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On stage cueing!


paulears

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The two synths are not plugged in, despite the cables - his radio mic is a dummy. He calls the show. The lights are controlled by the 'benny' character who sits behind a gutted yamaha electric grand circa 1970's. a Tascam MD is in front of the keys, out of sight and the two controllers sit on the lid. He, and the 2 girls sing live - there was a real bass player and guitarist. drums, keys and odds and ends on track.

 

I'm not sure nowadays that this makes them unprofessional - it is a very good show from the punters perspective. As a musician, however, it makes me angry that they get away with it. Cueing wise - it gets a little hairy as the leader is 'benny' and he insists on handsignals to the kb 'player' who then calls the show to lx and spots. very odd way of working, but it does actually work.

paul

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I can't say - I'd like the gig again, but it's not the one you've suggested.

With the huge number of tributes now it's getting difficult to tell what is what - but from the num,ber of people who want to see this type of thing, I feel they go away happy - even if musicianship is limited.

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There was a real bass player and guitarist. drums, keys and odds and ends on track.

 

paul

 

I don't get it. Why have a real bass player and nothing else real?

 

I've known bands have a real keyboard player or guitarist to do the slow intros then go into track from the up-tempo but bass live and everything else on track sounds pointless. :(

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Noo... I'm pretty sure he meant 'There was a real bass player, and guitarist.' - and somewhere above he mentioned live vocals... so its only really keys and percussion which were put on track - which given that abba's music was tweaked so much in production, I think can be excused. Its a bit like bands having 'DJs' in them, as an excuse to put nice sound effects into tracks after they've been recorded!

 

 

Sorry - just realised I've gone quite a bit off topic there

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Noo... I'm pretty sure he meant 'There was a real bass player, and guitarist.' - and somewhere above he mentioned live vocals... so its only really keys and percussion which were put on track - which given that abba's music was tweaked so much in production, I think can be excused. Its a bit like bands having 'DJs' in them, as an excuse to put nice sound effects into tracks after they've been recorded!

 

 

Sorry - just realised I've gone quite a bit off topic there

 

Just spotted that stray full stop that I hadn't seen before. Makes more sense now!

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last year at my high school we had a band concert for halloween. I did all the lighting for it. just 4 weeks earlier no one knew how to record cues or anything like that. I used a strand tutorial to learn in 5hrs pretty much the ajor of stuff about our strand 300. my stage manager had to play in the concert he was lead trumpet. he had his headset on the entire time giving me cues. he was in the back adn the headset looked like part of his costume(a football coach). we're doign the show again and he better be giving me cues or im screwed.
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he was in the back adn the headset looked like part of his costume(a football coach).

 

OK, slightly OT, but since when dowes a football coach where a cans headset? :)

 

School performances are a bit different... I've ended up playing lead trumpet through an LX focus shouting to people in the gaps, and our director has ended up drumming for an entire 5 night run of a show. And school concerts are completely different again. I've perfected a series of 'glares' to mean different things to the lighting op during jazz numbers :)

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