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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

analog snake or alternative measures?

So, being a small provider there are two things that I am almost always running short on. The first is real estate in my cargo van; there are a whole host of reasons why I could justify moving up to a box truck, but far too many other reasons why I choose to stick with a cargo van (that will be a topic all of its own). The second item is cash to buy gear; as soon as the money comes in it seems to disappear back out the door to pay the bills and can leave a tight budget to spend on new gear that is needed.

I am a firm believer in the concept of growing a small service business by renting the equipment that you cannot afford to purchase right away until you come to a point where you can afford to purchase some of the items that you find yourself renting the most. This approach allows you to be much more flexible and aggressive in going after the bigger contracts that you could not approach if you were married to your in house inventory. By the time you factor in maintenance, storage and insurance costs of owning your own equipment the benefits of renting become quite obvious.

“How does this relate to a snake?” you might ask at this point. Well recently I have been taking on many different types of work and have been renting snakes on a per gig basis. I have found myself at a point where I need an (in-inventory) solution that would typically be covered by a conventional analog (copper) snake. The issue I am running into is choosing what type of snake I need to fit the jobs. If I was only operating sound for bands, then this would be a pretty straight forward process. How many sends? How many returns? About a 150’ ? SOLD!
The issue is that in a typical week of work, my snake needs can change dramatically from day to day and show to show. Here is where we run into the issue with the Van space and the budget; most frustrating!

I simply cannot afford to purchase and store/transport the different models of snakes that I would need to carry to satisfy all of my needs. To complicate matters, a simple approach of buying the biggest one I can afford and using it for everything does not appeal to me as I do quite a bit of work where a large multi-core cable would not be easy to conceal or protect adequately. So what is a small sound provider to do? My answer comes from the Yamaha digital mixing console that I have in my inventory. I use the 01V96v2 for most all of my work and it offers a nice work around for people in my situation.

I have decided instead of going with a conventional snake system, to go with a smaller snake system and a Tablet PC that will control the digital mixer and let me setup my mix position anywhere in the house via a wireless network. In order to make this work for me, I will be employing stage snakes that will allow me to get my mixer and FOH gear to a location that is both concealed and accessible should I need to get to it during the show for any reason. This will usually be backstage or just tucked in behind a speaker stack side-stage. The mixer is fairly small and with a black scrim I can make it and the rack it lives on top of blend into the scenery perfectly.

In the rack lives a Dell D-600 Laptop running Yamaha’s SM-2 Studio Manager software (to control the mixing board) and DBX Driveware to control the DriveRack 260 speaker processor. This will be connected to a wireless router that will allow my Tablet PC to connect wirelessly to the network from anywhere in the area running Remote Desktop to operate the software running on the PC in the rack. This will allow me to roam the room while I mix and will also eliminate the need for snakes of different lengths and sizes. Keeping the gear in an accessible location backstage is the key here as you still need to be able to run the show should something go wrong with the wireless technology.

At this point, if you have not already started writing a response about the cost involved, I would be very surprised! I will say that although the idea of buying two computers seems expensive, consider the following. All you need are two fairly capable computers. There is no audio processing going on here, just a bunch of control data going in and out. A laptop capable of running the aforementioned programs along with perhaps itunes or similar media player (remember that this one does not need wiFi...just an ethernet connection) is fairly easy to find on both eBay and Craigslist for under $500. I was also able to find my Tablet (a Toshiba M200) for under $400 online in excellent condition. I already owned the Dell, so this alternative was quite cost effective for me. I would guess that it would be fair to assume that anyone using this approach and therefore owning the digital console, already has a computer that they use with it for studio manager control in some manner.

I will be putting the finishing touches on this setup in the coming weeks and will post some pictures and details of the how-to and setup of it all. This is a concept that may sound challenging at first, but can be accomplished fairly easily and on a very reasonable budget when you consider the results you get.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

First post.... Who am I?

So Who am I?

This is a reasonable question if you consider the amount of blogs that are available for you to read right now on the internet. In short, I am an independent live sound provider in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area. What that really means is that I provide sound systems and system operator services for a variety of corporate, political and private events in the D.C. and surround areas.

Many of the events I provide services for often end up leading myself and my crew through unusual circumstances or experiences that I would like to document and share with others who may someday find themselves in similar situations. Many touring sound providers keep a tour diary to document the antics and tribulations of the road and I would like to follow suit. I may not be out on tour, but I work with some of the areas top providers at some amazing events and I need a way to keep track of all of the things we learn everyday!

As you will get to know, I am rarely without means to publish to the web and I will be updating the blog from job sites and will try to get as many real time event blogs in as reasonably possible.

I am off to bed now, I am providing sound for an event tomorrow at an Embassy in D.C. . This particular Embassy is mostly glass and marble and presents some fun challenges in providing even coverage to a large audience for a spoken word program. I will get a live update from the event once we get up and start working through soundcheck.

One last thing:
I hope that the documentary I am providing here will be helpful to others who are involved or interested in the industry. With that being said, the contents of my blog is strictly my opinion and observations and in no way represents the opinions or views of the events or the clients for which I work. I am also open to suggestions, comments or helpful criticism of my work or techniques, I do not pretend to know it all and I am always willing to listen to another point of view!

Talk Soon.

Steve M.