Autograph's Warehouse in Kentish Town, London

Sound wise, it’s a pretty complicated rig here and there, but I was surprised that it only seemed to take up around 3/4 of a truck.  It is a Bobby Aitken design with CQ 1s in the stalls, JM1Ps in the Circle, 2 hangs of M1D for the rest of the Circle/Gallery system and a central hang of M’elodie.  There are a few fill speakers here and there to fill in the gaps.  Pretty much all of this is active, which saves space on stage without the amps etc.  There are still quite a few amps for all the E3s (I’ve never seen so many!!) for the 3 rows of delays, surround system (for all levels!!) and front-fills/foldback etc.  UPJs handle the majority of the foldback, with more E3s in the show deck downstage.  The show is controlled on a D5T12 out the front, with a D1 as well on stage for monitors sitting on the Optocore loop and triggered by Midi from FOH.  There are two(!) redundant Qlab systems on the show – one handling SFX out the front, and one for Click Tracks with the band.  They were originally looking at running the Clicks on ProTools like the previous incarnations of the show, but the decision was made (thankfully) to transfer it over to a Qlab system, which is a lot more sensible for the application!  Eventually, I guess, they could probably cut one of the systems, since it could probably all quite happily run off one redundant system.  As it is, they are having to tour 4 Mac Pros in total.

There is SMPTE timecode distribution on the gig as well for Video and LX.  This was originally going to be MTC, with a fairly complex set of Midi Long-Haul converters etc, but they eventually settled on using SMPTE, which makes it all a lot easier to distribute.  Radio Mics are the new 3732s again.  There are 28 channels of these, and then 4ch of Evolution transmitters for IEMs and Reverse Radios.

The radio rack monitoring is fairly complicated but interesting on this.  There is the main radio rack and also a Remote Monitoring Station (RMS) which can be set up the other side of the stage, or somewhere appropriate if the Radio Rack has to be remoted for whatever reason.  The main radio rack and RMS both have touch screens for the user to select the receivers they want to listen to.  The Radio Rack computer and RMS (connected over LAN) both run Autograph’s monitoring software and can both solo channels appearing on the Radio Rack PC’s soundcard inputs and route them to a specific output depending on which listening station they’re at (Output 1 for the Radio Rack’s headphone amp, and Output 2 for the RMS’ headphone amp).  In order to make this work on our gig, they decided to take a MADI stream straight back out from the DigiCo Rack handling the Radio Mic inputs.  This MADI stream (over BNC) then goes back to the Radio Rack and into a MADI PCI Soundcard in the back of the Radio Rack PC.  A simple USB soundcard (Fireface 400) is also connected to this computer to supply analogue outputs to go to the headphone amps at the listening stations.  Both the Radio Rack and RMS also run Sennheiser’s WSM for visual monitoring of the receivers.  We set it up so that FOH (just visual monitoring) and the RMS both pull their WSM files from a shared folder on the Radio Rack computer so that only one file needs to be modified when necessary.  This seems to work quite well, but obviously means the Radio Rack has to be booted up first on power up.  We’ll see how the operators get on with it.  I think a stand-alone network drive would be a better solution for storing the sessions.

The system is quite good really, but obviously the only thing to consider is that the audio is post patch from the radio rack, which made it quite tricky for us to implement the remote controlled (from FOH) A/B switches for the Johnny and Baby receivers (who are doubled packed).  We had to create an extra couple of inputs just for the switched outputs (which would be plotted into the show) and then have the four receivers (Johnny A & B and Baby A & B) patched into their own channels just to monitor from but not be used in the show!  The advantage of this kind of setup is obviously that the no2 can confirm whether or not the receivers are actually outputting audio and making the DigiRack inputs, because before now, I’ve had issues sometimes where a receiver monitors fine from the front panel, but isn’t actually outputting audio from the XLR on the back!  The main down side is that if a re-patch (via the bantam patch panel in the radio rack) is applied, then the monitored audio signal will be the re-patched receiver, which will then make it hard to listen to the receiver that’s been over-patched, but we figured you could just plug your headphones directly into a receiver’s headphone output if it was deemed necessary!  As I say… fairly complicated – but from a user-end point of view, it should all be pretty straight forward!!

