1. Thursday: Load truck for friday daytime show, load car for friday evening show, install new battery in truck so it will run to get to show.
2. Friday daytime show: while driving across field to setup knock window out of truck cap. Fortunately, not broken but can't get in in myself. This is daytime pep rally for homecoming at the high school. Students have some fascination with screaming into mic. See lots of limiting. Consistantly see limiters on the HPR's for the first time ever. Break down show, drop truck at home, switch to car and drive 2 1/2 hours to evening show.
3. Friday Evening show: Get to evening show just as the big east coast storm starts to move in, load in, patch the stage and immediately start running into problems. This is a 350 seat theater at a town performing arts center. Big Eurodesk at FOH. Everytime I touch any pots the system pops and crackles. None of the pots seem linear but keep jumping in levels. I get some pink noise going and the system seems to be missing mids. The whole system turns out to be a single center cluster run off of one side of the desk. I can't get show volume at all. A couple of the vocal channels are jumping from nothing there to clipping in a nudge of the gain knob. In my hurry to pack, I can't find my insert snake for my carry rack. I patch in just my effects using some extra cables, and that channel on the board is really wacked. Doors are fast approaching and I really don't have any time for trouble shooting. I end up with the lead singer (who tends to be quiet at the mic) triple bussed just to get her above the straight acoustic level of the banjo on stage. I spend most of the show with the console pushing out +6 to +9 and barely touching 80 db at FOH. I am 100 feet back from the stage and can hear the bassists fingers on the fingerboard, and the band tapping their feet. Fortunately it was a quiet crowd.
After the show,I show the house tech some of my measurements, everyone agrees that there is a problem with the setup of the system, and I leave him with a couple of things i would check for. Too late, I later have my epiphany. The setup in their driverack was for a three way system, but the house tech kept describing it as if it were 2 way between the sub and tops with a passive crossover for the HF. I have this feeling that they were sending the HF band out of the driverack to the tops as a full range signal. Of course that doesn't occur to me until far after the show.
Get to the hotel which was nice and comfortable. I did enjoy seeing one of the band members scare the bejebus out of the desk clerk when he walked in still in full zombie makeup (the show was halloween themed and several of the band members are also theater actors, the makeup was good.)
4. Drive back 2 1/2 hours to Maryland as the storm gets worse, concerned about all the gear that was left in my truck that now is missing a window. Get home, offload the truck in the continuing downpour, hump the stuff through the yard because the yard is too saturated to drive the truck over it (I wonder if anyone would think it strange if I buit a covered loading dock at my house?), dry out what I can and then reload the truck for the Saturday night show. Before leaving home I get a call from the band that the promoter is concerned about attendance because of the storm, and the band is not sure they can pay me. Since the band is close to my home for a change and the promoter is a friend of mine also, I chalk this one up to good will and karma and tell them I will be there anyways as the truck is already loaded and will still need to be unloaded and that is the greatest amount of labor involved in the show anyways. In the last minute changes, it turns out I have 2 different PA systems in my truck, the promoter has another, and the American legion room already has one in place. Since it looks like we are going to be lucky to get 25 bodies,I go for KISS and setup 2 LDC vocal mics, 1 SDC instrument mics, and have the dulcimer and one guitar direct. The bass has his own amp. I just mix FOH on the monitor board and jump a single mono channel into the houses PV 8600. A little tweaking and it sounds great. It was about 95 db average at my seat about 1/2 way back in the room and peaked just about 100 db. Wouldn't you know someone came up and asked why it wasn't very loud?
5. By the end of the show the roads were nearly dry as the bulk of the great storm had passed. The yard on Sunday is still soaked but I did manage to get most of the truck unloaded.
Usually when I have a pretty dense string of shows, I end up with a pretty long post centered around something I either learned or seems to be a fundamental principal worth repeating. I am not sure what that point is this time, other than that this may be the last hurrah of the summer season and my upcoming schedule looks a lot more like winter.
2. Friday daytime show: while driving across field to setup knock window out of truck cap. Fortunately, not broken but can't get in in myself. This is daytime pep rally for homecoming at the high school. Students have some fascination with screaming into mic. See lots of limiting. Consistantly see limiters on the HPR's for the first time ever. Break down show, drop truck at home, switch to car and drive 2 1/2 hours to evening show.
3. Friday Evening show: Get to evening show just as the big east coast storm starts to move in, load in, patch the stage and immediately start running into problems. This is a 350 seat theater at a town performing arts center. Big Eurodesk at FOH. Everytime I touch any pots the system pops and crackles. None of the pots seem linear but keep jumping in levels. I get some pink noise going and the system seems to be missing mids. The whole system turns out to be a single center cluster run off of one side of the desk. I can't get show volume at all. A couple of the vocal channels are jumping from nothing there to clipping in a nudge of the gain knob. In my hurry to pack, I can't find my insert snake for my carry rack. I patch in just my effects using some extra cables, and that channel on the board is really wacked. Doors are fast approaching and I really don't have any time for trouble shooting. I end up with the lead singer (who tends to be quiet at the mic) triple bussed just to get her above the straight acoustic level of the banjo on stage. I spend most of the show with the console pushing out +6 to +9 and barely touching 80 db at FOH. I am 100 feet back from the stage and can hear the bassists fingers on the fingerboard, and the band tapping their feet. Fortunately it was a quiet crowd.
After the show,I show the house tech some of my measurements, everyone agrees that there is a problem with the setup of the system, and I leave him with a couple of things i would check for. Too late, I later have my epiphany. The setup in their driverack was for a three way system, but the house tech kept describing it as if it were 2 way between the sub and tops with a passive crossover for the HF. I have this feeling that they were sending the HF band out of the driverack to the tops as a full range signal. Of course that doesn't occur to me until far after the show.
Get to the hotel which was nice and comfortable. I did enjoy seeing one of the band members scare the bejebus out of the desk clerk when he walked in still in full zombie makeup (the show was halloween themed and several of the band members are also theater actors, the makeup was good.)
4. Drive back 2 1/2 hours to Maryland as the storm gets worse, concerned about all the gear that was left in my truck that now is missing a window. Get home, offload the truck in the continuing downpour, hump the stuff through the yard because the yard is too saturated to drive the truck over it (I wonder if anyone would think it strange if I buit a covered loading dock at my house?), dry out what I can and then reload the truck for the Saturday night show. Before leaving home I get a call from the band that the promoter is concerned about attendance because of the storm, and the band is not sure they can pay me. Since the band is close to my home for a change and the promoter is a friend of mine also, I chalk this one up to good will and karma and tell them I will be there anyways as the truck is already loaded and will still need to be unloaded and that is the greatest amount of labor involved in the show anyways. In the last minute changes, it turns out I have 2 different PA systems in my truck, the promoter has another, and the American legion room already has one in place. Since it looks like we are going to be lucky to get 25 bodies,I go for KISS and setup 2 LDC vocal mics, 1 SDC instrument mics, and have the dulcimer and one guitar direct. The bass has his own amp. I just mix FOH on the monitor board and jump a single mono channel into the houses PV 8600. A little tweaking and it sounds great. It was about 95 db average at my seat about 1/2 way back in the room and peaked just about 100 db. Wouldn't you know someone came up and asked why it wasn't very loud?
5. By the end of the show the roads were nearly dry as the bulk of the great storm had passed. The yard on Sunday is still soaked but I did manage to get most of the truck unloaded.
Usually when I have a pretty dense string of shows, I end up with a pretty long post centered around something I either learned or seems to be a fundamental principal worth repeating. I am not sure what that point is this time, other than that this may be the last hurrah of the summer season and my upcoming schedule looks a lot more like winter.
