How do you handle a "crisis" on a remote?

[joelpatterson]

I guess the ultimate kind of crises are undealable-- talking about remote recording a show, a total crisis I guess means losing the recording, *poof!*

But a crisis of a lower order-- and say this is a pro-bono-ish remote, you're capturing a coffee house act on your Sony PCM-D50 as a favor, more or less.

Well, you live and learn something-- like how suddenly the batteries can discharge when you least expect it-- and how easy it is, really, when the machine is mounted on a tripod, to slip the battery pack out, replace them with fresh ones from your pocket, and slip it back in, all relatively innocuously!

And you maybe THOUGHT this blues duo wouldn't care so much about their cover of "Ain't Too Proud To Beg," but then you hear, of the rare times they will do any cover-- this is one they really, really like.

So: you loop a bit of it, you fade it in, you make it work, I mean-- you are a magician, right?

Ain't Too Proud To Beg Remix - Holly & Evan.mp3 - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

So: you loop a bit of it, you fade it in, you make it work, I mean-- you are a magician, right?

Ain't Too Proud To Beg Remix - Holly & Evan.mp3 - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

Nice work! It's great that we in these days have the tools to make the best of a slight mishap and save the day!

I had one of those almost seven years ago when I was recording a choir concert, while also singing in the choir. There were two girls playing in the sacristy, accidentally hitting "space" on my keyboard, stopping the recording. They probably found out what they had done, as the recording started again about 20 seconds later. This was an a cappella choir song where the second verse was almost entirely ruined. Fortunately, the ending of two verses were almost the same so I cut out the ending of verse two and put it on top of verse one. Saved that song and casual listeners probably won't mind...

[JonesH]

Originally Posted by Mats H

Nice work!
I had one of those almost seven years ago when I was recording a choir concert, while also singing in the choir. There were two girls playing in the sacristy, accidentally hitting "space" on my keyboard, stopping the recording.

Nice, Mats!
You can do almost whatever with a capella choir, it's really flexible when editing... lately I haven't had any disasters, but some time ago, a friend "borrowed" my MacBook charger from my recording case and I wound up with no power 15 minutes into the organ recital. That was interesting and awful.

[joelpatterson]

Originally Posted by Mats H

... so I cut out the ending of verse two and put it on top of verse one....

Wow. TOTALLY undetectable!

[Gerax]

Lately my ISA428 started to glitch on CH1 (which obviously is used as my main L channel) in a strange way: it looks like you've set up the right gain (which looks almost identical to CH2 which gets my main R) and all of a sudden it drops like 15 dbs!!! This usually happens when the pre is completely warmed up, then it's fine...but what if that happens when you have to set up and start recording a live gig in like 30 minutes? You get one of you main channels to drop so low in level (and coincidentally sounding quite funny with EQ) for like 30 seconds untill you slowly bring the gain up to the right level...
Then in post you edit the whole section with the same passage from rehearsals...automate some EQ back so that the clients cannot notice anything in the delivered tracks...

Then you rush your pre to the service center...

I'll see if I can post a snippet from the gig...

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

Wow. TOTALLY undetectable!

Joel, thx!

Johannes, yeah, A cappella choir is very editable Too bad about the organ recital!

[pkautzsch]

Originally Posted by Gerax

Lately my ISA428 started to glitch on CH1 (which obviously is used as my main L channel) in a strange way: it looks like you've set up the right gain (which looks almost identical to CH2 which gets my main R) and all of a sudden it drops like 15 dbs!!! This usually happens when the pre is completely warmed up, then it's fine...but what if that happens when you have to set up and start recording a live gig in like 30 minutes? You get one of you main channels to drop so low in level (and coincidentally sounding quite funny with EQ) for like 30 seconds untill you slowly bring the gain up to the right level...
Then in post you edit the whole section with the same passage from rehearsals...automate some EQ back so that the clients cannot notice anything in the delivered tracks...

Then you rush your pre to the service center...

I'll see if I can post a snippet from the gig...

Does it have a mic/line switch? Found the mic/line sensitivity switches on my MOTU896 to sometimes change their position to "line" when it gets warmer. Of course, I found out on a live recording.

[Richard King]

Originally Posted by Mats H

Nice work! It's great that we in these days have the tools to make the best of a slight mishap and save the day!

I had one of those almost seven years ago when I was recording a choir concert, while also singing in the choir. There were two girls playing in the sacristy, accidentally hitting "space" on my keyboard, stopping the recording. They probably found out what they had done, as the recording started again about 20 seconds later. This was an a cappella choir song where the second verse was almost entirely ruined. Fortunately, the ending of two verses were almost the same so I cut out the ending of verse two and put it on top of verse one. Saved that song and casual listeners probably won't mind...

Mats Helgesson
LIVING SOUND

Nicely done. I had a similar experience MANY years ago. I was recording the Edwin Hawkins Singers (a rhythm section, bass, piano, drums, and a small choir, etc.) backed by a (approx) 500 voice choir made up of members of all the black churches in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul). A great time was had by all. During the singing of "Oh Happy Day", the highlight of the performance the live sound guy goofed and created a couple seconds of feedback in the middle of one of the verses. Needless to say, I didn't want that on the recording, so, after mixdown I made a copy of the second verse and dropped in in place of the first verse. In this case it ended up being, as Herman would say, "second verse, same as the first". This was all done with analog tape, china marker and razor blade being about 1976. When I presented the final product to the customer and he played it back he commented that he never noticed during the performance that the singer messed up and sang the second verse as the first verse. I did tell him what happened though and he thought it was pretty good.