Finishing the final truck on the York Get Out

I’m afraid I don’t have any pictures of the prep period really apart from the panorama.  The boys are currently in Bristol fitting it all up, and I’ve heard our exhaustive attention to detail and testing has been ‘paying dividends’ (in the words of PJ!), so that’s good news.  I’ve just come back from a Legally Blonde move from York to Glasgow.  York has always provided quite eventful get-outs for me.  The first time with Blood Brothers saw me break up a girl fight where one lass was smacking the other’s head on the pavement, and the second time with Cabaret saw me attend A&E for the majority of the out – making it back just in time for the tour bus trip to Bristol!  Fortunately, I came away unscathed this time, but there was a moment where a length of metal cable trunking lid fell from the grid and I just got out the way in time!  Lightning fast reactions!!  There were stabbings nearby and the usual antics outside, but nothing to write home about(!).

Creative DSM postion in York Grand Opera House due to the serious lack of space!

York FOH position in 'Stretched Mode'

Glasgow Theatre Royal's HUUUGEE pit!

Glasgow Theatre Royal from the Dress Circle I think!

Glasgow Theatre Royal was a treat for the fit up.  As you can see, the pit is rather HUGE!  Hence why we stuck our racks down there (Which we later rotated 90deg towards the SL wall).  Below are a couple more Photosynths I captured while in Glasgow!! Please excuse the slight dis-jointedness – I’m still getting used to it, and I didn’t have a fixed point to rotate around very easily!

In-between my commitments on Legally Blonde, I’ve been purchasing various kit to build a rack to keep at home for small gigs around Bury St Edmunds etc.  When I was younger, I bought quite a lot of kit for my mobile disco rig (oh yea!) and various am-dram gigs, but it’s all been sitting around gathering dust for the last 5 years or so while I’ve been at uni and working out on tour etc.  I figured it was about time to sell off the kit I didn’t think I was going to use again, and collaborate all the useful stuff for small gigs into a compact rack system.  The idea was to build a system that could be very easily rigged so my parents could use it when they needed to on the occasions when I wouldn’t be around.  In order to do this, I needed to buy a new rack-mount sound desk, the racks themselves and all the inter-connects etc.  My deadline was the Troston Fete, which took place last week.

Troston is my home village where my parents live, and this year, my mum was one of the head organisers for their summer fete.  This year was to be a totally different affair from previous years, with the event taking place at the village hall for one thing, and the organisers were quite keen to ensure it had a ‘warmer’ atmosphere than previous years.  It was intended for it to be quite a traditional fete with the typical games you’d expect to find, such as ‘Splat the Rat’ and Stocks etc.  My dad volunteered to build quite a few of these games, and as you can see, he did a splendid job.  The weather was kind to them, and the day went fantastically.  They made a lot more money than previous years’ attempts, and there were many positive comments about the atmosphere etc.

For this gig, I not only planned to use my new rack, but I also wanted to design a system that would enable different areas of the ‘site’ to have different styles of music playing.  For example, the area round the bouncy castle and the kids’ games would have quite modern, poppy music, the hall would have a jazzy feel, while the front garden area with all the traditional games etc would have a British brass band theme.  This would give a bit of a variety to the music on the day and be in keeping with the atmospheres of each area – much in the same way big theme parks do, such as Disneyland etc.  In order to achieve this, I decided to use my Qlab Playback Rack.  By using Qlab, I figured I’d also be able to install my buttons around the site to do specific functions for the MC who’d be roaming on a radio mic.  In fact, I programmed it so that the 2ch buttons would either dip/restore the music when an announcement was made and play a fanfare to grab everyone’s attention.

Now you’d think programming up Qlab to do all this would be fairly simple (I certainly did), but along the way I came across a couple of stumbling blocks inherant to Qlab’s functionality.  Thanks to the guys at Figure53, I did overcome these with workarounds.

