Last night in Chicago started out flowing very smoothly. Another day at the office until some guitarist or bass player decided to start playing in direct half steps to the rest of the band, or so I thought until it was a keyboard solo moment and that same horrendous sound continued!
It was me!
I moved the pitch joy stick…pushed and pulled all of the controllers…reset the mode and finally in desperation did a complete factory reset on my beloved Roland G 88. Nothing worked and after the reset the problem still remained. It was like every fourth key would play half a dissonant half step when I hit the key a little hard.
Wow! it really sucked. Was a terrible sounding problem! A lot of things would have been better then the instrument deciding to play half step intervals! After I realized I couldn’t do anything about this problem I left the stage and started calling all my friends from Roland trying to get someone on the phone. I emailed an urgent message to Japan as well.
Minutes later I got a call from my buddy Scott Tibbs in the US. He called Japan and then I was on the phone with the head engineer there discussing the problem outside on the street while Tony Mike and John were shredding it up inside keeping the show alive. Thank god that LTE is very much about jamming as well because it seemed like they were having a good time! This was surreal for me because I was amazed to have this problem! In 10 years of touring with Dream Theater I have never had anything as bad as that happen! In Dream Theater I always have a backup keyboard with me. I pretty much have a backup of everything I use for that. For the LTE shows obviously it is not the same type of budget so I figured for 6 shows we could do it with my one monster Roland Fantom keyboard.
Guess not…Lesson learned. I will probably never not have a backup again no matter what. That was too weird for me! Anyway after a while of dealing with the Japanese and realizing nothing could be done in the allotted time, I figured I would do a little guitar bit. With Eric’s (my tech for LTE) encouragement I went over to JP and asked if I good borrow his axe for a bit. This led to a rare but very fun yours truly guitar feature. God, how I wish I had been in shape for that! I haven’t played guitar in so many months! Anyway, had a good work out until my hand was very tired at which point I gratefully handed the guitar back to it’s rightful owner.
After the show and the next morning I spent a good deal of time talking with my friends at Roland and figuring out a plan to make sure that I was covered for the rest of the shows. Yes folks…I WILL have a working keyboard (or two!) for the remaining shows and even a little surprise in Downey…
The Roland guys were all very cool and helpful to make sure they did everything they could given the situation. Ya know, with technology, shit can happen, and unfortunately it does on occassion (just not to me…wrong!).
Here I am tonight in Downey CA with a brand spanking new Roland Fantom G8 on my couch and it has be tried and tested. It sounds awesome. Apologies to those who did not see a full LTE show that they expected. On the other hand I think the band played even loooonger then we would have and it turned out to be a very unique evening indeed. I’m definitely gonna practice more guitar now so if it ever happens again I can be more prepared!
That’s it for now all!
On with the show!
Musically,
