The music event preparations are going at full swing. On friday, I got out a little early from work and went to guitar trader to rent some music equipment for saturday's dress rehearsal with a couple of other friends/group members. I should say that people are very helpful in general. We rented a whole bunch of cables - XLR to XLR, 1/4 inch to XLR and all kinds of combinations thereof. This process itself took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. We then transferred all the stuff to this guy's house close to the auditorium. We planned on getting to the auditorium at 7AM the next day to set up the various things. I had originally underestimated the time it would take to set up the mixers, speakers and the amps and the mics.
I came back home and didn't do much useful - oh yeah, I rehearsed the songs for myself on my keyboard. The next day, I had requested an event volunteer to come and help me take my keyboard to the audi. Originally I had requested him to come at 7:30AM, but since we later planned to get there earlier, I requested him to come at 6:45AM. I gave him the directions and he seemed quite comfortable with the area and gave me an impression that he will find it with ease. But of course, he got lost the next morning and came to my place only at 7:10AM or so. After having asked certain other key participants to come at 7:30AM, I kind of felt bad to reach there late. More importantly, we had great difficulty in fitting my keyboard in the volunteer's car - that was a big bummer. We somehow squeezed it in after some 10 minutes of effort. Few other people were there - I should say they were kind to have come so early - and they were already setting up the instruments and the speakers. I went there to help. From then on, it took us a full three hours to set everything up - and that too only partially.
It was easily past 10:15AM, when we guys thought we were somewhat ready to get rolling with our practice. The keyboards used some impedance converters to drive the mixer. One of our group members is very good at setting up the mixer and the amp. They take major interest in setting everything up. They identified some bad cables and problems and made a mental note of it so that we may go and tell the guitar trader people about it and get some quality cables later on. The speakers were kind of not fitting properly on the speaker stands. We got four speakers - two to be used as monitor speakers and two for the audience. According to the guitar trader guy who rented us all this stuff, the smaller pair of the two pairs of speakers we got was supposed to boom louder. So we thought we'll keep that for the audience and turn in the other two speakers towards us, the participants. Some of the instrumental mics, which supposedly have a wider range were causing a lot of feedback. One of the amplifier cables was kind of loose and required a person to hold it up in a particular position, if we desire any sound output.
There was a big ocean of cables running on the ground. Myself and the guitarist were towards the right of the stage as the audience sees it. The other two keyboardists were towards the left. The drummer wanted to be in the middle and he was going to be the loudest - I let him be there, but warned him that he may have to shift to the left because he was hiding the screen. And that precisely happened - the organizers had to request him to move towards the left for the final two rehearsals so that they may project some good stuff on the screen. The guitarist took some time to tune the guitar, which I thought could have happened a little earlier. We lost some time on that. But he is my good buddy, so no complaints ;) The drummer also rented a couple of cymbals to add some nice effects. I think he went a little overboard in using those ;) No major problems again. These guys are all very receptive and are fully open to suggestions. That's why I like working with them. Most people in my group are receptive, except for a couple. I have to come to embrace the fact that I'll always have such people to deal with, so there is no real point in fretting about it or giving up. The show has to go on because my reputation is rolled up in it. Most people appreciate the efforts we all are putting into this.
Some people are consistently late - that thing bothers me a little. The very idea of making ten other people wait for one person should really bother that person. And yet, such people do exist - that is again something that we have to live with. I guess I can't complain too much about that, because it was not really the bottle neck. I really had to speed up the connection and the mixer settings towards the end because it was getting really late and I wanted to have a decent practice session before we geared up for the actual event.
We started and I requested that somebody time it. We started at 10:25AM and were done with the four songs only at 11AM. That was 10 minutes over our time budget, but it also included a 5 minute set up time between two songs. No excuses, we still have to stick to the time limit. We really speeded up our tempo on two of our songs. We should try to stick to the original tempo. One song is consistently not coming out well - we have to work on that. It was 12:45PM when we thought we could afford a lunch break. We did that - we went to the adjacent food court and were done only 5-10 minutes past 1PM - the dress rehearsal's official start time. I felt bad for coming in late myself by 10 minutes, but I did inform the organizers and much to my delight he told me that he himself was late. But one of our participants was very late - that person came in only at 1:45AM, but explained to me that it was because of a bad headache. It wasn't such a big deal as I thought it would be because the thing was anyway getting delayed because they were preparing the slides. Overall, no complaints.
Then we started our stuff and did a pretty decent job, except in one song. I think both the singers went off pitch and it seemed like I started the interludes on a different pitch. It was not noticed by many, but to the trained ears it made a lot of difference. I wasn't happy with that. The fourth one was a big hit. We have to maintain that kind of a standard, though it could have been improved. People said that the song selections were much better than last time - ofcourse, :) We got another feedback saying that the instruments were louder than vocals. Some of us thought it was a better thing 'cause we can mask out the voices haha...but yeah, we have to fix that. There is still a lot of work required. More importantly, people should really remember to do things and not forget them. Anyways, let me get back to my work. We returned all the equipment later yesterday and avoided a trip today. By then, all of us were pretty exhausted and burnt out that we didn't feel like a rehearsal. It is a big time and physical commitment from everyone.
