Changes All Around Me

Well lots more has happened since my last post...I know I should probably learn to check my own blog and update it more then every 3 months. Where to begin? Well doors where opened at House of Blues in Dallas for me to get a job as an audio engineer. I had come through with a band and mixed a show and gotten a job offer back in August. After management finally received the budget increase I got a call to come in. After about a month it was clear that to get more frequent gigs at House of Blues I would have to be open in terms of my schedule. Completely open and so that lead to my next decision. I'm no longer full time at my church as the Audio Director. I still mix most Sundays as well as get paid to come in about 10 hours a week just to keep the stage and gear prepped for Sunday and take care of any ghost that might pop up during the week. I'm also completely done with the youth production area. Even before House of Blues I was getting stressed going between the different buildings and services checking on everything and so it's nice to only have to focus on the adult services and allow some of the volunteers to run the youth production. I will definitely miss working up at the church full time. We've all grown up together and it will always be home to me. However, I really enjoy my new family at House of Blues. The rest of the production staff are great people and a lot of fun to work with! My ultimate goal as an audio engineer is touring with a band on a decent sized tour around the country and possibly overseas as well. Basically big enough to carry my own console and mic package and maybe my own PA.....maybe about the PA. That's just a whole other can of worms. Oh and for those wondering....Avid Profile would be my console. I have used the VENUE system for over 5 years now and I really don't want anything else. Got to use the Soundcraft Vi6,Yamaha M7CL,PM5D, and LS9. Oh and recently got to play around with a Midas Pro6....still want the Profile! The snapshot automation and 100 slots for plugins and the super simple link to ProTools HD makes it unbeatable. It offers so musch create mixing options it's insane not to at least give it a try! I know, I should work for Avid.....back to the blog. I'm not entirely sure arenas would be something I enjoy mixing unless of course I had the PA and budget like U2, or like Tom Petty. With that being said, House of Blues is the best place I can be in Dallas to get me hopefully one step closer to reaching that goal and being around other techs and bands that operate on that level. Several other of the HOB guys have been asked to go out on tours by visiting bands and management, which is really cool. I was always under the impression that you could never get hired mid tour, because obviously the tour already has the necessary techs. Needless to say I always bring my A-game at House of Blues.

House of Blues has been an eye opening experience to say the least. The non-church production world is a lot different and way more fast paced. Also I've found that unless your the headliner and are a national touring act....less is more. I've had some of my co-workers wide eyed when I said I wanted a snare bottom mic on one of the support acts, or a double guitar mic setup. Hey, I figure we have a huge closet full of mics and cables and plenty of console channels why not?! It's also eye opening when I see costumers or bands acting just like they do in the church world. People with a sense of entitlement or control that they are so far from actually having its hilarious! I guess dealing with people is just life! Well until next time....

