OT - I HATE #*$& UPS!!

[stoken6]

And I made a few at my last gig...

 

"If you were allowed to hit 3 clams only..."?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Justin Havu]

I've made many myself, mostly when changing patches and going to the wrong one. Example: Meaning to switch to a soft string pad but instead accidentally call up a Jon Lord-esque, balls to the wall Hammond patch.

[Dr88s]

I only gig once a year so each gig means a ton to me. I flubbed the really easy organ intro to Black Magic Woman and turned nineteen shades of crimson. The bandmates heard but no one I asked in the crowd seemed to pick up on what was to me an epic fail.

[marczellm]

I once accidentally switched to a rhythm set.

 

Another time, playing someone else's Privia in a student big band, I accidentally started the onboard drum machine. Look to the drummer, realize it's not him playing completely out of time but the keyboard. Volume down. Desperately trying to find the stop button on a completely unknown UI. Find the one most promising and push it. Volume slightly up. No drum machine. Volume back up and continue playing.

[Joe Muscara]

At first, I thought, "why did he start another thread about UPS" and was completely clueless reading your OP. Then I got it and now I love the thread title.

[Threadslayer]

I thought exactly the same thing. The two thread titles were practically identical.

[yannis D]

Well, i once played in Barbican Center in London part of a world music band. We had as a guest a famous israeli female singer, and she sang this soft, tender song. Acoustic piano. I had placed my XV2020 near the pitch bend wheel of my 88 keyboard, and had velcroed it pretty stable (i thought). Towards the end of the song the velcro goes off (due to the heat, no idea...) and the Xv2020 slowly slowly slips towards the pitch bend wheel. Miraculously i hear a repetitive sound which is NOT my piano sound. In the middle of the most "acoustic" part of the song an out of tune arpegiator starts to pop out! The lady sings the last chorus and she's really into it, but i turn red! I try to figure out the fault. I figured out that "this" sound was from the internal arpegiator, and i handle the situation as fast as i could. I guess she did not notice it... But it was one of my most embarrassing moments on stage

(there are countless other stories, but this one is really hard...)

[MotiDave]

my UFO tribute show last fall, we were opening a show that Eddie Trunk (of "That Metal Show" fame) and his TV sidekicks were doing their comedy / dialog show thing. Eddie is a huge long time UFO fan, he always plays tracks off their live Strangers In The Night album on his radio show, just a huge fan. talked to him backstage pre-show, he's excited to see our band, blah blah.

 

we're playing Love to Love, a cool wurly piano song (with strings), which Eddie has said many times on his shows was one of his favorites:

 

UFO Strangers In The Night: Love to Love

 

Come up to the second Chorus and I blank, start playing the bridge that is after the chorus. complete brain cramp. I played on for about 5 seconds but it felt like 5 minutes before I realize the rest of the band is back in the chorus and I'm ... not. I get back in synch to the band, finish the song together, we play the rest of the set with no issues but its just burning me inside the entire rest of the set. and the rest of the night, and next morning. couldn't let it go.

 

nobody noticed, all the people there I talked to said we were awesome, etc., loved it yada yada. next day i'm venting to my lead singer/best friend. he said "what, you were great, relax". I'm like are you kidding, i sucked!. he's "no man, you were great". I'm all huff huff ... what you didn't hear me playing a different song midway thru there?

 

he just smiled, kindly, and said "oh, that. yeah, i heard it".

 

and with that, i let it go.

 

Doing the same set in May, opening for Pat Travers band this time ... and I will not make this same mistake again

[nadroj]

Years ago when I first started playing in clubs. Had spent a lot of time learning and practicing the sweet home alabama solo to the note.

 

End of the night, our last song is SHA and it ends with the piano solo. Full crowd. Singer shouts "PIANO SOLO, MR HOPE ON THE KEYBOARDS!". Get about 1/4 through the solo then mind blank. "What does the rest go like?". Cock it, I'll just improvise. First instinct is to revert to the tonic blues scale and take it from there.

 

A few seconds later: "...Wait, what f%^ing key is this in?" D and G blues sounds horrible. Pentatonics sound horrible because I'm playing them at the wrong times. I stop playing, then try to find my way back. Pick up on the original solo from memory, but oh look I'm playing 4 bars behind and they've already started slowing down to finish and I'm still racing away out of time. Hit a D to resolve (yup, oops) then walked off stage before the "applause" could begin.

 

Also starting stuff with the wrong patches, etc, but that one always stuck out. At the time I was still new to taking solos live and it threw me off for months.

 

EDIT: ALSO before I'd even started gigging I was asked to join a well established rock covers band for one night by a friend for one song - the final countdown. Usually they take the piss and play the intro on a kazoo or something, but they wanted me to play the intro for this one show.

 

I forgot all about it. Got a text at 15:50 saying "remember soundcheck is at 16:30, you on your way yeah?". I lived 45 minutes away and the only keyboard I had in the flat that day was my old microKorg.

 

Book a cab, put the song on once, find a preset, tweak the filters a bit then try to memorise the riff. "I've got it!" I think just as the cab arrives. Get to soundcheck very late, but they're excited to have me. "We'll soundcheck with this song then since you're here."

 

Just the band, their wives and the sound guys in the room and me, then barely out of my teens. Count in, aaaaaand...

 

I forgot. Stumbled my way through it, and it was all wrong. So, so wrong. They kept playing but stopped after 20 seconds because they couldn't stop laughing. I was humiliated - a keyboard player who not only was incredibly late, but who can't even play the intro to the final countdown?

 

"At least you got the sound pretty close" was my encouragement. "We'll just use the kazoo tonight though."

 

I still shudder thinking about it. That was five years ago. I'm in a band with the same singer now, fully booked with weddings and corporate events from March-December, so it has a happy ending, sort of. I try to laugh whenever it gets brought up, but struggle to hide the tears...

[brenner13]

If we really learned from our mistakes, I should be a freakin' Einstein by now!

[Stokely]

Started Black Magic Woman a step down, and didn't realize it until the guitar solo intro was almost over. I knew something was wrong, but not that it was me

 

Last gig, our singer was hurting so we tuned down. Well, I did something to undo the transposition (I wasn't about to try actually *playing* everything a half-step down), that sounded wonderful!

[Danny Linguini]

A couple of gigs ago my partner calls out Brown Eyed Girl. I check my piano patch, open up the Brown Eyed Girl chart, pull up the rhythm on the drum machine, and proceed to start playing Wild Nights. Complete brain fart. One of the few times we were glad nobody was really listening.

 

Before that, on the first gig using the drum machine live, a couple of times I nudged the dial to the wrong rhythm while setting the tempo. That had some hilarious results.

 

Of course, there's always my partner who's good for at least one major clam a night, and then he looks at me like I did it. That's when I want to accidentally tip over the PA stand on his head.

 

Oh yeah, and I have accidentally whacked the transpose button. Just once. Since I never use it, it took me what felt like an hour to find it and undo it.

[Threadslayer]

Another time, playing someone else's Privia in a student big band, I accidentally started the onboard drum machine.

I've made that #$%^up more times than I'd care to admit. The problem was always made worse by the fact that I never use those auto accompaniment / 1 finger harmony features intentionally so I typically don't remember where those buttons are to turn the damned things off.