Welcome to the CALVIN SHAKER website!

FEB 24' Future Posts Here!

My board (The Yamaha TF1 Digital Audio Mixer) that i've been using since 2021, has undergone a lot of changes mostly within just this last year of marching band. For example, the Back Ensemble used to be in a trailer, otherwise known as the "Taco Truck" with sides that would come down and everything. Super convenient and nobody ever squashed their fingers putting down and lifting up the doors. (The first part is true, ask Parker Towning about the second part 🙄)

Anyways, it all used to be hardwired into the trailer. Everything from the speakers, to the computer(s) when we stopped using the macbooks, to even the keyboards that we would keep in there before we realized how leaky it was when it rained. It was a huge change moving out of that and into a prop. One huge downside of it was the loss of ease by not having it all ready to go at just the press of a button. It makes up for it now, though, being actually portable by itself, with a portable battery andwith a drawer for the keyboard and any smaller cords.

The new setup also required a whole lot of rewiring, almost entirely done by the Beyoncé loving god among men Mr. Jason Elks. Him and his diciple, Sandro Mocevic, aswell as myself, helped assemble the new mixer cart, and the accompanying loom to connect to the cable box below the conductor's prop. This made it much easier than plugging everything in and dealing with each individual wire, and with everyone's combined efforts, and with help from the prop team/pushers and speaker-pushers this year was considered an overwhelming success from a technological standpoint despite all of the obstacles that had to be overcome.