Small Festival Type Event

So the month of August has been super busy! Starting with a week long trip to Seattle for our 1 year anniversary. I can honestly say that is one place I would love to move. The weather and the environment is amazing. Plus the public transportation is so cool that we didn't even rent a car and just rode around on the subway or street cars. After Seattle we had a special youth Sunday service which involved a full stage strike to get the youth band all setup. After that weekend I had 2 weeks of prep with 4 bands for a event we called 365. Basically it would be a worship service followed by 20 minutes of speaking. Then the audience would have a 30 minute intermission where we strike the worship band completely and have a support act then a headliner. Then the following morning it was just the worship set. Then again the following evening we had the 2 bands after. Knowing that I would have a lot of people pressed up against the front portion of the stage I decided to try some make shift front fills. I knew I needed them to sound pretty close to the mains so I spent all day the week of the event working on the tuning and level of the fills to work alongside our mains. Above is a pic of 2 per side in place on the front of the stage. They're way bigger then normal since they're not really designed for this application but the got the job done and we now use them on Sunday mornings since we have people down front fro praise & worship. I have to say the 365 event would have been a huge headache to me had I not had a VENUE system. Also 2 amazing volunteers made the set changes really fast and smooth. After laying out the number of inputs on paper that I would need for each band I decided that I would rather just create a show file for each individual band. By keeping the console architecture the same in terms of number of inputs,mix buses,L/R/M config, and such I was able to as soon as one band finished load the next band show files with only a 16 second pause before audio was able to pass for the ipod. I had originally wanted to use snapshots and had used them to switch between entire bands before but I liked the isolation and control having separate show files offered me. All the bands were running IEMs and I also had 2 sub fills on stage and a butt-kicker on the drummers throne. Stage patching was pretty easy; I just used our core Sunday band patching for the headliner and then ran an analogue snake to the middle of the stage for the worship set as well as the headline support. this way the headliner's patching would never be changed after the final sound check. This ensured set change for them went twice as fast and added a sense of security on my end of the snake. Having had rehearsal with all the bands except one(first night headline support) I felt super confident as well in my patching and gain structure which allowed me to really focus on mixing each band and not hunting down patching issues or trying to reset my gain structure the whole first song. The bands definitely had a blast and were super appreciative of me and my guys. Two things I will say always makes a huge difference even before wicked cool consoles or any piece of gear for that matter are: Preparation & Quality of Service. In terms of preparation; it would have been a whole other experience for the bands if I had waited till the day of the show and not had any rehearsals with them! They wouldn't be familiar with our stage, our IEM system, and certainly wouldn't have the time to find the right stage volume for their amps that worked with our size stage. Also, had I waited till then to find out what instruments they were bringing, or how many vocalists and where they needed mics it would have been a long frustrating day for everyone. Doing a lot of advance work such as input list, stage layouts, and building your show files ahead of time will go a long way in making your time with the bands smooth and enjoyable for everyone. Come to find out the day after the event our pastor was getting constant emails and phone calls regarding the service I provided for them and how thankful they were that were basically "rolled out the red carpet". In fact one of the headliners has asked me to mix all their shows from now on and later in the year I'll be mixing live and then the tracks after the show for a live album they are planning on releasing. That being said you never know what will result from the work you do. Always go 110% and make every effort to plan ahead. It will save you when things get crazy and will also make you look professional.

System EQ and the Big Picture

My friend Dave Stagl recently posted this on his blog and I think it really gets the point across on why I like to tune my PA a certain way and will open the door for maybe a few more posts regarding system optimization and tuning. I Know I'm always searching for the flattest response so that what I capture is reproduced with the least amount of coloration from the PA allowing me to have the cleanest starting point to create my mix. So read Dave's post already! :) Oh, and please follow his blog, it's full of amazing info and knowledge that will definitely help anybody in the live sound world!
Harsh Reality: Part 1 – All Things Not So Equal

Snapshots,Snapshots, Snapshots......

Well today was a day that reminded me why I absolutely love the VENUE's snapshot automation! Granted I had to put in the time to setup the snapshot and test it to make sure it would fail me in a live situation, but it was totally worth it. I have a lead singer that sing's once a month, and when she sings there is usually BGVs singing parts that don't normally have to cover with our other lead vocalists. The reason I needed a snapshot for this vocalist was two parts. First my own, almost lazy reason: I don't want to have to re-label the input,FX channels,IEM outputs, and FX sends, or have to recall my saved EQ for her channels and IEM output. Second reason being that she likes a totally different style of stereo mix in her ears as well as her mic level needing to be different in the rest of the band. Oh, almost forgot; all her FX plugins themselves. So all that being said, I created a snapshot called "AMBER LEAD". I scoped pretty much everything but 'midi" and "vca" and took the time to dial in the bands IEMs during a rehearsal with this vocalist. After about an hour in rehearsal with this vocalist and the band, I felt comfortable using it live. So this morning as I was bring the board online I just scrolled down and recalled "AMBER LEAD" and everything to do with the lead vocal section changed for her and the band required zero monitor adjustments and her vocal needed to dynamics or EQ adjustment. What a time saver on a already packed Sunday morning! Now if you are wondering why with a VENUE I can't just have a separate set of channels for each vocalist and their FX returns here's why: I have the drums, main vocals, and rest of the band all on bank 'A' just like you'd find on a traditional analogue console. I do this because when I work with a band I want all my main stuff on top so to speak. Fader bank 'B' is BGVs,Loops,iPod,DVD, speak mics(headsets) and other items that will only be touched at specific times. Bank 'C' is the entire band and vocals double-patched to be EQ'd,compressed,gated,and tweaked for the band's IEMs just as if I had a separate monitor console. That's a whole other topic/post so I'll save that for next post......maybe tomorrow. Also I'm going to try my best to take a lot of pics to help describe visually what I'm writing about here. Especially since I just got the iPhone 4 with the HD camera. That's all for now!

