Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Mixed at a church with quite a budget rig in which one Berry 4ch compressor would occasionally power up with all channels at maximum gain reduction (and heavy distortion) regardless of control settings. Only solution wass to power it down and back up again.
One week, a newbie was mixing whom I thought had been trained well enough to check for this at soundcheck.
I duly turn up just at the start of the service, and quickly realise that said volunteer's training had defiinitely not been thorough enough, to the point that he hadn't even noticed it himself.
So I go over to sound booth to help sort it out, quickly muting the affected desk channels before cycling power on the comp and unmuting the desk channels again.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, yeah, just the fact that the volunteer had all the channel gains at max to try and squeeze something resembling adequate level out of the affected channels.

Cue mightily red face after the obligatory mad scramble to get them back down again before the feedback took the heads off the first half of the congregation + worship team.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Evan Kirkendall said:
My most "annoying" oops at a gig would be Warped Tour a few years ago... Day 1 for the band, everyone's looking at me like "Who is this kid?" Console was a H3k. I show up, line check in headphones, throw all the VCA's at 0(they were assigned to various things, but I didn't have time to change it to how I wanted) and get ready to go. First song starts off with an iPod intro- tracks are rolling along, vocals kick in and nothing is there. Vocals weren't assigned to the L/R, my bad, no worries. Band hits, nothing. I about lose my shit- the tech for the stage put all the vca's all the way down since I wasn't using them, but forgot to un-assign them! I quickly throw the VCA's back up and get to damage control. Band joked around with me about it on stage and it's always been a running joke.

Oh, and look, youtube has it again: All Time Low - Weightless (Live at Warped Tour '09) - YouTube


...And I think that's it!



Evan
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A very similar thing happened to me this weekend. Doing broadcast on an X32. FOH tech had setup the board before the event, I walked in and everything's pre-labelled, VCA's assigned (seven of the eight available), all good to go. VCA's 1-6 are bits of band, VCA 8 is vocals. VCA 7 is nothing. Sound check goes great. No problems. I haven't set up mute groups, so I just mute the VCA's. All eight of them, including the unused one.

Band goes on stage, I unmute VCA's and I get...vocals. And the crowd mics. NO BAND. Nothing. I go on comms, talk to the FOH guy, he can't help. Another tech is behind me, we're both trying to figure this out, still no band. Mute/unmute VCA's, mute/unmute individual channels, still nothing, we're two songs into a four song set. I give up, crank up the crowd mics, and run with it.
Band goes off, FOH tech heads to broadcast, and says, "Your band VCA is muted".

My what?

Turns out, VCA#7, the unused one, was indeed in use. And was assigned to the WHOLE BAND. But the backlight on the OLED was blown. Since he'd set it up on the PC, and just loaded it onto the X32, he never noticed the blown backlight. Not having set it up, I had no way of knowing the blank VCA was in use.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

I had an auction/dinner event where the auctioneer would walk about with a wireless mic that he might turn on at any time to use. He might not even be in the room.
So, I set things up so the 3 playback channels (music, TV, & PC) were in a group with a ducker inserted. That way, when he used the mic it ducked the music. I didn't anticipate that he would open his mic during the video from the PC causing the level to drop, then come back up, then drop.... I like bypass switches
Next year only the music playback gets ducked :)


Sent from my iPad HD
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Rob Spence said:
I had an auction/dinner event where the auctioneer would walk about with a wireless mic that he might turn on at any time to use. He might not even be in the room.
So, I set things up so the 3 playback channels (music, TV, & PC) were in a group with a ducker inserted. That way, when he used the mic it ducked the music. I didn't anticipate that he would open his mic during the video from the PC causing the level to drop, then come back up, then drop.... I like bypass switches
Next year only the music playback gets ducked :)
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You sure ducked up that one... (sorry, couldn't resist).

My worst oops was probably the time I mixed an entire church service with the mains amp breaker in the OFF position.

