Good Gig, Bad Gig.

Wednesday night wedding, 33 people in a room which holds 130.
No information from the B&G - literally nothing, no first dance, no timings not even names. Whenever I contacted them they just said they would leave everything to me as have seen me before so know I am capable.

Luckily for me it was in one of my residencies and the B&G were like this with everyone - 'just do what you think'.

So what could go wrong ? Amazingly absolutely nothing. An impromtu first dance, at least 10 people on the dancefloor all night and not one song request from anybody despite my efforts to get a feel for what they wanted - I even got fed and watered.

Could do with more like that, I think at the moment B&G always try to be too much in control, especially with song choices, but this was a welcome change.

Oh yuss....I'm sitting here with my traditional glass or three of Pinot Grigio with a massive smile on my chops, and considerably less hair than I left home with.....let me explain.....

The gig itself - absolutely AWESOME. The B&G booked me no less than 26 months ago. I've met and conversed electronically with them many times since then and got to know them really well....it was ALWAYS going to be a good night.

The venue - literally 6 miles from my front door, but down a horrid fen track full of ruts and bumps. Yup....it's a barn in the middle of nowhere. It's a family run affair that only does 10 weddings a year (May to September because they can't/don't heat the place!) and they're always friendly, even bringing fresh coffee every hour on the hour from the bar :). What's not to like?

The playlist had been provided by the guests via their invitations....by the bucket load! 8 hours of music for a 4-5 hour set (only a dozen were must plays), so lots to choose from. It had the potential to be one of those nights you can go on and on with and didn't disappoint. Never did the dance floor empty, requests on the night came in aplenty (and believe me, everything from 70s disco to really heavy metal made an appearance).

I'd originally been booked until 11pm, and questioned this during our final meeting because the venue license goes until midnight. When they originally booked, the venue itself stipulated the 11pm finish but have since changed their rules. So, it was a potential hour's overtime - no problem.

As it happened, the bride came up at half ten and admitted she'd had enough and was ready for bed....could I finish at 11pm as originally planned? No problem - the dance floor is still rammed, let's leave them on a high and wanting more. Never Forget by Take That (her choice of last song) rumbled out with a massive circle of love and it's time to pack up and go home.

LOTS of hugs from bride and groom and the promise of 5* reviews - happy, smiliing faces...brilliant! Job done :)

The venue wanted me to stay for drinkies (because my word they were tucking in!)....unfortunately I have a van and the only driving license in the household....next time they've told me to take a sleeping bag with me! I might consider that!

Having said it was an awesome night - there was one huge, glaringly obvious problem to me this evening :(......my lighting.

Now, as already mentioned, I've been in this venue before (another banging night I might add), but on that occasion used my wirelessly controlled LOVE letters which went, well.....a bit funny on the night. I didn't think anything more of it after bringing them home to test and finding they worked OK. I just put it down to one of those things.

Since that night, I've gone over to LightRider to control my lighting....everything is wireless and it works a treat....apart from tonight :mad::mad::mad:.

For some reason, I just couldn't get anything to talk to each other no matter what I did (including using different dongles, transmitters and my backup tablet)....NOTHING worked! EEEEK! I literally exhausted all of my backup options!

Now with the LightRider kit, there IS an option to hard-wire from the dongle to the fixtures (and yes...I did that). There ISN'T an option to go from the iPad/Kindle Fire direct to the dongle though....and THIS is where the problem was. The signal for some reason was being interrupted and worked for a couple of seconds and then died.

Turns out the photographer (who I know very well and who also carries a hell of a lot of backup kit) was also having problems with his wireless flashes....they weren't flashing (that said, he got some absolutely brilliant shots of the evening under a lot of pressure due to failing kit!).

So with all backups exhausted, it's sound to light mode on all of my fixtures. Being Chauvet based, the S2L programs aren't actually too bad, apart from the Intimidators which go like the proverbial blind flying rodents from the underworld! Hey ho....it's the best I can do with no other options.

Do you know what? Nobody noticed!

I'd explained to the B&G what was going on (because they'd seen me a bit fraught plugging and unplugging things etc.), and they really didn't know I wasn't controlling things.

I noticed! I have different "shows" for different moods....I felt like I was letting them down big time....they really WEREN'T worried though...phew!

I know for fact that I'll bring everything home later today and it'll just "work" as it should do. Something in that venue was interfering with WiFi signals (maybe the fact that it's a huge corrugated iron barn?), and not just my kit....but the togger's as well....weird!

So - a brilliant night with a lot of technical problems....but I got away with it :)

Now it's time to relax for a week in a bolt-hole in deepest, darkest Wales. This year has been a rollercoaster so far what with redundancy, Liz having a seizure out of the blue and many other things I haven't mentioned....we both need to "disappear" for a week and recharge our batteries

Next gig is in a couple of weeks which could be "interesting". It's a 33rd birthday(?) with a "Retro Botanical" theme in my local village hall. Yup...the 80s roadshow is going out again with a playlist from the 90s and the naughties....hmmm.....