Local Club Trends

One of the things I've noticed mixing at pretty much every club in Dallas is that the system EQ seems to be the same everywhere.......HARSH with trashy low end. House of Blues was the only place I went where I only had to make like 3 or 4 adjustments to the system. Every where else it's like there's this obsession with 2.5k,3.2k,5k,8k, being 4db louder then everything else! Lets not even get started on low end.......on place had their subs crossed over at 400hz! This was not some small club either! Needless to say my growing communications skills I was taught in the police academy helped a lot! In every venue I've walked into I've been able to get the house guy to let me either tune the system a bit before the doors opened or store my own presets in the FOH processor or graphic. The most recent show I mixed at was this past Saturday at Trees in Dallas.(pic on the left) Soundbridge line arrays(XYON™ 7208XY) and Soundbridge subs. The system processor was and Ashley Protea 4.24C with QSC amps for the tops and Powersoft amps for the subs.....not too shabby. Definately the most beefy system in the local club scene. FOH console was a Yamaha LS9-32. While I was happy to break away from the mid-size analogue desks that are found at all the other clubs, I almost started wishing for one during sound check. Unlike the M7CL...NO TOUCHSCREEN! Very big speed issue when you wanna move quickly but you have to tab up,down,left,right with arrow keys instead of a trackball or touching the screen. If I ever mix here again I will definitely be using the StudioManager Yamaha offers and setting up my show before hand to make it easier on myself. One thing I tried at this show was using the house mic package. Trees is probably the best equipped club so I felt relatively comfortable with their selection of Sennheiser and Shure stuff. It definitely cut my time in half in terms of any EQ adjustments on the channels just because they were relatively close having been used with that system in that room all the time. I think with the exception of lead vocal mics, or just a horrible mic selection I may leave my mic package at home next time to help eliminate some time before the band starts. I'm looking forward to some shows that we'll be able to bring our own console and mics and be completely independent of the house setup. More then likely that will be another House of Blues show in late August. Until then, I guess I'll keep mixing in the trenches! Yes, I know I'm spoiled, but what can I say?! I love the VENUE and would it, well an SC48 even for a 4 channel wedding if I could. Musicians have their favorite brands and models of instruments, FOH guys have their favorite mics and consoles. Anyways, hope I can start being a resource for people all over as I start posting alot of the stuff I've been learning lately and dealing with on the job as an audio director. Also if you want to follow me on Twiter my ID is just JamesButera.

LONG TIME NO BLOG!

Wow my last blog post was Febuary 22nd of 2008! I can honestly say I just forgot I have my own blog. I've been so busy since Febuary of 2008, really busy. For starters I got married; August 8th of 2009 to Audrey Katherine Butera. Well she's Butera now but her last name was Young. I've also attended a regional police academy and become a certified Texas Peace Officer.....aka cop. I'm still the audio director of Church in the City in Dallas, and going to be reserving with Dallas Police Department that way I can still do all my audio work and get to do police work once or twice a week. I've been doing more freelance audio work for corporate events, weddings as well as working with several local bands regularly. It's been a huge technical growing experience just because in all the clubs around Dallas even the nice ones you don't get to have all you boutique stuff even if you bring you own mic package it's still low quality in everything else. I have to say though if you have the chance to get out and mix "in the trenches" do it! It's made me a better engineer and a better communicator. Now every time I mix on the VENUE I appreciate it WAY more! Lot's more stuff has happened since then and I promise to start posting regularly to keep this thing updated.