Now that the cable trunks are unpacked at the shop and I'm in my air conditioned office, I thought I would share about one of my July 4th shows and see if anyone else had any good ones. This year I was providing reinforcement for the Delaware Symphony Orchestra at one of the riverfront parks in Wilmington, DE. I opted for 5 of my S-Line line array loudspeakers for main cabinets, and 1 D&B B2 per side. The S-Line was all powered by macrotech 3600's and Lake processing. Unfortunately the budget didn't allow for flying of the cabinets, but with a seated audience and some ~4' tall stage deck helped. Because the park is sort of a half-bowl layout with the stage at the bottom, I was actually able to get a few degrees of curvature on the line which was nice. At one point a guy from the audience came up and told me he was impressed by the coverage of the rig!
What little frontfill I needed was handled by a pair of my proprietary 12+2" boxes. I had a few of my proprietary B-rig wedges on stage so a few of the actors reading the declaration of independence could have a little "confidence monitor" and hear themselves over the crowd noise.
Out at FOH I had my trusty DM2000. I opted to bring this board out because the orchestra plays with no soundcheck, and having the large meter bridge and analog gain knobs I can grab quickly really helped get things rolling.
I kept it simple and ran a little over a dozen inputs for the orchestra with some of my nicer mic options. Input list as follows:
Speech Mic 1: SM58
Speech Mic 2: SM58
Conductor vox: SM58
Violins 1: SM81
Violins 2: SM81
Flutes: KM184
Woodwinds: KM184
Cellos: C414
Violas: Beta 57
Double Bass: C414
Trumpets / Horns: SM57
Trombones / Horns: SM57
Harp: SM57
Percussion section: C535
Tympani OH: MD421
All in all it worked really well. The hardest part for me was the dynamics of the orchestra. We had a very noisy crowd of kids and chattery people so I had to use a little comp on the main output so I could keep the level up over the crowd noise but not kill people on the loud parts.
Here's a video slideshow with a little live recording of the performance: http://www.delawareonline.com/videonetwork/1723497553001/Wilmington-celebrates-4th-of-July
What little frontfill I needed was handled by a pair of my proprietary 12+2" boxes. I had a few of my proprietary B-rig wedges on stage so a few of the actors reading the declaration of independence could have a little "confidence monitor" and hear themselves over the crowd noise.
Out at FOH I had my trusty DM2000. I opted to bring this board out because the orchestra plays with no soundcheck, and having the large meter bridge and analog gain knobs I can grab quickly really helped get things rolling.
I kept it simple and ran a little over a dozen inputs for the orchestra with some of my nicer mic options. Input list as follows:
Speech Mic 1: SM58
Speech Mic 2: SM58
Conductor vox: SM58
Violins 1: SM81
Violins 2: SM81
Flutes: KM184
Woodwinds: KM184
Cellos: C414
Violas: Beta 57
Double Bass: C414
Trumpets / Horns: SM57
Trombones / Horns: SM57
Harp: SM57
Percussion section: C535
Tympani OH: MD421
All in all it worked really well. The hardest part for me was the dynamics of the orchestra. We had a very noisy crowd of kids and chattery people so I had to use a little comp on the main output so I could keep the level up over the crowd noise but not kill people on the loud parts.
Here's a video slideshow with a little live recording of the performance: http://www.delawareonline.com/videonetwork/1723497553001/Wilmington-celebrates-4th-of-July
