We live in an age of technology in which machines touch every part of our lives.
It is not surprising that music has also been influenced by technology.
This was the first time we had playground as a crew going to a new city outside of Vancouver.
It was great working in Edmonton.
It was definitely noticeable.
People are into music there.
It's always been a really self-supportive music scene where when a band plays, the other
bands are there to see them.
Edmonton's always been like a hotbed that nobody really understands.
You'll find a plethora of bands from all different walks and genres that are all amazing
and all willing to work together.
I think for live music, Edmonton pretty much kicks.
That's what I love about Edmonton the most is the diversity of the scene.
Shout out, out, out, out.
We're kind of number one on the list.
They're just heads and tails different than anything we'd ever done before in a playground.
I was really excited to see how we could make a playground with an electronic band.
I thought there was a lot more possibility.
I turned to electronic music mainly because I found I couldn't get the kinds of sounds
I wanted with live players and ordinary instruments.
That's one of the first bands that I'd actually been kind of a little fan of.
It was an instant yes from us.
In general with our band, we're always looking for something other than just a regular bar
show to play, something different.
Him and the band all wanted to write a new song.
So I think that was advantageous just in that it's not about re-orchestrating and trying
to figure out how the audience is going to fit in from the first draft.
They're able to think about how they're going to utilize them and sort of build around
that.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with these things, chord monotron?
No.
They're these little like handheld, paddery powered analog synths that sound pretty cool.
Wow.
Wow.
If you give that to me as I'm walking into a space, I'm like, this is cool.
I have no idea what this thing is, but I'm going to do something with it.
Do you have venues in mind yet?
We've just started to get that short list together.
I've just seen an email come in from Aaron.
I guess the first thing that I'm trying to think of for a venue for Playground is that
it's a venue that's not traditionally a music venue.
Really, we only had two days of pre-production in Edmonton before the show.
We had, I think, three, maybe four venues lined up for our first pre-production trip
to go out there and check out.
I'm not doing well at keeping on time, especially since we pushed this meeting because we were
running late.
How far away is it?
Can't be that far.
I don't know what the hell we ever did before there was iPhones.
Google Maps.
Are you planning things out ahead of time, really?
Yeah.
What?
We're just looking for something kind of quirky.
We didn't want something really clean and pretty, even.
We waited outside the venue we ended up using, the first time we went to go and look at it.
And from the outside, it doesn't look like much.
Do we really want to even go here?
Is it worth waiting for?
And I was kind of at the point of saying, guys, so we just call this off and choose
one of the other venues.
It's amazing.
I've blown away for so many reasons.
Like we could come in and set up kind of later afternoon.
Oh, you can do the day before if you want.
Oh, yeah.
You can do the day before and close up the day after.
It had a lot of space.
There's just a lot going on in there.
This provides something added for sure, right?
I don't know whether it's people on it or it is a camera track or we're landing a plane.
Seeing the sci-fi art in that venue sparked that idea to go with the lab and also to use
that catwalk.
I don't know if we would have even come up with the idea to have a lab coat in that space.
A startling discovery is made.
Anthology of the monsters.
Greg and I went through a few ideas.
To fly through space.
What did we start with?
So our initial thought was seeing a lot of wires everywhere.
It was going to be an experiment.
Everybody in the audience were part of a big lab experiment and they were working together
to create something.
I think there was a mad science theme at some point.
B-movie, sci-fi.
Cables connecting all these different sections and basically the climax of the song.
Frankenstein would rise.
Which seemed really exciting and that's actually what we pitched to them.
We decided that maybe Frankenstein wasn't totally fitting with shout-out and that dances
would be more appropriate.
I was more worried about how was that going to play out on the night, like actually getting
those takes and making people pay attention to something or react in a certain way.
Was that going to be a little too intrusive?
It's a little bit a matter of experimentation and if something works, run with it.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter.
Also play with people's opacity.
So like for some of the rehearsals, have a locked off shot and have them out of the frame
and in the frame so we can have people like flipping in and out.
There was a runway at the venue and by putting people on there, we're kind of giving them
this sense of importance.
That didn't seem to fit in with what Playground was, even though we wanted a concept piece.
So we started to scale the idea back.
Scaling something back isn't necessarily due to laziness or it's not necessarily not
as good as something that's over the top.
But they're not very sexy looking.
But sexy is not that important.
This one is medium.
Can you show us what it's going to look like?
Can you play drums in that, do you think?
All very long.
So it's just a plain jane.
It's an apron.
Yeah.
It's a little bit Texas Chainsaw Masquerade.
Yeah, I do too.
Yes.
Okay.
Can we see what you have for gloves?
We help out.
We like to participate.
I think that's one of the reasons why we've grown.
I always try and go to the zombie walks and we participate in the art walk and when somebody
asks for help in different areas, we try and do what we can.
