Announcement
The folks behind the Live@ series are doing the Pittsburgh Music Festival in November, and apparently I'm a part of it! This is an afternoon show, which is a touch unusual for me, but I've done 'em before. I have two hours, so I'll be doing two sets! From three to four, it's the return of Death Pig! I'll fire up the no-input setup for a fresh dose of pure electrons. Come journey with me through the feedback city of my mind.

From four to five, I'll broaden the scope with an ambient set of Guitar Clouds. I've been investigating some new frequency relationships, for effects ranging from reflective, to heroic, to post-human alienation. For some reason, I'll be playing on a day which will have mostly acoustic performers, so I'm sure it'll all end in tears for somebody. Probably not you, though, so come on out.

The Live@ people want me to give them an idea of potential audience size, so if you're thinking of coming (or thinking of staying away) please let me know.

Quiet Storm Coffeehouse: 5430 Penn Avenue (corner of Penn and Graham), Garfield. Afternoon show: *3:00 PM* (that's right--three in the afternoon). All ages. $6. For two--count 'em!--two hours! Directions at http://tinyurl.com/62vvk

Report
For as hard as the Live@ people work on setting up their shows--and I do appreciate the work they do--I'd seen a pattern with the three I'd done so far, which was that any audience would be entirely through my own efforts. At the last one (the C&I show) we discussed my participating in the Pittsburgh Music Festival they were having, which sounded good...although the Sunday afternoon time seemed unpromising. In the event, it was indeed unpromising--I was up against a Steeler game during the team's strongest season in a long time, and consequently there was no paying audience.

On the plus side, it's been quite a while since I've done a Death Pig set, and it was nice to record one, even if there was functionally no audience. In some ways, though, the lack of audience was a convenience to me--I'd not had time to eat lunch, and I was comped on (nonalcoholic) drinks, and given half price on food. So I ordered a rather tasty vegan burrito, which I ate during my DP set, eating with one hand and tweaking effects pedal knobs with the other. This might have been a distraction to any audience. There were some notable moments, although DP stuff can be hard to monitor correctly, especially when there's background noise. Still, there were some potentially usable points.

I finished that up and took a break before going into the guitar clouds set. At points, Music happened, although toward the end I also felt the music drain out of the process, possibly because the method I'm using (rhythmically related ring modulated delays) has become routine and somewhat predictable to me now. Also, as much as I like G, I miss the multiple channel controls on one screen that Girl had, which let me tweak things more quickly. But again, there were moments.

So as disasters go, it was pretty mild. I did a long double set to pretty much no one (apart from the staff, the sound guy, and the Live@ folks), but got a chance to record. And then it was time to get home and get back to work on both work and the scores I'd been writing for the show on the following Saturday.