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2012
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Testing New iPhone Blogger
I am writing this newest blog entry from my iPhone....it has proved to be near impossibe to fine a way to update the blog via my iPhone as very few of the apps available actually work.
I hope this one does.
Posted with LifeCast
I hope this one does.
Posted with LifeCast
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A picture is always good!
Having not had the opportunity to post anything new in the past few days, I figured I would get back into the swing of things with a picture. This is a shot from the Crest 40-Channel Console I got to mix monitors on for Grizzly Bear & The Violins just about a month ago.
This was my first opportunity to mix on this particular console since Andrew Roberts of (Rockville Music Service) added it to his inventory. Andrew provided the complete system for this event and acted as system engineer for the night. I was brought in for the load in/outs and to mix monitors for the two groups as they were only traveling with one Front of House guy at the time. Andrew deployed a very capable JBL SRX-700 rig for the house with a matching and equally capable SRX-700 montior rig. The systems performed flawlessly all evening, and it sounded quite nice up on stage where I was trapped for the duration of the show.
The two bands were very easy to work with and knew exactly what they were looking for in each of the 5-6 mixes I was providing. A combination of JBL SRX-712m & JBL SRX 715F cabinets were used in pairs as floor monitors with the later filling the drum monitor role. Only a single In-Ear Monitor mix was required, much to my surprise as more and more younger bands seem to be carrying these on tour. Once we got a few songs into soundcheck I found that both of the groups played at very reasonable levels and were able to create a fantastic vibe onstage without excessive stage noise or volume from the monitors.
We had a great night and I really enjoyed working two bands that were both professional and classy in the way they handled themselves throughout the day. Everyone went home smiling!!
More pictures and stories will follow now that the flood gates are open once again.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
End of a Busy week.
Just in from tonight's event....a nice late one! The show yesterday wrapped around lunch time and we packed up as quickly as we could and got home to get ready for today's gig. Tonight was a pretty standard event for a local hospital's annual gala. Tonight was a swing era theme so the band got to pull out all the old charts. It was a good night in a great sounding historic ballroom that has easy access and free parking! The house A/V company made a pretty good mess of the podium mic that was an SM58 going through the ballrooms tiny intercom speakers which were some 30 feet up in the ceiling....unfortunately in the area under the wrap around balcony the speakers are only 3 feet above your head, this makes for a very interesting effect. No extra charge for the swells of 400Hz throughout the program.
I cringe just thinking about what the hotel charged the client for that sound system usage; I would have been happy to throw a podium mic up and run the program through my system...crazy!
Taking a day off finally tomorrow to watch Game 7 and do some system maintenance.
I cringe just thinking about what the hotel charged the client for that sound system usage; I would have been happy to throw a podium mic up and run the program through my system...crazy!
Taking a day off finally tomorrow to watch Game 7 and do some system maintenance.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Where did yesterday go?
Things have been absolutely jam packed for me since my last post concerning sight lines at corporate events. Yesterday was a rather easy day audio wise, with the only points of stress on the day coming from having to drive all over the place. The event on Wednesday evening wrapped with great success and we received compliments from a very picky client on how well we covered the room. From that event I headed home to sleep for just a few hours before getting back on the road to D.C. for a morning focus group meeting I provide sound for every few months. A 7am load in let us get the meeting started at 8:30, we wrapped around noon and then packed up quickly and hit the road to get up north of Baltimore.
Arriving in Baltimore to help lend a hand to my good friend and sound company owner Andrew Roberts who is providing sound for a rather large and demanding church seminar program. Andrew, being into his third day on-site for this event had everything dialed in and well under control when I arrived despite the disorganized and often frantic nature of the program. We spent the rest of the day until around 10pm last night keeping track of a pile of wireless mic's and a remote feed that supplied sound coverage to an overflow room upstairs from the main room. The show wrapped around 10pm and we headed home for some much needed rest. Back up today at 5am to get back up here for the last day of the Church event. Although we had an early start this morning, the program will be wrapped by 11am leaving us plenty of time to load out and get home at a reasonable hour.
I want to finish up the topic I started on Wednesday concerning Sight Lines on corporate events. When working many corporate and/or political events, it is a regular occurrence to have someone who is completely unqualified as a sound person being the one telling you where to place your gear. This can be anyone from an event planner to the venue staff and they all have very strong opinions about where your gear should go. It is a rare occasion when one of these persons understands or even cares about the actual placement needs of your system, but they will all stand there and tell you what they think is best. So how do you accommodate these requests and still get the results YOU want? I find that with an open mind and plenty of time spent planning, you can make the best of even the most challenging events.
