Synth Glitch Creates On-Stage Disaster for Van Halen

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 4:20 pm

A buddy of mine just sent this to me. Thought some of you might find it interesting.

And now for a Friday musical interlude, we bring you Van Halen caught on its comeback tour, except there was one big problem and it involved gadgets. What happens when you play back a prerecorded synthesizer track at 48K instead of the intended 44.1K? The whole track plays back a little bit faster and at a slightly higher pitch, that's what. A dissonant musical mess ensues, trapping the guitarist and bassist in an on-stage musical hell with nowhere to go.

See Eddie Van Halen launch into his famous solo on "Jump," trying in vain to somehow transpose to this otherworldly key that is nowhere to be found. This travesty of a performance happened earlier this month (in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina), and the funny thing is, the crowd was delighted with it. I shutter to think that no one realized something was terribly amiss, but those hometown folks always were overly polite.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/train-wreck/ ... oplay=true

Casual Beats · Post by **Casual Beats** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 4:39 pm

well, i suppose I could chalk it up to listening through laptop speakers . . . but yeah, that sounded pretty bad.

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 5:02 pm

That was almost as painful as when White Zombie played More Human Than Human on the mtv music awards and were waaaaaay off sync with the synth loop to the point of them having to completely kill it half way through the song which made an incredibly thin track. I wish I could find a video of that disaster.

pat the dog · Post by **pat the dog** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 5:09 pm

ouch! that's harsh.

willdahbe · Post by **willdahbe** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:34 pm

I really liked it when the singer was showing off his sweet bow-staff skills. Also when he was bouncing around on that huge microphone.

bigbadotis · Post by **bigbadotis** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:50 pm

it's not as bad as this eddie performance:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CXbCt_1mrak

cosmosuave · Post by **cosmosuave** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:13 pm

Wow that was bad... They use to use an Oberheim OBXa for that tune.. Guess they should of kept using it..

cosmosuave · Post by **cosmosuave** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:16 pm

bigbadotis wrote:it's not as bad as this eddie performance:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CXbCt_1mrak

How do you check your email on that thing?

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:50 pm

that has SO been overdubbed.

but hilarious, especially when it breaks into Black Sabbath.

bigbadotis · Post by **bigbadotis** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:35 am

the guy has made a bunch of them, the clapton one is pretty funny too.

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:00 am

its very well done though, took me a while to work it out!

nowtime · Post by **nowtime** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:22 am

Oh man!

the one for Slash is High-laarious!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEwIRZ9p ... ed&search=

the Santana one is damn funny, too.

thanks for the links

v00d00ppl · Post by **v00d00ppl** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:29 am

it don't matter to me. i like van halen not van haggar.

gomi · Post by **gomi** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:35 am

beats me wrote:That was almost as painful as when White Zombie played More Human Than Human on the mtv music awards and were waaaaaay off sync with the synth loop to the point of them having to completely kill it half way through the song which made an incredibly thin track. I wish I could find a video of that disaster.

one time, i did a show, and the drummer kicked into the chorus section
to early, and our backing tracks where out by 3 bars...

luckily, the backing tracks were all clips in session view, so i just
restarting the scene at the appropriate time.. ans no one noticed.

i love live.

Diamond Mode · Post by **Diamond Mode** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:50 am

what possessed the engineer to switch from a 44.1 to a 48 between the sound check and the show?

maybe they didnt even do a soundcheck?