Time for the midwinter report:
The year actually started with a rather distasteful incident while I was trying to line up additional travel gigs. I took that as a sign to stay closer to home. However, I did hook up with a couple local bands with plenty of shows.
Looking back at last year, I find that even as a weekend warrior I managed to do over 150 shows. While I am still doing most shows as a BE, this year I also did some fill in house gigs in an established venue, as well as providing PA for a new series in a new venue.
The largest rig I remember was 12 per side vertec. I also saw QSC wide lines and EAW's. I was not responsible for system teching on any of the large rigs. I also saw large turbo and kf rigs. The one venue has JBL VP's installed.
Despite seeing larger rigs/stages, my bread and butter remains throw and go SOS shows, and when you come right down to it, the bulk of my money is made with a combination of ksub, k10, and k12 owned by both the bands and me. My larger HPR rig still sits more than I like.
While many people associate band engineers with mixing, I think of mixing as a minor part of what I do. What makes one show really stand out from others in the same place (especially when each band brings their own pa) comes down to system teching.
One place that we make a good per person paycheck has an entire Berhinger install; Board, amps monitor, foh, the whole deal. I go in there with 2 different bands and the regulars say that both of my bands sound better than everyone else in there. The system is "run it yourself" for the bands and sometimes I wonder if the guy that owns the place schedules us because he knows I will return the system to sane, usable settings ( not really, he schedules us because the bar does great when we are there).
This is also my second year of carrying and using SMAART which is a tool I really miss on many of the bar gigs that do not have the time or space to set it up.
I am not usually an early adapter. When the original hype about the studio live hit the boards, I kept my mouth shut until I had enough experience to form an opinion. After a couple of years and a number of shows I decided I kind of liked the board. Then one of the bands bought one so i added the wireless rig. Now I think it is a great tool for these throw and go shows. Actually I will risk a bit of blasphemy and state that I prefer it to an LS9. The lack of flying faders has been a non issue and it sounds fine with any speaker you are typically going to find a band carrying.
My favorite mix surface remains the SC48 which seems to be the perfect amount of control and labeling for a surface, but even if I had my own I wouldn't bother trying to set it up for most of these shows.
I have not seen a X32 in the wild yet. Check back with me in about 5 years and I might have an opinion.
The other two big changes for this year are that I drastically reduced the amount of travel time I was doing for shows, staying more local which also explains the increase in bar gigs. The other is that I have done a significant number of shows with drummers. Yes I do know how.
I still have problems with crowd noise making my ears tired. Perhaps that is one reason I like the visual confirmation from SMAART. But I still only remember two shows where I had the feeling of lack of control, and both were really factors out of my control.
One show was a festival setting. I showed up with an up to date input list and stage plot. It was a duo that used 6 inputs, 3 of which were guitars with separate processing. The stage manager asked if I cared if the channels were in the exact order or if he could land them where his festival plot was already set up. I told him I didn't care as long as I knew what was what. He mispatched all three guitar channels. We had a nice blast of feedback when we first tried to get a signal because what he thought was the clean channel from the electric was actually the unmuted acoustic sitting on a stand. Once we found the clean channel it turned out that the processed channel he had missed by a row at the snake. While trying to find that, he unplugged the clean channel and dropped the cord to the metal stage. Instant loud buzz which was bleeding across channels ( the two channels were sharing the two sides of a stereo di). The whole set went that way.
The other show that was a disaster centered around a horn player. Despite having lots of time all we got before doors was a rudimentary line check. He was using an AT35 clip on. He line checked with an alto sax. The show started and he came out with a tenor sax, immediately asked for a significant increase in monitors, and after the first solo allows the sax to flip upside down with the bell pointed straight into the monitors. I hate feedback too but before I could do anything to fix it he rips the mic off and clips it to the cable on his mic stand once again pointing straight into the monitor. So he takes his vocal mic, set for his between songs whisper, and blasts it with the horn. I have never seen so many things turn red on a sc48 at once. That was a start of a long night. I truly believe he has been playing professionally for 40 years. It would take that long to learn all the things he did to screw up the guy out front.
Funny how the bad sticks in memory far more than the good.
