Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

performance

learn how a PA system works

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I’ve found that the biggest barriers to becoming a successful local performer are usually connected to the PA systems I play into or mix on.

Did an open mic host EQ me badly and not know how to fix it? PA system. Did I not have the right mix of equipment to successfully amplify my show? PA system. Did I spend a night hosting our open mic at Intermezzo wrestling with persistent feedback problems? PA system.

Honestly, there’s no “too much” that you can know about the workings of a PA system – it’s what brings your sound to an audience! And, the more you know means the less you have to rely on others to craft your sound for you – even if you don’t lay hands on a mixer you’ll know just what to ask for.

If all of that already sounds daunting to you I would suggest that you read the Musician’s Friend PA System Buying Guide as a primer.

Their guide breaks down each element of a PA – from microphones to mixers to speakers, explaining the function of each one in easy-to-understand language. Though it’s featured on a commercial site, it’s ripe with info and relatively low on cross-selling, except in instances where there is an industry-wide standard worth mentioning, like the Shure SM58 mic or the BBE Sonic Maximizer processor.

I have a minor in music production and I’ve been setting up various PA systems for Lyndzapalooza since 2003, but a lot of the guide was either surprising news or a welcome refresher. Especially handy were the following two definitions, which I tend to fuzz into a single explanation when talking to Gina or Elise:

Compressor – will limit the amount of variation between the loudest and softest sounds.

Limiter – allows compression to occur only above a set threshold and the compression ratio can be very high. This prevents clipping, distortion, and other related problems.

It goes on to explain the (relatively arbitrary) difference between “parametric” and “graphic” EQ, which has always puzzled me. The difference? The sliders on a graphic equalizer control a set portion of the frequency band, so when you adjust them en mass you get a “graphic” up vs. down visualization of the changes you made to your sound. That’s it.

I’ve been collecting some thoughts on my year of gigging, and I think I might have enough to warrant an ongoing series on the various pitfalls of live performance. Does that sound useful or – to those of you who aren’t performers – interesting?

Arcati Crisis and friends Stand Up For Kids

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So, before all of that introspection crap started happening I was actually having an amazing weekend.

The story picks up mere seconds after my Friday post, which was interrupted by Dante’s appearance to ferry me and my various PA equipment to The Dark Horse on South Street for a benefit for Stand Up For Kids.

Stand Up For Kids is a nationally recognized and acclaimed charity that supports homeless and at-risk kids and teens. They offer many levels of service, from counseling children at risk for leaving home, to conducting outreach to kids on the streets, to staffing and maintaining outreach centers where teens can get help in obtaining a birth certificate or finding an apartment.

The Philadelphia chapter of Stand Up For Kids needs support to provide that full complement of services. Their benefit raised money towards supplies for their outreach packets – like juice boxes, deodorant, or sweatshirts – as well as for an outreach van that would allow them to be more mobile in their efforts.

Arcati Crisis has played a slew of shows this year, but the SUFK benefit ranks high amongst our favorites.

First, The Dark Horse Pub is a fantastic bar – one of my favorites in all of Philly. It’s just north of South on 2nd – across from Headhouse. The pub is comprised of multiple rooms that each have their own personality, all clean and comfortable and serving delicious food along with their drinks.

Second, the bill – we played with a lineup of people who we would go out of our way to see. Seriously. It was such a profoundly humbling experience to be listed in the middle of the people whose songs I hum while I walk down the street.

Joshua Popejoy, a model of sharp hooks and specific strumming, and increasingly my go-to for all discussions of mixing. Bill Butler, an outstanding songwriter and one of my favorite Philly vocalists, and the director of the charity The Philadelphia Sessions. Dante Bucci, a virtuosic percussionist who has transformed a zen instrument into a songwriter’s treasure, and who can engineer a PA solution for any space. Jon Glaubitz, an enormously talented guitarist and songwriter with a chameleonic ability to blend in anywhere – no matter if it’s a coffee shop or a rock club. And Andra Taylor, an arresting new voice on the Philly scenes, her hypnotically circular guitar riffs evoking a prism of contemporaries from Patti Griffin to Madonna. And, we made new friends – with David Miller and Jeremy Davis, performers we surely will see again in the future.

However, beyond all of those pleasures was the charity itself. SUFK volunteer, event organizer, and AC-fan Nina found the right venue to turn a gathering into a celebration, found the right music to fill it, and then packed the room to the very limit of its capacity.

Throughout the night Nina sent SUFK volunteers up to the microphone to share their stories about the organization while we set up for the next artist on the bill. The one that really caught me came after our performance – maybe because we were still trembling from a powerful closing swing through “What’ll I Say” and “Apocalyptic Love Song,” or maybe just because she was so very compelling.

