Donovan Banks

That's the question I hear all 65 of you ask about the recording of my last gig.

Not so great, is the answer.

There was a lot wrong with the way the whole event was executed to begin with and there are some things we can all learn from here.

Planning
There were 13 bands, each playing 2 songs with no sound check in between. The stage was nicely laid out with enough gear and we as the band knew what was expected of us. We were prepared. So we thought.
I got on stage and made use of a Laney Cub amp. I chose that over the other 2 Fender amps because I knew it had good tone and figured since it was mic'ed up, I could have the mix in the monitors and not hear it too much from the source. Unfortunately when I should have told the sound engineer which amp I was using I didn't because I was rushing to set up. I will NEVER forsake quality of sound for time. The result of this was that when I broke into my solo, and it was a great one, it was inaudible. You could hear nothing at all. I tried in between sections to crank the amp but it was at 10 and still nothing.

Execution
I just carried on playing and by the second song I was definitely hearing guitar. My moment had passed. Nobody heard me. I checked with the engineer recording the audio and he had recorded the stereo mix and not each instrument on separate tracks. Recording stereo can work out awesome when the live sound is up to the right standard. Unfortunately, now there is a recording with absolutely no guitar, not even a track that can be compressed and amplified to rescue it. I can probably try dubbing some guitar over it after the fact but I am not sure how usable that track, or the recording will be.

We played our two songs with gusto and pizazz. The audience enjoyed us and we had fun. Hopefully the end product is usable, or at least YouTubable (c) so you can see it. Maybe I can also get my hands on the audio and add what guitar I can but we will see.

Frankly I can't blame anyone for the shortcomings but myself. We knew what we were getting into and we prepared for it. I just disregarded lessons and experience that I have had from this same venue. I knew something was going to fail and didn't look hard enough at what could go wrong.

I still had an awesome jam though....