A Radical Proposal

[mkilly]

Good one, cashpoint.

[Lunkhead]

I like your idea Art, though since people have already started figuring out their bands it might be difficult to make it happen. I'm game to volunteer for guitar for one of the bands (and bass for another if need be).

[Future Boy]

As has been seen, I will be playing with Marcus, if they need me, I will be joining the Tiny Robots crew on keys once again, I'm pretty sure JBB asked me to play for him...

Am planning to do a piano/voice thing for High Density, though if I can get my act together Ken will be joining that. Hell, it might be fun if Tiny Robots played on the High Density set. Thoughts, dearest Tiny Robots?

[bz£]

We should all sit in a big circle with an instrument handy and then just play on whatever songs we're a part of. Oh, and put the audience in the middle for maximum effect. Kind of like Whack-a-Mole, except not in any way that I can express in words that make sense.

[jb]

(I sucked at that show cause I got drunk and did I Believe in a Thing Called Love kareoke the night before)

Hey, one of us did Tenacious D's "Wonderboy" the night before. What's a little falsetto? Pshaw.

[jb]

I'm pretty sure JBB asked me to play for him...

Yes! Yes he did!

[jb]

I like your idea Art, though since people have already started figuring out their bands it might be difficult to make it happen. I'm game to volunteer for guitar for one of the bands (and bass for another if need be).

Dude, I'm totally counting on you to play the solo in "Let's Get Naked". PLEEEEEZ.

[prayformojo]

(I sucked at that show cause I got drunk and did I Believe in a Thing Called Love kareoke the night before)

Hey, one of us did Tenacious D's "Wonderboy" the night before. What's a little falsetto? Pshaw.

There was pant rocking that night.

[Jefff]

I might be wrong, but it would seem the only major switching issue here is drums, right? Ken plays right-handed and Blue plays left? Passing guitars isn't that hard. Maybe we don't need super-groups and just need a wrangler (sure, I'll volunteer) who makes sure the next band is there and ready when the previous band ends. And maybe if we have a wall chart of sets and band-members, that would also help?

On another note, PFM Chris and I were talking about playing back-to-back and coordinating our sets for easy switching - his last song would be him and me with an acoustic guitar, and my first song would be the same. So the drums could be switched while we play.

How's all that sound?

[prayformojo]

I might be wrong, but it would seem the only major switching issue here is drums, right? Ken plays right-handed and Blue plays left? Passing guitars isn't that hard. Maybe we don't need super-groups and just need a wrangler (sure, I'll volunteer) who makes sure the next band is there and ready when the previous band ends. And maybe if we have a wall chart of sets and band-members, that would also help?

On another note, PFM Chris and I were talking about playing back-to-back and coordinating our sets for easy switching - his last song would be him and me with an acoustic guitar, and my first song would be the same. So the drums could be switched while we play.

How's all that sound?

I was just about to post that. Ken is drumming on my set and Blue is drumming on Jeff's. The "acoustic bridge" between our sets would be a great place to switch the kit.

[jack]

I might be wrong, but it would seem the only major switching issue here is drums, right? Ken plays right-handed and Blue plays left? Passing guitars isn't that hard. Maybe we don't need super-groups and just need a wrangler (sure, I'll volunteer) who makes sure the next band is there and ready when the previous band ends. And maybe if we have a wall chart of sets and band-members, that would also help?

On another note, PFM Chris and I were talking about playing back-to-back and coordinating our sets for easy switching - his last song would be him and me with an acoustic guitar, and my first song would be the same. So the drums could be switched while we play.

How's all that sound?

I was just about to post that. Ken is drumming on my set and Blue is drumming on Jeff's. The "acoustic bridge" between our sets would be a great place to switch the kit.

all sounds good to me. i think the drums are the biggest sticking point.

[bz£]

You probably don't really want people messing with drums right behind you while you are playing an acoustic tune. At least, it's not really worth it to save a few minutes. It's gonna make noise and be a distraction to the audience.

Ideally, the thing to do is put all the bands with Blue drumming on one night, and all the other folks the other night, but that's probably not practical.

Two stages might be an idea. Not two full stages, of course, but you could set up one corner for solo G&G stuff and the "main stage" for full bands and alternate between them. The G&G corner would only need maybe two mikes, a guitar plus small amp and a place to plug in laptops or whatever, and you could do drum switching and other setup on the main stage without too much interference while someone's playing solo. All depends on the geometry of the venue, and I have no idea about that because they don't seem to have pictures on their website. I'm sure we could figure out something, though.

Fast changeovers are gonna be important, in general. We've got about the same number of people as last year, maybe even more (?) but about four hours less stage time. Passing guitars is quick but it's often not that simple, and it still takes people a little time to get settled on stage.

