• 18 SXSW Live recordings Now on iTunes
• Mac Geek Gab 320, which includes my initial SXSW 2011 Debrief
• My ever-popular Geeks Survival Guide to SXSW Music 2011
• A few articles (from others with help from me on the ground there) about the new pop-up Apple Store that was put in place temporarily for the iPad 2 release during SXSW.
• Why SXSW Interactive Attendees Should Stay for Music

And for those of you who like to know (and I know you’re out there), here’s the list of bands I saw during the Music festival:

Foo Fighters
Guadalupe Plata
Luger
The Baseball Project
Duran Duran
Emmylou Harriss
North Mississippi Allstars (w/ G. Love)
Bob Geldof
The New Mastersounds
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Widespread Panic
Ozomatli
Luke Rathborne
The Belle Brigade
Darlingside
The Givers
Miracle 3
Summer Erikson
Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True Loves
Bowling for Soup
Los Lonely Boys
Tony Scalzo

Oh… hi. Let me catch you up on this rant that’s been going on in my head for about 4 years now. It seems any time I work with a new sound engineer, they insist on assuming they’ll know how to mix the vocals better than the band. Last week’s Cirque du Mac party was no exception (yeah, I know, I didn’t blog about where or what I was going to be doing at Macworld Expo and, yeah, I’ve been ignoring my blog in general for a while. I’ve been busy but I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. I’m here now!).

At Cirque, the Macworld All-Star Band had 5 vocal mics on stage: 3 across the front, one with Chris at the keys, and one at the drumkit for me. With that many live mics on stage potentially allowing other sounds to bleed in when someone isn’t singing into each, a sound engineer tends to get antsy that they won’t have full control over all the sound. The oft-perceived (and ill-conceived!) solution is to bring vocal mics up and down only when they’re needed. On the surface, this sounds very reasonable. The issue is the dangerous assumption by the sound engineer that they will somehow magically know when each mic needs to be on. Of course, it’s impossible for them to know this if it’s the first time they’re doing sound for the band. Hell, it’s hard for an engineer to know this even if it’s his/her 100th time doing sound for the band. If you have a band that liberally employs harmonies, you simply don’t know when one is going to crop up. And by the time you notice someone singing into a microphone, you’ve missed it. If you’re lucky, you’ll see it during the first verse/chorus and maybe get it right for the second one. But with 5 mics on stage, you’ve got to watch each and every one 100% of the time to even get it right the second time around, and I posit those chances to be slim, at best.

The solution is simple: leave the damned vocal levels alone and let the band mix on stage just like they’re used to doing in a rehearsal room. Most bands are better at this than most engineers give them credit for (bad English, good statement!). Of all the bands I play in, all the musicians I know are smart enough to back off the mic when blending a harmony and get up close when singing a lead. Mic technique is just one of those things you learn. Trust the musicians. Hell, it’s their gig and their reputation on the line if they sing harmonies too loud or out of tune. Let them fail and take the blame, if you wish, but in most cases they’ll sound better than you think.

So if you’re a soundman reading this, please — for the love of all that is good and pure, PLEASE — when mixing a band for the first time, set the vocal levels in the monitors (all the monitors!) the same as the mains and simply leave it alone unless one mic is much louder or softer than the others. Then adjust it in both places and get out of the band’s way!

And we let him release it. Crazy, huh?

Well, it’s out there, and it’s alive. You can check it out as it appears as MacVoices #8144.

I know I say it all the time, but I’ll say it again: I am *so* honored to be a part of this band and the friendships we have developed together. Definitely a highlight of Macworld Expo each year and a highlight of my experience in the Mac community and beyond

*Technically, we did get the band into an AIM-style “private, band-only” chat room in the very beginning to “chat out” the setlist prior to rehearsal. For all of the following gigs we found that having a (benevolent?) dictator assigned to manage the list was far more productive. Or at least it was easier, and we’re all for that.

Practice — especially the first day or two — was quite painful. The strings felt like fiery needles to the fingertips on my left hand, but sure enough even that’s (slowly) getting better. Practicing 15-to-20 minutes per day has been enough to push through the pain, have some fun, gain some facility, and begin to build up those calluses. It’s odd to notice the feeling slowly slipping away from my fingertips. Typing has become a whole new experience. Not bad, just… new.

And I guess that’s the point of this: a whole new experience. I’m very much looking forward to practicing together with my daughter this weekend, as well as my next lesson on Tuesday!

Then on Friday I will go back to Earcraft for my daughter’s first guitar lesson. We’re looking forward to beginning down this path together.

I’ll keep you all posted on our progress!

KnockOff is a female-fronted, four-piece classic rock outfit and the gigs are always a lot of fun for everyone. OT’s has a setup not unlike the Cavern club, where the band is tucked into an alcove, and the setting is great for just rocking out together. Should be a good time. We’ll see how my hands and vocal chords decide to behave this evening!

