Next week, B and I travel down to LA to work a show with Peaches at UCLA. A short solo show (not with the full band).
music
I bought the new album by Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau, or I guess to be more specific the Metheny Mahldau Quartet. Not bad, but nothing that grabbed me right off the bat. There are some sound issues on the second track, the sound of the low bass strings on Pat’s 42 stringed guitar sounding a bit… amateur, not his playing, but that DI’d in your face farting string buzzing sound is a bit… amateur. I think I like the previous album that Pat and Brad worked on a bit better than this one, but I’m not disappointed I got it.
I still buy CD’s, and very rarely download music. Nothing wrong with the download thing, I just like to have the highest quality version I can get if I’m going to spend money on it. I am picky like that being a sound engineer. I also like having the package, the collection, and my own “master copyâ€. If I really like the music on the disk I’ll end up importing it into itunes, many times as an mp3 at 192k or so, which on close examination sounds inferior to the original, but for casual listening that fine, and I have the CD if I really want to get into it. And if my hard drive holding this music goes boom, I have my “master copy†to go back to.
Like many other live sound engineers these day I’m using computer file playback (or ipod for some) instead of a CD to listen to refrence material on a sound system, when I import music I’m going to use for refrence into itunes, a either import as a aiff at 16bit 44.1k (which should be an exact copy), or with apples lossless encoder. I have heard rumors engineers out their using an ipod with 128k mp3’s to listen to their reference over a pa. For walk in, sure, for reference?
In other music news, as you might see on the sidebar to the left, I’ve figured out how to add a couple of iteresting things into the blog. The first being the top 10 artists I have been listening to, via last.fm. You can click on the list if you want to find out more.
I’ve also added the box showing my google reader sharred RSS’s. RSS’s….. lots of s going on there. This is a list of RSS items I have come across that you might find interesting, if you find things that I find interesting, interesting. Basically, your bored, on the web, reading my posts, what to do next? Well, click on these and watch the time fly by…
And finally, so you can always know the current status of our nation, for your convience I have also included the terriost allert level, or whatever, brought to you be aqua teen hunger force.
Now was that some mind blogaling blogging or what??
Two great shows with Meshell Ndegeocello. Fantastic band, a bit tricky doing monitors. The band was easy enough to work with, but the house gear isn’t the greatest, and the short depth of the stage puts the drums close to the front. Her sound engineer brought in a great collection of Nuemann and Sennheiser microphones, KM-105’s on all the lead vocals. A very good sounding mic, very open, a bit of high end spike. Made for a tough time getting quiet vocals loud with so much bleed. But the darn nicest bleed into a microphone you ever did hear.
Fellow tour manager Matt says my Tour Manager Database’s rock! And he is using the old old old version! Get your own free copy to use, manipulate, mangle, and otherwise write 0’s and 1’s to your hard drive as you try to keep track of a tour. And I swear there will be a manual one of these days (not that you really need one.)
Good show last night at the Bottom of the Hill, here in San Francisco. Loud, very loud. Sound-check sounded lame, but the bands seemed happy with the stage sound. Not a great room to sound-check empty with its tile floor, but once the place filled up things were much more tolerable. The new EAW rig that replaced the Community rig is definitely an improvement. Though it’s one of those rooms with tons of low end at the FOH position in the rear of the room, and nothing on the floor. The Alien and Heath console there is also starting to show it’s age, and the faders for 2K through 8K on the house left EQ are mysteriously missing. But Kirk, the house engineer was a great help and good luck to him as he leaves for a tour. The Get-Go opened up with a short but sweet set, Trainwreck followed, and last but not least eX-Girl hit the stage and put on a tight exciting show. It was interesting mixing a band that didn’t have a kick drum. The kit consisted of a snare, a floor tom, a high hat, and three cymbals. Fuzuki the drummer uses the floor as a “kick”. Kirk put an Audix D-4 on the top head of the tom, and a Beta 52 on the bottom head through a gate. Worked out fairly well. I recorded the Get-Go’s set on to my Powerbook with Coaster, records aiff files at various bit and sample rates, very simple interface, and phase reverse on left or right. I like its simplicity while it still has all the essential features you need to record, and being the freeware that it is, well, right on.
Good luck to eX-Girl as they travel on to the Troubadour in LA, and then to Texas for a show at Club Clearview, and finally onto Austin for SxSW.
Audiosquid 