Set change time on this event: will post more after the break.
Arriving in Baltimore to help lend a hand to my good friend and sound company owner Andrew Roberts who is providing sound for a rather large and demanding church seminar program. Andrew, being into his third day on-site for this event had everything dialed in and well under control when I arrived despite the disorganized and often frantic nature of the program. We spent the rest of the day until around 10pm last night keeping track of a pile of wireless mic's and a remote feed that supplied sound coverage to an overflow room upstairs from the main room. The show wrapped around 10pm and we headed home for some much needed rest. Back up today at 5am to get back up here for the last day of the Church event. Although we had an early start this morning, the program will be wrapped by 11am leaving us plenty of time to load out and get home at a reasonable hour.
I want to finish up the topic I started on Wednesday concerning Sight Lines on corporate events. When working many corporate and/or political events, it is a regular occurrence to have someone who is completely unqualified as a sound person being the one telling you where to place your gear. This can be anyone from an event planner to the venue staff and they all have very strong opinions about where your gear should go. It is a rare occasion when one of these persons understands or even cares about the actual placement needs of your system, but they will all stand there and tell you what they think is best. So how do you accommodate these requests and still get the results YOU want? I find that with an open mind and plenty of time spent planning, you can make the best of even the most challenging events.
Set change time on this event: will post more after the break.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Halfway Point
Wow...the first half of the show just flew by! We had six different and unique voices get up and speak from the podium (thankfully one at a time) and a few video rolls to go along with it all. No problems so far, nor any sign of problem frequencies threatening to run away from us. The extra work done earlier has payed off nicely, and now we are off in search of dinner before part two!!
More to come....stay tuned!
More to come....stay tuned!
Unconventional Mix Positions & Sight Line Accommodation
It is 6:30 and we just finished the setup for our event this evening (pictures to follow) and I have had some interesting issues to overcome dealing with both sight lines and Front of House location at this venue. Often times as a sound provider, we spend countless hours planning ahead and purchasing / preparing our equipment in order to operate in the most efficient way possible at every event; but what do you do when the person calling the shots does not understand all the trouble you have gone to?
This is an issue that seems to face us on more and more jobs these days and with more clients purchasing video projection along with or separate to audio production for their events, the need to keep things out of the viewing path (sight lines) of the audience is becoming an everyday task. It can be frustrating to have to reinvent the wheel so to speak on these events when you are thinking about speaker placement and the location of your mixing position, but with an open mind and a good game-plan it can be accomplished with great results.
To lay out some background of today’s event I will start by giving you an idea of the challenges we are up against. Again, pictures will follow and will give you a much clearer idea of what I am talking about here. The room I am in is for all intents and purposes, a large circle with a glass top. At about 100 feet in diameter and having marble flooring and hard walls all around, this room could prove to be a daunting task for any provider who walks in the door. The issue is further complicated by the balcony that hangs over the final 15 feet of radius of the East and West walls.
This leaves clients and event planners alike wanting to put the stage area out in the circle far enough to not be under the overhang... seems like a good idea so far. This actually is the best layout for the stage as it removes any chance the overhang will cause any funky slap or feedback issues with the open microphones. The first big hurdle we have to overcome is dealing with where to put our mixing position.
So we go for the obvious places first...
Can we run a snake out past the audience?
No: as the room is a large circle, people (guests, catering, security etc.) are constantly walking from inside the circle to the outer areas in 360 degrees to access the bars, kitchen, restrooms and exits. Running up the center of the room is a NO GO from the client, as cable ramps are not acceptable.
Can we run the snake around the balcony to the back end of the room?
Again another NO: the balcony does not actually connect all the way around, and offers no way to run cable around.
Can we just drop our stuff side stage and mix from there?
Of course NOT!!! On a lot of gigs, this is an acceptable solution, but when there are video screens flanking the stage this is another non-starter.
So what did we do in the end? The not so fancy answer is that we simply ended up dropping front of house Backstage of all places. This seems like a horrible idea that could never work and would only cause problems and heartache to those involved, but on this occasion it really does work out just fine. Not having the Tablet PC setup up and running yet due to a string of shows this week really is a killer. This event would have been an absolutely perfect opportunity to implement the Tablet and all of the freedom that is allows, but tonight we had to press on without it.