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Originally Posted by Imagine

The venue wanted me to stay for drinkies (because my word they were tucking in!)....unfortunately I have a van and the only driving license in the household....next time they've told me to take a sleeping bag with me! I might consider that!

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Had the Marquee party of a lifetime much like yours, Wayne. Told the hostess I'd considered sleeping bag in the van option. Her response was that there were plenty of rooms in the house!!! :eek::D

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Originally Posted by Imagine

Having said it was an awesome night - there was one huge, glaringly obvious problem to me this evening :(......my lighting.


For some reason, I just couldn't get anything to talk to each other no matter what I did (including using different dongles, transmitters and my backup tablet)....NOTHING worked! EEEEK! I literally exhausted all of my backup options!



Hey ho....it's the best I can do with no other options.

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Wayne!! :eek::mad::confused:

You :muppet:

From the Excalibur school of Youcan'tbeatsimpleIcandosimple: You can drive a pair of 305s with one. ;);):):) Get your hand in your pocket at Simeon's open night.

OK, my gig. At a local Cricket Club again, covering for Dave Jackson.

Wish I could be smug about it, but I almost had the same problem as Wayne, for different reasons. :o:o Decided to use just two metre long Stagg bars and the newly acquired Chauvet 305 scanners. I need more testing of controlling the scanners. I got them working more than acceptably while fending off the anklebiters. They're certainly impressive, and will add the missing link to my show. :)

Mine was a 50th Birthday surprise, and many of the guest had young children. Many young children. Energetic young children. ( I played Baby Shark three times ). :(:( We had a slow start to the night, with all requests coming from the under 15s. Whoopee. We slowly got into the spirit of things, and were going nicely, until parents started to take their young, tired offspring home. By 11pm I was down to 10 people, and banking on an early night. Oh no! The remaining guests were determined to take it to the limit, and we got very close to the planned finish time. All in all, a good night, if a learning curve.

Much like Wayne's, eh Wayne? :whistle:

PS. I might have a baffling story of my own ofvenue specific woes, to impart to you over the phone some time, so you're not alone. Mine cost more to cure than £36 though, and maybe I didn't need to spend anything. :cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

An awesome gig last night.

A 60th birthday - themed as a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

And wow, the decoration was incredible. An event's company provided full decoration with no expense spared. There was even a fully working water fountain in the reception area!

The guests all joined in, with some incredible costumes being worn!

There had been a lack of contact from the client, so myself and the event's company shared responsibilities and just made it work on the night! The timeline went out of the window, and much of the entertainment started earlier than planned, which is a good thing, as the timeline was otherwise quite ambitious.

I didn't play a song until just before 11pm!

Up to that point there had been a band (but one that didn't require any amplification and walked around the room), characters from Alice in Wonderland, bouncing rabbit on stilts, karaoke and circus act.

The bands second set had got everyone dancing, and by the time I started it was the first chance the guests had to have a chat, so they quickly went out to the bar leaving a handful on the dancefloor. The requirements of the evening were 'classics' being an older audience. And in a 2 hour set I was able to just bang out the classics. They soon returned, and it kept building and building right up to the 1am finish with the final song being a karaoke version of Wonderwall. Considering many of the guests were up playing golf at 9am that day as part of the birthday bash, they certainly weren't in the mood for retiring to bed!

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Originally Posted by Imagine

Having said it was an awesome night - there was one huge, glaringly obvious problem to me this evening :(......my lighting.

Now, as already mentioned, I've been in this venue before (another banging night I might add), but on that occasion used my wirelessly controlled LOVE letters which went, well.....a bit funny on the night. I didn't think anything more of it after bringing them home to test and finding they worked OK. I just put it down to one of those things.

Since that night, I've gone over to LightRider to control my lighting....everything is wireless and it works a treat....apart from tonight :mad::mad::mad:.

For some reason, I just couldn't get anything to talk to each other no matter what I did (including using different dongles, transmitters and my backup tablet)....NOTHING worked! EEEEK! I literally exhausted all of my backup options!

Now with the LightRider kit, there IS an option to hard-wire from the dongle to the fixtures (and yes...I did that). There ISN'T an option to go from the iPad/Kindle Fire direct to the dongle though....and THIS is where the problem was. The signal for some reason was being interrupted and worked for a couple of seconds and then died.

Turns out the photographer (who I know very well and who also carries a hell of a lot of backup kit) was also having problems with his wireless flashes....they weren't flashing (that said, he got some absolutely brilliant shots of the evening under a lot of pressure due to failing kit!).

