Bruce Sandler went to Hawaii on vacation. He’s still there 15 years later…
Saying that Bruce Sandler’s life changed when he landed in Hawaii for a vacation 15 years ago is a bit of an understatement. After about a week on the islands, Sandler decided to head back to his Indianapolis home, pack his bags and road cases and head back to the 50th state.
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If sound for video games is the new film sound, mixing games live takes FOH someplace it’s never been before
Part rock concert, part “Let’s Make A Deal” live, part religious experience, Video Games Live is a 135-minute-long amalgamation of the scores and songs from popular video games performed by an orchestra and a choir and set to both preprogrammed and random game playing on a massive video screen. Perhaps the best analogy would be Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show of the late 19th century, which sought to recreate the environment of the frontier west as a traveling circus.
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No, we didn’t change our name to MON magazine, but this month we recognize the art of monitor mixing.
The OTHER end of the snake: A place so foreign to most of us FOH personnel that just the very thought of going there makes us shudder with anticipation of horrible-yelling rock stars in a relentless barrage of insults and abuse. In fact, as a FOH engineer, the closest I ever want to get to that world is to check mic placement on stage.
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Getting the audio under control at Glendale, Ariz.’s Jobbing.com Arena
So, Neil Rosenbaum hears the phone ringing in his office one day last August and his boss is on the other side. The Jobbing.com Arena production manager picks up to hear the order to completely revamp the audio system. Good news. Bad news? It’s got to be done by Oct. 4 when the arena’s prime occupant, the Phoenix Coyotes of the NHL, opens its season.
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Thomas R. Keefer
Owner
Lakeside Audio
Wilson, N.Y.
www.lakesidebluesband.com
716.297.2920
[email protected]
Services Provided: Concert sound and lighting. Backline if necessary.
Clients: American Heart Association, Western New York Cystic Fibrosis, City of Lockport, N.Y., Ball Drop, Niagara Celtic Heritage Society Fall Festival, Wilson Field Days
Read More »On Nov. 10, 2007, right before the busiest season of the year, the Broadway stagehands decided to go on strike and piss off quite a few tourists and theatergoers who made the trek into Manhattan just to enjoy a show or two. Of course, these same stagehands were also finding themselves lam-basted in the media as spoilers for not only the Broadway patrons, but also for the producers, actors and ushers, as well as ancillary businesses such as restaurants and shops. In the mainstream media, the stagehands were collectively portrayed as “The Grinch” who, due to their own avarice, ruined the top moneymaking season for all the aforementioned and more.
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As FOH has gotten more high tech, so has that slice of real estate known as monitor world
Once upon a time, monitors meant a mix or maybe two was handled from the same console as the house sound (and some folks — like this year’s Parnelli winner for FOH Mixer of the Year, Tom Young, still do it that way for acts like Tony Bennett).
But as personal monitors become the norm rather than some weird thing you have to adjust to for some gigs, the game has changed and that change is sure to continue. For instance, take the one-man approach of Tom Young and contrast it to the growing number of acts using more than one monitor engineer.
Read More »Audio professionals have very specific goals when presenting events. A wide-frequency spectrum in our audio program. Realistic dynamics. A bal-anced mix. Intelligibility. That’s a tough one. It’d be nice to make sure that our audience can appreciate the subtleties of the artist we represent, whether that be a snare drum hit, a quick run of guitar notes or a whisper. Unfortunately, as venue size increases, intelligibility typically decreases due to a multitude of factors, including increased reverb time, poor coverage and attentiveness (or lack thereof) on the part of the audience. You may have noticed that cream of the crop artists such as U2 recognize this issue and actually play their songs a hair slower in large venues to make up for the fact that the venue is messing with their clarity.
Read More »A friend of mine, an FOH mixer, just had a nasty dustup with the IRS, so although I hate to narrowcast, the column this month is aimed at self-employed FOH mixers. It’s too easy to lose sight of tax issues in the everyday grind of touring or marketing yourself, but the consequences of pay-ing attention are both financially and emotionally draining. It’s March, so there’s still time to review some of the key changes to the federal tax code for the 2007 filing.
Read More »I was in Naples, Fla., doing a gig when I got the call last Saturday morning about the death of Roddy Pahl.
After getting over the shock of the news, and a brief conversation with his wife Wendy, I took some time to reflect on the five-plus years he and I have been friends. When Roddy and I first met, he was tipping 500 pounds, maybe 6 feet 6 inches tall, shaved head – not a little sucker by any stretch. As big as he was, Roddy was equally soft-spoken. In fact, as I write this, I can’t recall anytime EVER that he raised his voice.
LAS VEGAS – On Friday March 14, the Las Vegas live audio community lost one of its rising stars when Roddy Pahl died in his sleep at home. Roddy is known to countless acts and production pros for his work as the regular audio engineer at the Fremont St. Experience, and just over a year ago he took the reigns as head of audio at the MGM Grand where he oversaw audio on large events including the ACM Awards and many large corporate gigs including the recent Keep Memory Alive Power of Love charity benefit featuring Michael Buble—the first show in the MGM’s new convention and conference venue. Roddy was also a regular contributor to FOH writing product reviews.
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SQUAW VALLEY, CA – Imagine finding a way to get 13,000 pounds of PA system up the side of a mountain. That’s exactly what Alex Moran of Spider Ranch Productions of Calif., had to accomplish when he was asked to provide the sound for the Jeep King of the Mountain World Pro Ski and Snowboard Championships. Alex provided a full complement of McCauley loudspeakers including MONARC MLA3’s, MS3’s, SM72’s and McCauley Sound’s new M88 subwoofer for what’s been referred to as “the loudest show on snow.”
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