I feel like I may have just had one of the best technical shows of my career. Rarely have I felt in such total control of everything that was happening in FOH and the monitors. Since I use these posts as an after action review to help me remember what went right and what can be improved upon, during the drive home I was trying to pinpoint what made me feel that way.
This was a fill in gig at a local venue with a band I have never worked with before. I received an input list and stage plot that was clear and concise and actually matched what was needed several days before the gig. I was also told that they had played the venue about 6 months ago and due to the beauty of digital, I had the saved show as a template to start from.
I arrived at the venue about 2 hours early and had the time to carefully measure (using SMAART) the mains, the subs, the center fill, and two other fill zones in the room. I was able to identify and clean up a couple of things I have heard in there in the past but was never able to locate. I then patched the stage and set the monitors and vocal mics. I was able to ring out the wedges to add 6 to 10 db of headroom beyond the levels that were in the template show with the vocal mics pointed directly into the monitors without degrading the quality of the sound in the wedges.
Then the bands road manager arrived. He checked the vocal mics and asked for some minor tonal changes and then had me pull back the total level another 6 db. The full band arrived (on time!), we finished setting up the instrument channels, including a wireless sax, and started what was a long, leasurely, sound check where we were really just polishing what wasi in my template. The band was extremely professional and knew how to quickly and accurately ask for what they felt they needed without competing with the other members. With the piano and the singer in place, the main vocal mic briefly got a little ringy, but one more narrow cut took care of that problem. We were also able to walk the entire room with the wireless sax, and it was completely stable everywhere. In between taking care of the monitor requests, I was able to fine tune all my compressors and effects. Because the band was so focused during the sound check, we got about three times as much done in the time alloted and still had time for everybody to have a sit down dinner.
The band took the stage, the star played her way onto the stage through the crowd with the wireless sax, and the band did 2 one hour sets during which I basically rode the vocal effects fader to change the amount of verb to match the songs and pull it out in between songs. Oh yeah, I did push up the drum VCA during the drum solo.
So I guess the lesson from this show is that prior preparation makes showtime easy, and truely great musicians help you make them feel comfortable as they are playing.
This was a fill in gig at a local venue with a band I have never worked with before. I received an input list and stage plot that was clear and concise and actually matched what was needed several days before the gig. I was also told that they had played the venue about 6 months ago and due to the beauty of digital, I had the saved show as a template to start from.
I arrived at the venue about 2 hours early and had the time to carefully measure (using SMAART) the mains, the subs, the center fill, and two other fill zones in the room. I was able to identify and clean up a couple of things I have heard in there in the past but was never able to locate. I then patched the stage and set the monitors and vocal mics. I was able to ring out the wedges to add 6 to 10 db of headroom beyond the levels that were in the template show with the vocal mics pointed directly into the monitors without degrading the quality of the sound in the wedges.
Then the bands road manager arrived. He checked the vocal mics and asked for some minor tonal changes and then had me pull back the total level another 6 db. The full band arrived (on time!), we finished setting up the instrument channels, including a wireless sax, and started what was a long, leasurely, sound check where we were really just polishing what wasi in my template. The band was extremely professional and knew how to quickly and accurately ask for what they felt they needed without competing with the other members. With the piano and the singer in place, the main vocal mic briefly got a little ringy, but one more narrow cut took care of that problem. We were also able to walk the entire room with the wireless sax, and it was completely stable everywhere. In between taking care of the monitor requests, I was able to fine tune all my compressors and effects. Because the band was so focused during the sound check, we got about three times as much done in the time alloted and still had time for everybody to have a sit down dinner.
The band took the stage, the star played her way onto the stage through the crowd with the wireless sax, and the band did 2 one hour sets during which I basically rode the vocal effects fader to change the amount of verb to match the songs and pull it out in between songs. Oh yeah, I did push up the drum VCA during the drum solo.
So I guess the lesson from this show is that prior preparation makes showtime easy, and truely great musicians help you make them feel comfortable as they are playing.
