Songfight! Boston August 12-13 (I Know My Rights)

Post by jb » Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:17 pm

Google Map from City Club to Zeitgeist Gallery:

http://maps.google.com/maps?spn=0.01414 ... e+MA&hl=en

starfinger · Post by **starfinger** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:23 pm

i just booked my room at the holiday inn, and I got so wrapped up in the moment that I got it for Friday night too, so me and the family are coming for the whole thing after all.

hurray.

-craig

Sober · Post by **Sober** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:28 pm

Awesome. I've got my tickets, and now I need a roomie! I've pm'ed Roymond, but I'm not sure if he's bringing family or anything, which would certainly rule him out.

Anyone else staying at the Holiday Inn?

Post by **Spud** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:05 pm

Clarification Request: So you have retained the JamSpot for practice? Or is there another practice space in play?

also: excellent, dude.

SPUD

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:58 pm

Spud wrote:Clarification Request: So you have retained the JamSpot for practice?

Correct.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:25 pm

The new digs sound awesome. Another few clarifications, though (NOT complaints): we will need to bring gear to the new place? Drums/guitars/amps/keyboards/etc./etc.? It sounds like this place will have a PA, though, right?

drë · Post by **drë** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:04 pm

bzl wrote:.... and the room comes with its own cash bar and cash bartender, which is the best of both worlds, speaking alcoholically.

not to sound like an alcoholic myself, but
<b>whhhoooppiii</b>

Responsible drinking usually gives thing a more festive mood.

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:09 am

Lunkhead wrote:we will need to bring gear to the new place? Drums/guitars/amps/keyboards/etc./etc.? It sounds like this place will have a PA, though, right?

We'll need to bring everything, including a PA. We've actually got a lot of it taken care of already, so don't worry, especially since you're coming from far away. Most of the stuff that we'd like to have that isn't spoken for yet is stuff that wouldn't be realistic to fly with- mike stands, monitor speakers, etc. The info on who's bringing what is a little scattered right now; organizing that is on the to-do list.

Also, the room will be empty for at least a couple of hours before we start, and it's okay to show up early to load in and set up at a leisurely pace.

Of course, you're welcome to bring anything you like. As long as we have enough guitars, for example, there's no reason not to have more. A lot of people are more comfortable playing their own guitar, too. My lists are just to make sure we don't end up missing something important at the last minute.

It wouldn't hurt to toss a couple of cables or a guitar strap or some power strips or something in a suitacse, though. Can't never have too many of those useful sorts of things.

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:50 am

everyone pack a power strip.

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:45 pm

K, posted in the thread pertaining to coming and I'm coming. Unless some freak accident happens I'm there. Yeeeeeehaaaaaaa. I want to play if there's room and if there's not then I'll cheer in the b/g getting drunk and whooping y'all on.

Leaf · Post by **Leaf** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:50 pm

blue wrote:everyone pack a power strip.

Excellent advice.

The real go getters would bring:

tuner
extra 1/4 cable
extra xlr
drum key
pack of strings

A freak would bring:

extra drum heads
piccolo snare for "those funky tunes"
theatre makeup
pack of FIVE string bass strings
various straps in interesting design patterns
Canadian beer
Sandwich meats
12 pak of trojans
swim shorts
pistol.

and a towel.

Since I'm not going...someone else better bring those items.

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:00 pm

THINGS THAT BEN CURRENTLY NEEDS

Two things that I would like to get squared away pretty soon. Please let me know if you can help with either. Or both!

1.) Video-taping. Need somebody, preferably in the area, who has access to some decent video cameras and equipment and such. Mainly this is so we can tape the whole weekend show. You don't have to do all the work yourself; I'm sure some other people would be willing to help out. Malachi C. did pretty much everything last year, which seemed to me to be a heroic amount of work. I just want to make sure the equipment is available; once everything is recorded, we can sort it out later.

I also have a couple of (mostly) unrelated projects for which I'll need the assistance of someone with a good pile of video equipment, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask now.

If nobody's able to do this, my back-up plans are to 1) go pester the FilmFight folks

and 2) use my own 1980s VHS camcorder, which may or may not actually 1) work, or 2) still exist. Other ideas welcome.

2.) Promotional materials. Printing posters, tee-shirts, etc, is another thing that I have no experience with. Bortwein made up some groovy shirts last year, and I assume he was responsible for the posters too. I did find one place on-line that will turn around orders pretty quickly for cheap, so we could theoretically put this off for another few weeks-- I'd like to wait as long as possible to get as accurate a list of attendees as possible. I've never done this before though, and I don't want to end up with super crappy stuff. Plus I have no graphic design skillz. (I have some ideas but yours are probably better, for all values of "you.")

3.) Canadian beer. Leaf isn't coming so someone else has to bring all the Labatt's.

As far as I know, the guys who took care of all this stuff last year will not be in Boston, so I don't want to go pester them directly.

Anyone who wants to help out with either thing, please let me know.

thanks!

Post by **Spud** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:37 am

Here is what we are calling it on the upcoming shows section of our website:

SongFight! Boston: Scheduled & Booked

Has a nice ring to it.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:27 am

I like 'Baked and Refried,' myself.

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 10:18 am

bzl wrote:THINGS THAT BEN CURRENTLY NEEDS

Two things that I would like to get squared away pretty soon. Please let me know if you can help with either. Or both!