The first task was to come up with essentially 3 different ‘playlists’ – one for each audio zone.  Easily done with the ‘auto follow-on’ function?  Well – yes and no!  This was fine for 20 odd tracks in each zone, but I was finding that as I was adding more and more music to each playlist (to last the duration of the fete so they wouldn’t keep hearing a loop of the same tracks over and over again), I found that Qlab started to struggle to play back audio.  This seemed odd since all I was asking it to do was play back 3 stereo tracks at a time.  The problem was not to do with what it was trying to play at the time, but with all the tracks it had in ‘standby’.  Because there were essentially 3 long sequences with auto follow-ons, Qlab thought it necessary to load all of these tracks into its buffer memory.  Because I had/wanted over 100 odd tracks across the 3 playlists, this took up all the memory it seemed.  After a very impressive response time from the Qlab support team, they confirmed this as being the problem, and offered a work around.  This involved creating another ‘master’ cuelist with ‘Start’ cues targeting a cuelist with the audio tracks in.  This would mean that only the ‘Start’ cues (with matching post-wait times for the audio tracks) would be loaded into the buffer, and not the audio tracks themselves.  The ‘Start’ cues would just be sending a ‘Go’ command to the cuelist with the tracks in, which means only the next audio track in the cuelist would be standing by, and not the whole list!!  Fortunately, they sent me a macro which does the job of building a cuelist with all the ‘Start’ cues and their relevant post-wait times for a selected sequence of audio cues.

The second stumbling block was to do with developing a cue sequence to attenuate all the music for an announcement, and then return the music to its original level (to be triggered by the 2ch buttons around the site).  Again, I thought this would easily be done with 3 ‘Relative Fade’ cues acting on each entire playlist.  To cut a long story short, I found that ‘Relative Fade’ cues only act on cues either playing or in standby.  Under the method of configuring the playlists outlined above, this proved to be a big problem, because if the attenuated state lasted over a track change in any of the audio zones, the next track in the list to be put into standby would be set at a default level.  Therefore, when the cue to restore the music level across the zones is fired, these cues which were put into standby during the attenuated state would be, in fact, boosted from their default level rather than the attenuated level – making them bloody loud when they started playing!!  Unfortunately, the guys at Qlab couldn’t really come up with a solution for this one, so I was left to come up with another solution.

At this point, I was wishing I had a digital desk that I could control over midi for adjusting the levels.  Unfortunately I didn’t, and started to wonder if there was another ‘unconventional’ method.  I had another computer and sound card in my playback rack for redundancy, so was wondering if I could use that in some way.  I was wondering if there was such a thing as a ‘virtual digital mixer’ which simply used the ins/outs from your audio interface and could be controlled over midi.  Obviously you could sort of do this with Pro Tools and Logic, but these weren’t really appropriate/stable.  Then it hit me… what about Logic Mainstage?  So in the end, that’s what I did.  I took an optical output from the 1st machine running Qlab into the 2nd machine running Mainstage, and set up a Mainstage session which had a channel for each audio zone.  I could not only control the levels over Midi from Qlab on the 1st machine, but also do all sorts of EQ/compression to make it even better.  Of course I lost the full redundancy the system usually offers, but I did duplicate the digital outputs from Qlab on the 1st machine to the soundcard’s analogue outputs as well, which meant there was a ‘processed’ analogue output from the Mainstage machine, and an ‘unprocessed’ analogue output from the Qlab machine which could have been switched to between if Mainstage crashed (which it didn’t!)

All in all – a successful, if not slightly complicated system which was very reliable, and simplified to just one button push at the start of the day to kick it all off.  I wasn’t around on the day because of the Legally Blonde move into York, but I took the day off from Dirty Dancing prep to set it all up on the Friday before the Sunday of the event.  I had 10 small installation (and water-proof!) speakers I managed to lay my hands on, which did a fine job at distributing the sound around the village hall grounds, and I set up the circuits in a variety of parallel and series combinations to maintain the correct impedance across the 4 amp channels I had at my disposal.  The radio mic I managed to ‘acquire’ did its job by placing the receiver in the loft space of one of the hall’s buildings.  Because of the fabric of the building, this was the best (and probably only!) place to get decent coverage.  The hall’s walls were too thick to pass the RF suitably, so the loft space was best with only a layer of tiles and timber to get through!

