Outdoor recording fun.....not!

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 6:33 am

Last night we did our annual recording of the Commencement Band on the college's band stand for the local college. Since we have done this for many years we have it down to a basic setup which has worked well in the past.

This year they threw us a couple of curves.

First they increased the size of the "band" now called a wind ensemble which was not that much of a problem. Then they increased the size of the percussion add on and made it about 1.5 times bigger which again was no problem. They added an orchestra concert before the band concert which meant that a lot of players were doing double duty and we had to hold up the band concert for about 30 minutes so the orchestra players could get to the band stand. The weather was perfect and the crowd was the largest on record. They also increased the sound system from years past when it was only used for announcements and for the soloist to a fully miked concert sound setup. They had 27 microphones and the bandstand was completely surrounded by speakers including ones facing sideways and to the rear and the person who was doing the sound must have been a rock and roll engineer because he really liked his bass and at one point as we were setting up he had the whole square echoing from the drum beats of the bass drum. Of course every speaker stack had a subwoofer as part of the stack so he had LOTS of bass to play with.

We set up 6 microphones. A stereo pair in the front, two flanking omni's for the band wings and two omnis on the percussion add on. We also took 7 microphones from the sound companies splitter. They were the announce microphone, the spot percussion microphones and the solo microphones. We were going to multi track record this as well as do a down mix to stereo. For some reason the firewire on our Mackie Onyx console would not talk to the computer's firewire input and after trying for a long time gave up the idea of doing this multi track and only did a stereo mix.

The concert starts 30 minutes late and the first thing that happens is that some person comes running on to the band stand and throws a pie in the director's face. The director is standing there trying to conduct with a side of his face covered in cream pie. Finally someone rushes up with a towel and he is able to clean off the goo. He asks that security help him find the individual and station some security officers at the steps of the bandstand. So the concert goes on.

We are sitting off to the side of the bandstand with a ton of cables in the area between us and the bandstand. Earlier in the day people kept walking on the cables so we put up a barrier at one end to wall off our area. Now the audience starts coming up and coming around the barrier to be able to take pictures. So now we have a very dark area that is strewn with cables and the audience is going back and forth with cameras glued to their eyes and NOT watching what they were doing. A couple of them tripped but no cables came undone.

The concert goes on and we come to a place where someone decided to make bugler's holiday into tuba holiday and the sound company puts clip on microphones on each of the tuba's bells. Well tubas can put up a lot of volume and they overpowered the clip on microphones so it was distortion city in the PA system and since we were getting some bleed from the sound system it was distorted in our mix as well.

The concert goes on forever because the audience really likes what they are hearing and wants more. We finally ended at 11 pm did a quick strike and were done by 11:30 pm.

I have not had a chance to listen to the tapes as of yet but I hope they turned out as well as what I was hearing in the headphones.

Not a typical band concert but one that will go down in my memory as a weird one. Oh yes and at last report they did catch the pie thrower.

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 6:48 am

Sounds fun!

I think they should bare-ass cane the pie-thrower and then put THAT video on YouTube since this jackass undoubtedly did it so he could live forever in the Bowels of such an excrement of a site!

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 7:16 am

Your story was very interesting, I'm keen to hear your tapes.
The guy who rigged up the PA sounds cool.
And distorted tuba is the best kind. Razz

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:14 pm

You might want NEVER to do anything for a Church without lots of set in stone planning. Last minute changes and painful realisations are a given.

Don't ask, unless you want a rant.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 7:40 am

Tom, I'm curious about your Mackie FW problem; did you ever sort it out? (What computer and software were you using?) I went through some hoops when I first installed a few of my own, but now they're running very nicely.

