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san francisco jazz band
Rob's groups have been performing for the Entrepreneur of the year awards each year for the past decade, and this year Gold Standard had a blast at both the Salt Lake City and San Francisco EOY Award events. Here's a little recap from the SLC awards at the Grand America Hotel!
Gold Standard is a DJ+Vocals+Drums trio with many tools in our arsenal: live percussion, saxophones, flute, vocals, harmonization, and drum set, and on the electronic side: samples, looping, effects (on electronic and live instruments) and DJ techniques.
By integrating a full DJ setup into the band, we share the benefits of mixing acoustic and electronic elements which groups like Bonobo, Disclosure, Odesza, Daft Punk, Major Lazer, have used to rise to success.
Here are a few fun things that we can do as a result of integrating a DJ into the mix:
The vocals, saxes, flute, drums, and percussion all go through my DJ mixer. As such I have access to DJ tools like live looping, echo, delay, phaser, filters, EQ, and all the other effects built into a mixer.
Because I’m mixing live as a DJ, we keep the music flowing uninterrupted throughout our sets. Bands may start and stop songs, pause in-between, tune guitars and have stretches of awkward silence. Our music takes twists and turns, rises and falls, but keeps flowing as the three of us stretch and weave new spontaneous creations along with time honored hits throughout our set.
I run sound from my spot on stage with the band, whether we are performing for a large Aria Las Vegas venue or a small backyard wedding, I can keep the vocal and drum mix consistent so we sound our best. I control stage volume and our in ear monitor mixes, eliminating the risk of noisy feedback from stage monitors or inconsistencies as we change venues. We are set and locked in from start to finish and don’t need lengthy sound checks or separate audio engineers.
I’m constantly updating and adding to my large and organized sample and music library to integrate new and classic sounds into our music. While Conn is singing one of our popular songs, we might bring in a string breakdown and switch gears, changing the mood of the music behind the song on a dime, all the while improvising on our acoustic instruments.
Photos by Pierce and Paris Tews
