Assisting at review Week

DJ and electronic Music production

PPD/WBL

Simon adair

assisting at review week. February 16^th -20^th. 2015

During the review week of February I was asked by one of my tutors Scott Mason if I could assist some of the level 3 students to set up a live set in the main foyer of the the performance academy building. I was student rep for my course and usually attended meeting between course leaders. I also had garnered a reputation for having an strong interest in hardware routing so I would be in my element helping out.

I had arrived at lunch time and met up with some of the level threes in studio 2 were we were briefed. The set up looked like CDJ Djing and one of the students would do an Ableton set using the Akai APC 40. First we needed to move some fold-out tables to the foyer as a work surface. I made a suggestion to include the Prophet 5 Sequential Circuit analogue synthesiser to the foyer to 'jam with'. I had only used the Prophet 5 once before and really wanted to show the level 3's around the machine as I tend to be very enthusiastic about old hardware synths and really wanted to share that enthusiasm.

Next PA needed to be moved and installed and the studio 2 Mac with accompanying table had to be manured to the CDJ bench in the foyer in such a way as to set up a kind of 'booth' space for the DJ's.

I was wiring the power and the audio ins/outs from the CDJ's and the Mac into the mixer. Myself and Scott then plugged the audio from the prophet 5 and sound checked the old synth. Sadly we got no signal whatsoever. The Prophet was completely dead.

We carefully carried it to the stores and had the plug fuse checked. The plug was fine. So we guessed at the internal fuses in the circuits must have shorted out. This would be the most likely cause for this particular synth to 'die' on us.

I hate admitting it but I was actually pretty upset as I really have a respect for old analogue gear and really wanted to show the other students how versatile and powerful an old machine like the prophet could be.

I was asked if I had brought in any of my own tracks to DJ with but I declined as I didn't have anything prepared or even available on the day. I was however willing to play the prophet 5 and even 'jam' with one of the students on there DJ set.

Another reason I was sad the machine was broken.

The last set was played by one of the students using an Ableton live set. I helped him program the clip launch function on the APC 40 and route some of the parameter controls for the mixer fades and aux effects in Ableton.

During the sets I gave some advice on mixing and sequencing where it was requested and at the end all the hardware needed to be stored back in its original places either at the stores or in studio 2.