Yesterday, with requisite asides.

[xiane]

Woke up at first to pouring rain. I peeked outside a momet ago, and the sun was shining. I can see what today's going to be like!

Yesterday was a bundle of crazy. Managed to drag my sorry self out of bed at the crack of noonish, and I endeavored for quite a while to get ready to just leave the house. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, a feeling that would haunt me until after dinner. [sushi cures all ills]


Henofer showed up to pick briskpepper and me up, and we went to The Rose for soundcheck, after a quick stop to Foods Of All Nations for breakfast and drinks [coffee!] Found rozzgoth, s1lentmuse, and nothingoth waiting for us, and we started to whole soundcheck process. For those of you who haven't been to a soundcheck at The Rose - and I'll assume that's most of you - wringing sound from that room that doesn't evoke memories of the neighborhood garage band playing in your mom's basement is quite the laborious feat. Some bands coalesce quickly; others... well, let's just say that some bands really earn Henofer his pay as sound man.
Luckily, Silent Muse had very few issues. I would have liked more resonance in Patrick's voice, but we just didn't have the ability to provide it. I find that if we have lighter-voiced female vocalists, or sometimes males who sing in a higher range, the quality of sound in vocals can be on the tinny side. It doesn't seem to happen to me - at least not before I took the million year hiatus of performing at The Rose - because my vocals are very full [and loud]. Patrick's voice seemed to want to head towards tinny land, and Henofer did his best to keep him out of that forbidden zone. JDavyd, however, we had no problem with, as his voice is generally on the deeper side, and especially for this specific performance. Silent Muse's percussion instrument, Ghetto [read: a big plastic trash can], was surprisingly obedient, and Chad's guitars fit in effortlessly. Almost always if we have a problem with something sound oriented at The Rose, it is vocals related. One day we'll have the shiny new equipment we need, and no one will break anything because The Dawning crew will carry it back and forth. One day, I swear! At least we had mrjustice and spookybat to help us listen to the sound and give support to the bands. That was fun. We all ate my favourite pumpernickel and onion pretzels and yelled silly things to the guys on stage, then Nessa popped on stage and did a performance for us to Silent Muse's backing tracks. She proclaimed at the end, "I don't know how you guys do this!" Hehehe.

Broke up the posse to run some errands before meeting with Chad back at Casa De Spooky. Popped back out for more coffee, then came back and did the requisite checking of email and LJs, picked up some radom stuff I'd forgotten, and chatted a bit with originalcynic and her dad. The masses were gathering and preparing for an action-packed evening! We trucked off to The Rose, where we met up with the performers of the evening, plus a salaciousdrift and a dizzyblind, and sat down to a delicious sushi dinner. That was a lot of fun, and super-pleasant! Patrick had never eaten sushi before, so Chad and I [mostly Chad] helped him pick some favourites and instructed on the use of chopsticks, whick Patrick picked up quickly. He seemed to really like what he ordered, so I think we might have another sushi convert on our hands. We introduced him to the wonders of seaweed salad, yum!
Finally it was time to go open the doors downstairs. Mr. Justice took over the decks and started his set of Industrial Might with some more downtempo things, as befitted the quiet hour at The Dawning, and I manned the door, taking the cash and starting a theme of dealing with obnoxiously drunk people all night.
Highlights:
xymoxed was there, and HOT HOT HOT as a blonde! She doesn't believe me, but everyone said so!

I got to meet eilonwy! We didn't get to say much - working door isn't very conducive to conversing, especially when it is busy - and I'm shy. Shut up, I am! But at least we now know our faces [that doesn't sound quite right] and we'll be able to say hello hello next time and maybe even say something else too.

mbickers was vending her cute dollies and other nifty stuff, and managed to get Andy Deane to sign the ass of her "Deane" dollie. He also played with the dollie's wang, I saw him! Amelia has a pic of Andy and the dollie; I think M should sell it on eBay ;)

I was able to have a few conversations with mustelidmania, who I never see often enough. I know she must have been extra proud to see both her sons do so well last night. That's a lot of talent to have in one family!

Talked to audiorapture for quite some time about a lot of interesting stuff going on. I'm looking forward to being his neighbor/tenant!

Okay, my brain is tapped. I know I'm missing out on a lot of highlights, but I just can't think without breakfast. Yes, I know it is after 2p. Hush. I'll try to add to this later on, with more observations/rundown of events.

Hey, look. Rain is falling again.

Comments

[explodingcat.livejournal.com]

I'm curious. What kind of thing would you need to improve vocals at the Rose? I know so little about hardware sometimes. I always want to know more about it.

[daq42.livejournal.com]

Parametric EQ's, a balanced noise filter, probably a few proper monitors, a decent power conditioner with isolation circuitry, and 2 balls of twine.

Also different mics for different singers. The lower range singers can get away with more on more baseline mics, but to cut out the noise and improve the frequency response of other style of singers, you'd need mics with difference "sweet" spots. For those singers who like to deep throat the mics you'd want something with a very short gate range, but for the whispery little ones or those that can't seem to project 2 inches beyond thier noses, you'd want something that has a more focused pickup range. Then the trick would be tying all that together. That's what the twine is for.

Plus getting a different PA system would probably change a lot, but since that belongs to the Rose, I don't think we can mess with that too much. Also the amplifier has a very big influence on the sound. If the amp is designed for high wattage but no passive cross-over, you end up with amazingly bad acoustic resonance on your bass and mids. The treble comes through great, but the sound ends up being very peircing and feedback ends up being earshattering.

You want to build a new PA system from the ground up to really get a "perfect" sound. But again, you have to determine what type of sound you are going for overall. If you're a punk band, any PA will do, as long as it's loud. If you're a classical pianist, you need something that will get a "clean" sound. Classical vocalist generally don't like PA's, preferring just to bust out on the diaphram projection and break glasses. Then you have the heavy metal kids, who will use anything that's loud but doesn't distort thier feedback and fuzzboxes (beyond what it's already distorted). Electronic bands usually want the sound system to make the bass rattle the windows of the cars in the parking lot and have clean upper frequencies to make all the people on the dance floor jiggle. And of course industrial bands (well, certain types) want it to sound like you're under the train tracks as the train goes over. Or maybe inside a water tower with chainsaws.

Oh, yeah, and jazz musicians like tube amps. Mostly. Country prefer anything that makes them sound like Johnny Cash. And military bands don't care if you can hear them or not, they get paid just the same either way.

If you really want to get into the hardware, we can go play on some of the higher end audio websites, I'll show you some very cool stuff, that does only one thing, and cost more than your house.

Some people like to read about cars, some people like to read about music, some people like to read about people.
I prefer to read about how many decibels you can pump through a box before it starts to melt.

[explodingcat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the knowledge. Maybe I can save my money and donate the balls of twine someday.