Last night was good!
Sat about till nearly nine waiting and doing the crossword as some people were setup with their food down where I do my setup and after being told they were going to close early, 9.30, I decided to call it a night but on the way up to collect my gear… the people were leaving… so I changed my mind and got into it.
I’m still learning about the space and took stuff in to learn a little more and they all worked better than last time. The space, as in getting a sense of what one is doing… monitoring, is very unforgiving in the realm of bass and tends to reverberate into mudland and swamp very easily so any bass has to be stabby at best. At least in a monitoring space because as soon as you loop up something and walk about ten feet away, towards the entrance it all cleans up very nice… even the bass. The volume then tails off a bit as you get towards the steps then has a slight rise again, with a slight bass roll off as you get to the serving area on the ground floor. So any bass heavy stuff may work well in the space but you’d have to monitor the output at line level with headphones to see above the mush that occurs at the point of output. Maybe a small speaker at the steps being played back towards the end with a low pass on it might have enough cancelling power to make monitoring from source better? Who knows?
Anyways, I had the sprung sheet of steel, a phaser, the boss delay and the boss Looper into my new amp, which when placed on the table and with the speaker projected slightly upwards at about 800mm above the table, I’ve finally got something that works quite well as a basis for making the sounds I like. Plus I’m finally starting to get a handle, or set of handles, on the delay and the looper and how to make them work for me. I sorta need the looper, in this context to fill things out but it’s complicated being several people ahead of time but I’m starting to get around it plus I’m backing off quite abit on the delay and using more as a weapon of fills as opposed to a filling up weapon if you get me.
I’d figured out a while back that I quite like having the delay on and off and often cutting it off before a phrase ended and also just after it begun… instead of leaving it on all the time which can get really monotonous… especially if it’s just left at the same speed with enough feedback to keep it jangling away incessantly.
One resonably big problem I’m having is that the mixture of the room and all the gear with loopers and delays mean the feedback note can be a bit of a hassle when it eventually starts ringing out. Just need an EQ pedal set at that narrow band so if it gets to be a hassle I can just stab it out before it gets to the delay… maybe not so simple and maybe I’ll send a letter to Boss telling them to put another knob on the delay… actually a single parametric would do so I could set the place, the width and the height and I’d be right. Be best in the delay loop itself but it’s all internal on those things and it’d be a major mission to isolate the feedback path even if I could find it.
Next gig for me is the bfm thing this sunday and hopefully some director or producer somewhere in the world of bfm listeners hears my squawking interminable and decides I’m just the right person to do soundtrack for his or her next movie… but this particular export will be live and full of inappropiate vocal farting and belching and never, oh never, an export killed, portioned and purloined, snap frozen and ready packaged for consumption. It ain’t the kea way is it?
