NorCalMusician wrote:Amar, you will want to close your eyes for this.
Renee and I recently went to a Lunasa concert in Sebastopol. During the last song, the encore as a matter of fact, there was an apparent glitch in the sound system.
One minute there was all this beautiful music, then nothing but the sound of the drone on the pipes. NOTHING. It appeared as if they were continuine with their performance, but no sound other than the drone. Then all of a sudden the music was back on again.
Renee looked at each other in shock. This was a small, intimate croud of only several hundred people. They were using amps, of course, but I feel I still should have been able to hear at least something, if it even was only a quiet version. Whistle, pipes, flute and accoustic guitar. Heck, the neighbors across the golf course from us compliment me on my playing and they are 3 times as far away as this band was.
It has really left a bad feeling in my mind. $80 for a recorded concert? If anyone can explain why I should not feel this way, please let me know.
Technically such a glitch is quite possible, particularly in this day and age of digital multitrackers. Each instrument is assigned its own channel, and in the case of the pipes, for example, two (one mic for the drones, one for the chanter and low whistle when Cillian plays one). There's a thing called 'digital scene selection', very useful for setting up the monitors. You program a 'scene' wherein all channels are muted save one or two, say, in this case the drones, then set the on-stage monitor sound levels for the drones. Select another 'scene', so that drones and guitar are live, and balance the mix... and so on.
If you watch the sound-check before the start of a concert (Lunasa's in particular) you'll see how each monitor is adjusted in turn for each of the players. Kevin Crawford might like a monitor mix heavy on guitar, with pipes down and fiddle mid-range, say, and bass set just so, with his flute up some. The soundman goes through each player in turn, setting the monitor levels.
Plus, using digital scene selection, the soundman can press a button and all the faders automatically adjust to give emphasis to certain instruments over others, and automatically adjust the parametrics on each channel.
Plus, the bus master output to the monitors on stage are completely separate from the master channels out to the PA system. So, on stage, the band would still be hearing themselves playing fine through their monitors, and would be completely oblivious to the PA going down. That's the cool thing about monitor wedges, they isolate the performers from the PA and the audience.
So it's entirely possible that by some stroke of misfortune, a digital scene selection got selected which killed everything bar the one mic on the drones.
When I watched Lunasa in Oxford earlier this year, I was sitting three rows back from the stage, and during the sound-checks about the only thing I could hear unamplified was Cillian's pipes. The flute didn't carry well in that town hall unamplified. The bass is all-electric. I couldn't tell whether Sean's fiddle was all-electric or whether or not it's a mic he clips near the bridge. And of course the guitars are acoustic.
Hope that helps!
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
