The Yamaha AN200 is a 5-note polyphonic analog physical modeling synthesizer, with smooth, fat, fully resonant filters, and a 16-step “old school” style sequencer. But it’s always nice when there’s plenty o’ knobs, right? Count ’em – 18! Great real-time control, for live or recording, in a nice portable package. Bundled with exclusive editing software so you can edit the parameters in full detail right on your PC. You can also use any of the voices from the growing AN1x sound library with the AN200.
Last week, in honor of Friday the 13th, we started a thread of studio and stage horror stories. We’ve had some interesting responses so far that we’re publishing today, but there have to be a TON more excellent ones out there. Send yours in so we can all get a good laugh, or cry with you as appropriate.
Doug Krehbiel
We had a gig in a church basement and for a youth group. Half an hour before the show, we heard a pop and our PA head was fried. Luckily I had a friend in town who loaned me his head and rescued the gig for us five minutes before we were to go on. I chalked the failure up to age and normal wear of the PA. It cost around $100 to repair it. …but wait ….the story ain’t over. Eight months later, we are asked back to do another gig in the same church basement. We plug into the same outlet without a second thought and pop goes the PA head again! Turned out to be a faulty outlet at the church. The church was so conscientious about the problem that they reimbursed us for both repairs!
(Ed – We’d love to know what was faulty about it. Presumably the head you borrowed was not plugged into this allegedly faulty outlet.)
Dick Starnes
Years ago, when I was playing in a hard rock band, I purchased a Hush noise reduction unit to solve some buzz problems. The drummer and I (I’m a guitar player) hooked the unit up to our mixer in our basement practice studio. We were amazed at how much gain we could get without it feeding back. Then I spoke into the mic. That was 20 years ago and my ears have not stopped ringing yet. We blew the monitors as well as our ear drums.
Keith Mohr
Every now and then I would get some rappers who wanted to lay tracks at my studio. My normal practice is to check out potential clients first, but these guys were elusive to what they were doing because they didn’t want anyone to “steal” their rhymes. They wouldn’t let me hear any of them until they cut them.
So, we laid down the usual 808 drum loops and samples…Then, it came time to cut the first vocal. The studio I was working out of was in the middle of nowheresville, and the first rapper comes into the room with a long trench coat on, steps up to the mic, and pulls out a Glock semi-Automatic and cocks the trigger right in the mic…. I’m like….”woahhhhh dude!” I stop rolling the tape. I realize I’m the only one in the studio with 3 rapper dudes with a gun! I called all 3 of them into the control room, sat them down and gently persuaded them to leave, after I gave them all their money back of course.
I learned my lesson. No one cuts anything in my studio without me first hearing a demo and a read of their lyrics!
Felton Spencer
I had a band in my studio one day who wanted a special effect on their drum sound. After I got the kit all miked up and checked the drummer poured water on all his heads. I didn’t notice this until the started playing the track. When he came in water was splashing everywhere: on their instruments, on them, and most importantly on my mics. It took some effort to convince him there would be no water in the studio like this. He had evidently been used to doing it at live shows.
David Stewart (inSync editor)
A band I was in used to routinely play on a riverboat in Louisville, where I’m from. The Belle of Louisville is a three-story riverboat with a big red paddle wheel. It’s very old, but is a mainstay of the Ohio River around Louisville, routinely doing cruises, parties, etc. One night we were playing when a very severe storm hit us (if you live in the Midwest you know what I’m talking about). We were miles from the city up river. On stage I wasn’t even aware of it until the Captain showed up next to the stage. He motioned me over while we were playing and explained to me that we were about to get hit hard and that they were about to run the boat aground to avoid anything that might happen out in the river. And he explained that it was up to us to keep everyone calm when we hit ground and of course to explain the situation beforehand. So here is the captain of the boat telling a musician who is on stage with tons of electrical equipment during an electrical storm that when we run aground he needs to keep the audience calm.
We stopped the song we were playing and I explained what was happening to the audience and requested they remain calm. Put yourself in their shoes. Some long haired guy playing bass in a band is telling you to remain calm when the boat you are on in a storm runs aground. I’ll never know how much impact my words really had, but things did work out fine. We hit ground pretty hard, the electricity went out for a moment, but once we picked ourselves up and got all the equipment stabilized we were able to continue the show and everyone had a great time. Since we were so far up river we ended up playing two extra sets while we waited for conditions to improve enough to get the boat out on the river and return.
Send us your stories.