time and choir is second act. I am out front, wife is stage side. Performance time for choir comes, wife hits play on backing track, choir director tells her " that's not my cd".

Scott, about 5 years or so ago we made the decision that any track that is going to be played during a performance has to be transferred to our laptop or Mac Mini, whichever we have on site.  The reason is that we can control the track and know that it won't have problems.  We would never depend on a CD for a performance.  If the artist objects we let them verify we have removed it from our computer after the performance is complete.

I fully get that things happen.

Bill

[Tim McCulloch]

Scott, about 5 years or so ago we made the decision that any track that is going to be played during a performance has to be transferred to our laptop or Mac Mini, whichever we have on site.  The reason is that we can control the track and know that it won't have problems.  We would never depend on a CD for a performance.  If the artist objects we let them verify we have removed it from our computer after the performance is complete.

I fully get that things happen.

Bill

^^ THIS.

Unless there is zero time available I try to transfer all audio to a thumb drive and use Sports Sounds Pro on my ThinkPad for playback.  I'll transcode any file that's not supported by SSP, too.

I carry 2 laptops for playback, 1 primary and the other a hot spare.  Often we'll have a CD player as well although it's been a long time since I've relied on one for primary playback.

For those playing along at home and who don't want to pay for Sports Sounds Pro, VLC media player has a mode to play a file and stop (it's deep in the Prefs:  Tools>Preferences>Interface>Show Settings ALL>Playlist>tick 'Play and stop').

[Wes Garland]

That's pretty good advice.  I played tracks at a gig a few weekends ago and had a bunch of dropouts.  I'm 99.9% sure the customer-supplied thumb drive couldn't stream the MP3s fast enough.  Which seems implausible, but God Only Knows what dollar store the drive came from.  I use that laptop to stream audio on a regular basis without issue, going from Mixxx into my X32 via USB.  Never had an issue before.

[ProSoundWeb Community]