Live Event Post

I had the opportunity to do my first A2 gig at the Bakersfield Fox Theatre for Estevie, a wonderful singer and her band. They were opening for Xavi who is on the come up in a big way right now. Both are hispanic artists with pretty big reach and it was so exciting being able to work and be trusted with working the on stage monitors for them and getting to be what felt like a big part of the show.

This was Estevie’s stage plot we put it together for them and very quickly got to sound checking them as we were kind of in a rush. getting the instruments to have a full and clean sound took no effort at all. The only issue we encountered while setting them up actually was that we were having difficulties with the connection of the drummer’s wireless pack and his computer’s DAW was sending through an incorrect track into the channel we slotted for tracks but through various small tweaks we were able to get that sorted. The wireless pack actually only had to be restarted.

This is an example of the monitors we were using on stage for them. Testing the monitor volume didn’t take very long either it all happened within about 20 minutes basically just trial and error of sends in each channel for them as they signaled up and down with one hand as they took turns playing their instruments and singing for each other to make sure they could all hear their tracks clearly and as needed.

This is the beautiful Midas 32x we use at the Fox

Live Sound Tutorial

(green buttons are direct links to tutorials)

https://youtu.be/-jjbofstkjU?si=Zib3SIviLwaWss5h

I honestly felt as though this video wasn’t enough but I also felt that the Over-Under Method wouldn’t quite be enough either so I went ahead and just did both since they both have to do with cable care and knowledge.

https://youtube.com/shorts/sb5wiTYTEco?si=ncAIVPJQBSDqCvbG

Assignment #1 Basic Gain Staging

In Live Sound we have been learning all about gain staging and setting up a PA system and it’s various lines.

We were given the opportunity in class to, as a team, assemble a PA system in our group and work with single line gain staging.

We had the pleasure of working with a Beta 58A mic, which thanks to this class, I know is particularly great for live vocal sound.

The mic line was plugged directly into our Allen & Heath mixer which can on it’s own bring it up to level.

for this exercise we messed with all the settings to give ourselves a feel at what they all did the picture above does not capture the settings we were happiest with but it does show us with some boosted gain and using some FX.

As you can see we have a line going out to our QSC monitor which we had positioned on the floor pulling power from the wall directly behind it.

this image is also not indicative of the settings we were happiest with this is just the picture I grabbed after we were done. I did pay mind, when setting up the monitor, to face it in a direction that would best allow us to avoid feedback from the mic. While these are all things I do at work already it was really nice to get a deeper understanding of all the parts with this exercise.

EQ Ear Training

I had to re-do this assignment because for some reason in early April when I had done this and a couple of assignments from my other classes they did not save however it did allow me to revisit the pulse.berklee.edu site which reminded me how neat of a tool it could be for getting your ear used to what you’ve got to have an ear for in the live sound industry.

I allowed myself to navigate through all the “audio source”s and tested each with a few different filters until I felt like I was making more confident choices and not having to scout around so much between choices.

I really enjoyed the way the site is stop and go so you can devote as little or as much time to it as you’d like, definitely a nice tool for practice in short bursts or even if you want to really test yourself and go at each source a few times.

I actually really see myself going back and testing myself in random pockets of downtime when I’m around some headphones which is honestly pretty exciting to me. I think it’d be great if this was accessible as an app that had like little daily challenges or something I feel like that’d be really neat. Excited to have gained this resource.

Stage Plot + Input List

For this first attempt at a stage plot I opted to go with the fairly common setup of a 4 piece band with guitar, bassist, vocals, and a drummer. I also included monitors because I see they always get used for these kinds of bands. I made the implication that the bottom of the paper would represent the front of stage as this how I usually see them laid out. I also made sure to include the guitar amp on stage for a little further detailing.

making the input list was pretty fun, it allowed me to role-play the scenario out a bit and also use some of my (light) knowledge of mics and some equipment. I definitely have to do a little more research on the kinds of documents but this a very useful and neat thing to learn and practice.

EQ Ear Training - Dynamics

On this second ear training exercise we were tasked with using a DAW and using tracks within our DAW that we could throw compression or noise gates on to see what kind of different results we could achieve with our sounds. I thought it was crazy the different kinds of things you can cut out entirely from your sounds. I have an arpeggiated track that goes from gently electric to what is essentially digital pots and pans haha. The noise gate clips so heavily into some of the frequencies that it just straight up cuts parts out of the original sounds and creates skips.

I went ahead and added a second track with the same sound information but with the Noise Gate off to record the difference.