She spoke about how she helped to found the Philadelphia chapter four years ago, and how at the time it was just a handful of people who wanted to make an impact. She spoke about how we all pass homeless children every day without realizing that we see them, partially because they so desperately don’t want to be homeless that they will do anything to blend in. She spoke about how – four years later – she is so energized by the enthusiasm of her fellow volunteers and the changes they effect in the world, but that they aren’t enough – they need more support and more volunteers to truly change the streets of Philadelphia.

When she was through I found myself with tears welling in my eyes.

All of these things we do take time. Four years ago Arcati Crisis was an in-joke name for our studio recordings. Four years ago Dante Bucci didn’t know what a hang drum was, and Andra Taylor had no idea she’d be living in Philadelphia.

In that four years we’ve devoted to ourselves, Stand Up For Kids has devoted itself to others, and because of our collective commitment we were able to come together last Friday to share and celebrate positive music and a positive message. We came together into a room as strangers to each other and left with a common cause.

That is the best kind of gig to play, and after the clouds of my weekend introspection clear on a bright Monday morning that is the memory that I’m going to take with me. Even if our music only made SUFK twenty dollars it was worth every minute of playing. If I could raise a thousand I would play for days at a time, stopping only to breathe.

Finding My Footing (or, a belated welcome to NaBloPoMo)

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Lately I’ve been feeling like an actual singer-songwriter, instead of just a pretend internet one.

Of course, I’ve had a lot chances to feel like a legitimate musical artist in the past year through my performances with Gina as Arcati Crisis. But, there’s a certain strength in numbers – a power of two – that makes us a minimum amount of compelling and keeps us lurching forward even from our unlikeliest (and unlikeable) moments.

I don’t have those abilities on my own, which can sometimes make playing by myself a lonely prospect. For a while at any solo appearance I spent more time noticing Gina’s absence than being present on my own. At an open mic this summer I joked to an inattentive bar crowd, “if any of you could come up here and stand just to my left I’d feel much more comfortable.”

They didn’t get it.

My few solo outings earlier this year were the first times I was playing alone to unfriendly crowds in a long time, and I was daunted on each occasion. I played the same songs over and over, heavily relying on the crutches of “Icy Cold” and my cover of “Like a Virgin.” Any other song would leave me wide open for rookie mistakes like forgotten lyrics.

I started to wonder … can I hold space and attention on my own? Are my singing and playing interesting without someone else to dress them up? And, if there isn’t any point to me playing solo, than how can I write compelling material for my band by myself?

I don’t know that I’ve answered any of those imperative questions, but as summer ripened into fall and I kept stubbornly playing on my own I started getting into a certain rhythm where I was less fearful and more adventurous. If no one is going to pay attention anyway, why play “Like a Virgin” for the fifteenth time? New originals and covers and forgotten oldies started sneaking into my sets, and I surprisingly loved some of them. And, when I played the newer songs I was reminded that I devote an uncommon amount of detail to each song that I write. That fact alone doesn’t make me better than the competition, but it definitely makes a difference.

By the time I debut a “new” song (typically a dreaded introduction to hear at any open mic) it has been through months of development. In the case of a newer song like “Not Tonight (from Monday’s Trio), I start with a core of words or melody that have been stuck in my head. I sketch the basics of them out on piano or guitar, and then I typically switch instruments for a while to flesh out the chord structure and melody before returning to the original instrument to complete my lyrics. Next I transcribe a definitive version of the lyrics into my MYSQL database, and begin chipping away at them daily – revising order and polishing lines whenever I think of it.

Afterward I tend to go through an incubation stage that mostly consists of singing the song wherever I go – sometimes deliberately missing a bus so I can sing while I walk. At that point I’m mostly making decisions about dynamics, so that by the next time I sit down with the text I’m ready to mark my vowels and breaths.

Then I actually start rehearsing.

I don’t explain all of that to brag, because it’s not anything I’m especially proud or ashamed of. It just happens to be my process at the moment, and when I enthuse about my database or (attempt to) commiserate over the difficulty of choosing the right vowels I realize that I’m different than a lot of the people I meet at open mics. A song that’s “new” to me is well-experienced to them, and my repertoire of 80 originals (out of a total of 228) is boggling.

The fact that I have a specific process – my own database and binder, an untold history for each song – makes me feel like a valid artist again. I haven’t felt that for a long time, and the last time I did it mostly came from playing fictional concerts to no one in my bedroom rather than making regular appearances at open mics. My current insanity of organization has kept me limber and nimble, to the point that I’ve completed over a dozen new songs so far this year – the most I’ve completed in one calendar year since I started dating Elise in 2002.

