Well – it’s carnival, mardi gras or as we called it over here in Germany “Karneval”.
Myself is settled in the heartland of Germanys carnival region No. 1 and of course there are plenty of mixing jobs to do during this time. But the rules of mixing are quite different to gigs apart from the carnival time.
"Welcome to combat audio" – where only the strongest gear, musicians and soundguys will successfully complete the jobs;-)
There are common stereotypes about Germans. We are believed to be punctual, loyal and faithful, reputable and polite. This might be halfway true for the rest of the year, but carnival in the low rhine area is the complete opposite! Under the motto “In absentia of all common sense” – working as a soundguy can be really tough in these days. So, I had some of these combat audio jobs on my schedule and was thinking about the right mixer for these gigs. One golden rule, when doing gigs during carnival: NEVER set up your FoH in the middle of the audience! You and your gear will be overrun by the drunken mob in no time. So “remote mixing “ is the way to go and I thought:
This would be a nice job for a X32 Rack or X32 Core!
So I called my friends at Behringer R&D and bum a X32 Rack for a week
I planned to do four Jobs with it. I prepared a rack with the X32 Rack and one S16 (for one job I needed 28 inputs!), one D-Link wireless router, an old IBM T60 thinkpad running XControl and my iPad I with XiControl. I prepared all shows beforehand and went straight into combat audio.
Gig No.1
Straight story: One punk-rock-coverband, one DJ and one cheesy all round entertainer in a 200pax club. Too bad the promoter thought it would be an awesome idea to sell 340 tickets! The term “crowded” is a first class euphemism in this context. So I mixed the first set with my iPad in the crowd but did all the other sets on stage with the XControl on my Thinkpad. First class chaos In addition, I had just one hour to set up everything (soundcheck included). I can asure, that “my stages” normally do not look that messy…but like I said: carnival has it’s own rules. This goes for the drinking attitude too. Yes, Germans like beer and they drink a lot of it during carnival. This night the audience and the band drunk themselves into an another dimension. I remember one guy was dressed up as a cook and he had this giant wooden spoon. The drummer took this spoon and played a drum solo with it…you get the picture. Anyway – nobody was hurt and the X32 Rack performed very well. The only downside was, that the range of my iPad was dramatically shortened, when the audience took over the place in no time like a zombie mob…”the walking deaf” so to say
Some pics:
One iPad to rule them all
The X32Rack-Rack
Rack'n'Roll
cooking spoon drum solo
Gig No.2
Next day a similar job, just in a bigger dimension. Top40 Band with 28 inputs in a 1000pax sold out hall. They came with an own monitormixer & splitters, so that I had just to drive two flow wedges from the X32 Rack and one drum wedge (if the InEar ever fails). Again, no way to set up a FoH in the crowd. So I did soundcheck with the iPad in the hall and mixed the show on headphones and the Thinkpad with XControl. I had six channels of keyboards and had to use the SOLO function often, just to see which keyboard plays what sound. To be quick enough, I routed each keyboard player to a dedicated DCA group and left the DCA view on the iPad always open. Sometimes I used X- and XiControl simultaneously and I’m still surprised how well that worked.
As a side note: There was also a DJ Team this night, and guess what mixer they used for their stuff-->
The show was great and sounded well, at least this is what some friendly souls in the audience told me. The X32Rack performed flawlessly as well, but the endurance test is still to come.
mixing world
More in a second posting...
Myself is settled in the heartland of Germanys carnival region No. 1 and of course there are plenty of mixing jobs to do during this time. But the rules of mixing are quite different to gigs apart from the carnival time.
"Welcome to combat audio" – where only the strongest gear, musicians and soundguys will successfully complete the jobs;-)
There are common stereotypes about Germans. We are believed to be punctual, loyal and faithful, reputable and polite. This might be halfway true for the rest of the year, but carnival in the low rhine area is the complete opposite! Under the motto “In absentia of all common sense” – working as a soundguy can be really tough in these days. So, I had some of these combat audio jobs on my schedule and was thinking about the right mixer for these gigs. One golden rule, when doing gigs during carnival: NEVER set up your FoH in the middle of the audience! You and your gear will be overrun by the drunken mob in no time. So “remote mixing “ is the way to go and I thought:
This would be a nice job for a X32 Rack or X32 Core!
So I called my friends at Behringer R&D and bum a X32 Rack for a week
I planned to do four Jobs with it. I prepared a rack with the X32 Rack and one S16 (for one job I needed 28 inputs!), one D-Link wireless router, an old IBM T60 thinkpad running XControl and my iPad I with XiControl. I prepared all shows beforehand and went straight into combat audio.Gig No.1
Straight story: One punk-rock-coverband, one DJ and one cheesy all round entertainer in a 200pax club. Too bad the promoter thought it would be an awesome idea to sell 340 tickets! The term “crowded” is a first class euphemism in this context. So I mixed the first set with my iPad in the crowd but did all the other sets on stage with the XControl on my Thinkpad. First class chaos
In addition, I had just one hour to set up everything (soundcheck included). I can asure, that “my stages” normally do not look that messy…but like I said: carnival has it’s own rules. This goes for the drinking attitude too. Yes, Germans like beer and they drink a lot of it during carnival. This night the audience and the band drunk themselves into an another dimension. I remember one guy was dressed up as a cook and he had this giant wooden spoon. The drummer took this spoon and played a drum solo with it…you get the picture. Anyway – nobody was hurt and the X32 Rack performed very well. The only downside was, that the range of my iPad was dramatically shortened, when the audience took over the place in no time like a zombie mob…”the walking deaf” so to saySome pics:
One iPad to rule them all
The X32Rack-Rack
Rack'n'Roll
cooking spoon drum solo
Gig No.2
Next day a similar job, just in a bigger dimension. Top40 Band with 28 inputs in a 1000pax sold out hall. They came with an own monitormixer & splitters, so that I had just to drive two flow wedges from the X32 Rack and one drum wedge (if the InEar ever fails). Again, no way to set up a FoH in the crowd. So I did soundcheck with the iPad in the hall and mixed the show on headphones and the Thinkpad with XControl. I had six channels of keyboards and had to use the SOLO function often, just to see which keyboard plays what sound. To be quick enough, I routed each keyboard player to a dedicated DCA group and left the DCA view on the iPad always open. Sometimes I used X- and XiControl simultaneously and I’m still surprised how well that worked.
As a side note: There was also a DJ Team this night, and guess what mixer they used for their stuff-->
The show was great and sounded well, at least this is what some friendly souls in the audience told me. The X32Rack performed flawlessly as well, but the endurance test is still to come.
mixing world
More in a second posting...
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