[king_arthur]

Okay, I think the King Arthur pickup band (the One Stand Knights ???) is going to be me, Jack Shite, Spud, Ken and Fluffy. If any of those people think otherwise, let me know ASAP! Chord charts and demo .mp3s coming soon.

Edit: Adjuster, will you be there to sing the "Father" part on "So Long Atticus?"

I'm planning on doing four songs of my own, which should fit into the alloted time unless allotments are further reduced. Spud would like me to play on an # song for him; I'm not sure if that would be part of the KA set or part of a separate "friends of #" set...

And, as I keep mentioning, I would like to go first on Friday night (or first on Saturday night, if that makes scheduling easier - I guess Ken's four or five other bands have expressed a desire to play Saturday).

I remain available for guitar or bass for anyone who is still looking...

Charles (KA)

[king_arthur]

In terms of musician changes, the other thing that's a killer is guitarists who have fifteen separate FX boxes that all have to be connected during setup, and who absolutely have to have all that stuff to get "their sound." Anybody who's in that boat, please think about ways to simplify / speed up your setup for the show! Attach everything to a board with wire ties so you just have to plug in one power strip and your guitar, stuff like that.

For whoever's doing the soundboard, would it be possible to have one of the aux sends go into a digital tuner and then put all the bass and guitar channels into that aux send? I know some FX boxes have built in tuners, but for those who don't, it would be nice to have one tuner that everybody can get to by just playing, even if it means the other guitar/bass people have to be quiet while they're tuning. I'm thinking of something like one of those Sabine rack tuners (I can bring one) that are visible from far away, aimed so it can be seen from the stage, or even placed ON the stage somewhere. And another tuner in the staging area that people can plug into just before they go on...

Charles (KA)

[fluffy]

the One Stand Knights ???

Nice. Don't change it.

[drë]

I'll be bringing and using my PS02, it has about 40+ guitar FX, and like 10 Vocal FX(each can be slightly altered),
is small, simple and best of all it can run for a couple of hours on batteries.
it also has a tuner, that can be used by LINE IN, or through its embedded mic.

Anybody that needs it, is welcome to use it.

[jack]

hey charles, as you are opening the show on friday, maybe you can get there early (by 6pm) and help with the setup/loadin, and talk to the soundguy and work with him on getting some sort of board feed too into my ibook/protools laptop maybe. or if someone has a DAT, that could work.

[king_arthur]

I will be there as early as they'll let us in, and, yeah, I'll work with the sound guy on setting up a board feed. It would probably be a good idea to have two or three different separate paths for recording (a couple pairs of X-Y mics in the room, into entirely separate recorders), but we'll figure all that out onsite.

Charles

[Jefff]

You probably don't really want people messing with drums right behind you while you are playing an acoustic tune. At least, it's not really worth it to save a few minutes. It's gonna make noise and be a distraction to the audience.

Actually, I think it will be fine. Or at least, I think it's a risk I'm willing to take. (I welcome the challenge of trying to hold the audience's attention.)

As far as the hassle of passing guitars goes, you're right. But even if we do super-groups, people will still be switching around, even if nobody new is getting onstage.

Personally, I think we should ban all guitar effects and should have the exact same equipment setup for everyone. Combine that with clumping together acts with the same drummer (we'll have to ask the drummers how long they can go for), and I think we should have a pretty fast moving show.

[fluffy]

I will be there as early as they'll let us in, and, yeah, I'll work with the sound guy on setting up a board feed. It would probably be a good idea to have two or three different separate paths for recording (a couple pairs of X-Y mics in the room, into entirely separate recorders), but we'll figure all that out onsite.

Charles

Having room mics is definitely a win. When I recorded 2004 I had a direct line from the mixer and two room mics, and I found I mostly used the room mics for the sound simply because the mixer didn't get much in the way of drums, and a couple people went acoustic without warning.

Doing it into separate recorders is probably a bad idea though, since then you run into sync issues. It's a lot better (in my limited experience) to put everything as separate tracks on a single timeline.

[king_arthur]

Fluffy - by "separate recorders" I just meant that there should be two or three entirely separate recordings made of the show, so that a failure in any one signal chain doesn't screw up ALL the recordings, as it could if all we have is nine decks chained off the soundboard or something. I wasn't suggesting trying to sync things back up afterwards... just advocating a bit of redundancy.

Charles (KA)

[fluffy]

Oh, right, that's a good idea too. Especially when the primary recording is going through multitrack recording software, which has an annoying tendency to crash or decide to stop just because it had a single dropout or whatever.