If you want to post pics of your gig locations, post them here. I’ll start things off with a set up shot from a gig by a stream in what I call the jungles of the Ozarks. The forest is lush and thick this year where I live so it truly is a jungle if you try to walk around in it. We had a fun gig with the stream at our backs playing to a nice crowd of all ages. If you look close you can see Cantabile is in the mix …
I’ll bite. Here are some shots of one of our more memorable gigs from last summer. Keeping with the theme of outdoor gigs, this is at a fabricated “beach” at the end of Montréal’s old port. They fill the parking lot with sand and decorate, but there is no access to the water.
Love the outdoor gigs as well. Half of out 13 gigs last year were in outside. Family friendly and great vibe.
No Cantabile yet. They provided a sound engineer for this gig but I often handle sound from a laptop (while I play bass, sing backing vocals and do a half-assed job of directing) using Cubase. I have been wanting to switch to Cantabile so that I can also trigger FX and help manage volume changes for solos and such with a foot controller. It’s a years-long work in progress that is just about ready for prime time.
This looks so beautiful. By the way, what do you about glare on your laptop screen? I did something outdoors recently and there was so much glare I could hardly read the screen.
I only have trouble in really bright outdoor sun light and 9 times in 10 there is shade or a canopy over me to help out with that. In addition to that the old HP Elitebooks I use have diffused screens and are not glossy so instead of glare I get washout but cranking the brightness still makes it usable. I also set the show notes up so that I can use black letters on white background for bright gigs and white on black for indoor low lit gigs.
I love your lineup, it is a happy looking group of players! The upright electric guitar stick is really interesting, might I ask who makes it? The gathering looks like great fun, thanks for the post.
We are indeed lucky to have a mix of cultures and age groups, all with great attitudes. It’s a lot of fun. We play mostly old-school salsa.
I built the bass myself. It’s almost embarrassing since I’ve been making instruments for many years now; most with exotic woods and intricate details like carvings and inlays. This one was an exercise in reproducing a specific sound with as little time and money invested as possible. It’s a combination of materials from Home Depot (the fingerboard is a carefully sliced section of black ABS pipe) and the cheapest parts I could find on Amazon.
I found the patent documents for the original Ampeg Baby Bass, trying to figure out how to reproduce their pickup system for that distinctive tone. I didn’t even come close, but with some noodling and a second pickup I got something close enough in tone, and it’s a blast to play.
Here’s a compilation of a few shows from last year. You hear the difference in the live sound and my board mixes in the video.
Played outdoors in historic Eureka Springs district in Arkansas across from the city museum. @Corky likely knows the place, “The Cathouse” which was a brothel back in the frontier days but is now a dining/lodging/pub arrangement which is usually loaded with touring bikers who come to ride the curves out here in the mountains. I’m glad we played the night we did, the next day it was 118 heat index … Today it hit 126 with the heat index. Time for AC type gigs!!
Here’s my setup from yesterday’s road test gig at the Cellar Bar in Cardigan. First time on stage since Feb 2017 (!!!) and first time I have done a three hour show on my own.
Whilst a lot of keyboards can be seen, you can see my gig rack towards the back between the stands, which was running Cantabile. All keyboards are in a MIDI STAR configuration with Cantabile acting as the router and processor of all MIDI data, and there is lots of layering going on as well, sometimes running multiple instances of Wavestate and Modwave, Falcon, DIVA, PolyKB, etc.
Hey Derek! I see you’re using a Nord G2 Modular Engine, like me! Have you run into any problems running the editor for that, on recent Windows versions?
I’m not using the G2 so much these days but want to revisit it and get it into a few songs, as it still sounds great.
When I last checked the editor was working fine on WIN10. I am also thinking of setting up a VM for legacy software in anticipation of the day when it stops working.
This was recorded at a small Juke Joint in Mississippi about a month ago. Very interesting place in the middle of nowhere. The heat was almost unbearable, as you can tell by the cooling scarf around my neck. We were jamming for about 20 minutes on this Gregg Allman version of Whipping Post. Sorry, no pics, but lots of video.
“Down by the river” 
Today it hit 126 with the heat index. Time for AC type gigs!!
