Hello from Skinny Puppy and London After Midnight

    Did some MAJOR hard drive clean up and cloning tonight... I'm ready for WGT with my backup system. Going to use the backup for rehearsal tomorrow. I'm controlling both Kemper's via MIDI. One is hooked up to my MOTU (going over MIDI channel 11), my other one is patched from the MIDI THRU on Kemper #1 (via MIDI Channel 12). Aaaaaaaand it works perfectly =) I've done a lot of fly dates, this is the first time I've ever carried my amp on the plane with me. I'm VERY happy about this =)


    Anyway, another long day of work. Just fighting off cabin fever at this point :P

    @ project_grudge Didn't make it to that monument, I saw friends of mine did (namely JD from the band Grendel). Looks like a super cool place!


    As for the show, wow.... what a day! The numbers I heard were around 12,000 people in Agra Hall to see our show. That afternoon I had, without exaggerating, the worst sound check of my life. Everything was fine until the video guy showed up 90 minutes late (German punctuality my ass!). He plugged in and basically ruined everything. So much noise was introduced into the system it was unbearable. Oddly enough not through the interface, it added noise to the guitars and bass. It was a house electrical problem, they tried to run down the problem with no success. We ran a couple songs, with the noise, and the un-thinkable happened... our backing tracks skipped. First time this set up (that's 100% mine) has done that. Solid state drive... no idea how that's even possible. Everything was going wrong and we had to leave the stage, we were already 20 minutes over our allotted sound check time. Looking back.... if the video guy had been on time we could have solved the issue right then and there.


    That afternoon was intensely stressful. Sean (the singer for London After Midnight) and I figured out a way to separate the video and audio signal. I have a complete redundant backup system. I have 2 identical computers with cloned solid state drives and 2 audio interfaces (MOTU 828 and Apollo Quad). We ran video from one machine and audio from the other, completely isolated the two signals. As for the skipping... the only thing we could figure was the INSANE amount of shaking. The sub woofers were under the lip of the stage, playback was back by our drummer. So- I took the pillows out of my room and put the 2 laptops on those. This was theoretical, didn't know if it was the hard drive/interface or what. There's padding for a laptop on my rack case already. We just added more padding with the pillows.


    Showtime. We run power from video land for the video computer. Set up both machines side by side with the same Ableton Live sessions. Hit space bar on both machines and waited. The Kempers both switched to the right channels (okay, midi is working). Video and Audio matched up perfectly (good, good). I had my schmancy new in ear monitors in, no skipping on playback. And.... we had an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC SHOW!!!!! I can't even begin to describe the emotional roller coaster I went through that day. I'm just so thankful everything worked flawlessly and the show went so well. After the show I showered/changed and went out with friends. Lots of people came up to me with glowing reviews of the performance. The owner of the record label was there, our booking agent was there, not to mention all of our fans... this was a big show. Not going to lie, I'm feeling really really good about it =)


    And the Kempers were freaking fantastic. We staged them on the rolling riser with the drum set. They wheeled it out, it was already patched. Good to go! I wish everyone could have seen our sound guys face when we rolled those out. He was VERY happy to see them =)


    So, that was my big adventure last weekend. Carried the Kemper on the plane (Lufthansa super sucks BTW but that's another rant). Going to do it all over again in Canada a couple weeks from now.


    Big huge hugs from Matthew land, hope everyone is doing well.



    M =)

    Haha, man what a ride.


    We've ha a SSD skip once, and it was due to electricity problems for all that we figured out....Battery operation for laptops is safest, but it depends on your set length of course!

    Quote from viabcroce

    You can also empower the laptop from the mains, batteries will act like a power unit in case of troubles. But this goes to the detriment of batteries a bit.


    Yes it will, but it's not uncommon that there's a glitch/skip when going from mains to battery. Especially with external soundcards.

    Thanks for the reply guys, my only guess is the sudden motion sensor. I thought it was deactivated, I was wrong. You have to go in the terminal to deactivate that thing. I did that on my main computer and the backup. I hope that NEVER happens again!! I've been talking with my music making friends here in LA, nobody has a straight answer. Wonderful.


    I had a teacher at CalArts once tell me "pursuing a career in music... you probably won't make a ton of money, BUT you will have stories!" She was absolutely right. No mid-life crisis in my future =)

    Some pics from Amnesia Rock Fest with Skinny Puppy =) My Kemper was beeeeutiful! I saw a lot of them that day, they're quite popular for touring bands. I wonder why!! :P


    https://www.facebook.com/photo…2237915069&type=3&theater
    https://www.facebook.com/photo…2237915069&type=3&theater
    https://www.facebook.com/photo…2237915069&type=3&theater
    https://www.facebook.com/photo…2237915069&type=3&theater


    Finally got a shot with my Kemper at the bottom there. These are pics from a facebook group, I hope they work for everyone!! If not let me know, I'll figure something out.

    @ JerEvil


    I've run the Kemper live for 3/4 of my projects... soon to be 4/4. I use a lot of EFX in my sound and this little guy has me dialed!! I LOVE this thing. My signal flow for SP is like this:


    ->WX gtr into Kemper
    ->Direct out of Kemper into my Apollo Quad
    I'm amp modeling and sculpting my live vocals with UAD plugins
    I'm sending FOH 2 guitar signals, Kemper and Apollo
    ->XLR Main Outs from Kemper go to FOH
    ->Power amp output goes to a cab on the side of the stage
    This is not mic'd, just for my stage volume
    ->Apollo Quad gtr outputs go to a rack DI along with my processed VOX
    These are both L&R
    At the moment I'm 6 inputs, all direct no microphones
    Gtr1 L&R, Gtr2 L&R, VOX L&R
    This *may* change for the fall tour… we'll see


    As for control I'm using a Keith McMillan SoftStep
    ->Pedal->USBcable->Laptop
    ->Laptop->MIDI interface->Kemper
    The Kemper control is seamless, the UAD however… that took some finesse.
    I wrote a Max/MSP patch to control programmed mouse movements to change
    my guitar patches and VOX patches.
    There's no MIDI control for the UAD stuff, input monitoring is great… but I make changes for all the songs. That's how I solved that little monster.


    I'm sub mixing my gtr signals + my VOX + tracks for my in ears
    In other words… I'm handling my own monitor mix, which suits me just fine

    Wow! That sounds pretty damned awesome!