mike257

2 hours ago, TimR said:

 

I think the engineers bands bring with them are recording engineers who are trying to reproduce the CD sound. 

It's not often the case that recording engineers are involved in the live production as it's a very different skillset, although the handful I can think of that I work with who split their time fairly evenly between studio and live work are actually some of the best live mix engineers I know. 

11 hours ago, lurksalot said:

Well the desk was at the side of the stage , they had no idea what the sound was like out front.

Ian Prowse,  the support, was spot on crystal clear and had the crowd well up for the gig.

The tour declined the option of the house rig.

”serious technical issue” ... not buying that at all , where are you getting that gem from ? 

The desk at the side of the stage is the monitor engineer's console, he's mixing what the band hear and has nothing to do with what's out front. 

The front of house console is out in the auditorium and can hear exactly what's going on. 

The tour didn't decline the house rig. The main left and right PA hangs and the flown sub array of the in-house system were used, and augmented with additional ground stacked PA and subs from the touring rig. 

There was a problem with the in-house system that occured early in EC's set which the touring team identified and worked with the house team to resolve. 

As for where I'm getting "that gem" from... I'm a touring engineer and production manager myself, I have a number of colleagues and friends on the EC touring crew and also with the support, and I'm well aware of the issues that they had and how much was done to resolve it as soon as it happened. 

Everyone who works on a show at that level is striving for it to be the best it can be, every day. We put redundancies in place, we plan, we test, we check, but sometimes issues develop that do affect the show and all that you can do is try your best to make it work with the resources available to you. Often, this happens completely unseen and the audience would never even be aware there'd been an issue. Sometimes, unfortunately, that isn't the case. 

On 11/06/2022 at 00:16, lurksalot said:

Elvis Costello and the imposters , well , the biggest imposter was the sound ‘engineer’ 

 

utter , utter garbage 

 

at the Philharmonic in Liverpool , 

 

I don’t do stadium/arena/festival stuff  I’ve found the sound crap , but FFS ....

 

it’s the Philharmonic Hall , sound is what they do 

truly awful , the house management were all embarrassed and couldn’t apologise enough , they should be refunding.

DIRE 

 

 

There was a serious technical issue with the sound system that hadn't presented itself during the soundcheck, and that the touring tech team worked incredibly hard to resolve during the show. 

Sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, things can go wrong. 

4 hours ago, MoonBassAlpha said:

Sounds interesting,  in what capacity?

I was their tour manager for the last year. Recently stepped down because of other touring commitments. Lovely bunch and all wonderful players!

2 hours ago, MoonBassAlpha said:

@fleabagand anyone else who saw 64 Spoons back in the day, just turned this up on YouTube:

Hope it brings back some memories!

I've worked with Lyndon a lot over the last year. Absolutely wonderful guy and insanely talented. Currently playing keys for Go West. 

On 01/04/2022 at 23:55, wateroftyne said:

I've got PAT stickers on my stuff that I bought from eBay just in case, but I've never been asked.

Anyone that wants to see evidence of PAT testing (or anyone with a clue, at least) doesn't want to look at stickers. They'll ask for your PAT certificate. This is less a certificate and more an inspection record on a big spreadsheet, showing the items tested, the results, and the date of testing. That's what venues are asking you to email over in advance, and if you've had your kit tested, the tester will have supplied you with this document. 

On 02/04/2022 at 09:41, paul_c2 said:

 

Its quite common nowadays. Basically what has happened is councils and other venue owners have done several rounds of cost-cutting exercise and pared down their insurance to the barest minimum, so that where a few years ago they'd have just covered mundane things like this, now they put the responsibility for holding the PLI onto each act visiting/using the facilities. Think, WI, badminton club, etc for a village hall. 

Their insurance will cover them if they're liable for, for example, an accident that causes someone an injury. It won't cover them if they're not liable. Your PLI is to cover your liability for something like that happening. That's not a new development because of someone cutting costs, that's just how liability insurance works and always has done.

On 18/03/2022 at 14:00, MacDaddy said:

 

So in terms of the practicalities... assuming the drummer is playing to a click, they'll be wearing headphones/earpieces to hear it (unless the click is put through a monitor?) so how will they hear the rest of the band?

