Photoblog: Weekend Audio

This is the first in what will hopefully become an ongoing installment of photo blogs.  I’m working on a quick & efficient way to implement video blogs but its not ready yet.  Hopefully soon!

Saturday, 9am.  Start of the day.  Time to wire the stage & prep for the band…  Tunes are rolling – today’s playlist is Peter Frampton I think.

Drum kit after its wired.  Rode NT4 for overheads, Shure Beta91 inside the kick (primary mic), Audix D6 on the short boom in the kick hole (some extra midrange & click for the kick), & Neumann TLM103 out in front of the kit for another artistic option for kick.  All of the cables for the kit are loomed and labeled so it is fast & clean to wire.  They terminate into a custom 16 channel fan snake that pulls to the drum deck for each service regardless of where it is located.  Channels 1-12 = audio, Channels 13-16 = PQ mixer, ears feed, & Dr Beat connect point.

Audio-Technica ATM-450 on snare top, Shure SM-57 on snare bottom (though hardly used), Neumann KM-184 on hat, Heil PR30s on rack & floor tom (auditioning them this weekend and quite impressed).  Although we have a house snare, most of our drummers bring their own.

Ready for the two electric guitar rigs.  Guitar 1 using a Shure SM57 and CAD E100, guitar 2 using a Sennheiser E609 and CAD E200.  Our electric amps are always faced directly upstage and this measure seems to be enough to provide reasonable control over stage volume.  I don’t anticipate us going the ISO cabinet route because our artistic folk like the “raw-ness” of amps on stage.

Ears & PQ mixer ready to go.  We provide Shure E3s or E5s to artists, although some are starting to bring their own.

12:30p.  Band rehearsal is underway.

All These Things That I Have Done

Christmas 2008 Wrap-up

Christmas at Kensington for this year is officially in the can and in light of all of the system changes made this year in audio world, I thought it would be fitting to outline some learnings and experiences.  I’ve started writing and will gradually put things up over the next week or two.

In the meantime, here’s a sample of the big epic tune that was the centerpiece of the service as part of an original 9 minute spoken-word, dance, video, & music package.  You’re listening to a live FOH board mix simply through the new broadcast chain (more on this later).  Little bit of Massey limiting and Cranesong Phoenix and presto!  This track was written by our music director, Danny Cox, for this service and has quickly become one of my favorite songs of the last few years.  Enjoy!

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More photos of the service can be found here:  http://tinyurl.com/kccxmasphotos

Messin around…

I found an open-source app that does time lapse video with the built-in iSight on my Macbook Pro now that the feature has been removed from the latest version of iMovie.

So I now present…A Saturday at the Office

A Day at the Office from Tim Corder on Vimeo.