Forum Week 12

I’ve had to endure a bit of rap and scratching in my time, notably the experience of monitoring for DMX and putting up with a mate of mines stories of operating FOH for the Hill Top Hoods national tour (which he raved about mind you. Nothing is more rediculous than seeing a fourty year old carrying on like an eighteen year old rapper. “Hey yo!”), but nothing compared to the moron we had to endure at the last forum from the video “How to rock a party.” At least HTH aren’t complete morons. Even the turntablist that opened for DMX got a thunderous roar when he concluded his act, although it was probably the fact that he had actually finished that the crowd were applauding. The only thing different in monitoring scratchers rather than real musicians is that their desks are set on a separate auxilliary so they can control it themselves. They know this and are told this about five times before they go on, but the amount of times I got strange looks and the sign of a finger-pointing-up from the performer asking to get the foldback turned up was rediculous. Morons. I told them numerous times I will have no control over the level. They adjust their own monitoring themselves fed from a feed from the monitoring console. That is how all turntablists have the monitoring set up. It is not a band situation where the levels are fairly constant and need minor tweaking during a show. The records they use to scratch have widely differing volumes and it is easier for them to mix the monitoring levels as they see fit. Well it looks like that is the end of my ranting for this semester.

Oh wait! One more thing I stumbled upon. Are they serious?! This has to be right up there with knitting and origami on the list of worlds most useless courses.

Whittington, Steven. 2008. “Forum.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 5th June