 

The click track will be usually either fed to the mixing desk and returned to the drummer in their in ear monitor mix, along with the rest of the band as needed, or the drummer may have a small mixer as part of their monitoring setup which receives the click directly from the playback system along with their mix from the monitor engineer, allowing them to directly control how much click they want to blast their ears with!

I've used them in large scale touring productions right down to little club shows. It's a massively useful tool.

One high end function/corporate showband I've mixed a few times had two different clicks outputting from the playback rig, each with different verbal cues built in - one for the band and one for the vocalists - so even a last minute dep jumping in on a show had cues in their ears for every section change, breakdown, ending etc - great when the band had loads of mashups and unique arrangements. 

I've seen some very sophisticated setups where a playback rig is sending clicks, automating patch changes on keys and guitar rigs, and feeding timecode to lighting/video to sync the whole show up. 

There's huge creative and practical potential in these tools that goes far beyond just keeping unruly tempo wandering in check!

10 hours ago, Doctor J said:

If I knew who to kick to get another Rival Schools album, too, I'd be putting my boots on.

10 hours ago, Graham said:

United By Fate is one of those albums that always takes me by surprise, I forget how good it is, put it on and it blows me away every time.

Soooooooo good. Remember seeing the Used For Glue video on MTV2 back in the day and being instantly hooked. Such a great record. I met Walter when I was about 17 (20 years ago 😳) and he was an absolute gent too, spent about 45 minutes just hanging out and chatting.

2 hours ago, Bolo said:

Guessing it wasn't a large venue or metal gig.

Yes, you can do some gigs for £150.

The bigger the venue, the less you need a substantial backline.

I'm usually pushing faders these days, but when playing I've tried to go direct and IEM as often as possible for a long time now. 

On 26/02/2022 at 10:32, ambient said:

I’ve only been once, that was only for an hour following a trip to see Gormley’s iron figures at Crosby beach. I’ll probably stay for the weekend and have a look around the city.

You should! Loads to see. Lots of heritage sites, all the main museums are free to visit, tons of good food places, lovely architecture. Obviously there's all the Beatles stuff if you're that way inclined, but plenty to enjoy even if you're not. 

21 hours ago, VTypeV4 said:

This thread is so old now but I thought I'd just drop a quick post to show that in 2022, my 'home / ex ITV' 02R is currently being used to mix a live album due for commercial release in April.. 😀 Still going!

 

 

 

 

Glad to see the old girl still getting some use! 

My Yamaha's are long gone, but my SQ5 is doing solid work. 

Currently piloting an SD12 around the UK and Europe mixing monitors, lots of fun....

The bleed is often down to poor quality sound cards within the laptop, and/or cheap cables. A half decent external interface should sort you out. 

My experience of this over the years (having done the original band DIY touring thing in my youth, to occasional covers gigs around a day job, to full time muso/techy work) is that, broadly speaking, the more professional the act, the more accustomed they are to you having multiple projects on the go and to have to use deps from time to time. 

When I was depping around all over the place, I'd frequently drop in to reasonably high end function gigs with nothing more than the setlist and a handful of notes on the arrangements, and a Motown band I was involved with would sometimes end up doing a gig as a ten piece with seven players who'd never even met before turning up at the gig.

Conversely, it was the part time pub bands looking for a dep who'd ask you to come in for rehearsals before playing for £70 at a local boozer. I remember one in particular asking me to come to a rehearsal to "try out" to dep a handful of pub shows for them, and to make sure I could play Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, because they liked to "test out bass players with it". 

I think whatever the situation, whether it's a pro working band, a part time pocket money thing, or a fun rehearsal room project that might play the odd show, the important thing is that everyone knows what the expectation is going in to it and is on the same page. If you just want to jam and play the odd gig, and dip in and out of other projects, but the rest of the band want to be playing shows every week (or vice versa) it's doomed. If everyone knows the score, and is comfortable with seeing the occasional dep drop in, then it's definitely workable to be involved with multiple projects. 

I've been trying not to do NYE gigs for the last few years, but after the work diary being ravaged by 'rona I'm currently saying yes to everything that comes in!

Sadly no four string action - I'll be hauling a load of PA in to a fancy hotel and mixing a band. 

Put two products in my basket (Polytune clone and the cheapo 3" monitor speakers), came to £56. 

