SATURDAY-

The moment of arrival. I enter the saturday pre-spark pizza party. As I meet everyone I’m told quippily, “Yeah, we put your piece in the ‘scary electronics’ category”.

I laughed.

Later on I get the amplifiers. Thats a good sign.

SUNDAY- 2 days til spark:

I want to get to work. But its sunday. Its the calm before the storm for them and its already the storm for me. I make calls, and people start doing me favors. I get into the studio, but no key. I see the pile of amplifiers, all coming from home stereo systems. I realize I’d need to create a new speaker wire system to connect to the transducers. I’m told the gong racks aren’t available anymore, and am given no solution. I explain my tech setup to one of the assistant directors helping me. We realize together that I have not been provided with 2 audio interfaces, nor the midi devices. We look around. More calls are made, and by the end of the day i have two m-audio firewire 410’s.

an aside:

Never, ever, use these machines! Their mic preamps are useless, unless you’re into low hums, or the “philosophy of saturation”…

MONDAY-

Rehearsal number one, (of two). I get the key today, so i’m free to come and go instead of getting locked out. I play 16 channels through 8 speakers. There are no problems w/the patch. However, it sounds nothing like the piece and looks nothing like the piece without the metals. My singer does an incredible job and we look forward to wednesday when i have all my stuff..I also get another favor from someone. I’m given the needed adaptors from 1/4 inch to RCA, in order to connect the audio interfaces to the amps. The audio interfaces that i hadn’t tried yet, but was told that there was no other option, so “je m’en fou”…

TUESDAY-

Beginning of Spark Festival, three days to go. I go to Home Depot (grace a ali, for he is kind and has a car) and, on my dime, buy materials to build the gong racks. I then manage to construct the most feeble, pathetic looking gong racks that you’ve ever seen. But it works. This takes all day. I then need to make the speaker cables to connect to it all. This takes all night, hanging out in the friendly art building, where there are much more interesting things going on- installations..the energy is there, and i’m among 5 people, all burning the midnight oil…

WEDNESDAY-

Rehearsal number two goes down in flames. The only good thing was that Carrie Henneman Shaw, the singer, had made significant progress. From a technical point of view, it doesn’t work, and I’m exhausted. The M-audio mic preamps were of such inferior quality, their midi connection was seemingly non-existant, and daisy chaining them wasn’t possible in max/msp. Later on i think about pulling the piece. Defeat was near. I share my desperation wtih John Maccallum, who’s showing up the next evening, and he tells me to keep pushing, but if need be, pull it. He and David Wessel come with two Motu 828 mkii’s.

THURSDAY-

Not much to do but wait for the van and move stuff over to the space. I am informed that I would have 20 minutes in the space to set up everything and run tests. I’m first on the program. This, however, is insufficient for the piece. In addition I’m told their 16 channel snake has had “problems” and that passing the dacs through the mixer isn’t possible as its only for 8 channels. Sound reinforcement isn’t possible either- all of which was specified in my tech schema.

another aside:

I had made it to around 5-6 other concerts. There were concerts that had the tech setup i needed. However I’m sure there is always a certain hierarchy to these festivals: 11am concerts like mine are for students, and we move up the ladder of age and professorial appointments to the 8pm concerts.

FRIDAY-

Now with my two motu’s I walk to the space, arriving at 730am. I silently start setting up my setup just to the left of the stage. I set up my computer and audio interfaces near the mixer, so as to at least diffuse the two mic’s into the halls speaker system. By 8am I realize I can’t get channels 9-16 out from the second motu. I decide to ignore this reality that unless I figure it out later I can’t do the piece. I continue to set up everything else. John arrives and, with the aid of a second computer, manages to get ch 9-16.

The time arrives. I had luckily 30 minutes before the concert. With John’s help we test ch 1-16, and 4 of them don’t work. I accept this and move forward- no time to find the faulty cord. I get Carrie on stage and insist of running parts of the piece. Never do we have the signal of the laryngophone (2nd mic which rests around her neck) to excite the metals- an integral part of the piece. By the way theres no midi cable long enough so i trigger the events with the space bar. Despite these problems I decide the piece is “good enough”.

It goes on and I get some nice comments.