Also, I can't help but wonder about the pie-thrower.....what kind of conductor would deserve such treatment? Perhaps there was some old grudge going on there, finally coming home to roost? Paybacks can be a b*tch, as they say..... Rolling Eyes

Ya never know; I had a malicious, mean, nasty music director in my HS that deserved a lot more than a pie for what he did to some students. One of the "nicer" things he did was play a game called "Stump the stoops" whereupon hearing a bad note or messed up part, he'd stop the ensemble and make each player play their part, alone, until the culprit was caught. Then it was ridicule time. It worked, but a lot of kids just gave up rather than face the embarassment. I suppose the really dedicated ones just worked harder to avoid the embarassment, but there were lots of scars because of it.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:11 am

Codemonkey wrote:

You might want NEVER to do anything for a Church without lots of set in stone planning. Last minute changes and painful realisations are a given.

Don't ask, unless you want a rant.

I assume you have had your share of "problems" I know when I use to do church sound at my church there were a LOT of problems especially non communication between the minister and me and he just expected me to know what he was going to do AS he did it. I remember one time he took his wireless microphone, walked out into the church and stood in the free field of the speaker cluster and did his whole sermon from there. It was feedback city and I had to cut the gain back to keep it from going into constant feedback. After the service he said some people complained to him that they could not hear him in the back row. This was in a 300 seat conventionally laid out Protestant church. The minister we had before this guy did not even need a PA system and he could be heard in the third row of the balcony just fine.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:20 am

JoeH wrote:

Tom, I'm curious about your Mackie FW problem; did you ever sort it out? (What computer and software were you using?) I went through some hoops when I first installed a few of my own, but now they're running very nicely.

Also, I can't help but wonder about the pie-thrower.....what kind of conductor would deserve such treatment? Perhaps there was some old grudge going on there, finally coming home to roost? Paybacks can be a b*tch, as they say..... :roll:

Ya never know; I had a malicious, mean, nasty music director in my HS that deserved a lot more than a pie for what he did to some students. One of the "nicer" things he did was play a game called "Stump the stoops" whereupon hearing a bad note or messed up part, he'd stop the ensemble and make each player play their part, alone, until the culprit was caught. Then it was ridicule time. It worked, but a lot of kids just gave up rather than face the embarassment. I suppose the really dedicated ones just worked harder to avoid the embarassment, but there were lots of scars because of it.

No this guy is pretty well liked. He is a perfectionist but the students respect him for it. He is NOT the kind of person that you would do this to for a "fun" thing. It was in front of a crowd of a couple of thousand people so it was somewhat embarrassing for him. It put a damper on the rest of the concert and he was always looking for another attack. They did catch the person responsible and we have it all on video tape for the trial in case it is needed. Not a cool thing to do. The guy was wearing a puppet head so he could not be recognized but they caught him anyway. He was seen standing around before the concert with a pie in his hand so maybe this was a crime of opportunity or maybe not.

UPDATE: The pie thrower was a current student and did not like the way the band conductor was doing things.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:26 am

This "Pie in the face" thing is becoming what's known as an Internet Viral phenomenan. Sh*t heads like your offender do this to public speakers (originally as a political statement against local/regional politicians/businessme) and catch it on video so that they or their buddies can put it on YouTube. Do a quick search on that site and you'll see what I mean.

To me, it's a shameless offense which is some idiotic attempt at one's 15 minutes of fame.

Seriously, I think people like this *should* be bare-ass caned in public and video taped for the whole world to see.

Grrr...

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:40 am

Sounds like you have some sort of sadomasochistic arse fetish dude.
I'm not condoning retarded behavior, it's just a little cream to the face never hurt anybody...
Maybe he was a Nazi...
If he was a nice, happy go lucky helpful cheery guy and a credit to humanity, I think he'd laugh it off in moments and relish telling the story whilst being the life of the party for years to come...

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 11:10 am

I can tell you from my experience as a music director that commencement is one of the worst gigs to prep for, play and organize. You're dealing with people who are not accustomed to organizing, coordinating and communicating to/for large groups of people and then make changes like you've described. I also think our society is becoming too immature for commencement to continue in the old-fashioned tradition. Not that I'd really be sorry to see the whole mess disappear - as they exist now.

