Aiiiight!

This weekend I filled in on drums for two gigs with the coverband that I usually mix for. Pretty fun actually, but a bit exhausting around my other gigs. There was an excellent Irish pipe trio on Thursday night, and the 18-piece brass jazz band on Sunday at the Mallard to keep me busy.

This week at SAE we focussed on running the monitors for live sound. Tim joined us in the green screen studio as we set up a stage worth of foldbacks, including a drum fill and side fills. This was a good exercise for me as I have only used the Avid Venue system for mixing front of house in the past. There are a number of layers in the system that need to be checked before you get a functional send so it’s good to have gone through that process. As with the D-command, I’d like to spend some more solo time with the system to get across all the features.

It was reassuring to hear from Tim and Lance that one of the greatest challenges of live sound is managing the on-stage volume, as this is something that I have found especially in smaller rooms or spaces not suited to live music. This ties in with interpersonal skills, as the solution is often to ask musicians to turn down or redirect the amps away from the audience. I think that lots the other problems associated with live sound – feedback, unclear monitors, buried vocals – can be avoided if this is done right.

Cheers!