I played a gig in the live band I’ve started with my 3 oldest sons this past weekend. The name of the band is Bonne Nuit and we play a lot of current hit music. The band is a four-piece comprised of two guitars, bass guitar and drums. We are playing some seriously synthesizer based songs using only guitars. We cover the Black Eyed Peas, Metric and Gary Numan and we play these songs on our guitars.
We are able to take the main synthesizer parts and using my prowess as a patch programmer on my guitar effects units we are able to capture the overall feel of the songs with guitars. I use my trusty Fender Cyber-Twin SE amplifier and Erik uses my Digitech 2120 guitar effect rack. Between these two excellent guitar units we can create enough synthesizer type sounds to really flesh out the songs and make them work using guitars.
We played a live, online concert using a Shoutcast server streaming from our recording studio. We run all the instruments through a Pro Tools setup and then feed a mix to the shoutcast server. Anyone with an Internet connection is then able to listen to our music stream using the Shoutcast.com mini-player, Winamp or iTunes. We marketed the gig primarily through Facebook. There was also a live chat session going right here on Live Musician Central so we could interact with our listeners.
We had a pretty good show with quite a few people signing on to listen to the concert. The band played pretty well although we did tend to make the rookie mistake of playing some of the songs too fast. It’s a fairly common problem with young musicians to rush the songs when you have the pressure of a live audience. Playing these shows online is giving the band an easy way to get used to playing for an audience.
The live chat gives the concert a more interactive feel than just playing for the broadcast. It really gives you a sense that, yes, you are actually playing for people that are listening to the band. It was great to see so many friends had signed on to listen to the band. There was definitely the same type of rush that you get playing in front of a live audience.
We had a few technical difficulties with a faulty pair of headphones, thank heavens Sennheiser headphones have replaceable cables. We recorded the entire show so we can evaluate our performance. We played well with only a few obvious mistakes but nothing we couldn’t recover from. It was a very fun gig if nothing else and we’re getting very close to playing an actual live show outside of our studio. Hopefully you’ll be able to come see us at a venue near you, very soon. In the meantime, check out our Bonne Nuit Facebook page. -Matt-