So with all backups exhausted, it's sound to light mode on all of my fixtures. Being Chauvet based, the S2L programs aren't actually too bad, apart from the Intimidators which go like the proverbial blind flying rodents from the underworld! Hey ho....it's the best I can do with no other options.

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Sounds like a great team the venue have!

Regarding the lighting, is there any other WiFi connections showing (possibly even hiding) on the list of networks?

There's one venue we play at from time to time and the first time we was there we only had partial control of the lighting before error messages kept appearing on the iPad. (:Censored:, panic!)

I had to find the closet plug to a door and walk out to the golf greens to only pick my ADJ Airstream up and change the WiFi channel of the ADJ. This solved it and worked perfectly every time we went back!

TL: DR Try changing the WiFi channel your system is running on. Sounds like a crossover in frequency.

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Originally Posted by DJWilson

Sounds like a great team the venue have!

Regarding the lighting, is there any other WiFi connections showing (possibly even hiding) on the list of networks?

There's one venue we play at from time to time and the first time we was there we only had partial control of the lighting before error messages kept appearing on the iPad. (:Censored:, panic!)

I had to find the closet plug to a door and walk out to the golf greens to only pick my ADJ Airstream up and change the WiFi channel of the ADJ. This solved it and worked perfectly every time we went back!

TL: DR Try changing the WiFi channel your system is running on. Sounds like a crossover in frequency.

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Tried that (LightRider has an app which lets you set the channel it's working on). The venue have several WiFi networks for guest access blasting across multiple channels because they themselves struggle with an signals. They turned all bar one of those off as well just to test.

My thinking at the moment, bear in mind that the "barn" is essentially a corrugated iron tunnel, is that it was some sort of Faraday cage effect with signals being blasted everywhere except where they're supposed to be going. Outside the building, the photographer's flash guns worked faultlessly, inside, nothing.

Interestingly, I've had LightRider connected here at home this morning for the past couple of hours with absolutely no drop-outs.

I don't do too many gigs in there (they themselves only host 10 a year as a maximum), but I'll be ready with a hard-wired solution for next time.

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Originally Posted by Imagine

My thinking at the moment, bear in mind that the "barn" is essentially a corrugated iron tunnel,

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Bloody hell, Wayne, you're working in a Nissen hut! ;) ( And for our younger readers, no it's not a misspelling of a Japanese car ).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Imagine

I don't do too many gigs in there (they themselves only host 10 a year as a maximum), but I'll be ready with a hard-wired solution for next time.

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Hmmmm. Older DJs sceptical of this voodoo you children use would never leave home without one. :p:p

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Originally Posted by Excalibur

Bloody hell, Wayne, you're working in a Nissen hut! ;) ( And for our younger readers, no it's not a misspelling of a Japanese car ).

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Correctomundo :)

Attachment 18721

Or as my soon to be sister-in-law described it when she was looking for a wedding venue, "it looks like a giant condom inside" :o


Attachment 18722

Bearing in mind that I've now been playing at the same venue for almost a year (is it really that long), for one night only, my Chauvet Freedom Sticks started playing up, not following instructions from the master. I tried swopping their positions and changed some of the various settings. I came to the conclusion that the band working alongside had several radio linked items, so thought that looked like the problem had something to do with them. So I turned them off. The band went about 11pm so once they had gone, I tried again and bingo, everything worked fine, all mirroring each other like they should.

I've got some Chauvet 305's too (2 scanners, 2 barrels) and, being a DMX hater of huge proportions, I control mine using the Chauvet IRC controller. I split the two masters on each side if the rig, then cross connect with the other of the pair. That way, controlling the barrels say, the scanner master won't pick up the IR signal. I tend to have them on Auto, rather than sound, that way you can run them at less than the speed of light (if you get what I mean).

Peter, you succumbed then - is it the 305 scanners you've got, like mine?

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Originally Posted by mattydj50

Bearing in mind that I've now been playing at the same venue for almost a year

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Funnily enough, it seems longer.

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Originally Posted by mattydj50

I've got some Chauvet 305's too (2 scanners, 2 barrels) and, being a DMX hater of huge proportions,

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As long as it's got faders to push, I've got a fighting chance of lighting it up :) I on the other hand am not a fan of hand held remotes. Each to his/her own.

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Originally Posted by mattydj50

Peter, you succumbed then - is it the 305 scanners you've got, like mine?

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Err, :whistle:

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Originally Posted by Excalibur

Decided to use just two metre long Stagg bars and the newly acquired Chauvet 305 scanners. I need more testing of controlling the scanners.

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I thought I gave you a big clue by saying Chauvet 305 Scanners. :p:D:D
I'm already overjoyed with their output, disappointed with the stock gobos ( but don't worry, there's a cunning plan for some wedding friendly new ones, Baldrick :) ), and not fully across the DMX channels yet, but getting there. Very happy so far.