Those of you who know me are likely aware that the day or two leading up to a gig is always filled with dread of having to go through the gear-change of shifting into “gig mode.” This entails adjusting my day/night schedule, packing the car with all the required gear, driving to the gig, getting set up, and making sure everything is going to work for the gig. Once I get to the last step, I’m actually quite stoked about the night, and remain so all the way through the gig and even through tear down, load out and drive home. So I’ve learned to ignore my desire to cancel gigs and know that it’ll be great.

This weekend, we have two curveballs that are adding to that cancelation desire. The first is that we have a sub for one of our sax players. Now, he’s a fantastic sub and a great guy, but it’s a sub just the same and that reduces the comfort level of the gig somewhat. On top of that, I just found out that our sound engineer can’t make it. This is a huge shift because he brings his own audio gear and lights. WIthout him, not only do we have to mix from the stage, but we have to bring all our own gear, cobble together a PA, and then do the “braille mix” from the stage. We’ve done it before and it works out great, but it adds quite a bit of time and stress to the gig, in addition to adding a distraction DURING the gig that makes even the enjoyable part significantly less enjoyable.

But it looks like we won’t be canceling, so we’ll make it work, and I’m sure I’ll look back and realize all this whining was unfounded.

It all started at about 3pm when I went up to my studio to play for about 30 minutes. Since I so rarely get any warmup time at a gig itself, I try to at least play on my practice kit for a bit just so the downbeat isn’t the first time I’m hitting drums that day. As soon as I started playing I realized that my hands and feet were being very well-behaved. Everything I asked of them, especially my left (weaker) hand, was being delivered with precision and perfect speed. I remember thinking, “if this keeps up, tonight’s going to be fun!”

While setting up at the club for some reason I decided to move all my toms and snare lower, and my seat higher. I had been struggling with my gigging setup for a while, and I had a gut feeling this might help. It certainly didn’t hurt. From the first note, I realized I was playing very aggressively. Not overly loud, per se, but really driving things, especially with the kick drum. I was expending a LOT of energy making every stroke count, and the thought, “you better hope you can keep this up all night” quickly went through my head. And sure enough, all that speed and dexterity in my hands and feet was still there, everything being perfectly executed. If I could think it, my limbs could play it, and that’s a very rare treat!

Vocally, I couldn’t get comfortable until about mid-way through the second set when the crowd requested, “Superstition.” I was a bit concerned with how it might go given that I would be singing lead from behind the kit. Indeed the first verse was shaky, if only because I couldn’t get the right words to come out of my mouth! But by the chorus everything was fine, and it got even better from there. After that, I was fully warmed up, and throughout the night we had some fantastic 4-part harmonies just falling together with little effort.

It’s rare that I leave a gig fully pleased with my performance, and even now, 2 days later, I still find myself thinking about it. I’m surprised with how aggressively I played — to a level I hadn’t reached or even aimed in a long time — and I hope to figure out how to capture that and stick with it. I think it really helped drive the band quite a bit, but I just need to be careful to not overdo it and either speed things up or play too loud.

I think over the years I wound up sacrificing some of that aggression and drive in favor of playing at moderate volumes to accommodate the other musicians and smaller rooms I might be in. But I realized the other night that I need to bring an additional level of intensity back into my playing to take things to the next level. I need to do that without also reintroducing too much sound level! Balance is the goal… It will be interesting to see how it all plays out!

Going forward, I think I’ll use my blog to keep you all posted about upcoming gigs, and if I have anything notable to say afterwards, I’ll do that, too. If I have something to say during the gigs, I’ll update my Twitter stream during the setbreaks, cell service permitting.

• Twitterized Attendees Shape The Show
• Music Through Wednesday: Béla Fleck, Van Morrison, R.E.M.
• Thursday Music: Body of War, Wheatus, The Presidents of the USA, Bowling For Soup
• Friday and Saturday Music: Vampire Weekend, The Redwalls, The Supersuckers and The Rolling Stones

The music festival really blew me away, and in basically 4 days I saw more than 24 acts, including:

• American Bang
• Béla Fleck
• Ben Harper
• Billy Bragg
• Blue Cheer
• Bowling for Soup
• Brendan James
• Dead Confederate
• Foreign Born
• Jonathan Rice
• Kate Nash
• Kevin Gordon
• Papercranes
• R.E.M.
• RX Bandits
• Serj Tankian
• The Presidents of the United States of America
• The Redwalls
• The Supersuckers
• The Vines
• Tom Morello
• Vampire Weekend
• Van Morrison
• Wheatus

Was a great week, and is also great to be back home!

“When you practice, at all times try to pull the best sound you can out of the drum or cymbal. And playing very slowly will give you the time to digest all kinds of information. Again, be sure to practice slowly. it really helps.”

New inspiration, indeed!