Mehovoric

I have a short story ... well, no not really short… that I'd like to share with Coldplaying. Mod's, feel free to move this if you feel it could go in a better spot. (Deep breathe) Now this is a story all about how my life.... no no wait, wrong place, wrong time. Let me start over.... I may have endured one of the worst summers of my life. The details are unimportant. What does matter, on October 2nd, 2017, Coldplay did a show in Portland, Oregon USA. I went to that show. I made a short video so if you get bored, it's at the bottom. But if you'd like the read the entirety of my story, thank you. It means a lot to me that I can share it and hopefully you’ll enjoy it. ____________________ On October 1st, Stephen Paddock took 59 innocent lives, injured another 546 at a concert in Las Vegas, and emotionally scarred thousands more. On October 2nd, hours before the Portland show was to begin, Tom Petty passed away. I had the privilege of seeing one of his final shows at Safeco Field in Seattle, WA a mere 6 weeks earlier. After that, I also went to Coldplay's show in Seattle at Century Link Field on September 23rd, and while a blast to see the boys in my home town, (outdoors with fireworks, which, really the arena shows just aren't quite the same without them) the people I went with have changed and become distant in the short time since then. I still don't really understand why. Back to Portland. I had bought my tickets the very hour they were released a full year earlier. I made plans, spent far more than I ever imagined I would. We had seen Coldplay before, knew it was magical, and decided that while we still can, let's go all-out. I've had better luck than most to see them a few times, even while working at Superbowl 50. I got to watch the halftime show rehearsals 3 times and even meet Miller! But this summer was different. Earlier in the year, my life changed, and I lost most of my friends including the ones I planned to go to Portland with. I did consider not going, but I still wanted to experience the show, so I tried to sell off my other tickets, but to no avail. Well I guess I'll get 4 good seats to myself. Maybe take a pre-show nap. I packed up the truck and started driving. It's about a 3-hour journey. I'd be lying if I said the events of Vegas the night before didn't cross my mind. However, I decided to stand up instead of cowering in the dark. 2 Hours to go; still no plan. The sun was setting, landscape was beautiful, and I was getting more excited the closer I got. I was talking to a couple of lads on a classified ads website almost trying at this point to give away my tickets. 1 Hour to go, still me and my 4 seats. During the Viva and Mylo eras, Miller, better known as Roadie 42, wrote a series of blogs about touring, the shows, his various adventures with the band. I remember reading in one of those, that the band likes to give away tickets in the front rows to the people who purchased in the nosebleeds that "look genuinely excited and giddy to be seeing the band." So I thought, "You know what, I'd rather someone enjoy my turmoil, then let the seats go unused." With that I had my plan. Little did I know that I would soon learn just how true it is that giving is better than receiving. I finally arrive in Portland, about 2 hours before the show. Get my parking, get in and pick up my tickets, vip bags, Love pins, and of course, my Xylobands. (I'm sorry Coldplay, I just had to keep mine.) I take all the extra stuff back to my truck and get a message from a gentleman who had already bought a floor ticket a few rows behind me, but wondered if I was willing to trade one of mine so he could be closer. I told him, "Screw it, buy me a beer, and you can have it." One down, two to go. Told him my story, my plan, and told him that he could have one of my tickets on the condition he do the same thing I'm doing for mine. He loved the idea, and was all for it, immediately on the lookout. Now finding a lone individual at concert is apparently difficult, but hey, there was the two of us, so there had to be more, right? Thankfully we managed to give it away to a very happy woman. Beers bought and I'm becoming fast friends with this random cool dude from Canada. Now to the climax of this story ... I have two tickets to get rid of. I am on the lookout for excited, giddy people, maybe a couple on a date, best friends hanging out. I'm even contemplating trucking up to the nosebleeds to look. (Also trying to figure out how to explain to the ushers my idea once I get there so they'll let me through.) Out of the corner of my eye I see two ladies passing along on the concourse carrying posters. I didn't think much of it until I look again, and one giant word stopped everything: Houston. Looked at the poster a second time. "All the way from Houston"... I was floored. On August 25th, Coldplay was set to play a stadium show in Houston, Texas ... The same night hurricane Harvey began its march inland and campaign of destruction in Texas. For the safety of the fans Coldplay postponed and ultimately cancelled the Houston show. It had barely been weeks since the storm and most of the region was/is still in rescue and recovery mode. When I saw these two women with their sign, I immediately knew what to do with my last 2 tickets. From Houston? Yes. Crazy emotional story? Yes. Exhausted? Yes. Dedicated enough to fly to Oregon last minute and hang out with local family to get away for a couple days and see a show you were so excited for but so disappointed it was cancelled? Yes. Nosebleed seats but you don't care? CHECK. This woman had given so much of her time and energy to help