I came back home and didn't do much useful - oh yeah, I rehearsed the songs for myself on my keyboard. The next day, I had requested an event volunteer to come and help me take my keyboard to the audi. Originally I had requested him to come at 7:30AM, but since we later planned to get there earlier, I requested him to come at 6:45AM. I gave him the directions and he seemed quite comfortable with the area and gave me an impression that he will find it with ease. But of course, he got lost the next morning and came to my place only at 7:10AM or so. After having asked certain other key participants to come at 7:30AM, I kind of felt bad to reach there late. More importantly, we had great difficulty in fitting my keyboard in the volunteer's car - that was a big bummer. We somehow squeezed it in after some 10 minutes of effort. Few other people were there - I should say they were kind to have come so early - and they were already setting up the instruments and the speakers. I went there to help. From then on, it took us a full three hours to set everything up - and that too only partially.
It was easily past 10:15AM, when we guys thought we were somewhat ready to get rolling with our practice. The keyboards used some impedance converters to drive the mixer. One of our group members is very good at setting up the mixer and the amp. They take major interest in setting everything up. They identified some bad cables and problems and made a mental note of it so that we may go and tell the guitar trader people about it and get some quality cables later on. The speakers were kind of not fitting properly on the speaker stands. We got four speakers - two to be used as monitor speakers and two for the audience. According to the guitar trader guy who rented us all this stuff, the smaller pair of the two pairs of speakers we got was supposed to boom louder. So we thought we'll keep that for the audience and turn in the other two speakers towards us, the participants. Some of the instrumental mics, which supposedly have a wider range were causing a lot of feedback. One of the amplifier cables was kind of loose and required a person to hold it up in a particular position, if we desire any sound output.
There was a big ocean of cables running on the ground. Myself and the guitarist were towards the right of the stage as the audience sees it. The other two keyboardists were towards the left. The drummer wanted to be in the middle and he was going to be the loudest - I let him be there, but warned him that he may have to shift to the left because he was hiding the screen. And that precisely happened - the organizers had to request him to move towards the left for the final two rehearsals so that they may project some good stuff on the screen. The guitarist took some time to tune the guitar, which I thought could have happened a little earlier. We lost some time on that. But he is my good buddy, so no complaints ;) The drummer also rented a couple of cymbals to add some nice effects. I think he went a little overboard in using those ;) No major problems again. These guys are all very receptive and are fully open to suggestions. That's why I like working with them. Most people in my group are receptive, except for a couple. I have to come to embrace the fact that I'll always have such people to deal with, so there is no real point in fretting about it or giving up. The show has to go on because my reputation is rolled up in it. Most people appreciate the efforts we all are putting into this.
Some people are consistently late - that thing bothers me a little. The very idea of making ten other people wait for one person should really bother that person. And yet, such people do exist - that is again something that we have to live with. I guess I can't complain too much about that, because it was not really the bottle neck. I really had to speed up the connection and the mixer settings towards the end because it was getting really late and I wanted to have a decent practice session before we geared up for the actual event.
We started and I requested that somebody time it. We started at 10:25AM and were done with the four songs only at 11AM. That was 10 minutes over our time budget, but it also included a 5 minute set up time between two songs. No excuses, we still have to stick to the time limit. We really speeded up our tempo on two of our songs. We should try to stick to the original tempo. One song is consistently not coming out well - we have to work on that. It was 12:45PM when we thought we could afford a lunch break. We did that - we went to the adjacent food court and were done only 5-10 minutes past 1PM - the dress rehearsal's official start time. I felt bad for coming in late myself by 10 minutes, but I did inform the organizers and much to my delight he told me that he himself was late. But one of our participants was very late - that person came in only at 1:45AM, but explained to me that it was because of a bad headache. It wasn't such a big deal as I thought it would be because the thing was anyway getting delayed because they were preparing the slides. Overall, no complaints.
Then we started our stuff and did a pretty decent job, except in one song. I think both the singers went off pitch and it seemed like I started the interludes on a different pitch. It was not noticed by many, but to the trained ears it made a lot of difference. I wasn't happy with that. The fourth one was a big hit. We have to maintain that kind of a standard, though it could have been improved. People said that the song selections were much better than last time - ofcourse, :) We got another feedback saying that the instruments were louder than vocals. Some of us thought it was a better thing 'cause we can mask out the voices haha...but yeah, we have to fix that. There is still a lot of work required. More importantly, people should really remember to do things and not forget them. Anyways, let me get back to my work. We returned all the equipment later yesterday and avoided a trip today. By then, all of us were pretty exhausted and burnt out that we didn't feel like a rehearsal. It is a big time and physical commitment from everyone.
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