Tale of two Vertecs @ Woodstock

[robertbartsch]

I use vocals as a good test of the mix. Crosby, Stills, Nash was an event at Woodstock in 2008 that had an excellent mix. The system was small by comparision; 12 x 2 of very smallish L-acoustics flown; 4 x 2 bass cabs on stage and 12 x 2 SR amps.

I could hear every word of every song - electric and acoustic licks. They played with vintage Fender and Marshall stage amps miked.

If the sound engineer could acheive this without a huge system, I assume that other engineers who are able to work with a larger system but produce only garbled noise are just lost-in-space.

[Tim Rinkerman]

"Tim,you and I could swap some great stories I bet."
I suppose we could start a "War Stories" thread....
Alot of sound guy's get it in their head that a certain instrument has to sound a certain way..weather it fits the song or music doesn't matter to them...I have heard many guitar solos treated as "solo guitar" to the point that the rest of the band is inaudible.

"If the sound engineer could acheive this without a huge system, I assume that other engineers who are able to work with a larger system but produce only garbled noise are just lost-in-space."

It all depends on what you are listening to/for what...you want to get an even tonal response from every input to get a proper musical balance..all parts of all instruments ( voices are instruments) heard equally. PA systems are only tools..some mechanics reach for a hammer first, others listen to the entire assembly to determine which part needs fixing first. How many times do you watch the guy spend half the night referring back to a set of headphones?
Alot of guys won't accept the fact that they have to come to a happy medium between what the band is doing, what the PA can do, and what the venue is doing to all of it. You have to have a "sonic image" in your mind to work towards...
Oldmic's...how many bands did you work with that brought out their "studio engineer/producer" to mix the show, because they were "familiar with the music"? I quickly found out that studio guys were hands down the worst at trying to mix a live show. On the opposite foot is the reason I never wanted to work in a studio....Live, you have to get it, and get it good the first time. A good live performance is fleeting magic...the band builds energy from the crowd, thing happen that wouldn't (couldn't) happen in a studio. A studio performance will NEVER hold a candle to a good live performance.
I'll be quiet now...I'm going on like a Kathy Mattea encore....

[Oldmics]

Oldmic's...how many bands did you work with that brought out their "studio engineer/producer" to mix the show, because they were "familiar with the music"? I quickly found out that studio guys were hands down the worst at trying to mix a live show. On the opposite foot is the reason I never wanted to work in a studio....Live, you have to get it, and get it good the first time. A good live performance is fleeting magic...the band builds energy from the crowd, thing happen that wouldn't (couldn't) happen in a studio. A studio performance will NEVER hold a candle to a good live performance.

There has been more studio experts that attempted to mix a live show than I care to remember.

I guess without pause,protools and rewind it usually does not lead into an enjoyable sonic event.

"A good live performance is fleeting magic..."

and sadly next to no one knows you were an integeral part of it.

Oldmics-been there and probably will go back !

[clmrt]

Well, worked the Frampton gig last night. We used our usual W8LC Martin lines in a 2000 seat room. Bottom end was 4x WSX, 18" folded horns per side, power by Crest, 9001's and related.

102-103db at the desk, clean and wide open feel to it. The engineer had it dialed, great work in a big shoebox conference room setting. Maybe 200x80x30 ft.

Pete had all new gear due to his losses from the floods in TN.

Sorry, no pics. Cam batt died...

[robertbartsch]

What exactly happened to the equipment in the TN floods?

So this stuff was in a truck and the truck floated away? What was lost; amps, guitars, drums, PA, board?

They were traveling with Yes; did the Yes stuff get lost too?

[clmrt]

Not sure exactly - They were set up for rehearsal in an Air Force hangar and overnight the flood waters crept in and ruined the gear that was in place. I know he had all new Marshall cabinets, effect racks and pedal boards, cables...He told the crowd about it and that's how I learned, actually. The guitar tech, Rick, didn't mention it. Much of the gear was new but in old road cases.

[clmrt]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=126776761

[robertbartsch]

That SUKs.

With hindsight, it seems dumb to store muscial instruments and equipment in a flood zone. The insurance people must have known this was volnerable. If not they know it now.

[Oldmics]

, power by Crest, 9001's and related

Wouldnt know what to do without mine!

Oldmics

[boputnam]

Sorry to have missed all this - been out doing it...

Tim - you raised a lot of issues, some agreed, some not. I run into many band engineers (BE's) on the road, and I can say that to a person, few are bored, and all are working really hard. Speaking only for me, every show is just as exciting as the first, and I have high expectations of my ability to get it right, quickly, and at lowest SPL possible so that the fans are happy. My eyes are glued to stage - I hate missing even one cue. With high SPL stage wash, I bring down the vox bus (or DCA) about -6 to -10 dB between singing, to clean-up the mix, so I cannot afford to miss resurrecting the gain structure. Healy is working me through his mic floor mat switches the Dead used for decades, but touring has kept me away from my shop, so I carry on manually in the interim.

The hardest part of my role is deciphering the install and making sure we have a system that will work optimally for us. Many clubs have archaic and shabby installs, of poorly maintained and sometimes unserviceable gear. Then there are venues like Brooklyn Bowl with a Venue at FOH and SC48 in monitors, and a nicely flown Vertec array. I carry a wealth of adapters, splitters, looms, and the xta to help us achieve a stable system, but there is often little that can be done and "doors" are looming.