1.) Video-taping. Need somebody, preferably in the area, who has access to some decent video cameras and equipment and such. Mainly this is so we can tape the whole weekend show. You don't have to do all the work yourself; I'm sure some other people would be willing to help out. Malachi C. did pretty much everything last year, which seemed to me to be a heroic amount of work. I just want to make sure the equipment is available; once everything is recorded, we can sort it out later.

3.) Canadian beer. Leaf isn't coming so someone else has to bring all the Labatt's.

Ok being Canuck and coming.... no brainer..... beer is there. Except I'll bring some Creemore Springs or something of the smaller brewery variety. I'll bring some Labatts too for you Ben. This is ofcourse if I can get it over the border.

Video wise I can borrow a mini-DV camera from a buddy of mine with a stereo mic that we could strategically place and I'll also bring my MD recorder to record a board feed that could probably be used in conjunction with the camera sound or what have you. These are small consumer type tools that won't be high end (but be pretty damn good).

As I work as a professional in the field of filming and the like it gets tricky for me to bring better gear as Customs and Homeland Security are being quite difficult about bringing too many costly items as I'll have to justify working and the like (which I"m not). My sound package won't come, but I'll bring some cheap wireless systems so that we could maybe do some interviews or whatever.

What would be a better deal is to get the stuff locally and I can help you run it. A camera that would preferably have XLR inputs would be best. Maybe it's something you can rent or borrow from someone in the area for the two days or con them into shooting it.

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:55 pm

How about the field equipment listed here, Tonetripper? You know better than I do what we'll need, but I suspect the VX2000 is more than adequate. I don't think my membership has expired yet, which means that I can probably get it free for the weekend, plus accessories and other equipment. The only catch is that I then have to produce something from the shoot to put on SCAT, but that's not so much a catch as it is an opportunity to run a promo for SongFight.

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 2:20 pm

Well you can't beat free. Just so you know though that the 2000 doesn't seem from what I viewed in the picture to have XLR inputs. This means that the mic input from an external source is probably mini stereo. There is a device called a Beach tech that converts the XLR signal into the mini plug-in. It has volume knobs on it as well. You could conceivably do one of two things. Use the mic on the camera which is fine for a room sound. Or use a board feed going into the beachtech and get levels or use a stereo mic placed somewhere in the space and hardwired in the camera.

In this type of capacity the camera mic is fine, but see if you can get the beachtech. It probably is something they have there. If it's free get it. And if it's not then don't. Nice to have the option. I've heard good things about the quality of the 2000 in terms of picture.

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:12 pm

Well, it says "XLR adapter" right there on the next line. :nevada:

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:15 pm

Er, wouldn't a dual 1/4" to 1/8" adaptor plugged into the board work pretty well too? Though live board has the major problem of not picking up much in the way of drums or crowd noise. The way I recorded the audio last year was I had two room mics and a mono feed from the "board" which I recorded onto separate tracks, and that seemed to work pretty well, though it'd have been better if I had stands for the mics.

(For mixing I fed each track into its own compressor and then fed the mix of those into a multiband compressor, and just adjusted each individual channel's levels to select the mix ratio while just letting the multiband compressor handle EQing and so on. It worked pretty well for a quick, efficient "master 10 hours of audio while everyone's begging to get their live set back" thing.)

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:26 pm

the Jazz wrote:How about the field equipment listed here, Tonetripper? You know better than I do what we'll need, but I suspect the VX2000 is more than adequate. I don't think my membership has expired yet, which means that I can probably get it free for the weekend, plus accessories and other equipment.

Jazz, would you mind looking into this, since you've got the connections there? Sounds like the SCAT equipment would be awesome. Overkill to the hilt, which only adds to the awesomeness. We might even be able to rent some time at their studio for post-production, though the only reason I can think of to do this would be for the fun of it.

One more thing to ask for might be some kind of small, separate monitor. That way whoever is running the camera wouldn't have to be staring into a little eyepiece all the time, and if something goes wrong we'd notice it sooner.

I'll admit that I'm not too worried about getting great sound on the video; stereo miking is probably fine. And simple, and quick, which is good, since we probably won't have extensive amounts of sound checking to tweak a more complicated setup. If we get anything better out of a multitracked audio recording like fluffy did last year, that's a bonus, and I guess we could dub it in later. Plus it would be good to have a simple audio mix available without having to do any extra mixing so that we could satisfy all those jerks (like me) who were demanding their songs right away.

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:54 am

So that's cool. It's got the xlr adapters. I couldn't see it. In a couple of the other reviews it says it was like the pd150 which doesn't have xlr inputs and you have to use the beachtech to transfer over. Great.

I'm also gonna bring down some cheap wireless mics I have and I think what would be cool is to grab the board feed and send to one channel of the camera (there is a built in compander in the unit - to beat the idea of compression), so that way a person can move with the camera while still getting the continuity of sound. I'm just gonna bring them cuz it might be a good way to keep the camera wireless. We could also plant a mic in the room with the other wireless transmitting back to camera. Might be good to do. I'll bring them anyway and you all can decide on the day.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:56 am

dre wrote:
bzl wrote:.... and the room comes with its own cash bar and cash bartender, which is the best of both worlds, speaking alcoholically.
not to sound like an alcoholic myself, but
<b>whhhoooppiii</b>

Responsible drinking usually gives thing a more festive mood.

Whats odd about this is that we'll meet and be drinking together nearly a thousand miles away from our homes that are less than 90 miles apart.