That’s why you’re seeing a late-stage resurgence in the stalled Trio season I began last November – I have a lot more songs to share than I did at this time last year.

That, and it’s once again National Blog Posting Month, which I have resolved to make more of a go at this year. This is one of the most interesting times in my life, both personally and publicly, and I’m sure that many years from now I’ll appreciate a running commentary about it.

(Last year, as you might recall, it intersected with being newly engaged, and I quickly found out that it was a time I wanted to spend outside of the house instead of at the computer.)

(Seventy-odd days out from the wedding and I much prefer the confines of my house, especially when I don’t have any credit cards in arm’s reach.)

(Good night.)

Weary, but without wedding woes.

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I am profoundly tired.

The day that preceded that condition included some crazy legwork at the office, as well as three hours of hosting LP’s new Wednesday night open mic @ Intermezzo at 31st and Walnut.

However, the root cause of the weariness extends back several days, during which I have been trying to squeeze in more content than a day can hold. Much of that content has been wedding-related.

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A year ago I said,

I love all the dire wedding warnings that come from every quarter when you first get engaged. I suppose it’s a cultural hazing thing? I just don’t get it. Each of our favorite weddings were relatively lacking in insanity and drama according to the various brides. Also, we’re both OCD project managers with the same taste in everything.

Right. Remind me to come back and read this post in about twelve months and see what I have to say about it.

Well, I’m back a week shy of one year later to report that I still agree with that sentiment. Maybe you should ask me again in two more months.

In the past year I’ve discovered that weddings don’t have to be difficult projects filled with temper tantrums. We’ve certainly had some stressful moments, and we’ve argued and disagreed over a few things. I’m sure that’s true for every couple, no matter how in-sync they are. Yet, on the whole the entire planning process has been … well, mostly just fun.

It helps that we’re both OCD project managers with experience in communications and event planning. Elise methodically steers the critical path of our overall project plan, and I own a subset of tasks – one of which recently resulted in booking the fantastic Alexandra Day to play our cocktail reception. Anything that deviates from the plan is addressed or eliminated. Several cagey or uncooperative vendors have been jettisoned prior to signing a contract. All four sets of parents have been supportive and barely meddlesome. Whenever we get stuck we ask our parties for advice; they have solved every problem we’ve come up with so far.

The past week has been especially active because we mailed our invites on Monday. They are definitely amongst the top five most awesome wedding invites I have ever laid hands or eyes on. Not coincidentally, all five invites on my most-awesome list were at least partially self-designed and hand-made, with every aspect of their formats customized to the personality of the couple.

Elise and I started discussing our ideas for invites as early as January. At the time our wedding was still fresh news, rendering it the lead-in topic of every conversation. Since invites were one of the few things already underway I was eager to talk about our ideas to everyone. Surprisingly, I heard a handful of puzzlingly dismissive comments, usually along the lines of the following:

Me: “… and, we’re designing and producing our invites by ourselves!”

Them: “Oh, I guess you’re trying to cut costs, huh?”

Me: “Not really. We both do similar projects all day at work; we thought it would be fun to do one together.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, it’s neat when people find a way save money on their wedding.”

Me: “Actually, it’s more about designing exactly what we want.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, and you can do it really cheaply that way.”

Me: “I don’t think we’ll save very much. It’s just that we’ll have control over the quality.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, but they won’t be as nice as invites you buy out of a book.”

Me: “Um… [bangs head against the counter]”

Ultimately we did save some money on materials compared to “customized” wedding invites available from a book or online. But, that wasn’t the point, and it isn’t even a fair comparison. The definition of “custom” in commercially produced invitations is vastly different from our own, which features unique text and layout, high-end specialty paper, a bevy of custom shapes and die-cuts, and hand-embossing.

To get a better sense of how “cheap” our invites really were, I sought out a more realistic comparison. I showed a final invite to one of the senior designers at work and asked her to quote what she would charge to produce them as a freelance project.

Once she was done calling in other members of her team to marvel at our amazing paper, she conservatively estimated that she would have charged at least $700 for the design (not including costs for comps), $500 or more for the time Elise spent on hand-assembly (some of which she would have sent to a vendor for digital die-cut), and a 10-15% markup on our material costs. And, that doesn’t account for our hours of debate over colors, paper weights, fonts, and content, or our extensive usability testing with a series of prototypes,

Essentially, Elise put in the commercial equivalent of more than $1200 worth of woman-power into our invites. If you also factor in her material costs, we just sent out a fleet of invites valued at over $21 a piece, not including postage. And that’s the conservative estimate.

I haven’t done too much market research, but I don’t think that’s very “cheap” in comparison with the industry average, no matter what your definition of “custom.”