A few mitigating factors to this one, though: FOH position is under a balcony and juuust outside the coverage pattern from the mains, I was stuck at FOH unable to walk the room since I was also running presentation graphics that Sunday, this was in an era when we didn't really control stage volume that well so SPL in the room was pretty similar with mains off or on (just muddier with them off), and to top it off the regular FOH console was out for repair so I was blaming the pre-EQ aux sends of its replacement for the muddy sound figuring it was just sending more bass to the monitors than I was used to having with the post-EQ sends on the main board.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Probably my stupidest mess up was about a year ago when:

Mute Groups...... Effects Mute Group........ All Channel Mute Group........... Right next to eachother.......... You can use your imagination for that played out..... :roll:
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Not a sound snafu but rather a musical one.

I was playing keys at church (electric piano and Kurzweil K2000 synth) and had a foot pedal set for a pitch change (up at least a tone) which I triggered half way during a song item. (It saved me learning to play the song in 2 keys.) The song went fine.... but.... since I forgot to reset the pitch back down, the subsequent congregational song was up too high for the singers and the poor guitarists struggled to follow me!
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Had a newbie kid on my crew and I assigned him to hook up the feeder cable cams: green to green, white to white, etc. while I worked on other stuff and I never checked his set up. Powered everything up and half the amps wouldn't work because (you guessed it) he hooked them up wrong. Some of the cams were old and the colors had faded a bit and he got confused. We were using a mixture of Macro Techs and Xti's and luckily the Xti's just wouldn't power up because they detected improper power but we weren't so lucky with everything and of course the PA was a disaster because half the amps were out.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Robert Piascik said:
Had a newbie kid on my crew and I assigned him to hook up the feeder cable cams: green to green, white to white, etc. while I worked on other stuff and I never checked his set up. Powered everything up and half the amps wouldn't work because (you guessed it) he hooked them up wrong. Some of the cams were old and the colors had faded a bit and he got confused. We were using a mixture of Macro Techs and Xti's and luckily the Xti's just wouldn't power up because they detected improper power but we weren't so lucky with everything and of course the PA was a disaster because half the amps were out.
Click to expand...

So what readings did you get when you metered the power feed?
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Robert Piascik said:
Had a newbie kid on my crew and I assigned him to hook up the feeder cable cams: green to green, white to white, etc. while I worked on other stuff and I never checked his set up. Powered everything up and half the amps wouldn't work because (you guessed it) he hooked them up wrong. Some of the cams were old and the colors had faded a bit and he got confused. We were using a mixture of Macro Techs and Xti's and luckily the Xti's just wouldn't power up because they detected improper power but we weren't so lucky with everything and of course the PA was a disaster because half the amps were out.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but at our shop, nobody but crewchief or sparky touches feeder connections. Even if sparky "does the deed", crewchief follows up with metering. NO EXCEPTIONS. Hell, I wouldn't let a newbie patch a snake (unsupervised) first time out.

Back to the subject...
Only goof I'll admit to....
I worked 4 or 5 years for a particular band.
Bass player, BG vocal, and 1 song lead singer..
His voice is bassy as hell at the best of times. Fairly poor enunciation. Wicked levels in his wedges.
Intermission is over, un-mute everything, 2nd song in, his song.
Seems less clear than normal. Twist the HF, twist the MF, raise the mf crossover, twist the HF again, no help.
This is odd. really sounds like he's not in the PA, and all I'm hearing is stage wash....
Ooops. When I hit his mute, I also caught the group 1-2 select button, and took him out of the PA.
At the obligitory guitar solo, I put him back in the PA, and un-did my "corrections".
I don't think anyone actually noticed, as his voice is so hard to understand anyway.......

That would never happen with digital, right ?
 
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Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Robert Piascik said:
Had a newbie kid on my crew and I assigned him to hook up the feeder cable cams: green to green, white to white, etc. while I worked on other stuff and I never checked his set up. Powered everything up and half the amps wouldn't work because (you guessed it) he hooked them up wrong. Some of the cams were old and the colors had faded a bit and he got confused. We were using a mixture of Macro Techs and Xti's and luckily the Xti's just wouldn't power up because they detected improper power but we weren't so lucky with everything and of course the PA was a disaster because half the amps were out.
Click to expand...

