Fringe Benefits – part two

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Tanmay

Today was a long and tiring day. We had an 8 am setup and soundcheck. Luckily, we had Marz with us or we would still be there right now.. The Mysterious room in the New Town Theatre is located below the much larger and impressive Majestic room – the main hall of the Freemasons. The building is old and designed in the gothic style, with a huge dome and natural light flooding the place. That’s the Majestic. The Mysterious is cosier and has the vibe of an underground bar, albiet with great acoustics – all churches have beautiful acoustics. This isnt exactly a church, but you get the drift.

The Mysterious room is perfect for our band.. the audience is in our face, just like the way we like it. A good dancefloor and an array of lights with a small bar at the side, the stage comfortably fits all the members of the band and our gear.

So, here’s our soundcheck in pictures. Enjoy!

Walk the line

Martin for the people

Austrian Delights - better than sausages

We’ve just acquired a bunch of AKG mics. The Austrian manufacturer became our choice for microphones after much deliberation and research. We’ve got a Drum kit set consisting of a D112, 2 C1000S’s, 2 C518′s, we got a couple of clip on C518′s as well for sax, congas as well as some C1000S’s for percussion. A couple of D5′s for vocals and backing as well as the only non AKG mic, the Sm57 for Guitar cabinet.

Hip hop kit overview

JJ’s got himself a spanking Mapex Hip Hop Kit with a tiny kick drum and a tinier floor tom. We’ve got a D112 on the kick, the 1000′s for overheads and 518’2 for everything else. As usual, he’s got a variety of Istanbul cymbals. My favourite one being the Xs expression Fx crash on the left. Its a beauty.

JJ's Pearl Reference Series Snare Drum

Zara and Line6 was always the best combo

Stu’s going into an Ashdown  vintage solid state combo straight from the POD. Stu has been nursing a very seriousSuper Mario Bros (SNES version) addiction on this trip. So between checks, he got his game face on and his calves flexed. Its amazing how Mario doesn’t get serious head injuries from headbutting all those bricks. Maybe its the hat.

Classic games are like cocaine

We can work it out

These congas didn't get wood.

Marz set up AL’s congas with a 518 on each. Goldy is determined to destroy the LP table. (“I could have made it in Lohar chawl man!”)

Bedroom Red

Here’s LC’s keyboard setup – a nord electro 3 with a midi keyboard. We decided to trash the midi keys, and just use the Swedish masterpiece. Here’s another thing that Goldy wants to destroy. (“This is just nord happening OK!”)
Our last three shows in Mumbai were cancelled. Goldy believes that this is so because we didn’t break a coconut the day the nord arrived.

Traditional Tone

My guitar setup is fairly simple. A Gibson ES 339 paired with a Fender Twin miced with a 57. Stu and I had our Gibsons set up and fine tuned by arguably the best guitar tech in Mumbai – Mr Sunil Shinde.

Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky..

Ive got a signal path that goes something like this – Digitech Multi Pedal> MXR Micro amp > MXR Dyna Comp > Ibanez Ts9 tubescreamer > Boss DD2 Digital Delay > MXR Stereo Chorus (my favourite pedal!) > ElectroHarmonix Micro QTron > ElectroHarmonix Holy Grail Reverb > Sansamp EQ/DI > Mixer and Amp. On the bottom is the channel select footswitch for the Twin – didn’t realize how valuable this is till i started using it!

The boxes dont fit in our ears

Aazin and Ryan got AKG IVM 4 in ear monitors for themselves. To save their hearing from being permanently damaged by playing in the band. Has anyone heard the Grateful Dead classic ‘Playing in the Band’. Listen to it, preferably on headphones. Its a trip.

Wired

Our patchbay got a little complicated. Thats what happens when you have so many people on stage. We have to roll out the patchybay and reconnect all the cables for each gig; a major pain in the ass. Being in a band sure is hard work..you have to make a lot of connections to get anywhere in the music business.

Ryan's happy with the sound

Marz is happy with the sound too

Marz is mixing the band on a Yamaha LS9 console. We’re recording all the shows for a live album through our new Dante Card (the wonders of ethernet audio). More on this later

In case things got out of hand...

I miss Murfy

Thats our soundcheck. We’ve got our first gig at the Mysterious tomorrow night and after that we’ve got a 1 am set at the Spiegel Tent on Princes Street- a special gig for ‘The List’ – one of Edinburgh’s finest entertainment and arts publications. Its going to be an exciting run of shows and i can’t wait to get cracking.