Neil Spencer Bruce

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Reverberation and Devonshire Dome, Buxton

Wow, so just had a gig at the Buxton Dome (Devonshire Dome I believe it is called), which is part of the University of Derby, and it is an acoustician's dream, but a bands nightmare. Being a dome shape it suffers terribly from focusing (ideally we would want diffuse surfaces) and a large reverberation time with distinct echoes. The person playing the harp sounded amazing, as did the ability to hear conversations on the other side of the massive dome was fantastic. But trying to perform in it was a rather very tricky job. Needless to say the only place where it worked was in direct line of sight of the PA, i.e the dance floor. Kind of funny as the slap-back delay was so prominent it was possible to play a dotted 1/8 part without a delay pedal (cue the U2 songs). Here is a mix of some of the sounds from our sound check to highlight the fun we had.Now I am not one to get all political on my blog, but this isn't really political but more of a thank you. After being unexpectedly admitted to hospital, I just want to give a massive thank you to all those in the NHS who excelled themselves in caring for me. It was exceptional, and just makes you realise how incredibly lucky we are in this country to have such an institution, something which we should be very proud of. Yes, sometimes it gets it badly wrong, sometimes you have to wait ages, there are mix ups etc, but those are the only things we tend to hear about. I just wanted to give an example of one of many very positive experiences and how it should be protected and not left to the Tory dogs (and yes Labour started the sell off I know!) to have their way with it. Thank you MRI.PeaceNeil