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Mixing Bon Jovi’s “Because We Can – The Tour”

Jon Bon Jovi uses a Shure Axient with a Beta 58a capsule. Bon Jovi tour photo by Steve Jennings.

Mixing Bon Jovi’s “Because We Can – The Tour”

Definitely one of the hardest working bands in the business, quintessential American rockers Bon Jovi kicked off their 2013 “Because We Can” tour to a long string of packed SRO arenas, starting Feb. 10 at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. Named for the main single pull from the band’s current What About Now CD, “Because We Can” is perhaps Bon Jovi’s most ambitious live undertaking to date. The tour is appearing on five continents, including two early May dates in South Africa, as the band leaps up to a extended series of summer stadium shows, including a brief return to the States for five stadium shows in July before heading to Brazil and Australia later this year.

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FOH May 2013 Buyers Guide - Headworn Microphones

Headworn Microphones

Over the years, headworn microphones have evolved from clunky, low-fi affairs into lightweight, nearly invisible transducers capable of serious audio quality that can equal or best many handheld mics. Once mainly relegated to singing drummers and keyboardists, today’s headworn mics are more frequently becoming the choice of lead vocalists, classical soloists, live theatre performers, as well as for singers and spoken word in houses of worship applications.

To download the May 2013 FOH Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE

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KiAN Concert Sound Services

Long a regional player in Western Canada, KiAN Concert Sound Services has stepped up to play ball by investing in a Meyer LEO system. This because nothing other than a Meyer system will do, according to company president Mark Reimann.

Heck, he didn’t even have to listen to LEO system before he bought it.

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Fig. 1: The central cluster is one of the simplest approaches to subwoofer placement, and is predictable, yet non-directional.

Subwoofer Arrays in the Real World

Over the past two years of FRONT of HOUSE, we have covered substantial ground with respect to subwoofers. Whether on the specifics of setting up a basic cardioid array or on how to design your own vented box, we have presented several nuts and bolts articles on the ever-important bottom-end that keeps sound reinforcement exciting.

This installment is very much in keeping with the previous practical articles on subwoofers. I am suppressing my inner egghead tendencies towards discussing topics like “phaser summation in the far-field,” or “radiation impedance,” and instead will look at a number of subwoofer configurations as they were implemented in the field of real gigs. We will briefly overview each configuration and discuss the implementation, and the goals behind the implementation.

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Solid State Logic's LIVE console

Solid State Logic’s LIVE console

The word is out. At last month’s Musikmesse/Prolight+Sound show in Frankfurt (see report), Solid State Logic, a leading manufacturer of studio consoles and processing tools, has launched “Live” — its first console designed for sound reinforcement applications. This is definitely big news, but hardly the first time a studio-oriented manufacturer has entered the live console market, with notable examples being the Avid VENUE and PreSonus StudioLive series.

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Pete Townshend, a longtime H.E.A.R. advocate, with H.E.A.R. co-founder/executive director Kathy Peck

Making a Great Impression

In the early 1980s, there were no real solutions for musicians hearing onstage. With the support of the Who’s Pete Townshend, H.E.A.R.® (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, was instrumental in conducting the first public information campaigns on music hearing conservation throughout North American and worldwide media with MTV, PBS, BBC, Time magazine, Rolling Stone and many others.

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Rush FOH engineer Brad Madix

Incorporating Strings into the Rush Tour

Onstage strings — meaning a real string section — are nothing new to rock shows, although this addition to the current Rush outing is a definite change. Another change for the continuing Clockwork Angels tour (the second leg of which kicked off on April 23, 2013, with Rush delighting a sold-out house of more than 16,000 fans in Austin’s Frank Erwin Center) was the band’s return to a number of markets not visited during the tour’s first leg, which began last September.

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This up-front console placement during the setup for the James Taylor show was later relegated to a less-than-ideal position where near-field monitors were a must.

Near-Field Monitors for Live Shows, Part 2

Last month, I wrote about the role played by using near-field studio monitors during band rehearsals. This month I will concentrate on show applications for these small but very useful speaker systems. During rehearsals, I ran these speakers off the console’s monitor bus as one would in a studio. Once we are out on the road and working, I use a different output configuration to drive the near-fields. Because I don’t want the output signal interrupted whenever I PFL an input channel or AFL a VCA group or output bus, I put the near-fields on their own stereo matrix output, instead of using the console’s Monitor Out. The monitor function is reserved solely for headphones.

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WTD's WeatherOps provides real-time warnings on mobile screens.

It’s Springtime – Be Careful Out There

The live touring season gets fully underway this month. There’s a lot riding on it because, while the housing market seems to be coming back, recorded music sales sure aren’t. Even with subscription and streaming services accounting for 15 percent of record business revenue in 2012, according to the RIAA, and digital revenue at 59 percent of total recorded music revenue, the big picture was down one percent from the year before.

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A popular “money channel” choice on many tours, Avalon Design’s Vt737sp offers a tube preamp, opto-compressor, sweep equalizer, VU metering and output level control in a single unit.

Where’s the Money, Honey?

One of the more serious issues facing engineers who travel without production is consistency of audio quality — or lack thereof. When your entire audio chain is different every night, it’s tough to maintain a high standard of sound, and that’s not taking into consideration the drastic variations in acoustics from venue to venue. In an ideal world we’d all be able to use our preferred gear every night, but the reality is that when you’re relying upon promoter-provided production, it’s “sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells.”

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Walter Bush (at the console) explains some fine points of digital mixing on the Yamaha MC7L with volunteers at Destiny Christian Church in Yuma, AZ.

The Ten Suggestions

Essential Rules Church Volunteers Need to Know

If you go to church regularly, you probably know The Ten Commandments. Even if you don’t know them all in order, you know they exist. With that in mind, I would like to introduce some audio commandments for you. Actually, the word, “commandment,” is a little presumptuous on my part. So I will simply call them “suggestions” or “rules.” The fact of the matter is, there is no one single thing in audio production that is really difficult to learn. And if we break down all the tasks individually, the entire process becomes simple and fun. Okay, let’s get on with it.

 

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Illustration by Andy Au

A Sound Philosophy

It is generally understood, by most college students and their parents, that the study of Philosophy should be considered as a minor or — at best — an elective credit or two towards graduation. I would think that the prerequisite for any student graduating from college as a Philosophy major would be ownership of a large trust fund or — if that is not the case — a good knowledge of plumbing, roofing, electric or some other technical profession. Audio engineering happens to be a great technical profession for poets, musicians and truth-seekers, as it seems to lend itself better to the artistic and idealistic type than some of the other technical careers available to emerging philosophers.

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