her neighbors, even while her own family’s home was in shambles. I may not be able to do what she did to help Houston, but I can surely help her, as I'm not sure a single person there in Portland that night deserved more than she did. Take my tickets, here's the better of the 4 seats, get your signed noticed, (And it did! Chris pointed at her and made eye contact and mentioned it later in the show) thank you for inspiring me with your story, now let me help you. Their reaction, their smiles, their excitement ... indescribable. My plan was complete, our night was set, let's go have the time of our lives. Excitement at peak levels, the building was ready to explode and Tove Lo wasn't even off the stage. She finishes her set and leaves the crowd wild and ready; they know what's coming. Someone manages to get a Wave going. My 3 complete-strangers-turned-new-friends keep chatting, telling our stories, learning more about Houston, with Brian Eno's atmospheric melody creating just enough tension in the background. Come to find out, one of the ladies had never been to a full arena show and was completely overwhelmed by the entire experience and now she was sitting right next to the B-Stage. Finally, the opera intro starts. comes blasting out of the speakers and instantly everyone is on their feet and cheering and the house lights aren't even off yet. I look to my right and what. the. heck. ... This woman from Houston is singing. SINGING. This ridiculously obscure opera song that nobody knows or has ever heard, ... this lady is SINGING IT. Word for word, perfectly in time and on key. Apparently, she's an opera singer. I turn to the other guy with us, "Okay so that happened." The intro finishes, house lights go out, I've got my camera up, ready for the Xylobands to fire and bring on Charlie Chaplin!!! I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to lights and LEDs so my favorite thing about the show is the Xylobands. Charlie Brown at a live show? Perfection. I’m for everything to start but nothing happens. The fellas quietly appear on stage with just a couple of spot lights and address the audience. Chris begins talking about how strange a thing it is to consider how to go about playing a concert less than a day after the events in Las Vegas. In classic Coldplay fashion he asked we send our love to everyone in Vegas, to thunderous applause and agreement. This is why I decided to go to the show. You never know when something tragic can happen and you can't let it paralyze your life. You keep your head up high and charge out into the world anyways and when 18,000 people collide, when all these separate lives clash for the same moment, it makes something truly magical. We're all in this together. We all took our phones, turned on our flashlights, and had a minute of silence. (A quick note it's amazing how much light 18,000 cell phone lights give off. The place was completely lit.) The silence may as well have been deafening. It was eerie, but heartwarming. All of us, all there for the same reason, all thinking about the same thing, sending our love and prayers to people in Vegas and all over the world to those who need it most. And with a cry of "Viva Las Vegas" from the crowd, the band picked up their instruments, were joined by Peter Buck and played a beautiful tribute to the fallen Tom Petty. The entire crowd sang along to "Free Fallin". And with that, the lights went out, and we we're off to the races with a sea of red fireflies and the words of Charlie Chaplin... ____________________ I learned a lot that night, even about myself. I learned how important it is to stand for things you believe in, to stand with others. Even when you're exhausted and down, still get out there and do the things you love. Stay optimistic, help and love your fellow humans. When you've had a crappy summer and just don't feel like doing anything, still go do something. Put yourself out there and interact with others. You'll find out that everything's not lost. Even if you can't help yourself, maybe you can find someone that you can help. If things don't go according to plan, don't panic. Keep going and you'll find a new one. If my plan hadn’t fallen to shambles, I never would have made 3 wonderful new friends. I would not have had one of the best concerts of my life. I would not have experienced the satisfaction of helping someone that has also been through so much and that my woes can't even begin to compare to. If you're one of those 3 people reading this, if I never see you again, I'll never forget you or that night. It was truly an experience to remember. A memory I will always cherish. If you're ever in my neck of the woods, look me up. We'll put on some Coldplay albums. Thank you. ____________________ Without further adieu, here is a short video I made with some of the shaky footage I captured. The time lapse at the beginning was made with a GoPro Hero4 Black held with a suction cup to my windshield. The rest of the footage was done with my GoPro Hero5 Session. (Seriously a fantastic concert camera because of the size. It literally just looks like you're just holding your hand up in the air.) Thank you for reading my story and watching my video. If you're ever in a place where you can help someone else, take it from me, it makes you feel so much better. Take care, my friends of Coldplaying. PS: If you've never gotten to stand beneath falling confetti, yes, it is as cool as it looks. Totally worth it! PSS: If you'd like to see my raw shaky footage, and don't mind listening to a grown man screaming his head off and singing out of key, PM and I'll share you a temporary OneDrive link