So, despite the gig being pretty small, I thought it raised a few interesting situations/experiences I’d share with you.  I was going to go on to talk about Dirty Dancing prep in this post as well, but I think I’ll split them into two posts after all!  I’ve rambled on enough in this one!!

The fit up all went according to plan, with only a few minor issues to keep us on our toes from time to time.  The gig from our point of view is of a fair size – taking up around 2/3 of a trailer.  We’re touring 10 MSL2s, a couple of UPAs, a load of JF80s for front fills and foldback, and a load of E3s for delays.  The desk is a Digico D5T, with the TC Remote and an RE for rendundancy… all in an Optocore rendudant loop.  I’m not going to lie – we’re a little nervous about the moves if over-keen locals pulling multis through walls etc might forget that our entire gig is resting on a couple of fairly delicate fibre optic lines that have to be sent back to the manufacturer if they need to be re terminated – all at a great cost too!  I don’t think we’ll be sending them up pipes under auditoriums if we can avoid it!

All of the plans for foldback and cuelight cabling in the LX looms worked fantastically.  Their ladders in each portal house our onstage and offstage foldback, as well as the portal cuelights.  We just have to plug up a 6 pair and a Soca into the back of their racks, and the rest of the cabling is done for us!  It’s really great when the collaboration between LX and sound goes to plan!

Above: The show gauze just before a dress run.  The final two legs of the furthest downstage LED portals arrived the day of the opening night!

There are 32 radios on the show with the new Sennheiser 3732 receivers and 5212 transmitters.  I believe the only show to use these before us was Ghost.  Ian gave positive reports about them from Ghost, and I have to say that so far, they have performed flawlessly for us too.  WSM works fantastically fast and effectively with them, and they look as though they’re a pleasure to rack, with the option to pass through the RF with short 50ohm BNC links rather than using an antenna distribution unit such as the ASA 3000.  They obviously have an ethernet port on the back of each unit as well, which can plug directly into a switch in the back of the rack.  The only thing that concerns us with the BNC link throughs – and was the subject for discussion over lunch one day – was that what happens when one unit in the middle of a chain fails and loses power etc?  Do the rest of the units downstream lose RF?  I came up with the suggestion that I’ve used before on the Trantec S6000s that maybe we should link through in opposite directions on each diversity.  ie: Start diversity A at the top unit/link downwards, and start diversity B on the top unit/link upwards; that way, if a unit in the middle should fail, at least the units above and below it will still have one diversity each to get by on!

The monitoring for the receivers is via an Autograph bespoke unit which takes all of the headphone outputs from the receivers and just routes them to one headphone output.  All headphone inputs into the unit are ‘live’, with the idea being that you only ‘turn up’ one receiver at a time to listen to it.  If you leave one RX up accidentally while monitoring another, you’ll hear both unfortunately.  I guess you could use that to your advantage sometimes, but it’s also something to be aware of in the heat of a moment!  I intend to write to Sennheiser to see whether they could include a function in WSM for the 3732s, where you can click on the RX icons to turn on the headphone monitoring of their associated receivers.  It seems that the ‘listen’ button on the receivers could be controlled via software, so I think it could be a goer!  I’ll let you know how I get on.  It would be of great help for remote monitoring stations running on touch screens!

Just one more positive report from the RF system… I really love the new AD3700 antennas from Sennheiser as well.  They come with a broadband booster attached to the paddle.  These have an easily modified gain adjustment setting on them from ‘no gain’ to a 15dB boost in 5dB steps.  A multi-coloured LED on the underside indicates what level it’s set at, which is a nice feature to ascertain quickly whether it is working and at what gain setting.  We’re using RG58 cable as well on this gig, which is a lot more light-weight than the low-loss cable I’ve used before with N-Type connectors.  It all seems to be working well so far, so I’m giving a big thumbs up at the moment!

The band on the gig is a 9 piece, with 2 keyboards, drums/perc, guitar, bass, two woodwind and two brass.  Below you can see the custom designed/built drum booth.  Nick, one of the sound designers on the show, designed it and the scenery company built it for us.  It seems to be working rather well for us acoustically, and it has been really well built.  I just hope we manage to keep it in good condition out on the road!

