I am not a Roman Catholic, but I imagine this is what it feels like to enter the confessional. To expose my sins and hope fervently for the forgiveness that will make the rest of my life livable. What follows is a tale of woe, destruction, humiliation and anguish. I wish I could say it has a happy ending, but it doesn’t.
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In previous columns, various Waves plugins that I use on vocals, horns, violins, electric guitars, bass guitars and drums have been discussed. By now it should be apparent that I like to use a lot of compressors. This current entry will focus on my compressor of choice for the acoustic grand piano: the Waves CLA-2A Classic Compressor.
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Since the dawn of time, engineers have struggled with the task of getting good guitar sounds on stage. One of the big issues is stage volume: the musician cranks it up to get “their sound” while the engineer and audience get blasted with ear-crushing levels from the stage. Inevitably, the PA has to be cranked up to overcome the stage volume. Let’s assume, for the moment, that the musicians you work with have their stage volume under control (whether it be via volume knob, moving cabinets off-stage, or threats of violence) so that you can actually hear the guitar through the PA and create a mix. There are some tried-and-true methods you can use to get great guitar tones.
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Finding that next (or even first) gig is still a matter of persistence
It’s January, the quiet season for touring — unless your work for the rest of the year isn’t firmed up yet. If that’s the case, this needs to be the busiest part of the year.
Read More »Happy New Year to all of you. By the time you read this I will either have been to the winter NAMM show or be on my way. The reason I am mentioning NAMM (other than the fact that it takes place in January) is that it is my favorite place to look at new gear for my sound business. I am particularly interested in column speakers this year. (I must mention that InfoComm would also be a great place to look for this type of speaker enclosure.) Anyway, I am specifically looking at architectural speakers that can be installed in a house of worship.
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There is no definitive way of setting up gain structure and mixing a show but, after much time and years of practice, we all learn the right way to go about achieving our desired results. While the “art” of mixing may not be an exact science, there are still many precise and defined rules to which we need to adhere as we master our craft and practice our “art.” The rules that define right from wrong are not only imperatives for mixing, but are also the tenets that extend to every aspect of a given production.
Read More »Wth the New Year approaching, we make lists and promises for the next trip around the sun.
I recently visited the shop of a major sound company where an entire room of top-shelf rider-friendly analog outboard equipment was collecting dust because most mixing now occurs “inside the box” of digital consoles on tours, in venues and at festivals, eliminating outboard gates, compressors, and, to a lesser degree, EQ and effects.
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The 10th annual week-long Rock In Rio festival returned to Brazil after spending even years of the past decade in Lisbon and Madrid, drawing 700,000 to the site planned for the 2016 Summer Olympics to hear Guns N’ Roses, Shakira, Katy Perry, Stevie Wonder, Ke$ha, Metallica, Rihanna, Coldplay, Elton John, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and many other top artists perform.
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For the fifth year since it opened in 2007, Britannia Row Productions provided live audio for the NFL’s annual International Series game seen by some 80,000 fans in London’s Wembley Stadium — a venue Britannia Row has worked many times, including Live Earth, the Concert for Diana, Metallica and Foo Fighters, among others.
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Katy Perry rose to fame with her 2008 single, “I Kissed a Girl.” Her 2010 album, Teenage Dream, which debuted at number one, included five number one hits (with a sixth on the way up) — a feat matched only by Michael Jackson’s Bad. She is also the first artist in history to spend 52 weeks in the top 10.
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Both the XP and XD have an industry-standard choice of Bessel, Butterworth or Linkewitz-Riley crossovers with slopes from 6 to 48 dB-per-octave. Under General Settings, the EQ and crossover settings can be made in either 1 Hz increments or 36 steps per octave.
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Managing low frequencies is one of live audio’s constant challenges. We deal with room nodes, architectural resonances, uneven coverage and unwanted spill. Today’s line arrays provide fairly uniform horizontal coverage with adjustable vertical splay. However, an equivalent vertical subwoofer array that provides low-frequency directivity is enormous. The last decade has brought about the ready availability of digital signal processing (DSP) and with the advent of digital consoles, modest DSP is included in every mixer’s outputs, allowing the easy creation of cardioid arrays with everyday means.
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