Ole!

It’s that time of year again where the theatrical halls echo with the sound of stamped foot – not me missing donuts but this year’s Flamenco Festival.

I’m always bemused by just how much kit a cajon, two guitars, 3 vocals, a couple of claps and a dancer seem to require (yep, I’m generalising again). For a musical style that has a marked absence of electronic and electrical instruments, it does seem that a lot of electronic and electrical boxes are required. Still I take the rider and get it all to fit.

[Shop Talk]

The kit list for this years festival (less than two weeks) hire cost is more than some peoples salaries and includes -

Our Midas as the monitor desk. This is something of an odd choice as with only 12 mixes, the options for onstage monitoring, sidefills, and effects can get quite tight. Yep, it has group and matrix outs but these aren’t necessarily the most practical in this instance. And as we have a Heritage 3000 out front …

Outboard at both ends is the fairly standard dbx and XTA compressors, Lexicon, TC and Yamaha effects and BSS and KT equalisers. The only non-standard is the pair of Avalon 737 valve pre-amps adding some warmth to the lead vocals in the FOH rack.

Microphones again are a standard mix of Km185, Beta 58 and SM98 with the odd MKH416, MD421, SM58 or C414 covering specific instruments as required and there’s a bunch of PCC160s under the floor for those stamping feet. Compared to the last couple of years, there’s a higher reliance on radio mics this year with DPA 4061s being used on guitars and violins that move around and DPA 4066 on most vocalists. We are trying out the Neumann KK105 handhelds this year around in place of the Beta 87 but as only one company has so far needed them, it’s been a litle tricky to notice much difference. Beltpacks are the ever popular SK5012 (we like packs that are easy to hide) with a 1046 receiver system. For a supplemental system just needed for a couple of days we ended up with the larger 3063 packs on Sony receivers. This was the first time that I’ve had mixed brands on radio and we didn’t have any rx problems, which was nice.

All the hired speakers were, as often, d&b branded. C6 monitors for individual musicians onstage and E9s on sidefill detail powered from P1200 amps. A pair of B2 subs replaced our in-house martins and our main EAW system has been powered down in favour of a ground stacked Q1 array powered from D12 amps. I have to say that I’m impressed with the sound. It’s carrying evenly throughout the stalls (enough that we’ve turned off the delays there also) excepting right at the front where we are having to use our in-house front fills (just). There’s a little HF loss as you head into the circles so our delay lines are still in use but overall I’m liking it. I still feel that a point source system is more appropriate to our auditorium but it has been nice to have something else for a bit.

[/Shop Talk]

I’m looking forward to next week though – there’s only so much tap-tap-tapping that you can take – and I’ve got holiday time to use up before Easter!

Defending our airwaves

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/PMSEspectrum/?showall=1

 I’ve recently added my name to this e-petition, another way of expressing my concern for this issue – and I hope that everyone with a connection to the live and recorded entertainments industries does the same.

 More details can be found at BEIRGs website here

Camera Crew Question

If you look at the website for my theatre at the moment, one of the first things you see is an option to view some archived webcast footage taken as part of the Playstation Season event we hosted recently.

 The thing I notice about this is the quality of the sound on this – I guess the inputs on the web media guys little Spirit Notepad couldn’t quite cope with the output levels of a Midas. And I can understand some issues with the pieces that were only on for one night but have problems recording pieces that were on more than once – and they knew where to find the in-house sound team – well, that raises a few questions.

I do wonder why camera companies seem to come onboard projects once they are up and running (at least in my experience). They’ll turn up on the day of filming and will spend the day trying to get the camera’s set up. They likely won’t have seen the performance before,  or if anyone has, it’ll normally just be the producer. They won’t get a chance to colour balance and as they are filming a live performance, the light levels will not have been designed for recording to video. The audio feed will just be a single mono or stereo feed, normally going to the main camera, or to a small mixer and then to DAT.

 Would it really be so tricky for companies that are wanting a webcast, or EPK, or archival DVD to get the camera crew in for even an extra day, to arrange for a multi-track recording of the audio straight from the direct outs on the sound desk, to arrange a re-lights session so the look of the piece can be maintained but light levels increased (where possible).

This is obviously a generalisation and does not apply to all companies. But is the money saved not doing that little bit extra really saved if the final product is not up to the standards that the public expect?

 I welcome all comments on this and leave you to ponder…

Comments

Just a quick note to tell all and sundry that I’ve disabled the need to log in to leave a comment.

It’ll still require moderation and you’ll have to provide a valid email but if you think I’m being a ratbag you can now say so (or is that just the wife?)

Fire and formula

A few more theatre related musings …

 After the festive flu bugs finished having their way with us and the christmas show went on it’s merry way, we spent a week having the stage accessible to companies who normally would not have access to a large space to rehearse in.

 No punters meant that each company could indulge a little – with a full tech team if they wanted to add lights, sound or flying to the mix. For the most part it was a quiet week technically. One company did try having 500 tealights lit at once (gave or take the odd one or two) – really wishing that I’d remembered to bring the camera in that day.

Particularly, when having grouped a bunch together, they managed to set fire to the stage.

They were given a prompt demonstration on suffocating flames and we watched them a bit (read LOT) closer for the rest of the day.

Another company spent most of the day playing with black lights and seeing what reacted and what didn’t (the best reaction came from my grey Pitchshifter band t-shirt – not quite what they hoped for )

This was a culmination of a project the theatre has been working on of recent, where small-scale choreographers and directors were invited to sessions aimed to help them ‘up-scale’ ideas from small venues (50 -300 seats) to largers ones (such as our 1,500 capacity). This was several workshops on lighting (led by Paule Constable), sound (led by Gareth Fry) and other technical concerns,  such as production management do’s and don’ts, all under the title Big Intensive (who names these things – really?).

We also seemed to have a large number of students in (dunno if it was part of the same thing) gettings tours of the theatre in return for being talked at by us on areas of technical theatre. I dunno if you’ve ever tried to compress the whole area of live sound into 45 minutes. If you have, let me know how.

I’d recommend Kai Haruda’s website BTW for learning the basics of sound theory and practice. Find his site at haruda-sound.com and follow the links

Education department seems to be earning it’s pay this month …