I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but it turned out to be quite a nice evening. I knew it was a graduation party, and that apparently they'd also hired a magician and boxing midgets, so I wasn't sure of the vibe. That uncertainty aside, we had decent preparation: Amethyst and Shanti had danced to my music before, and we set up a rehearsal with Amethyst and Astarte, as Astarte hadn't danced to my music yet. I also spent time organizing the percussion samples, looking for sets of loops that worked well together, so I'd have a general plan for moving through the set. I changed strings the night before, and discovered that the winter low humidity has kicked in, and the neck has lost some relief--currently, one string in the low frets is bottoming out in a sitar-y way. Not enough time to correct that before the show, but I resolved to go with it, if it came up.

Parking was right across the street from the building (the offices where our host worked), and I quickly got hit up for honky tax. I showed up at the door right as the dancers arrived, so we all went in together, and immediately encountered the boxers.

We were sent on the slowest elevator in the world, not to the sixth floor, where we'd be playing, but to the fourth floor, which was empty. Apparently here was our staging area. I headed on up to do my setup, and immediately was met by someone who surmised I was the musician, and asked what she could get me. (Water.) Already this boded well. I set up near the front of the office, next to the DJ, and here again things went smoothly--I had enough cable to get into the PA comfortably. We didn't start on time, though, as by showtime I hadn't seen the dancers upstairs, and went to look for them. As you'd expect, our paths didn't intersect, but by the time I was back up we were ready to go.

We'd agreed on three dances choreographed to other people's short pieces (which I had), separated by longer sets of mine, and that's what we did (largely because Amethyst reminded me right before we started). After the first prerecorded piece, I started at 140 bpm, and the set was pretty strong, apart from some early uke feedback. Early on, I also dropped in Ash's vocals from July's Electrobelly this past summer, and that added a nice texture to things. I tried to keep up a regular regimen of changing things--new melody, new rhythms, new textures, whatever--to keep the audience's attention from wandering. At one point this was a bit difficult, as one of the audients came up to talk to me during the set, with some (positive) observations about the uke, and some curiosity about the software, but he quickly realized that I was busy.

I tried to keep an eye on the dancers so that I wasn't making any major changes during a single dancer's set, though sometimes the audience blocked that, which was ok--better to have a lot of interested people. At one point I noticed that Shanti had taken a tray of pizza from one of the servers, and balanced it on her head while she danced, which was a nice touch. After about 20 minutes, I made the rhythms more sparse and cued the next prerecorded piece. During the break, I kicked up the tempo to 180, and did a bit of other prep. For the second part, I kept things more abstract, did some remixing, and also did record some new stuff. I played with the gate plugins to get a bit of distortion and attack cut effects, and I did notice that we lost a few people from time to time, but we had some others taking their places. Even with the audience shifts, I felt energized enough that at one point I busted out a conventional solo, which is usually a sign that I'm having a good time (unless, like some gigs, it's a sign that I'm pissed off, but this time it was the good time sign). I did mistakenly give Amethyst a visual cue about five minutes earlier than I should have for the last pre-recorded piece, but it worked out, and we moved into the last pre-recorded piece, in which the dancers used canes as props.

I did do some outro music out of stuff I'd done earlier in the evening, though the vibe didn't lend itself to an encore. Instead, we headed to the bar, picked up some food, and talked to a few interested people. Soon, though, we were told we all had to move downstairs to the fourth floor, which was empty--this made sense, as people were crowding around computers, and in any case I had to head down there to get my jacket. This was less of a good thing for the DJ, though, who had to tear everything down and set it up again down there.

Once downstairs we hung out, talked a bit, and tried to determine how long to stay; in the event I headed out at 10. As I was leaving, some guests commented on the uke, and noted that they'd not heard this cute instrument--apparently they'd arrived late). Unfortunate for them, but it was nice to have the interest. I was home quite soon after--maybe 10:20, though apparently the party was swinging rather late. A good gig.