Wow. What a great show. But what Coldplay show isn't a great show! I have a great story I'll be posting later on to supplement once I get all my videos and thoughts in order. Quick recap though: The boys broke their usual routine of entry and came out after the house lights went down and briefly talked about the tragedy in Vegas and everywhere else in the world that's dealing with turmoil, and asked us all to turn our phone lights on and have a minute of silence. After which they launched straight into a touching tribute to Tom Petty, playing Free Fallin, with REM's Peter Buck. (Guessing this is why they postponed going on stage for about 45 minutes, to make sure they were ready to play it). Then after that, we were right back to Charlie Chaplin, Xylobands, bounding off to lasers and confetti. Chris gave away a couple guitars after the c-stage to a couple kids that he pulled up with him. They were floored and one was actively trying to refuse. Chris then promptly goes back to main stage asks Jonny, "You didn't need that did you?". Show finished strong. I made some new friends, took a long drive home. Was a good day!

Ohhhh how I wish I had been able to go to this show. I could have gotten in the building for free too! Love this stadium. Agh. Just would have had to pay probably $200 in airfare, gladly would have slept in the airport. Alas. Having to work on weekends sucks. haha Oh well. Here's a couple photos from the setup: [ATTACH=full]5902[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]5903[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]5904[/ATTACH]

It must be literally what Chris is playing, and not a melody/vocal hybrid? If so, that's pretty awesome! I can't seem to find any digital versions other than Kindle or iBook, kinda unfortunate. I'm all for paperback books but I got nowhere to put it.

I was just banging my head against my desk thinking the same thing. You could probably get away with 6-12 velocity levels instead of 127! But even then, you're right, that is a lot of time and patience. I'm thinking about practicing a bit with some other stuff I have. See if I can even make it work. I would totally ship you a box of cookies though! haha In regards to your Fostex question, I haven't even seen one of those for sale ever! You currently have 8 mono outputs (4 stereo) ... If you don't mind my asking what do you need more for? The RME's are great but crazy expensive. You can get other interfaces from Presonus, Zoom, Behringer that all have ADAT outputs and you can hookup an ADDA converter and get more balanced stereo outs. My Presonus box can run 24 mono outs with 16 over ADAT at 44.1 KHz. And it sounds really good for my needs.

Thank you very much! That'd be greatly appreciated. I'm traveling for work all next week but back in the studio June 1, so if you got stuff you want me to try out for you, let me know, happy to collab. And I'm completely torn right now. I have the receptor and can get the ex pro samples, but I also have access to get an MP9000. While I don't want to carry around a huge/heavy piano, having one would be amazing. But if I can get the same/similar sounds out of the ex pro's I don't need it. On the other hand I do have the expertise to gut it and create my own MP9000 Rac. However, I'd hate to gut a perfectly good MP9000 that looks and plays so beautifully. What do I do?!?! haha I wonder if I could gut it, and then build another midi out interface. The physical key action is all I really want in my home studio. When I'm out performing I've got this super tiny compact Midi 88-key half action piano that does the job.

Its funny you post this because I JUST, like literally 2 days ago picked up a Receptor. No idea how to use it, got it in the rack last night. Still working on transferring the iLOK. First thing I'm going to do though is pick up those Kawaii EX Pro samples! My rack is mostly the same-ish. This is my home studio; Stereo outs from the Triton and Receptor going to a Presonus Studio 192 interface with main outs to speakers and separate mix outs to the Behringer HA4700 headphone mixer and Shure PSM900 wireless monitors. MOTU MTP AV for chucking Midi data. The foot pedal on the left is a modified Behringer FCB1010 that I use to trigger backing tracks and lights with MIDI in Ableton Live. Would you be willing to share your Fix You setup of the Triton?? I've got all the visible screen settings the same as the photos we have but I can't seem to find the right combination of organs to get it to sound right.

In simple terms you build your virtual instrument on a computer and then you stick the data on a flash drive or what-have-you and plug that into your rack unit, then configure the unit. (Coldplay uses the Muse Receptor) Then plug your piano or controller device into the rack unit and away you go!

Miller's Rig is all about playback of backing tracks (typically synths and orchestral stuff the band can't play live) and providing the sounds for all the keyboards. So Jonny plays his keyboard and that data is sent here and triggers sounds from the green boxes. (Think Viva La Vida, Fix You Organ) Here's another video where Miller is actually talking about one particular piece of the rig but he talks through some of the rest of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=fOQPKn7Vzv4;list=FLRrpqkxLQWkspxbyOjc4sVg

Video Description: Live at the Chords 2 Cure benefit in Santa Monica on 24 April 2016. See http://www.chords2cure.org for more info. These kids are amazing. If I hadn't seen video of it, I would think it was actually Coldplay! Big props to them. Need to go on tour! And really cool of Chris to do it with them! To my knowledge, I don't think it's ever been played live.

