Easter Sunday Show with Manlalakbay...

It was indeed a nice performance compared to Musikamulatan in terms of sound mixing and the venue. However, aesthetically, it was an overkill. The whole concept was totally changed to fit in additional songs and dances. Though, it was supposed to project for social awareness but it is overwhelmed with song choreographies and slide shows by a power point presentation and voice over. Ironically, every song has a choreography and a slide show which makes it more difficult for the audience to focus and to grasp the whole idea. It was also a little bit tiring because we had to perform twice at 3:30pm and 7pm. But we all managed to seal it to the very end together with the dancers. It was the youth choir who performed all the dancing moves on every song.

Two weeks before the slated show, I already told my band mates that I had to lay low for a while and "muni-muni". But that doesn't mean that Manlalakbay will stop its musical journey but rather continuously search for its identity in the alternative world of music. So it was expected that it was my last performance with the group. For this, we had to perform on our very best and most especially to really have fun.

There goes Musikamulatan...

It's over a month now since the Musikamulatan was launched at La Salle University, Ozamiz City duly performed by our group, Manlalakbay. From then on, I was organizing my thoughts about the output or the result of the performance itself against the expected outcome. From my point of view, technically, it is an utter failure. First and foremost, we prefer to use a sound system and amps which is totally new to us and the one handling the sound mixing is not a very well trained technician for this kind of job. In addition, the venue itself is not well suited for live performances, it has a poor sound acoustics. Though it is an Arts Center but it was not designed for such purpose. At first, I go over with the sound system of the university to check if it is capable handling such a tasks and found out that it has enough capability to deliver what we need but we have to rent a mixing console to fully centralize our output. But unfortunately, my suggestion to use that equipment was turn-down. My other band mates preferred to use other equipment from the other school.

At the concert proper, sound mixing was not properly tested due to lack of time and preparation. Therefore, with the best of my abilities and experiences in live performances, I honestly conclude that we sound very muddy. It was a performance which should not be proud of. But the show must go on until the very last song on our list.

And frankly speaking, previous band chemistry did not worked out. I was frustrated with its outcome but I had to move forward and seek for what I strongly believed.