Overhead - 25th anniversary tour

Gig Performer in Action
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Overhead, a Finnish rock act I joined last year, has been celebrating its 25 year history this year with gigs in the countries where we enjoy playing the most.
I’ve been slowly and steadily improving my GP based setup and live-sounds throughout the year. Our singer is also working on switching from his old TC Voicelive Rack to a plugin-based chain, also utilizing Gig Performer as the main host. Upcoming weekend will be his first time on stage with GP.

First, a photo of the hardware side, taken in Netherlands in May 2024. We were travelling for one week, and this was our fourth gig. My old and beat-up but still perfectly functional Roland A800 Pro as a “master” controller keyboard, (rented) Hammond XK-3C for organ stuff. During May I was still using a 2nd gen iPad pro as a second screen (just monitoring what was happening inside GP, the laptop was out of reach on the side when performing).

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During the summer I started learning open-stage-control and built this control layout. A tiny old tablet I got for peanuts can be nicely velcroed on top of the midi keyboard and used for viewing and tweaking channel and FX send levels, so no need for a separate stand anymore like in May.

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And here’s what I have visible on the setlist mode. The open-stage-control layout is pretty much mirroring this with “color coded” FX knobs: purple for reverb, green for delay, light blue and gray for either insert FX or cutoff and resonance settings on a synth plugin.
Earlier this year I published this basic rackspace-template on my website. It tremendously speeds up setting up new songs and keeps my plugins more organized in the wiring view.

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Our drummer also has a tablet, which he is using for two things: launching our visuals and at the same time sending OSC messages, so our singer’s vocal rig and my laptop will receive BPM values and play/stop signals. This tempo syncing is essential for time based effects and some simple synth sequences I have programmed for some songs.

A couple of videos of some of the longer numbers in our setlist, first one from that same gig in the Netherlands 12th of May:

And here’s another one from Fusion Festival, UK.

And just for the joy of keyboard nerds, here are the essential plugins for my Overhead live-sounds

Synths: TAL J-8 and U-No-LX2, GForce Oberheim OB-X, u-he Repro-5, Synapse The Legend, Arturia Pigments, D16 Group Phoscyon 2

Piano, rhodes, wurly: Keyscape, AcousticSamples C7

IK Multimedia TR5 Leslie (hardware organ through software leslie)

Other FX and polishing: Valhalla VintageVerb, Delay and Shimmer, Sixth Sample Deelay (wonderful free Delay!), Melda MEqualizer, Fabfilter Pro-Q3, Analog Obsession LALA, Stellar

Go ahead and grab my rackspace template! Only plugin you’ll need is the free MEqualizer.
And if you wish to control this rackspace template via OSC, here’s my open-stage-control file.

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I love the giddy feeling I get when I discover a new band whose music I really dig. Fortunately, Amazon Music has 5 of 6 studio albums and the Live After All live album available. Playlist created and downloaded to my phone for listening while walking my dogs! Too bad the first album (Zamanthum) isn’t available for streaming.

I live 45 minutes from Bordeaux (in Arcachon). Any chance you’ll be playing there?

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Thank you for the kind words!
The old debut hasn’t been uploaded to common streaming services, but if you wish to have a listen it is still available on Bandcamp.

We have two more gigs this year, one of them in Bordeaux this week. If you have time for the travel I can put your name on the guestlist :slightly_smiling_face: It’ll be the last concert organized by Eclipse Association.

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Very cool!

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A nice place for putting the laptop! :slight_smile:

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The laptop visible on this screenshot is actually another laptop we use for controlling our monitoring mixer and recording our shows. Usually it’s pointed so that the audience won’t see the screen, don’t know why it was left that way :rofl: Well, it was a festival gig which was already a bit behind schedule, so we were propably just busy setting up that time…

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Most importantly, your performance was tight! :love_you_gesture:

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Copacetic timing! Unfortunately, the Salem Bar is north of the airport, so it would be about 3 hours of total drive time, plus the show itself. That’s longer than I’m comfortable leaving my 16 year old dog unattended. Have a great show!

That said, I found Zumanthum on Bandcamp and purchased the USB version with all 11 albums and several concert videos. I am totally out of space for physical CDs, so getting everything on one stick will be great!

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Thanks for supporting the band! It means a lot!
Hope you’ll enjoy the stick, at least you won’t run out of Overhead content for a while.

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The USB drive arrived via La Poste this morning. It was well-structured. The only thing I did was number the folders. I like to listen to things chronologically, plus it helps me remember where I am. 29 GB! That took a LONG time to copy to an SSD. I was also really pleased to see PDF files of the CD booklets, JPG files of the CD artwork, and lyrics. The included playlists were also great to see. Money super well spent!

I’m also impressed with the mixes of the songs I’ve listen to, and being a bassist, really happy with the clarity of the bass!

Bravo!

EDIT: I forgot to ask how the show in Bordeaux went.

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So this is new :slight_smile:
Feel free to “bump” the thread when you add stuff like this :beers:

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Glad to hear you got your money’s worth!

The gig in Bordeaux went very nicely, 2,5h of playing, finishing with 21st Century Schizoid Man as an encore.
Only the trip itself was full of surprises, you can find bunch of posts on our Facebook-page documenting everything.

To summarize:

  • Our plane from Amsterdam to Bordeaux was cancelled, and all later flights that day were full. They also told our guitar player that he didn’t have a seat in the system, somehow Air France only had a seat for him in a plane to Bangok in December :sweat_smile: So we spend a night in Amsterdam and took a train Gto Paris the next morning.
  • When we boarded the train and showed our tickets, we were told that the seats written on our tickets didn’t even exist in that train, but luckily they still let us travel.
  • In Paris, after running through baggage drop and security, we were informed that the plane had to be switched to a smaller one and we couldn’t fit in. After some negotiating they managed to find us 4 seats in the plane and our guitar player bought a train ticket, arriving several hours later to Bordeaux.
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The romance of business travel. Not. But, heh, glad to hear that everyone made it and the show went on!