There are a number of red flags in this post:

  1. Depending on your municipalities code interpretation, the connection of feeder to a service or separately derived system may have to be performed by a licensed electrician. Even if this is not required by your jurisdiction, a newbie should never be allowed to connect power without direct supervisory training in a controlled environment beforehand.
  2. If your cam colors are not clearly enumerated, then your conductors may be violating NEC 200.6, 200.9, 200.10, or 400.22.
  3. The connection should have been inspected before energizing.
  4. Metering of the energized service panel, and ideally testing with a wiggy, should have identified any problems in advance of connecting equipment branch circuits.

To the peanut gallery, never interact with power in this way.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Mine isn't nearly that dangerous...

Years ago I was doing sound for my community theatre group on "The Sound of Music". I was using SoundCueSystem on an XP laptop, and I'd set up a bunch of different thunderclap sounds on hotkeys. We get to the bedroom scene and I lean over and hit a key for the first thunderclap. "Ding!" goes Windows. WTF? I hit a different one. "Ding!" Then I realize that somehow I'd managed to click focus away from SCS and Windows was just complaining about unknown keys. Click. Press. "Boom". Phew. Lessons learned: always check your SFX, and always disable System Sounds!

So far that actually might be my worst. I guess I've been lucky.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Large conference, the end of which has a reveal to a band performing on a stage over the other side of the room from the lecterns etc. Band starts, we start to discretely strike the conference kit. I pull out what I think is the power feed for the now unused podium and associated racks/gear.

The rest of this tale pretty much writes itself :D
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Many decades ago :
Top flight audience, mayor, MPs, The great and the good. Flashest hotel ballroom in town.
The gear : 16mm arc light projector + mic + sound system.
The show : Run the film (of some important person buggering around in the Antarctic) after the intro speech.
ONE switch to operate - switch has 3 positions : Off, standby (lamp lit but shuttered), Running.
Projector sitting in standby, speech ends, dead on cue, I switch projector......OFF.
There is no way in hell you can re-strike an arc lamp without a few minutes cool down, and even then the first
few minutes of light output is dismal until it gets up to temperature again.
Much shuffling of chairs and time dilation followed.
M
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

My most embarrassing moment. Yamaha LS9 was still relatively new, and we had a regional bluegrass band in one night for a community event. Lots of local important people in the audience. We're doing 4 mixes of in-ears from FOH, maybe a dozen inputs total. I'm playing Alison Krauss/Union Station for preshow. Band is supposed to start the night w/o an introduction, just walk on and play. At show time they walk on, I fade down preshow music, sparky brings up stage lights. They pick up their instruments, and all proceed to stare at me. Loooong pause while they are looking at me and I am looking at them. Finally one of them grabs a mic and makes a comment about hearing Jerry Douglas in their ears. I realized that I had hit "Select" instead of "mute" after fading down the Preshow CD. CD was still playing and was still live in the Aux feeds for their ears. :blush: The band was good enough to make a few more comments to cover it up, and we all had a laugh later, but I remember that ooops every time I hear an Allison Krauss/Union Station song.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

For a wedding about 10 years ago I brought an 01v96 to the venue that had a little Mackie board. The Mackie had 1/4" outputs, and since I didn't have a pair of TRS->XLR adapters, I just used the monitor outs of the 01v96, which mirror the main outs. This works wonderful EXCEPT when you accidentally press the SOLO button instead of the ON button - then that soloed channel goes to the monitor outs at the preamp gain level. Instant howling feedback, and it doesn't go away even when you mute the main outputs.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

One from my archives that came to me today during load out. My mic stand cases and mic stands are color coordinated. So the stands that go in the green case, have a bit of green shrink tube on one of the tripod legs. This way, when they lose their home, it's easy to get it back where it belongs. And we "always" have the right stands with us. So at a large (for us) event I will usually have two cases on the main stage. Because we don't know what all we will encounter, and those from other stages can also borrow some when/if they need them. And then it's easy to get them back after the fact. So, on a load out of this nature, the stage hand has been given instructions on how to split the stands and which case which stands go in. And he does a very diligent job of spiting the stands up, and getting them in their respective cases. Not.

So when I get to my next gig, I have a stand case full of only the short stands, from both sets. Not a tall stand in the whole pack.
 
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