Mini Drum Shield

For the last few months we have not been using a drum shield and for the most part it's been good. The band loves it and our stage and room is big enough that it's been ok. As a little background, we have been going to a more rock n roll sound and I've been working really hard at creating a really big r-n-r sound while keeping it smooth and for the most part at 95db a-weighted or less.

With these parameters in our room I realized I was right at what I'd call the "snare threshold."  This is the point at which you are able to put enough of the snare in the pa so that the snare and any verbs are fully present in the pa versus the snare mainly coming acoustically from the stage and you are mixing around it.  With no drum shield I was finding that when I'd get the full drum sound I wanted, the resulting overall loudness feel was a little to hot.  I say loudness because i'm not really talking about a large increase in overall db but it made the drums very much more in your face which would increase the complaint ratio.  (this topic alone, the nuances of mixing in this environment, could be a separate blog on it's own.)

So this got me thinking, what if I could have a shorter drumshield who's only purpose was to block the snare from me.  Since we have a long history with drum shields, I found 3 older panels we had laying around and cut them to 34". This height gets us to just under the top rim of the toms with our drummer. The result is I get what I want, less snare bleed to FOH, and Phil our drummer is happy because it still feels like there isn't a drum shield. So far it's been great. I might even experiment with going to just 2 panels. I will say once or twice I've wished it was high enough to block the hihat but it hasn't been very often. 

This obviously won't work for everyone. It completely depends on your room, pa, and your churches worship culture but it's working for me. I'm curious if anyone else has done something similar. Also you actually can buy a very similar sized shield from Clear-Sonic. It's actually a Joe Bonamassa edition shield for guitar amps but it's basically the same size. 

2014 So Far

It's been a very long time since I've posted so I figured I'd give a little recap for the year so far. It's been a great one so far. 

Back in January I was part of the team who traveled to Leipzig, Germany to do the Leadership Summit. It was a very hard, but very rewarding 90 hour week. We were in an exibition hall that I believe was built in the 80's when there wasn't much thought given to building codes. As a result the weight load for a single point was very low so the pa was 2 smaller main hangs and a bunch of delay hangs all around the room. We had an L'acoustics Kara rig provided by Babbel & Haeger that sounded amazing. We took a monster room, hung what seemed like miles of truss to make a room within the room and I couldn't believe how great it felt.  

It was my first real show with the Yamaha CL-5 and that was fun. Really got to dive into the desk and explore the features of it since we pretty much used every input. It's such a great sounding desk. 

At some point during the conference I had an attender come up and tell me that it was the best sound he had ever heard in that room. Just to have more perspective on his comment I asked how many shows he had seen there and the answer was 3. It wasn't the 300 shows I was hoping for but I'll take best of 3. 

I also used for the first time the dpa 4080 lav on some of our speakers. I was amazed how great that sounded in a huge hall with 8000 people.

Audio Truck on Load in

View of setup from last row in corner

Great pic of FOH with the lit bleacher stairs behind.

Another highlight from the year so far was our Easter services.  To me the center piece was a little green piano.  It was an old piano that our video director found in his neighbors trash a couple years ago. It says Marshall Fields on it so apparently that's where you could buy it.  He brought it in and we got it fixed up and we used it for this song.  You can watch it here.  Song starts at about 3:15.  By the end of the weekend there was a bunch of us who wanted to take this thing home.

Also around this time we installed 2 new Yamaha CL5 consoles in our Lake Side Auditorium.  I love these desks and and so blessed to get to use these every week.

So a lot has happened during the first 5 months of this year.  Hopefully i'll be a little more consistent with posts here about what I'm doing.  I have a couple of other projects that i've been up to that will be fun to share.

Lights and Midi

This is one of the fun things i've been working on the last few weeks in prep for our Christmas services.
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One Church Many Voices

Back in late January and early February I had the honor of traveling to S. Africa and Zambia to help record some choirs from churches we partner with in those countries.  It was a life altering experience.

The result of that is a cd that is available now.  Best of all it's free.  To listen or download click

HERE  

Pretending to be a sax player

Throwin down some horns.

2 Songs i've been listening to non stop.

Ready for 17hrs on a plane

Tomorrow I leave for S Africa and Zambia. Ill try and post updates for this trip but today I'm packing and prepping for 17 hours of plane time.

Midi Designer for IPhone.

I got Midi Designer for the IPhone and imported my scene from the iPad. I had to rearrange it a bunch but I've made a screen for the iPhone. Fun driving something as big as the PM1D surface with something as small as the iPhone.

Favorite Dance move of the Creative Program

Best Rock Documentary Ever

When I was in high school i remember checking out a vhs from the library of Journey's Frontiers and Beyond documentary of their 1983 tour. Somewhere i still have a vhs copy of that tape but i still have yet to see a documentary as good as this one. The doc was done by NFL films and what makes it so special is that it tells the story of not just the band but the whole crew. Over the years i've checked online to see if it was available but never could find a copy. Now it's been posted in it's entirety on youtube. Enjoy!

