BACK ON THE TOOLS

My son attends primary school in Melbourne’s inner north, and like a lot of other government schools, the yearly school fete is a major fundraiser. Pre- COVID, the evening’s musical entertainment, and the PA it came through, was organised by a parent’s band of enthusiastic amateurs, and god bless them for it.

The PA was…interesting. It was an off-brand powered brick mixer running a Frankensteined mix of a couple of very old Wharfedale 12 and horns, and some homemade cabs made with car stereo drivers. There was no foldback. The band obviously were obviously having a ball playing wobbly covers.

As my son settled into the school and I met a lot of other parents, it unsurprisingly turned out that, as the school is in Brunswick, there was a significant proportion of professional musicians and the odd professional technician such as myself on hand. Now, we all quietly agreed we could do better, but the parent band looked so happy, and who were we to stomp in with our professional boots on and spoil their fun?

Then COVID hit. No school fete for three years. When we finally came back, my friend Gideon, who is a professional jazz musician, was appointed musical director. He grabbed me for coffee one morning after school drop-off. “Can you organise the PA?” he quite reasonably asked. Of course, I said. It was time to pay the piper.

You see, I was suffering the guilts about keeping my technical identity secret from the school. Literally the first thing I did when I set foot on school grounds the first time, for the prep information evening the year before my son started school, was fix a radio mic on one of those Mipro portable PAs (it was just the battery). I didn’t want to be in there everytime someone turned on a mixer. Yes, I’m a terrible person. COVID made this position moot, however.

I called up the wonderful Mark Barry of BS Sound, staunch supporter, advertiser, and occasional contributor to this very magazine. He organised a very reasonable quote for a perfectly decent system covering all mics, cables, FoH, foldback, mixer and even lights, and the deal was done. He would deliver and help set-up, I would operate, and he’d be back to help me pack down. I picked up the tab for the hire.

I had to organise a couple of other bits and pieces, like a three phase distro, and corral all the info coming in from the acts to a line list. All really straightforward; a couple of local high school big-band type ensembles, a singer-songwriter with a guitar, a scratch band of professional musos playing covers, and Gideon’s jazz/blues/New Orleans good old time ensemble, Hoodoo Mayhem. Just like riding a bike.

On the day, Mark arrived with his van promptly, and we started throwing gear around on the school oval. Mark was an absolute joy to work with. His gear was well-maintained and wonderfully organised. You can tell he does gigs like this all the time; he had a system and a technique for dealing with everything, from quick release mic clips, to pre made looms, and literally everything labelled. He’d really done most of the work for me.

This extended to a ‘basic’ scene on the Behringer X32 Compact mixer I was to operate. I’d never touched one before, but a quick plow through the online/offline editor software, the iPad app, and the manual in the days proceeding, assured me that it was so close to working like a Yamaha (which I know backwards) that I’d be fine. What I didn’t expect was all of the channel EQ and dynamics settings Mark had already set-up, paired with all of the mics he had selected for me, and the graphic EQ tunings he’d already dropped onto the four sends of QSC K10 foldback wedges.

To be honest, and I said this to Mark’s face, I took one look at the alarming looking graphic EQ settings on the wedges and said; “I’ll be flattening that and starting again.” He smiled patiently and knowingly at my arrogance, and politely suggested that I just have a listen first before I hit reset. Fair enough. I started talking into a Beta58, and very quickly realised that if I flattened these graphics and started again, I’d end up back in this position in 15 minutes if I was lucky. He had done a really great job tuning. Lesson – never mix with your eyes.

Out at FoH, we were rocking two RCF HD32A on the mid highs and two RCF 905AS subs. What a great system! Beautifully defined, easy to work with, and all the guts I needed. An absolute pleasure to mix on.

By this point, I’d made a few tweaks to the desk, including a few EQ things that are my habit, personal preferences for how my VCAs are assigned, and how I run FX. All of this was very, very easy courtesy of the Behringer’s iPad app.

Mark had thought of everything, including providing me with some shotguns for the school bands. The first act that kicked off had about 25 kids from the high school down the road, including a string section of 10. When my back was turned organising their backline DIs and the drummer, the entire string section set up in front of the PA. Damn, too late.

I did what I could, and very quickly found out how fast I could make 100Hz take off in the PA. Musical Director Gideon came over to me, and we shrugged the mutual shrug of the professional who understands that there’s nothing you can do sometimes. The parents and the music teacher were happy though, which is the main thing.

The next big ensemble were much the same, but all brass, playing whimsical arrangements of things like ‘Africa’ by Toto. It was their professional muso teacher on Baritone sax, and about 15 kids of faltering confidence on trumpets and saxes. The ones with mics directly in front of them appeared to have stopped breathing. Still, at least I could get some gain before feedback as they were all mercifully on stage behind the PA.

The singer songwriter turned out to be our principal’s daughter. Despite not even finishing high school yet, she was assured, professional, direct, and had a great voice. Her set of covers was short and sweet, and after that she expressed her interest in live production. Later in the evening, she helped us bump out. It became apparent she’d already had some live experience under her belt; she could under/ over cables perfectly, knew what every piece of equipment was, and was totally keen to know more, asking myself and Mark questions about everything. If anyone’s looking to hire a young up and comer, I would recommend her to any of you. She has ‘it’.

The rest of the gig was a pure delight. The scratch band had keys, bass, drums, two electric guitars, bass, and Gideon on Alto sax. Most of them sang. They were an absolute joy to work with. Having an iPad to set levels for foldback is a godsend – I wish we had them in the first two decades of my career! I went out the front with the iPad and had a ball. My wife had arrived by this time and was chatting to our friends. She noted the big dumb grin on my face and reminded me that I promised when we got married that I wouldn’t work at nights and on the weekend all the time…

Last up was Hoodoo Mayhem, with keys, trumpet, trombone, sax, two vocals and…a sousaphone! I’ve somehow never amplified a sousaphone, most likely because they’re almost purely a marching band instrument.

The sousaphone player had a Shure radio mic with lapel. He asked me if I had any gaffa tape. Of course I did! We taped the mic into the bell and popped the transmitter in his back pocket. “EQ it like a bass,” he said, so I did. Apart from a resonance that built up at 80-ish when he wasn’t playing, it worked a treat!

With the gig done and our enthusiastic assistant helping us pack down, we were out of there in record time due to Mark’s splendid gear organisation system. I realised I hadn’t actually mixed a gig for about five years, and how much I missed it sometimes.

Please don’t tell my wife…