Some of the music is incredibly catchy.  It was only really when the band got in the pit and we started running the show properly that I warmed to the show as a whole.  I would now definitely recommend a visit if the show’s in your area.  I think you have to take the show as it is intended… just good honest, fun entertainment!  Don’t drop by if you want to be educated or experience a cultured, serious evening!  This is the first show in a while that I’ve worked on where nobody has died at the end (or even the beginning!), so it’s been quite a novelty for me!

Keyboards have been interesting on this again.  They’re running redundant Mainstage systems on two Mac Minis with a Radial switchover unit.  The programming is from the USA tour, which turned out to be quite difficult to implement and required a load of alterations from what I heard.  The whole show has basically been a cross between an import of the US touring production and the West End version – as a result, there have been quite a few influences across the gig from different sources.  We in the sound dept had to get involved with the racking of the units in the foyer bar at the Empire, because the UK programmer, Gareth (who I’ve worked with quite a bit before), was let down by quite a few suppliers – meaning a lot of the kit arrived between the Zitsprobe and the first band call in the pit!  We didn’t do a bad job of the racking considering the time limitations and the equipment specified etc, but I don’t think we’ve finished with these systems yet!  I quite like the general idea of them, and the redundancy with the Radial Switchovers is great, but I think there could be a lot of little improvements that would make a big improvement to their ‘tour-ability’ and reliability.  There have been quite a few stability issues resulting from possible over-heating of the Macs, Mainstage being a bit buggy and a lack of system resources when certain samples are used.  They chose the standard Mac Minis rather than the server editions with the extra HD.  I think the server editions would make a considerable improvement to the stability of the systems because the audio could all live on one drive, whilst the OS could reside on the other.

We’ll see!  As always, it’s another case of seeing how it all goes and learning from the experience!

So this has all been a bit of a different experience for me, as I’m used to touring with the shows I work on.  I’m one of the production engineers on this one, so I only get involved for the few days when the show moves, then I get to go home.  I have to say, I was a little bit jealous of the show staff when I left Liverpool, because it looks as though it’s going to be a fun show to work on.  Having said that, doing this role gives me the opportunity to take on other work between the moves, and live a more ordinary life back at home!  I’ve even had the opportunity finally to design and print a load of business cards!

Obviously the pixelating is for censoring, but you get the idea.  I’m quite happy with them!  As Ian (ever observant) pointed out – it has a picture of a knob on it!  At least a client knows what they’ll be getting when they employ me!!

Next on the horizon amongst the Legally Blonde moves is the new tour of Dirty Dancing, which is coming out of the West End to go on a UK tour first of all.  It is shaping up to be quite a whopper of a show sound-wise… as always I hope to keep you posted on that one. I’ve also got a monster gig(!) back in my home parish for their new village fete!  I don’t think my Mum knew what she was letting herself in for when she asked me if I could help them out with a sound system.  The space is around our village hall and quite divided, so – with my inspiration from Disney Theme Parks(!) – I’m planning on having several zones with a different theme of music in each depending on the attractions within the area.  My Playback Rack will be playing a starring role in the setup, alongside some of my older kit which I’m currently re-racking and hooking up to a new Yamaha MG166CX mixer.  I’ll put up a post to let you know how it all goes!  Watch this space!

My gradual return to work started with a couple of small jobs for Dance East in Ipswich, which were very pleasant and enabled me to catch up with a few colleagues from my days at Gofer.

After having turned one move into Aylesbury down because I didn’t feel up to it, I finally got involved with ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ on its move into the Birmingham Hippodrome.  I did this first one with Brew and everything went swimmingly, so since then I’ve been doing them every week or so with Ian into Nottingham and Glasgow.  It’s been terrific to work with Ian.  We were classmates back in LIPA, so it’s been a real pleasure to be working on a job together out in the real world!  The job has been fairly straight forward with a basic pros system for the SFX, float mics and (in some venues) 8 or so radio mics.  There are also (more awkwardly) a load of plasma screens relaying live camera feeds and various video clips to rig up around the pros, and a projector on stage.  All in all, a fairly varied gig, which makes it quite interesting, but with two of us on the job, everything fits together fairly comfortably over the two days.

