BLOOPERS

[Anonymous]

To lighten the mode:
This is the NEW place to write the HUMOROUS BLOOPERS that we all do at some place in time in what we do.
And lets face it… we ALL do them some time in our life of sound, either on the road or in the studio!?
I’m sure we all have stories to tell?
NO names need to be mentioned!

[Anonymous]

I’ll start to get the ball Rolling.

I was checking my emails waiting for some power point presentations to come in, in the middle of a very quiet 8x lectern type mic conference. A very quiet intense discussion was happening.
As I was looking at the inbox [waiting for power point presentations to come in] on my PC on the net, I thought… I might just check the local news.
My PC was not muted into the desk!? as I did not use this particular PC for anything other than the original sound setup. It was sitting there solely as a backup and for incoming data.
Suddenly ZZ-Top played at full volume into the FOH from a POP-up add.
GASP!
Must have been about 5 seconds worth of music.
It certainly lightened the atmosphere and everyone had a chuckle!
In fact people wanted to know the song!?

cheers guys

[LouParticipant]

Oh okay… I do sound at a local high quality folk music venue. During the day they rent it out for continuing education classes for seniors, affiliated with a local college. It’s a good way for a sound guy to get extra hours – 8 hours is more than a usual evening gig! But we usually work nights, right? So starting at 8AM and working until 4PM is way different, and staying awake is the main job. It’s usually quite simple, a wireless headmic or two and a couple of handhelds for questions. One day I had my hand on the fader of the main speaker when I nodded off – my hand went down along with my head so the mic went off, and someone scrambled to get a handheld to the talkers! It was that scramble that woke me up fast, and though I had his mic back on quickly, he kept the handheld for the rest of the hour.

Old folks assume sound systems can fail at any moment, so nobody blamed me, but *I* know what happened! :-/

[LouParticipant]

Here’s one more that surprised me just recently: Doing a set of Summer shows outdoors in the town plaza, I use the same scene preset for each show, as the bands do not repeat, do just one set, and aren’t all that different. One Sunday afternoon seting up and soundchecking the first band, it was all just fine up to a point – since I have iPad control, I set the mixer right next to the band, and get the monitors right first. Then I went out front and – no lead vocals! Weird, how could that be? I sweated and puzzled over the screens for what seemd like an hour (but was really only seconds) before I found the lead vocal has become unassigned from the LR output! I was applauded when I got it back on, but still have no idea how it got unassigned.

Oh, and the MC on this gig says – every time – “and I’d like to thank Lou & Coleen for the saound – without them you couldn’t hear me!” Kinda cute the first time he said it, bit five Summers on it is getting lame…

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Mute him half way through – or set up a donald duck FX for him…

[LouParticipant]

But he already sounds like a duck! 🙂

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Oh well…

My normal error is doing the wrong mix, or recalling a scene rather storing it.

[cornelius78Participant]

Not on a Qu, but still…

Walk up FOH+mons gig that involved band>speaker>band. Band did first set, all was fine, speaker started to make his way to the stage, I started muting band inputs for them to get off stage (GL2400, no mute groups, about 24 band inputs, so 24 mute buttons to press.) Speaker went fine, band got up again, I started un-muting inputs. Band played intro of song, all was good, went to start signing first verse: no lead vocal. Band looking at each other and me oddly, started playing intro again… I’d somehow missed un-muting the lead vox channel. Whoops.

Of course I’ve made the usual mistakes with double bussing, eqing like a mad man with the eq switched out, adjusting the wrong fader, routing channes>groups and not getting any level because the group master was down etc, plugging in insert cables backwards and wondering why I was getting no signal outboard (but to be fair, someone had labelled the cable backwards in that instance.)

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Church – band trying in ears, because worship leader wanted to try a backing track.

Realised that I’d probably need some front infill speakers, since the first few rows were normally dominated by stage spill…

Was a bit late rigging (very)….

First song.. 1,2,3,4….
I realised what had happened and walked out and just unplugged those speakers for the first service (no one in the hot seats) and wired them correctly for the second service (where they were needed)

[dpdanParticipant]

during many years of providing sound and recording services for a local church’s Easter and Christmas productions, I always had a 30 second rule, when you have just left the stage and have finished your lines for that scene, you do DO NOT talk to anyone backstage for at least 30 seconds, giving me plenty of time to pot up all the mics for the next scene and mute the other ones.

During a Christmas show, Mary and her friend Martha are discussing their excitement of Mary giving birth to baby Jesus,… so the next time the audience would see her she would be bigger “with child”.

So, the house goes to black at the end of their scene, it was stone silent, then they go backstage with their mics still on, Mary says to Martha in a whisper…. “well, let’s go get pregnant”

It came through clear as a bell through my Altec system, and within 5 seconds, the snickering from the audience went from about fifteen people to the whole crowd laughing. Talk about wanting to crawl under the console.

[Author]

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