Put the 30% discount code in and it knocked it down to £48. 

I'm no Carol Vorderman, but that's definitely not 30% off!

EDIT: On further investigation - anything already showing as having a discounted price isn't affected by the codes. Ah, well!

Ben is great, I was production manager on a tour with him and two American Elvis chaps a few years ago. He's a cracking performer and a properly lovely guy, will be a fun show!

On 07/11/2021 at 18:13, NancyJohnson said:

I'm kind of with @Richhere.

 

Curiously, it's been more a case of discovering long dead punk/indie (Fighting With Wire/Fortune Drive), purchasing a handful of reissues (Garbage/Wildhearts) and finding comfort from old material.

Absolutely bloody love Fighting With Wire. Two great albums. Such a shame what happened with the release of the second one. Have you checked out Jetplane Landing? Cahir from FWW played guitar for them from their second album onwards, and Craig from FWW is on drums for the final album. All recently disappeared from Spotify when their record label shut up shop, but well worth tracking down. 

On 09/11/2021 at 07:40, xgsjx said:

 

I'm looking forward to Silk Sonic's album coming out on Friday...

 

 

Been on heavy rotation for me all week. Absolutely brilliant. 

On 03/11/2021 at 14:17, mlauritsen said:

 

Green Day - Basket Case (I like this one, fun to play)

Radiohead - Creep (Cool sing, and easy to play)

Seether - save today, driven under, wasteland

Rise Against - Hero of War

Thrice - Stare at the sun

Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

3 doors down - landing in london

cranberries - zombie (easy, so no problem)

 

None of these are very hard, it was more the quantity. Hence, I figured "give me a couple of weeks and i'll be fine", but I got the boot before I really made it.

 

Anyway, time helps, chalked down as an experience and moving on. 🙂

Seems like an odd mix of songs, looks to me like a band that doesn't know what it wants to be and who it's audience are. I can't quite see the crossover between people who'd watch a covers band playing Rise Against tunes and people who'd watch a covers band playing Chris Isaak!

You may have been presumptuous in assuming you were "in" but you may have also dodged what seems like a practice room project that may not have had legs anyway. 

From the tone of the thread, seems like it's been a learning experience that's given you some insight in to next steps and how to approach things in future, so it's by no means been wasted effort, just another step in the never ending journey of learning that we're all on with this stuff!

Two issues - one already covered above that the headphone socket generally bypasses the speaker, the other being that it's all well and good to hear your bass, but I'm assuming you'd like to hear everyone else too! 

You ideally need a feed from whatever mixer your band is running, to a headphone amp, to your ears. This allows for a mix of all the instruments to come your way. 

Flightcase Warehouse and Swan Flight as mentioned above. Castle Cases and Five Star Cases are also very good. 

They all need a device of some description to run the POS software that drives them. If your venues have WiFi, even a cheap Android tablet will do you if having to use your phone is a big issue. If not, you could always get a cheap old phone and a GiffGaff SIM that just lives in your merch kit. 

I use Zettle for touring merch sales with a few artists I work with. The app is easy to use, quick to get a new merch person up to speed on (we often get a local vendor organised by the promoter so I'll have to give them a crash course quickly before doors open and it's never an issue) and the reporting features are pretty in-depth.  You can log cash sales on the app too, so it leaves me with complete visibility of every item sold at every show whether it's card or cash, which is really helpful for accounting and for estimating sales based on historic data when I'm doing tour budgets. 

The only limitation is using it abroad, I don't know if it's changed but last time I looked in to it it didn't support multiple currencies. 

Slightly biased as I'm currently on tour mixing them, but absolutely loving this album by my good friends in Clean Cut Kid. Proper songwriting and great playing, brilliantly recorded. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/6WB2kQKKY1mq9zRrsKU46b?si=HY7DHzXsRmW6znAv9-7C9Q

Bass work all done on a very, very nice 60s Hofner Violin too. Lots of nice prominent bass parts in there. 

I mean, a DI or something is the "right" way to do it, but I've done countless small gigs in bars over the years where I plugged a jack straight in to the desk and got on just fine. 

Would I do it on a proper gig? No. Will it do the job in a pinch? Absolutely. 

Welcome back, nice to see a familiar name from the old days around here!