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Synth Glitch Creates On-Stage Disaster for Van Halen

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 4:20 pm
by smutek
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

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 4:39 pm
by Casual Beats
well, i suppose I could chalk it up to listening through laptop speakers . . . but yeah, that sounded pretty bad.

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 5:02 pm
by beats me
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.

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 5:09 pm
by pat the dog
ouch! that's harsh.

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:34 pm
by willdahbe
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.

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:50 pm
by bigbadotis
it's not as bad as this eddie performance:

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

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:13 pm
by cosmosuave
Wow that was bad... They use to use an Oberheim OBXa for that tune.. Guess they should of kept using it..

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:16 pm
by cosmosuave
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?

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:50 pm
by adventurepants_
that has SO been overdubbed.

but hilarious, especially when it breaks into Black Sabbath.

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:35 am
by bigbadotis
the guy has made a bunch of them, the clapton one is pretty funny too.

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:00 am
by adventurepants_
its very well done though, took me a while to work it out!

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:22 am
by nowtime
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

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:29 am
by v00d00ppl
it don't matter to me. i like van halen not van haggar.

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:35 am
by gomi
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.

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:50 am
by Diamond Mode
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?