Above-left: Ian hard at work ‘safetying’ a speaker on the Pros at the Glasgow Theatre Royal, which is a rather lovely theatre, as you can see by the picture above-right.  The only real pain are those nasty overhangs in the two circles, because there are no real positions for delays.

The show is based on the comedy series which was apparently Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV show.  I saw the first act of the show in Birmingham, but haven’t had the chance to see Act 2 yet.  It spurred me into watching our DVD of the series at home, so what I saw clearly impressed me!  Hopefully when it goes into the West End in a week’s time I’ll get a chance to see it in full!

Above: Mid fit-up at the Glasgow Theatre Royal.

Above: During the EQ session at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

Above: Sound Check at the Birmingham Hippodrome

I was pencilled in to do the final move of it into Cardiff and then to the West End, but I’m now working on the new tour of Legally Blonde.  I’ve already been in Autograph for a week or so prepping the gig with PJ etc, and am now en-route to Liverpool for its production period and opening at The Empire.  I’ll hopefully get round to updating you on how it all went in a couple of weeks’ time.  The plan is for a couple of us to move the show around the country every two weeks for the next few months, along with the three operators on the show.  The schedules are fairly tight, but definitely workable with 5 of us dedicated to the cause!

Above: Prep at Autograph for Legally Blonde.  A bit tight in a few places, but a nice tidy system.

There I was “living the dream” in Europe on Evita visiting more German, Swiss and Austrian cities including the delights of Vienna, Basel and Zurich, when suddenly while mixing the last show in Basel, I had a funny turn at the desk.  I went hot and cold, developed a sweat and everything went rather blurry.  It was one of the only times in my life when I thought I could have fainted.  Fortunately at the time, the funny feeling passed after a few minutes or so, and I was able to continue mixing the show.  From that point onwards, however, I have been constantly light-headed.  That was 10 weeks ago now, and after cutting my head open on a fit-up, a four night stay in a German hospital with every heart test going, two weeks off at home, a failed attempt to return to work and several visits to my English GP, I’m still feeling the effects of the condition the GPs have concluded to be Labyrinthitis.  This is an inner ear problem that affects your Vestibular System, which in turn is closely related to your Central Nervous System.  It’s not something I would wish upon anybody; it has completely turned my life upside down both personally and professionally.  One minute I was touring Europe, then the next minute I was back at home with my parents with not a lot going on.  It was quite a shock to me as I’ve never experienced anything as severe both health wise and emotionally.  I guess I’ve been very lucky, and I haven’t really appreciated this until now.  However, this problem is uncomfortably close to the part of the body I rely upon heavily for my career – the ears!!

Considering all that had passed, to save causing the show any further hassle, I decided to resign from Evita, which allowed them to find a permanent replacement and let me get better without worrying about setting a return date that might not be suitable again.  Bill Kenwright have been very supportive throughout the entire ordeal, for which I am sincerely grateful.

Despite all the doom and gloom, in the last couple of weeks I have taken the opportunity to catch up with some terrific friends from home and on various shows in the UK.  I am extremely thankful to them for their support.  My referral to a specialised Neurologist in the appropriate field is coming up on Tuesday, so I’m hoping to have more answers and maybe some exercises to help following the visit.  I am planning a phased return to work – taking on smaller jobs before returning to touring or taking on another large show.  I hope and expect (crossing my fingers!) to make a full recovery soon.  Sometimes, however, the compensation the brain has to make for the damage to the inner ear can take a long time.

The time off has let me sell quite a bit of my old sound kit on Ebay and start work on re-painting my sailing boat.  It’s just a matter of trying to keep occupied really without pushing things too far.  It’s also allowed me to do a lot of work to this website, which I am rather pleased about.  I’ve now built the website using the WordPress CMS – adapting and modifying a theme to suit my needs  Apart from making my life updating the site a hell of a lot easier in the future, I’m hoping that interactivity with visitors will be greater with all the commenting facilities etc.  It’s always interesting to hear from people who have had a look around, so hopefully this new build will now allow for that a lot better.