Oh yeah.
I could snorkel.
Yeah.
How'd it go?
Yeah, that was like totally embarrassing.
Two.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
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Two.
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Two.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
One.
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Two.
We've also talked about what the collaboration was going to be.
A huge driving force of the entire tune is going to be the people pointed to Tom's,
we are only limited in that sense by how many Tom's you can come up with.
How many do you want?
Well, we'll do 20 though
20 is minimum, but the one thing, okay.
The Aתขpop, let's say 30, let's say that's our goal.
The vocal part is going to be pretty important to the entire tune.
This is the vocal part right here of this black thing right here.
Another challenging part of electronic music is working with sophisticated electronic equipment.
Reed and I were given the chore of going around and getting all the drums and all the sound stuff.
We had our cargo van, so we first rolled up to one Long and McQuaid and they had a few drums.
We cleaned them out and then we went to this next one.
There was a lot of hoping that no one else was doing something as crazy and stupid as we were
in trying to get 60 drums.
That day in Edmonton started at like 7.30am or 7am and finished at 4am.
We normally have a lot of volunteers.
And in Edmonton we didn't, we just had our own team that we had brought on.
That venue definitely required a lot of setup as far as getting the flow organised.
This is one of my favourite times of the day, just because right now we've got a room
and a bunch of wires and cables and lights and about 300 drums.
But in about 10 hours it's going to be transformed into this place where people are going to be making music
and fun, drinking beer and just joining together and doing something.
We changed everything about how our layout was in Edmonton.
We had like quite a specific plan of where everything would go, all the drums, all the instruments.
And we changed it in the course of an hour.
When you see this now, Gem, the setup of all the drums and that is kind of, is it how you envisioned it?
Um, no.
No, but I think it can work for sure.
It can work.
Yeah, totally.
Honestly, until a couple hours before, we don't really know the capacity of the room
and how many drums are going to fill the room and how exciting that's going to be to fill.
Everything changed so much to the point where we were like,
okay, let's, we're going to make it work no matter what, capturing what happens,
which is really the most important thing.
You definitely need to be flexible because who knows what's going to happen with light or with the sound
or, you know, if less people are coming or more people are coming, things are always going to change.
I think once you start getting stuff in the space.
Yeah, I feel pretty good.
Like all the speakers are set up and they're working and we're just waiting to get all the synths
and the rest of the drums in so we can figure out where we're going to place it all.
And my word, those guys have a lot of electronic equipment.
We did like a trial run the other night with six buddies that came down and it sounded so huge already with six people.
So 10 times that is just going to be ludicrous.
I thought it would be a little bit smaller scale.
I honestly didn't think you guys could pull off finding 60 drums.
We've never taught people how to play a song and have them do it.
So I think it's going to be crazy.
We've got about an hour.
We've got about an hour and 50 minutes till doors.
This is going to be really big and loud and I think it's going to be a pretty awesome moment for everybody involved.
This song is actually a song that we wrote for this thing.
We've never actually played it before at all.
So we're going to **** as much as you.
So don't worry about it.
Sound good?
The two drummers are great people.
They're going to come in playing a pattern on the top.
The pattern goes like this.
You want to try it?
One, two, three, four.
Nick was able to sort of get those parts going and could play Ringmaster.
I'm a little surprised at how quickly people picked up the parts and how smoothly that whole process went.
I think it was really cool to see everyone in costumes the first time we've done anything like that.
The words are, we're trying to keep it from this point so it's going to repeat a million times.
We're hitting it together.
One, two, three, four.
We're hitting it together.
One of my jobs on the night is right after people enter the space, they get a portrait taken,
and then they talk to me and I figure out where we're going to put them for the night.
So the first thing I'm saying is, you know, do you have any musical experience,
or how's your rhythm, or do you sing in the shower, things like that.
And people were like very confused by that question.
I think they thought they were like watching a band.
But that really translated into sort of the magic that night.
The fact that the drummer like cut and made the wood blocks, like they really just went all out
and you know they spent a lot of time on it.
So I think that they were an exceptional choice.
I thought tonight was fantastic.
I've watched some of the playgrounds before and this is as complex as I can imagine it ever getting.
Like their own band is so complex with the setup and the instruments and the wires.
And then trying to like sustain a rhythm with that many people pounding drums.
I saw a train wreck for a while, but man it was fantastic.
I didn't really understand 80% of what the band did.
You know, it's incredibly complicated and there's just machines and boards and plugs and wires everywhere.
That was what really set it apart for being unique.
It was the electronic music side of it and how they used that to play with the crowd.
Their music is actually quite elaborate, but it's not over the top.
There's a lot of treats in their music for someone who's listening intently.
So hopefully our video has some of that too.
That's it for this video.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
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