The biggest tool I have is controlling SPL. I strive for 93 dBA at FOH (unless I'm literally on the mains, which happens... ). During solo's I tend to de-emphasize other inputs, rather than boost the solo - the result is the same without escalating SPL.

As to Santana's troubles, I cannot know. At a recent festival the spendiferous IM8-40 would not bus one of my vocals - an unknown "feature" of that contractors console. w/o soundcheck (only line checks at festivals...), I had to bump it mid-set at FOH - the adjacent strip happened to be empty and functioning. I told the system tech, who failed to pass it along to Scarekrow (NRPS) who was up next. I was backstage during NRPS, and could tell Scarekrow fell into the same trap - David Nelson's vocals were not where they should be, so I ran to FOH, and shared my discovery. Scarekrow couldn't bump (adjacent strips busy), so he double-bussed. The point being the bad strip gave great signal indication, but would not bus - tough to decipher in the heat of building a mix, fast. And, something that was not so obvious until Nelson was talking.

Likewise, Sunday I had our keyboard through a JDI duplex - just like always and works fine. But the house tech inadvertently punched one channel out-of-phase. Neither our monitor guy nor I caught it - both ch gave great clean signal, but combined in the mix I got nothing. Mind blowing symptoms at downbeat. A few frantic COMS to stage made them check my hunch, and it got fixed, but it took some time and I had 20-something other ch needing my attention.

The point is, things happen, as you know, and it doesn't always go as planned.

I've run into as many disinterested / obstructionist HE's as you have BE's. My job is to friend them, work with them, and leave things in better condition than found, and to throw off a good show for the fans and house. I can also only remind that BE's get incredibly run down - we're not home or near home. A different venue every night requires +/- 5 hrs of driving every day (not everyone has a tour bus), after too few hours sleep and 12-hrs of standing every show. This is not an excuse, just the reality of "living the dream" and toward the end of a run, everyone is pretty exhausted and needing some time off. Then again, after being home for only a couple days, I'm already advancing the next run and anxious to get back out...

[Tim Rinkerman]

"Tim - you raised a lot of issues, some agreed, some not. I run into many band engineers (BE's) on the road, and I can say that to a person, few are bored, and all are working really hard."

I have to agree that few are bored.....I guess I have just come up against too many that spend too much time making excuses why the band is messing up their mix, or promoting their own agenda. I, like you, try to make the day as smooth and easy as possible...even when moving the building 4 feet to the left would have been easier.
Yes, things do happen, and sometimes it doesn't go the way you would like, or the way it was planned..but you know as well as I do, that there are some people who push you just to see how far you will go. Or, spend 2 hours on getting drum sounds, and the vocals suck during the show, and the BE blames the guitar player....been there too many times...

[Altec Best]

One thing I think any musician will tell you is that they would much rather play in a indoor small venue then an outdoor one.With outdoor venues i think you need more power and with more power you have more distortion especially if the drivers can't handle it.There is nothing worse then a show that sounds like crap.Hey I want my money back this sounds like crap.. Visuals are a lot harder as well I try to stay away from the outdoor venues just for these reasons "I Won't Like the Show" Any intimate small venue is going to be hard to beat.The only problem is that any decent act don't play in too many small venues for the fact that the demand for tickets is too high to justify playing in those small venues when let's say that they can sell out a large venue.It's all about making money and being able to satisfy the public in that it will give everyone a chance to see them who wants to.

[boputnam]

...I guess I have just come up against too many that spend too much time making excuses why the band is messing up their mix...

. Yikes - never known that. We often struggle with our rented backline - the B3, Leslies and guitar amp are not what the rider specified and this (rightfully) distracts the artists and confounds the mix, too, but I can't comprehend blaming the aritists. We are in this together.

One thing I think any musician will tell you is that they would much rather play in a indoor small venue then an outdoor one.With outdoor venues i think you need more power and with more power you have more distortion especially if the drivers can't handle it.

Both are very different - hard to compare. Outdoors gives the benefit of less acoustical issues - boundary effects, slap-back, etc. - both situations need the proper sized PA, in either event.

I prefer outdoor, myself - weather permitting - especially if a small amphitheatre.

[LowPhreak]

Excellent observation - I do find that for rock music drummers make the best transition into sound techs

Don't know how that was intended, but let's not bash drummers! I'm a drummer and I can tell you that if I ran sound in many of my gigs, I'd certainly try for a much more balanced mix than what I've had to tolerate. No, I don't believe the drums should hog the mix much of the time, though I do get annoyed when some half-assed FOH guy gates my cymbals too hard. But I guess if they just want white noise...


On Santana - One of all-time fave bands, and I've seen them several times over the past couple decades (80's through '00's, though didn't get to see them in the 70's). Every time in venues such as Saratoga Performing Arts Center and RPI Field House (Troy, NY), they sounded very good to excellent. Most of those shows from what I could tell were JBL PAs. Example: the 1983 Shango tour I saw at SPAC was a near-religious experience for me, (and no, I hadn't used any of the dreaded 'Lysergic)

So I'm a bit surprised at the description of that show above. Too bad, because Santana shows used to sound great, and I didn't hear a bad one out of the 8 or 9 I've attended.

Yes, another of my faves, I've seen 3 times, (1977 Relayer tour at War Memorial in Nashville; 1991 Union tour at Pepsi Arena, Albany; and at SPAC a few years ago), and all had very good sound.

Anyway, it's too bad these great acts have such mediocre backup today.