notesdontmatter

Forum Week 1 – 01/03/07

Steven Whittington's first techo 'axe'

I remember my first shot at live mixing for a band being requested of me. I showed up at the venue with an idealistic image of myself setting up a few microphones, then settling in behind the desk (which would be situated in the middle of the band room, central to the stage) for some level checking followed by a professional display of EQ and signal effect tweaking on the fly. How wrong could I have been?

Just a small glitch with the power people, remain calm...

The reality on the night was a pathetic four channel mixer (it used to be eight but four faders were broken) situated at the back of the stage near the drum riser – so much for a fair degree of stereo separation. This shameful excuse for a live setup (people had actually paid money to see bands perform here) allowed just four microphones to be used simultaneously. So the options were limited pretty much to singers one and two, and micing the kick and snare drums. Add to this the location of the desk and you’ll get the picture – I was given a set of conditions to work with that could, at best, sound like an average rehearsal room jam session. It was a pretty frustrating and off putting first experience.

That being said, I have since had much more rewarding experiences in the field, some of them related to course work during this degree, so I certainly don’t intend to put anyone off working in the field. I guess I’m just trying to say that one should be prepared to take the good with the bad…

Anyone else got a worst and / or best experience with sound engineering to tell me about?

Reference:

Stephen Wittington. ‘Forum – Introduction and Overview’. Lecture presented at EMU Space, Schulz Building, 5th Floor, Adelaide University. Thursday 1st March 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 10:55 AM