In leu of the Tablet PC setup, I instead took extra time to work through the system prior to doors opening in order to eliminate any potential trouble. When I am mixing from a compromised position like this, I tend to go ahead and implement a bit of redundancy into the system. Instead of just tossing up a single podium mic for this one, I am using a combination of two different mics. A conventional podium mic (Audio Technica Contractor Series) will serve me very well for those presenters who have good podium technique and a boundary microphone (again AT contractor series) will give me a fail safe option should I get someone who likes to bob and weave a lot up there. Although I hope to use only or mostly just the conventional podium mic, the added boundary mic gives me a great backup that is a bit more forgiving for people who do not square up to the podium and speak directly.
I spent a longer then usual amount of time setting levels and ringing out the problem frequencies in the system during sound check. Again, when in a compromising position I tend to approach setup more from a “worst case scenario” approach. I have whomever is speaking into the mic for soundcheck move around back quite a ways off of the podium and speak at varying levels from little more then a whisper, all the way up to a good solid shout. This is a good practice in general when setting up any event, but in this case it pays off to be a bit more extreme in your approach. The more issues you can create and fix prior to your client taking the stage, the better off you will be in the long run!
We are just now starting the program; I will add another post later to show some pictures and discuss the sight line issues we had with speaker placement and what we did to overcome them.
This is an issue that seems to face us on more and more jobs these days and with more clients purchasing video projection along with or separate to audio production for their events, the need to keep things out of the viewing path (sight lines) of the audience is becoming an everyday task. It can be frustrating to have to reinvent the wheel so to speak on these events when you are thinking about speaker placement and the location of your mixing position, but with an open mind and a good game-plan it can be accomplished with great results.
To lay out some background of today’s event I will start by giving you an idea of the challenges we are up against. Again, pictures will follow and will give you a much clearer idea of what I am talking about here. The room I am in is for all intents and purposes, a large circle with a glass top. At about 100 feet in diameter and having marble flooring and hard walls all around, this room could prove to be a daunting task for any provider who walks in the door. The issue is further complicated by the balcony that hangs over the final 15 feet of radius of the East and West walls.
This leaves clients and event planners alike wanting to put the stage area out in the circle far enough to not be under the overhang... seems like a good idea so far. This actually is the best layout for the stage as it removes any chance the overhang will cause any funky slap or feedback issues with the open microphones. The first big hurdle we have to overcome is dealing with where to put our mixing position.
So we go for the obvious places first...
Can we run a snake out past the audience?
No: as the room is a large circle, people (guests, catering, security etc.) are constantly walking from inside the circle to the outer areas in 360 degrees to access the bars, kitchen, restrooms and exits. Running up the center of the room is a NO GO from the client, as cable ramps are not acceptable.
Can we run the snake around the balcony to the back end of the room?
Again another NO: the balcony does not actually connect all the way around, and offers no way to run cable around.
Can we just drop our stuff side stage and mix from there?
Of course NOT!!! On a lot of gigs, this is an acceptable solution, but when there are video screens flanking the stage this is another non-starter.
So what did we do in the end? The not so fancy answer is that we simply ended up dropping front of house Backstage of all places. This seems like a horrible idea that could never work and would only cause problems and heartache to those involved, but on this occasion it really does work out just fine. Not having the Tablet PC setup up and running yet due to a string of shows this week really is a killer. This event would have been an absolutely perfect opportunity to implement the Tablet and all of the freedom that is allows, but tonight we had to press on without it.
In leu of the Tablet PC setup, I instead took extra time to work through the system prior to doors opening in order to eliminate any potential trouble. When I am mixing from a compromised position like this, I tend to go ahead and implement a bit of redundancy into the system. Instead of just tossing up a single podium mic for this one, I am using a combination of two different mics. A conventional podium mic (Audio Technica Contractor Series) will serve me very well for those presenters who have good podium technique and a boundary microphone (again AT contractor series) will give me a fail safe option should I get someone who likes to bob and weave a lot up there. Although I hope to use only or mostly just the conventional podium mic, the added boundary mic gives me a great backup that is a bit more forgiving for people who do not square up to the podium and speak directly.
I spent a longer then usual amount of time setting levels and ringing out the problem frequencies in the system during sound check. Again, when in a compromising position I tend to approach setup more from a “worst case scenario” approach. I have whomever is speaking into the mic for soundcheck move around back quite a ways off of the podium and speak at varying levels from little more then a whisper, all the way up to a good solid shout. This is a good practice in general when setting up any event, but in this case it pays off to be a bit more extreme in your approach. The more issues you can create and fix prior to your client taking the stage, the better off you will be in the long run!
We are just now starting the program; I will add another post later to show some pictures and discuss the sight line issues we had with speaker placement and what we did to overcome them.
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