Well ok so we got there early and on setup the sound guy tells me he has no signal. I’m going out the mains on my MOTU, I see signal in and signal out on my meters, but he says nope nothing. So after swapping the main bus a few times and going around full circle, miraculously sound occurs. So my sound check consisted of just getting sound. From there on out for the rest of the show the bottom chords were one long rumbling clip and the lead synth was undetectable in my monitor. But on a good note the lead singer could hear my synth plain as day in her monitor, but not her voice and I could here her vocals loud and clear, but not my synth.
After a few toggles using pipe organ and strings the sound guy kept turning me down, I’d go to piano and he would turn it up, any expression was entirely out of my hands. It would have been great to just have “ok this is as loud as it gets”, adjust, then let me lower it from there. Instead the whole time was chasing an oscillating volume. I was nervous as hell for the first three songs and on the first two the sound guys kept asking me about levels while I was playing. I didn’t count on that level of distraction from the sidelines.
The lead singer who is usually killer and the strongest out of the whole group, started out raspy and a uncertain. Thinking about it, I think she did commendable, not hearing her own voice and with my synth blaring at her. She pulled it together about half way through the set.
I made about five solid mistakes throughout the whole thing, but recovered quickly enough and nothing was a show stopper or tragic. “C”, “A”, at least for the most part, the goofs were harmonic. I brushed a wrong key on a lead it was quick, but enough to make me cringe inside.
At one point the lead vocalists skipped ahead about a third of a song, but the rest caught on quickly enough and it was well disguised. Strangely enough that was a big boost of confidence, because no matter what we could still make it work. It was becoming fun and on by song four I was feeling pretty confident, so actually took a few times to be present in the moment look around and fake like I knew what I was doing. Although a little voice in my head kept saying: “Oh my god what are you doing up here?”
Overall compared to our practices we did poor to “ok”. First time out, I’m sure it could have been worse and I’m certain the next one will be better. We had invited guest there among the crowd, but walking along in the fair grounds some strangers complimented me on my playing. That was a cool feeling even if it’s not the best performance, they seemed to enjoyed it just the same. We had a crowd of about fifty people and everyone there had a good time, so yeah it was really fun. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Once again thanks all for the advice, it did come in handy. Learning that the perspective was different from the audience made the screw ups concerning, but not mortifying. No outright stops, a few glitches but I’m sure that’s going to happen regardless.
