I ran sound and used my sound system for a Tom Lovato & Friends poolside concert, tonight. It was a hot, July, afternoon to set everything up. Loading, unloading, setting up, tearing down, loading, and unloading again, is a lot of work. Hehehe…
It took about two hours to set up and about an hour and a half to tear down. The next time I have to set up my entire system, I’m giving myself three hours. I had an assistant, today. Riley is wanting to learn sound, so I figured there wasn’t a better opportunity to learn than in a real-world gig. A lot of running sound is carrying a bunch of crap, so let the young guys do it! Shawn was also there, doing promo pictures and videos.
The night was a success. There were no problems. Well, I guess there were a few issues. I have a Shure Beta 91A kick mic. It goes inside the kick drum. The drummer’s kick drum didn’t have a hole, in the resonant head, so I had to go without a kick mic. There also wasn’t enough stage room for overhead mics, but that wasn’t a big deal. Also, being poolside, water is an issue. One of my cable bags was sitting in water and I’m still trying to dry it out. The band is on a small stage, but a lot of cables are on the ground. I tried to keep all connections off the ground, though. This was the first time that I used an extension cable that has outlets spaced throughout the cable. It worked really well. This was also my first time running a full show from a tablet. It did disconnect, multiple times, but I would just move closer and reconnect. I still prefer physical controls, but there are so many situations where remote mixing makes more sense. I also tested out a new microphone, the sE V7, on Tom’s vocal. I thought it did a good job and Tom seemed to like it, as well.