The year actually started with a rather distasteful incident while I was trying to line up additional travel gigs. I took that as a sign to stay closer to home. However, I did hook up with a couple local bands with plenty of shows.
Looking back at last year, I find that even as a weekend warrior I managed to do over 150 shows. While I am still doing most shows as a BE, this year I also did some fill in house gigs in an established venue, as well as providing PA for a new series in a new venue.
The largest rig I remember was 12 per side vertec. I also saw QSC wide lines and EAW's. I was not responsible for system teching on any of the large rigs. I also saw large turbo and kf rigs. The one venue has JBL VP's installed.
Despite seeing larger rigs/stages, my bread and butter remains throw and go SOS shows, and when you come right down to it, the bulk of my money is made with a combination of ksub, k10, and k12 owned by both the bands and me. My larger HPR rig still sits more than I like.
While many people associate band engineers with mixing, I think of mixing as a minor part of what I do. What makes one show really stand out from others in the same place (especially when each band brings their own pa) comes down to system teching.
One place that we make a good per person paycheck has an entire Berhinger install; Board, amps monitor, foh, the whole deal. I go in there with 2 different bands and the regulars say that both of my bands sound better than everyone else in there. The system is "run it yourself" for the bands and sometimes I wonder if the guy that owns the place schedules us because he knows I will return the system to sane, usable settings ( not really, he schedules us because the bar does great when we are there).
This is also my second year of carrying and using SMAART which is a tool I really miss on many of the bar gigs that do not have the time or space to set it up.
I am not usually an early adapter. When the original hype about the studio live hit the boards, I kept my mouth shut until I had enough experience to form an opinion. After a couple of years and a number of shows I decided I kind of liked the board. Then one of the bands bought one so i added the wireless rig. Now I think it is a great tool for these throw and go shows. Actually I will risk a bit of blasphemy and state that I prefer it to an LS9. The lack of flying faders has been a non issue and it sounds fine with any speaker you are typically going to find a band carrying.
My favorite mix surface remains the SC48 which seems to be the perfect amount of control and labeling for a surface, but even if I had my own I wouldn't bother trying to set it up for most of these shows.
I have not seen a X32 in the wild yet. Check back with me in about 5 years and I might have an opinion.
The other two big changes for this year are that I drastically reduced the amount of travel time I was doing for shows, staying more local which also explains the increase in bar gigs. The other is that I have done a significant number of shows with drummers. Yes I do know how.
I still have problems with crowd noise making my ears tired. Perhaps that is one reason I like the visual confirmation from SMAART. But I still only remember two shows where I had the feeling of lack of control, and both were really factors out of my control.
One show was a festival setting. I showed up with an up to date input list and stage plot. It was a duo that used 6 inputs, 3 of which were guitars with separate processing. The stage manager asked if I cared if the channels were in the exact order or if he could land them where his festival plot was already set up. I told him I didn't care as long as I knew what was what. He mispatched all three guitar channels. We had a nice blast of feedback when we first tried to get a signal because what he thought was the clean channel from the electric was actually the unmuted acoustic sitting on a stand. Once we found the clean channel it turned out that the processed channel he had missed by a row at the snake. While trying to find that, he unplugged the clean channel and dropped the cord to the metal stage. Instant loud buzz which was bleeding across channels ( the two channels were sharing the two sides of a stereo di). The whole set went that way.
The other show that was a disaster centered around a horn player. Despite having lots of time all we got before doors was a rudimentary line check. He was using an AT35 clip on. He line checked with an alto sax. The show started and he came out with a tenor sax, immediately asked for a significant increase in monitors, and after the first solo allows the sax to flip upside down with the bell pointed straight into the monitors. I hate feedback too but before I could do anything to fix it he rips the mic off and clips it to the cable on his mic stand once again pointing straight into the monitor. So he takes his vocal mic, set for his between songs whisper, and blasts it with the horn. I have never seen so many things turn red on a sc48 at once. That was a start of a long night. I truly believe he has been playing professionally for 40 years. It would take that long to learn all the things he did to screw up the guy out front.
Funny how the bad sticks in memory far more than the good.
