So I fell off of the blogging bandwagon that I was never really on in the first place. It happens apparently. So here is a selective/scattered update for the two of you.
Since the new year it's been a pretty typical winter, slow for live events, but this year instead of getting LOTS of shop work done we've been pretty slammed with installation work. I can't complain about the work, but I sure miss h
aving a winter break. One of these jobs was the first we've used a
Danley Sound Labs speaker. The room was fairly small (~36'x~55') and there was no good place for subs so a single SH-100B seemed like an ideal solution. I was extremely impressed with the results. One box covers the entire room with enough SPL for a contemporary style worship service and sounds great. Enough LF was simply not an issue. In fact, aside from a HPF the only processing applied to the box was to tame >80Hz content. (That's not entirely true, we ended up making a couple of room resonance cuts, but the room isn't the box's fault.) All in all a very cool little box. I can only imagine that DSL's other designs are equally impressive.
In February we did a college show with a loud emo/punk/rock band. The show is worth mentioning for me because this was a fly date for the band. On non-fly dates the band is all ears and I got the impression that they has their own MON guy. This date they had no MON guy and 3/6 pairs of ears. So I'm mixing MON's for a band that is used to ears and their own guy with wedges for half of the band. What could've been a somewhat not fun day turned into a really rewarding day for me. The band was picky but super easy to work with and end the end everybody was happy.
Later that same week I did a walk in for a local 250-seat theatre presenting everyone's favorite Guit-Steel player Junior Brown. The show was good (even if they didn't play either of my favorite tunes) and the Fender twin wasn't turned all the way up, only up to 9.25.
March, among other things, was the third musical of the year for a local community theatre I work with: The Wiz, directed by Colton Berry (of brief American Idol fame). Not much to say about this one. Over top of one of the weekends of the Wiz was James Madison University's James Madison Week. Usually it's "James Madison Day" and the have a keynote event/speech in the 1300-seat theatre and a luncheon in the ballroom and that is that. 2008 is JMU's centennial and it became Jimmy Madison Week and the production was considerably scaled up. The keynote event was moved to the arena, the Govorner spoke and three large music ensembles were added to the mix, in addition to the luncheon and a few other events. It was a busy week for me.
The following week I worked an Irish Caberet featuring Noel V. Ginnity which was fun if only for the photo.
Later that week was racks and stacks for Mannheim Steamroller. "But it's not Christmas!" you say. Correct. But they definitely played Christmas music for their encore. We actually loaded in a day early to demo the rig for our friends in Richmond. I like the QSC Wideline just fine, but I think they weren't going to buy it before they heard it and I don't think they heard anything at the demo to change their mind. We did the demo with only factory processing applied, and obviously with line arrays
everything is a function of how it's arrayed, but with that said there has always been something in the Low-Mids that I don't like.
Show day all was good. The BE, Nick, was cool to talk to and a smart guy. Though he definitely tuned the PA with SmaartLive running a 1/3-oct RTA, and the resultant EQ was what I would call ugly. That said, his show sounded good. It just goes to show that there are several ways to do the same thing and if it sounds good it is good.
Following the Mannheim show I took a week to spend Easter with the GF's family in NJ and some time in NY (state, unfortunately). Last night I worked a college culture show and now through Friday is a lot of shop work to convert the remaining ep6 systems to NL8/NL4 and paint 50+ speakers.
This weekend
MACRoCk descends on Harrisonburg. I always look forward to MACRoCk because I usually hear at least one band every year that I wonder how I ever did without before. I'm sure that will be true this year but, in addition to the bands I don't yet know and those I am passingly familiar with,
ANATHALLO is playing MACRoCk! For the past three years I have
worked the
Wheatland Music Festival in
Wheatland, MI. The sound co. sends a core crew from VA and we supplement crew locally. The first two years I was there a couple of guys named Dan and Matt were a couple of the locals working with us. Dan and Matt were in a band called Anathallo. The knowledge got filed away in some dark recess, but about a year ago I stumbled across Anathallo again and since have become one of my top 10-15 favorite bands. I've yet to experience the band live but it'll be a good show I'm sure, and I expect the other bands won't suck either. If you're at the show (you should be) say hi.
-C
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