Last night, my MOTM system underwent a trial by fire.
UberKunst, a band in which I "perform", played live on KDVS radio (Davis,
CA., noise capital of the world). Formerly, my participation was defined by
"pounding on junk" and "breaking shit". But last night I pulled apart my
studio (one of those things I swore I'd never do), grabbed everything I
could imagine useful, jammed it into the car, and trekked out 50 miles to
that wonderful noise haven. Oh, did I mention I hadn't thought about
playing the MOTM until about 3 hours before the show?
We were met by some really friendly and cool people (hi Brian!), and a
groundskeeper who was obsessed with being cited for us driving onto campus.
We unloaded, and we (7 people) settled into a corner of this tiny studio
(oh, about 10'x15'?). I set up my mixer for microphone and bass (damnit,
now I really know I need a preamp module!), powered everything up, and
patched a bunch of modules.
At it worked! Well... at first. It should be noted at this time that two
modules in the system had never been powered up, never been tested. At all.
They were constructed, slapped in, and expected to work. Well, more
accurately, I really ∗hoped∗ the would work. One did... the other, once it
was patched in, blew away power from ∗all∗ the modules. Even after it was
un-patched. Oh dear. I'd like to say that I kept my cool, but that would
be a damned lie. It took me a few minutes to recollect on what I had done,
eliminate the module, and start over. (There will be another post detailing
the problem with that module... d'oh!)
So here's what I had, and what I intended to do. I had 120, 440, 410, 420
(broken), 110, 320, 800, and 820. Nothing to actually produce sound... so I
took my trusty (POS) bass, turned up the volume ALL the way, massively
over-pre-amp'ed it, and had a nice source of static and bass tones. This
was filtered, FM'ed, mux'ed, fed back, ring-moddled, resonated, and
generally f---'ed with.
It might be a good time to mention that I hadn't done this as anything like
a performance before. I mean, knob twiddling in the studio, sure... but
that was just kinda expiriementing. As I learned, that's nothing like
playing live. I think I didn't really figure out what was working until
about 1/2 way through the performance.
As a little plug, KDVS has the show available for streaming and/or download
from their website! If you feel like submitting yourself to some really
wacky cheesey noise-rock, go to
http://www.kdvs.org/grid.shtml, and click on
the "Live In Studio A" link at the bottom of the schedule for Thurseday. (I
think you can get the real-audio stream from
ftp://kdvs.org/pub/audio/LiveInStudioA.rm.) I think it will only be there
for a week, and (fair warning) contains a little profanity. We don't start
playing until about 4 minutes in... at least, I don't remember that intro
bit being us. I think I was still freaking out a little. And you can only
really start to hear the MOTM work in "Kill Everyone", about 24 minutes in.
It's the deep bass rumbling. It's more pronounced at 32 minutes in,
although not to be confused with the real bass player or the digital flanger
thingy which others were playing.
I ended up not using the mic at all. The bass was a noise source at all
times. Late in the show, it was actually strummed on / hit / played by my
fiance / wife, and I mess with that. It's probably much more "musical".
I'm know the 820 never came into proper play. The EG was little used. I
tried to take advantage of the 410, but it took me awhile to realized I
mispatched it (output to output doesn't do anything, kids!)... and once I
fixed that, I still couldn't hear it in the mix. But the 120, 440, 110, and
320 were very largely used. In the future, I'd love to have a working 420,
a 300 (hey-- a pitch controlable sound-source! What a concept!), and a
freakin' pre-amp! <grin> I'm also really looking forward to the pedal
interface, and I should get off my butt and build the Time Machine.
Lastly, and I'll check my archives in a few minutes, what's the best way to
get a power supple in a pop-up SKB case? A full sized SKB is just too big
to do this often...
The MOTM was certainly only one aspect of what UberKunst performed, but I
had a blast. Thanks for listening to me ramble on about it. :)