Another Skirmish with Technology

It's been a week since my latest skirmish with technology. Though I acknowledge the benefits modern technology can deliver, the snafus that routinely occur using it can be infuriating. What happened in your most recent skirmish? I hope you were alone when things went technologically awry. I was not.

 

The day before sound-check went smoothly. And looking around the auditorium before beginning my presentation entitled The Magical Musical Mystery Tour I felt prepared, comfortable in a nice space that I'd used previously, and pleased to see at least fifteen familiar faces scattered throughout the nice-sized audience. 

But as the first stanza of Please, Please Me played, I could hear something was off. I've listened to that jewel more times than I can count and immediately noticed that both the propulsive rhythm guitar interlude between the first two lines of the stanza and George Harrison's brief guitar obbligato preceding the first refrain were seriously muted over the house sound system. I said nothing to the audience and quickly discounted it as a fluke with the first song. Twenty-three more Beatles gems still to go - with plenty to point out to the audience about each - over the next ninety minutes. Things would work out.

If only. By the middle of the second song, it was clear to me - if not to most of the audience - that this glitch was going to be with me, in varying degrees, for the rest of the night. In several cases, I was unable to make the pertinent musical distinctions I wanted to make because those distinctions were lost somewhere in the technological void between the playlist on my phone and the house sound system. In Rain, Ringo's explosive drumming was nearly inaudible. In Fixing a Hole, the harpsichord accompanying Paul McCartney's vocal was totally inaudible. Piano for the entire length of While My Guitar Gently Weeps? Missing. As you can probably guess, I could go on. 

Though all of this was out of my control, I apologized several times and was later admonished for overdoing the apology bit. Most of the people who spoke with me afterwards - or since - were kind, saying they enjoyed the presentation despite my difficulties. Others assured me they might not have noticed the glaring sound gaps had I not drawn attention to them. Am I evolved enough to say those kindnesses and reassurances - true or not - have helped me extract a lasting lesson from this fiasco? I am not. Above all, what remains with me a week later is an abiding frustration with technology.