Sorry Greener - I'm guessing you're young and find the whole Jack@ss phenomenon humorous. Jr. high mentality in an adult's body.

Jeremy, I'm with you - I'd cane him myself in front of the frickin' crowd if I could, or file for assault charges and kick him out of school as well. He'll probably end up with a slap on the wrist and file under "boys will be boys" crap. Spend a weekend picking up garbage and the issue is forgotten until the next ass comes along to "make his mark".

It's not enough to put in 60-80 hr work weeks at the end of a school year, you now get to be fodder for juvenile delinquents. I guess that's why I spent so much time in the practice room.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 11:20 am

Greener wrote:

Sounds like you have some sort of sadomasochistic arse fetish dude.

This coming from the person who wrote these posts:
http://recording.org/ftopicp-335304.html#335304
and
http://recording.org/ftopicp-335321.html#335321

Hmmm...within the same thread, you referenced the "arse" or its derivitive 4 times.

If you have nothing to contribute, don't.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 11:30 am

Takes one to know one! Smile

Pull your head out of it...

/Side note, yeah, I know tempo is all about feeling just wanted different opinions. Meh...

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 12:36 pm

Recording outside is not fun, I attempted to record some acoustic guitar outside at about 6am before the cars started rolling, to get some atmosphere with the birds and junk. Well I have all my microphones set, x-y, about 6 feet from the guitar with my computer inside the door, put my headphones on and here this massive buzzing! Needless to say I gave up, struck my gear and went back to bed. Only to wake up and realize that I had attempted to record a guitar underneath my home's main power lines!!!!

I'll have to try again on the opposite side of my house!

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 5:25 pm

Nice one on the power lines.

As for our problems:
"he just expected me to know what he was going to do AS he did it."
Same. We get maybe half an hours notice for things, we do find out about concerts a few weeks in advance. Although, the details? Lost in space.

Sunday there, we went to Shotts Congregational. Nice smallish place, good acoustics. Has a PA installed. We were short of space so we left our main speakers and took 2 monitors, the mixer, cables, mics and snake.
First oops: I forgot to grab the monitor amp.
Next oops: both of our monitors have one faulty jack so we can't use them in parallel.
Next oops: The PA speakers they have can't be put in parallel either. SO, there's 4 speakers and 2 amp channels. Plus their powered mixer. So I hijacked a line input. Then found one of our monitors has lost both input jacks, maybe in transit. Great, one monitor for a whole band. It has a blown twerter too (big problem with Church sound: zero budget).

THEN, after I set up the monitors etc, I find out the guys at Shotts want to use their PA to play some songs and use some of their mics. So I ran a line back from their mixer to ours, and somehow dodged a feedback loop. Halfway through the gig I find that the mic they said they would use wasn't being used, the mic they weren't going to use was being used. So I had to sneak up during a hymn and twiddle some knobs. Which, I made no note of the original settings of. I think I've left the radio mic now blaring out the floor monitor, although I have informed them to turn the offending knob down.

Problems caused by lack of communication? All of the above.
That and the lack of organisation on my part.

Note to self: essential gear list now consists of "Monitor amp" and "Notepad/pen"

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 5:24 am

multoc wrote:

Recording outside is not fun, I attempted to record some acoustic guitar outside at about 6am before the cars started rolling, to get some atmosphere with the birds and junk. Well I have all my microphones set, x-y, about 6 feet from the guitar with my computer inside the door, put my headphones on and here this massive buzzing! Needless to say I gave up, struck my gear and went back to bed. Only to wake up and realize that I had attempted to record a guitar underneath my home's main power lines!!!!

I'll have to try again on the opposite side of my house!

Most power is balanced (110 VAC-Neutral-110VAC) and at least in our local area the AC power coming into the house is wrapped around each other further canceling the fields. Unless you were within inches of the AC power and the house was drawing a lot of power I don't think that was your problem. If that was the problem then you would have the same problem in every room of your house.

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