making noise in eindhoven

wow .... what a joy .... let me in the sound ....
u2 sings about it, I got to do it ... in full ...

they had arranged a place for me on the dance floor, and they hired extra speakers, making it an amazing wall of sound, for me to model and arrange ... haha! yes ... this is what playing livesets is all about .... standing in front of the sound, allowing you to feel every little tiny frequency shift, that when applied in the mix .. results in an interconnecting force that seems to speed things up .... this is why I bring all my gear, so I can truelly alter every little corner of sound that is there ... and the pleasure comes when you start mixing, and then the instinct takes over ... as your gut and your inner ear are being massaged, they also start to guide and control ...

ok, maybe you have to experience it for yourself to understand fully ..
but hey .... what a joy it was !

they also had arranged this amazing laser, that can shoot out every colour in the rgb spectrum, pretty special for a laser, even in this century yes ... they did have to pull a huge cooling unit up the stairs in order for teh laser to work, but they did not mind, they really made a huge effort to make the night a special one ...

Also I got to play later ... played from 1.30 till 3 ...
my set was a lot of work ... as the direct sound, even more so, points out all things that should sound a little tiuny different, not too much, but just a little bit .. making you work ... call it being a musician ...

it was great to experience that the plan of attack worked, as I got to practice the night before, I had decided to change my set completely ... this time slowly building up the sounds, then after 45 minutes, making a drop from 164 to 132 bpm ... making the synths scream for real with the kickdrum dropping holes in between ... ha ha what a joy ... then in the end I speeded things up again and then all envelopes were pushed, making use of the amazing headroom in my mackie mixer and I danced my own arse off the last 45 minutes of my set .. and thats when I am truelly enjoying myself ... loosing myself in the music ... the set has been recorded ...
thanx for the great welcome, and sound etc ! sound was extremely clear, thanx dieJ
thanx for the invite, lets do that again !!!
ciao

surprise gig

friday night 7 o'clock phone rings, ferdy asks if can come and bring my liveset to merlijn tonight in order to play a full liveset, surprise surprise ....
as filterfedde dropped out last minute, ferdy was looking for a replacement and as I was gonna go to nijmegen anyway, along with the RAF acid machinery .... also, I had to play the day after in eindhoven, so I actually had prepared a set for that night, and had started packing up my set earlier that day, I was eating my dinner when the phonecall came ... ha, it did not take long to decide ... that was that .... packed up my things, and filled up my car with gear .... not forgetting the piece of paper with all notes from the night before, when I made my selection of patterns that were ok, and some that were not to be used, I was almost ready for the saturday, but not totally ready ... the list of notes still left me with a big mess of possibilities, all sorts of rythms and sequences, all unarranged, leaving all of that for the onthespot turning and twisting of the knobs and sliders .... doing it all live ...

for me, a liveset is truelly a road full of evolving sounds, instead of loads of clean climaxes .. it must also be the way to the unexpected moment when you get a beautiful collision of sounds and then after that, also the path that takes you away from it ... to reach another hot spot .... its all part of the liveset 1,5 hrs of discoveries ...

ok, back to teh night ... first up it was Unit Moebius .... then me and then the Rythmic Alkaloid Factory

loads of slowmo acid, twwisted beats and effected sounds guaranteed ..... some bad cables here and there ... loads of machines on stage, and yes, it was there .. the laptop .... I had one too, but only to record my set ...

There was not a lot of people ... guess it was the first signs of a busy weekend, with monday being that traditional festivalday .... pinkpop and loads of other things were on that weekend ,... and we were in nijmegen ... on a friday .... hey hey ...
I had fun, learned a lot again ... and was happy to do the job ...
.... next time I will bring longer cables ...
thanx for the unexpected invite !