Leadership Summit PIcs

Here's some pics from this years #wcagls

We had a Harmonium in the house with Gungor.  Very cool little instrument.

Mixing monitors for Gungor was a blast.  Really great people and incredible musicians.  This was during the lunchtime set.  It made our 7200 seat room feel like a small club.  Having cello, glock, and harmonium mics right on the edge of the stage made the iems sound like you were in a small club.

View backstage during the last session.  We had to turn for the weekend services right after the conference was over so i got a little head start by striking the band set from session 6.

Maybe hard to see but you know it's summit time when patch cables are tied off to the ceiling.

Dr. Rice is in the House

PM1D + Ipad

For some time now i've been bouncing around in my head the idea of trying to figure out how to control the Yamaha PM1D with my ipad.  Now i know there's the PM1d Manager software and that you can control the console via a laptop and vnc but my experience is that you end up spending more time waiting for your computer or console to reboot because of a crash.  I wanted to be able to control a few faders (DCA's) just so i could walk the room and make a few mix adjustments or mute the band if they were done rehearsing while i was up in the balcony.

The way that made sense to me was thru a midi control app like Midi Designer.  You can custom make your own interface with faders, buttons, etc and assign them to whatever you like.  I googled pm1d and ipad and found the Yamaha Faders and XY app.  This is primarily for controlling yamaha synths but for some reason they have a PM1D skin.  It provides 8 faders and an xy pad.

To connect your ipad to the PM1D you need a host computer.  For the computer settings i followed the directions on the Midi Designer website.  After that was completed the host computer appears in the Wireless MIDI Port window in the Yamaha app.

Now the Yamaha app has a midi learn feature.  The idea is that you select the channel assign window in the app, turn on midi learn, then move the fader on the PM1d that you want assigned and the app will learn.  While the app did receive midi data it seemed to be for a different function then volume level so i had to go in and manually setup of the Control Change numbers in both the app and on the PM1D.  Here's a couple screen shots of the PM1D MIDI CTRL CHANGE screen.

My next step is to setup a control surface in Midi Designer.  You can setup a lot more faders, buttons, etc with that app then with the yamaha app.  

My latest musical obsession

Why I Like BuskerOne

Lately I've been listening to a lot of electronic music and have put together a little midi studio around my iPad and some old gear I had laying around. While that alone could be the subject of several posts, it is the reason I was reading an issue of Future Music and came across an article about how a synth sound was created for the song, "Changed the Way You Kissed Me" by Example. Having never heard of the song or the artist I YouTubed the song and found the video.




After watching the video I noticed a related video of 2 people (BuskerOne) doing a cover of the song.



 This led to me going to BuskerOne's YouTube page and watching many more covers of theirs. BuskerOne is 2 music school grads from the UK. As a way to create some YouTube traffic to their site and their own music they started doing a cover of whatever the #1 song was that week in the UK. The videos are shot with 1 camera in front of a closet. The more videos I watched the more I liked BuskerOne and appreciated how creative and savy these two are. Here's some of the reasons why.

 1). Their arrangements of the songs are really creative. If you aren't familiar with the song check out the videos for Changed the Way You Kissed Me. They take a dance song and give it a country feel, including singing the rap in the song. They also did a cover of Dynamite. The song is the same 4 chords over and over and if you just pounded out those 4 chords on an acoustic it would be the most boring thing ever, but throw in a couple inversions and some nice vocal stylings and it's fun again.

 2). They make the best of what they have. From a production standpoint there's nothing that incredible. I would guess that they don't have a ton of gear at their disposal but it's what they do with what they have that impresses me. Their arranging is well done with additional guitars, drums, bass, and bgv's. While the backing tracks are simple and the production quality is on the lower side, it shows off their talent very well and that's the point of this whole thing.

 3). On the savy side of things there are a couple things I noticed. First they keep their covers on the shorter side. No filler stuff needed. Second they always have something on the wall behind them that has to do with the song they are covering. Just adds another element of fun.

 So what's the point of all this? To me it is to make the best with what you have. Gear and equipment is not a prerequisite for talent and practicing to improve that skill. Whether you are on the musician side or on the production side of the stage, with some creative thinking and hard work you can create some amazing things with the talent God has given you.


BuskerOne ep free download
BuskerOne website

Kirk Franklin in the house

Christmas Rehearsal

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Building Christmas Band Risers

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Location:Willow Creek Church Dr,South Barrington,United States

John Mark Mcmillian

Mixing monitors for John Mark McMillian tonight.

his new cd is here

Buy it!