First Linnstrument gig report and troubleshooting after the fact
Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2019 10:01 pm
So I know John the Savage is a "real" gigging musician. I am on the other end of the gigging spectrum: indie rock music, not much money involved, but sometimes crowds of people in rooms with not great electricity. Very satisfying but not lucrative.
Saturday night was my first gig with the Linnstrument. It was just a couple songs (I'm normally the bassist) but it is gradually getting more use and will play a bigger and bigger part in our live set as my bandmates love it as a change up.
For this show, I used a DJ TechTools Twister, MacBook Pro 2018, USB-C hub and RME Babyface.
No problems at Soundcheck. The act before us finishes, we go up, I move my gear back to the front of the stage area, plug in the computer and peripherals, and BURP.
The computer (and software) seems fine. The Linnstrument seems to have been completely reset. I'd changed the colours and configured stuff how I wanted it, saved several presets, and it was back to the defaults. Also the MIDI Fighter Twister wasn't receiving MIDI right from my computer, so I had to twist knobs to get it to reflect the settings on the computer.
I'm guessing it was either some kind of power surge from the mains or the MacBook port, or a bad connection with the USB-C to USB-A adapter.
What was GREAT about the Linnstrument is that it took me about 1 minute to re-establish the settings I wanted other than colour, and were able to start just a couple minutes later than planned, and the set went off without a hitch otherwise. Once I set it up again, the Linnstrument was problem-free. So the fix was more or less like dealing with a broken string. Kudos to Roger for such a robust interface.
More importantly, what should I be doing differently to prevent this next time? It's troubleshooting after the fact, I know, but I'd be curious for others' ideas about protecting fancy digital gear from power issues. Nobody at the venue (including a very good live sound engineer) could diagnose the problem and I'm only guessing above.
I'm likely going to be moving to an iPhone/Eurorack setup live from here on out, just because it's more fun for me, but the same issues will apply. I've used digital gear of one sort or another for decades, but this was the first time something like this happened in a gigging situation.
Saturday night was my first gig with the Linnstrument. It was just a couple songs (I'm normally the bassist) but it is gradually getting more use and will play a bigger and bigger part in our live set as my bandmates love it as a change up.
For this show, I used a DJ TechTools Twister, MacBook Pro 2018, USB-C hub and RME Babyface.
No problems at Soundcheck. The act before us finishes, we go up, I move my gear back to the front of the stage area, plug in the computer and peripherals, and BURP.
The computer (and software) seems fine. The Linnstrument seems to have been completely reset. I'd changed the colours and configured stuff how I wanted it, saved several presets, and it was back to the defaults. Also the MIDI Fighter Twister wasn't receiving MIDI right from my computer, so I had to twist knobs to get it to reflect the settings on the computer.
I'm guessing it was either some kind of power surge from the mains or the MacBook port, or a bad connection with the USB-C to USB-A adapter.
What was GREAT about the Linnstrument is that it took me about 1 minute to re-establish the settings I wanted other than colour, and were able to start just a couple minutes later than planned, and the set went off without a hitch otherwise. Once I set it up again, the Linnstrument was problem-free. So the fix was more or less like dealing with a broken string. Kudos to Roger for such a robust interface.
More importantly, what should I be doing differently to prevent this next time? It's troubleshooting after the fact, I know, but I'd be curious for others' ideas about protecting fancy digital gear from power issues. Nobody at the venue (including a very good live sound engineer) could diagnose the problem and I'm only guessing above.
I'm likely going to be moving to an iPhone/Eurorack setup live from here on out, just because it's more fun for me, but the same issues will apply. I've used digital gear of one sort or another for decades, but this was the first time something like this happened in a gigging situation.