I think that even the cost-cutting crowd from above would appreciate all of the effort … if they received an invite. Which they didn’t. Why? Because I cut their rude asses from the guest list months ago … even before we paid for venues, meals, and dresses they were more interested in how much our wedding cost than in how much it was about us.

(Aside from that alteration, our final guest list was nearly identical to the list we originally drafted a year ago this week. Again, why does this cause people stress? It’s pretty simple. First, when you get engaged write out a list of all of the people who you might like to see when you get married, as well as those who want to see you when you get married – not because they expect to be invited or because they are calculating the tab in their heads, but because they care about you. (If you are me you will supply a draft of this list along with the engagement ring.) Then, check with your parents and close friends to see if you forgot anyone important (and by important I mean important to you). Next, stratify your full list in some way – like, small-wedding vs. large-wedding, must-invite vs. should-invite, A-B-C-D lists, 80/20 rule, or whatever. Once you have established a budget and looked at some venues it will be clear which version of that stratified list you can afford to invite. Finally, send invites to those people. The end. If that means you wound up cutting a cousin in favor of a co-worker, so be it. Life goes on.)

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As part of the invite process Elise built a staggeringly detailed web site that matches the overall look of our wedding “campaign,” and on it she placed the first three entries in my series of ten engagement posts.

Seeing as the wedding quickly approaches, I’m thinking I should write the other seven in pretty short order.

And rent a tuxedo. And buy my wedding band.

And go to sleep.

Arcati Crisis Upstairs@Zot

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Last night Arcati Crisis played our first true headlining set inside of the Philadelphia city limits, in a fantastic space upstairs from Zot Restaurant, sharing the bill with our good friends Lindsay Wilhelmi, Andra Taylor, and Nate Dodge.

In my increasingly frequent travels in the Philly music scene I often feel like an amateur, and in open-miking I still am. There are Philly artists who have honed the art of open mike to a fine, fine point, and are able to score kudos from a crowd of strangers on every outing.

I’m not that. But, I am a communications professional, a project manager, a Lyndzapalooza organizer, and a reformed amateur theatre junkie, and I brought all of those experiences to bear on what turned out to be an amazing show. I designed the flyers, I worked with all of the performers come to a consensus on our schedule, I provided a sound system in a pinch, and I refocused lights and worked the crowd throughout the night.

I don’t mean that to sound like I take credit for our night, because if I had done all of that of that for a four-hour solo Peter show I wouldn’t have garnered nearly the same amount of support or success. Just as there’s something magical about the harmony of Arcati Crisis, there was something special about sharing a real bill with Lindsay after how hard we’ve worked on our music together over the years, and about sharing a stage with our new friends Andra and Nate, who energize and inspire us with every performance.

Would the flyers have been as cool if I hadn’t been designing on their behalf? Would the schedule have been so intuitive without their brains? Would the PA have been worth carrying up the stairs without Lindsay to strike a balance on the initial mix? Would the lights be worth refocusing without a bill of compelling performers to watch?

I can’t take credit for combining the four of us – to that we owe our thanks to David Simons of Five Year Plan Entertainment, who gave us all the chance to be heard, and to be heard together. It was a rare bill where I could cross-promote every artist with the confidence that our audiences would seamlessly overlap.

My dad arrived to the show early and held court at the bar for the duration, and every time I stopped by he was ready with a polite litany of ways we could improve for our next show. We need a bigger board with an off-board equalizer, and maybe a compressor. Sandbags for the bottom of mic stands. Better eye-lines. Performers closer to the audience. Stop by ahead of time to check out the lighting situation.

If you’ve followed my history with my father at all, you know that it’s rare for us to find an intersection of interests, and it was fascinating to hear him so effortlessly detail all of the credible, tangible ways we could improve for our next show.

At one point in the conversation I interjected.

“Dad, we will do everything you just said. But, realize that it used to be that we had no mic stands to even sing into, so I bought those. And then we didn’t have mics that were good for Gina and I, so I bought those. Then Lyndzapalooza needed a PA system, so I bought that. And, Gina and I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to us without quality recordings, so I bought a digital recording interface and spent the last year mixing and burning demos.”

My point was well-taken, just as his was by me: success requires steady progress; milestones require constant motion.

It was a year ago today that Arcati Crisis made our Philadelphia debut at the Tin Angel, playing three newly learned songs in a brief set during a lineup of almost a dozen other performers – mostly strangers. As great as that felt, and as inspiring as the support from friends and family was, I don’t think we could have imagined that a single year later we would be playing for five times that long to twice as many of our dearest supporters on a bill of talented friends.

I am truly blessed to be a part of a community that continues to support the evolution of our music. I will continue to do everything within my power to make sure it gets heard.