Tech Disasters

[smy1]

Shit hit the fan last weekend. How I survived and what I learned from it:

http://faderhead.com/blog/bacdafucup/

I am obviously more prone to these problems than a rock band but I think a lot of these principles apply to rock bands too. Especially if they play to a click/backingtrack.

At least I learned a bit

 

[LeSedna]

Cool read, thanks Sammi

 

[smy1]

Thanks.

Funny sidenote: I just found (!!!) a 1.5TB harddrive in an unopened parcel that was delivered in April 2011 and stood next to all my other backup drives in the studio ...

 

[kev]

So you cracked the screen and fucked the hdd in the same fell swoop? That's some fucking bad luck man lol

 

[LeSedna]

In a way it reminds me a bit of my own job : the only way to avoid shit to happen is to raise as many barriers against it as possible and to never, ever, be lazy about correcting one of them when they are not up. In your case, you got 2 problems at the same time, which are both unexpected, especially together : a laptop fail + the backup laptop not being up and running because your mate didn't have time yet to copy yours onto his. For some reason, which sounds improbable but is actually theorized, there is a rule that basically says "when shit can happen, it WILL happen" you just don't know which one !

I really liked the idea of having everything available through internet, internet is everywhere these days and say having a .zip package with the essentials ready to download from anywhere can save your ass I guess. I liked the "4) Have a second laptop on stage that is up and running and actually connected to the DI boxes in case the first one fails" because I'm not sure a lot of semi-pro to pro bands actually do that and it does make sense to have the backup operational itself to make a fail-safe setup which can be running in about 5 realistic minutes

 

[smy1]

"4) Have a second laptop on stage that is up and running and actually connected to the DI boxes in case the first one fails" because I'm not sure a lot of semi-pro to pro bands actually do that and it does make sense to have the backup operational itself to make a fail-safe setup which can be running in about 5 realistic minutes

In case of a rock band I'd always bring a POD, SansAmp or something like that. It costs very little, takes up no space, takes 2 minutes to set up and if your amp fucks up, you can just pull up the fader on the board and get immediate replacement sound.

Some pro-band stories:

We played Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig in 2011 and the headlining band of the night was Front 242. That band has been around since 1981!!! Halfway thru the set their ONE computer broke down. It took them about 20 minutes to get it fixed. After that half of the 5000 people that were in attendance had left. I was very embarrassed for them because it's such a noob mistake. Just play from your fuckin' iPhone - all you have to do is set it up, which takes 2 minutes.

Same thing happened to Combichrist at Blackfield Festival in 2011. Their ONE dat playback device fucked up and they had to stop the show after 30 minutes ...

 

[smy1]

So you cracked the screen and fucked the hdd in the same fell swoop? That's some fucking bad luck man lol

I am still unsure how that happened. The bag did not get kicked or thrown or anything ... no biggie though. Wanted to buy a new MacBook with solid-state-drive anyway. Regulard HDs skip too much from all the bass and jumping around on stage

 

[amarshism]

Redundancy is an important lesson. I moved our track system over to an spdsx which most bands on tour are using for sub drops. The card has a duplicate, the files are on the drummers laptop, my iPhone and stored on Dropbox should anything fail. If the pad itself dies we borrow one, insert card and pow. Teching for big bands gave me an important lesson in having backups.

 

[smy1]

amarshism: yea, those type of card-memory solutions are a lot more sturdy than laptops. I've been contemplating buying a Roland SP-404 as another backup system and loading all the tracks on individual sample pads.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Cool, that setup is exactly what I plan on doing live. Although my backup is an ipad, then an iphone.

I really don't want to resort to the backups. haha

 

[smy1]

Loren: with computers/pads/phones you'll run into problems all the time. From stuff like "forgot the power cable at home" to "nobody has the right connector (minijack to 1/4inch)" to "the support band spilled beer all over your shit" to "why is the driver for this soundcard not working?" to "ooops, hard drive failure". Get familiar with using the backups because you'll need them, even if you'd rather not. I think about 20% of the time there's been some sort of problem in or before the shows we played in the last 6 years.

If you have backups (plus cloud backup) you'll deal with all that stuff much more easily because you have peace-of-mind when it comes to the very last resort.

IMPORTANT: iPhones are shit when you try to get the mp3s from there to anywhere else cause unless it's your computer/iTunes, you can't access the phone from outside. That's why dedicated online backups are very convenient.