'Midnight' Night over London Lay > In The Darkness Cool Game!

Definitely more NA dates coming. They wouldn't say exact locations/dates. But its good to keep the surprise factor up! haha They've been through both those areas on previous tours so it wouldn't surprise me if they went through again. Hope you get to see them!

There's an old FCC filing from 2012, states frequencies 869.47 to 869.53 MHz. I have a feeling it won't be just as simple as broadcasting those RF signals and hoping it turns on. That'd be too easy! But hey, maybe that's how they did it! I think they only had 4 or 5 different color bands, so maybe there's a smaller range per color that controls how the device actually functions. Let me know what you find!

I think the best part of that for me was the Clocks/Midnight transition to Fix You. But the first time I heard them start singing Up & Up at rehearsals during Fix You, I just about died. Was so so clever. As much as I love it, I agree, for the tour, keep them separate. But hey! At least they're singing the Believe In Love thing at the end just like at Superbowl. Great way to end it!

That is correct, they operate on two different frequencies. The Tech's could potentially carry two differently programmed antenna and operate both, but I find it more likely they wouldn't do that. Since the new wristbands are white straps with RGB LEDs (multi colored) they probably wouldn't want a bunch of people running around with their old straps. Want it to be uniform. During the intro, they're all pulsing one color before they go crazy. It's pretty cool.

I can't say where, but an insider source told me more North American dates are coming! Based off their current schedule, I'd expect them to either take September off and come back, or march up to the NW region right after California, cross Canada to the East, and then hit the Southwest in the dead of Winter. Sent from my XT1585 using Coldplaying mobile app

They are the original! He sampled and repeated them. If you listen very carefully, you can hear a tiny bit of the organ coming off the first track AHFOD, every 4 beats. It's a pretty common practice in the DJ industry. Sent from my XT1585 using Coldplaying mobile app

I've always been curious how much of their sounds and samples, if any, are loaded into these keyboards. They've got the Muse Receptors in the keyboard racks and everything is hooked up via Midi. Maybe its more of a triplicate backup or something they can use in the warm-up rooms if necessary.

I thought about posting and seeing if anyone else was around because other than working I had literally nothing to do this trip. But alas. And yes! I'm trying to work it out! Especially since I doubt they will come to my stadium. The problem is just coming up with excuses to stay somewhere where I can watch the show and dance around without having to actually work .... so if you have any ideas. haha

I was doing computer support work for one of the other companies involved. I routinely make trips down to that stadium. Nothing related to the Halftime show unfortunately. And that bracelet is so cool! I heard they were giving out the pins to everyone that came in and was a little ticked they didn't give some to the employees as well. So now I have to go find one online. haha

That's such an awesome experience you had! I can't believe I got to be there working on other things but got to watch the rehearsal 3 times! But you, you got to be IN IT! Uber jealous but that's so awesome and I'm really happy for you! I kept waiting in the tunnels for at the points the band was supposed to go by, but I kept missing them or had to actually do my job. Lol But what a memorable experience! I think my favorite part of watching you all was when you all scattered and sprinted off the field! Was like all of a sudden you were all gone!

AWESOME! I was there too working, but I wish I would have known others from here were gonna be there, and I would have let you borrow my GoPro or something to record it! Timelapses are super easy to create. This is a free tool I've been using for years and it works great and I trust it. Just be careful when installing and and actually read through the prompts. It tries to sneak in other software sometimes you don't want. http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-YouTube-Download.htm

I would say the audio problems are a result of not having the wonderful Dan Green at the controls. I got to say hi to Miller though just before the halftime show and he was walking out to the staging area with his camera. I couldn't quite tell if he wasn't thrilled being there or just focusing on getting where he needed to go. But he perked right up and seemed surprised someone knew who he was. Certainly made my day. I'm super happy for the fellas. I was telling my friends that Coldplay aren't really exhibitionists. The last 5 years I think, the halftime show has been all flash and pop with Artist that sing and dance and excel at running a choreographed/scripted show. Coldplay is far more spontaneous and the only real script is the setlist. They don't have dozens of backup dancers and specific moves. They're musicians and they play their instruments not their bodies. But all in all, they were still themselves and that's all I care about. Thanks for all the hardwork Sparky and Stephen! I was disappointed that I couldn't keep talking to you guys through the day while I was there, but it was all great anyways. AHFOD tour here we come!

[ATTACH=full]3940[/ATTACH] Staging has begun!

Just said hello to Miller! Mozying down the hallway here. He brightened right up! And for those who decided to view the spoiler setlist. It's pretty accurate. I've seen the rehearsals 3 times.