This is the 1st part of the post-mortem.

The “A Green Symphony” event last Sunday at SeGi College, Kota Damansara was a great experience for us as it is the first time we perform with the 6 member lineup. Overall we did well, with some minor mistake but still sounded decent. We had some trouble during the soundchecks and “rehearsal” as the management keep on changing their itinerary. What we can do is to do our part to perform as best as we could.

As far as the PA system is concerned, my worry was true. Not everyone has their own monitor speakers, probably because we are not the main highlights of the event, so they didn’t bother to provide some for the bands. So in the end, Siang Xi cannot hear himself, Brett can only hear Choong How’s bass, Choong How can’t hear mine and others, Xiao Yu can’t hear herself. I on the other hand can hear everyone because my spot is the intersection of the all sound sources. I have no idea how it sounds like from the audience’s seat. Hopefully it will sound decent.

As for the management of events, I can’t say I’m totally satisfied with their work. I am grateful that they gave us a chance to perform on the stage (although we’re not the main highlights), but that does not justify them treat us and the rest of the band like we have all the time in the world to entertain their “ever-changing” itinerary. Things would have been easier if they had discussed with us and see if we can have a workaround. But sadly, they didn’t. So screw them.

More on the “uninforming” organiser. They only inform us about what we should wear only on that day. We didn’t bother to go back just to take our clothes, so I wore a V-neck T-Shirt hehe. Brett had to leave because he got an urgent phone call from his company to debug some issue. THEN, they told us that they’re going to have a full rehearsal so can fine tune the volume balancing and etc. So I called Brett to come back and he told his boss about this and manage to get someone else to stand in for him. AND THEN all of the sudden they say ONLY play 1 song. AND THEN AGAIN, they said the plan has been put off. So I was pissed and raised my voice when talking to the coordinator. So in the end, we manage to have some time to balance the volume between Siang Xi and Xiao Yu’s synth.

The sound crew on the other hand was being very helpful except for ONE, a Malay guy. He seem to not having an idea how to solve on stage problems. During our first soundcheck, we don’t have much issue because both synths are using separate DI Boxes to feed the console. Then after bringing back UPM’s synth on to the stage and they use the DI for that synth, we had more issue during our second soundcheck because both our synth is connected to only 1 DI, then when we requested to separate it again and the fella seems to get pissed. The issue would have been resolved without much hassle if he had connect one of our synth to the other DI. The other soundcrew joined in after that was very helpful and cooperative and helped us to solve our issue right on.

Before our turn for soundcheck, there’s already a band up on the stage doing their “souncheck”. To me, it seems more like a practice than a soundcheck and it’s a complete waste of our time. Seems like either they have never practiced before or never practiced enough and taking their own sweet time on stage to practice without realising they should be sound-checking and there are other people downstairs waiting for them to fuck off from the stage so the others can have their turn to soundcheck. tsk tsk tsk … these inconsiderate twerps. Never mind, we also had some fun time down there laughing and joking with the other bands.

Guess that’s all for Part 1… Stay tuned for Part 2