So… here I am (in joke!).  I’m sat in a friend’s flat in East Dulwich, London (which I’m incredibly fond of may I add!) after a sunny, if not slightly breezy around the knee caps(!), day in town.  Evita has truly been a roller coaster of a rIde for me.  It is the end of one journey in so many ways, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before the start of another!

The show has undergone a new sound design by Ben Harrison. There’s certainly a lot of kit on this one – quite easily filling a trailer of its own, as I found out rather abruptly in April on the Bromley get-out after my swift journey down from Whistle Down the Wind in Leeds! We carry a D&B rig of 32 boxes of Q1, a load of Q7s, 4 B2s, 6 Q-Subs and plenty of E8s for front-fills, E0s for delays and E3s for foldback etc. The rig was designed to be very flexible to cover the range of venues we’d be visiting, from traditional prosenium arch theatres to grand opera houses, a basketball stadium and an outdoor venue! I believe we’re also doing a tent venue around Christmas time! It’s all controlled by a PM1D with almost all of its 96+ inputs, 48 mixes and 24 matrices filled, plus a DM1000 submixing the 24 channels of keyboards from the pit!

Aylesbury Pros!

In Athens, we used the in-house J-Type…

Athens, Greece

Athens, Greece

Typically, the show has 9 players in the pit comprising 3 Keyboard chairs, a Bass/Double Bass chair, a Nylon/Acoustic/Electric Guitar chair, Trombone and Trumpet chairs, a Percussionist and a Drummer. For all the German venues we’ll be visiting over the next year (of which there are quite a few), we shall also be touring a string section of 3 Violins and a Cello – making the pit comprise 13 chairs in total. The show has some click tracks to reinforce the sound as well, altogether making the show have a very full and rich sounding arrangement. The sound of the band on this is quite spectacular.

Athens Pit

Hamburg Pit with extra Strings Players

Aylesbury Pit

There are 32 channels of radio mics on the show and, to my delight, Ben and Dan (the production engineer) spec-ed Sennheiser 3532 recievers with 5012 transmitters. You can’t imagine how pleased I was after spending the previous two years with Trantec S6000 systems! Audio monitoring of the system is over an MCX2 unit supplied by Orbital and there are 3 NET-1 units (for 30 out of the 32 receivers) for visual monitoring/control of the receivers using Sennheiser’s WSM software on a rack computer. I have to say, it was quite a mission to get this software to load an offline configuration I had spent time creating and matching it to the physical devices in order to update them with the settings I wanted. I found after several email exchanges with Sennheiser Germany, in the end, that it was crucial to enter the exact frequency ranges of each receiver in order for WSM/NET-1 to identify them. I thought it would automatically pick these up when identifying them, since I’d spec-ed the model of the receivers and numbers etc quite precisely, but it turns out that the interfacing between the new NET-1s and aging 3532 receivers doesn’t appear to be that clever. It’s also worth noting that the serial port chosen on the back of the 3532 receivers to connect to the NET-1s is also crucial when determining the address of the receivers once connected to the NET-1s. Whichever port is connected, its associated receiver is given the address 001, and the next receiver in the same housing is given the address 002 – whether left or right of it! It means that it doesn’t always logically give the left-hand receiver 001 and the right-hand receiver 002, because if you use the serial port behind the right-hand receiver, it will give the right-hand receiver 001 and the left-hand receiver 002. Contrary to how I (and probably quite a few others!) assumed it worked… thinking they were just paralleled connections for daisy-chaining under the old system! It meant that when I finally loaded my offline configuration correctly and everything was talking, several receivers were appearing back to front in the software for no apparent reason. After a bit of head-scratching and comparing how the receivers were behaving to how they were plugged up, I came to the conclusion I just outlined above. To add to the confusion it also required a re-boot of the NET-1s, even after re-plugging to the correct serial ports on the receivers, because the NET-1s seemed to retain some sort of internal address of the RXs! OHHHH soo unnecessarily picky! I was starting to wonder whether Trantec systems were easier to implement….. mmmmm…. that idea soon passed, although I do find using IP addresses etc a lot more precise than just the order in which something is plugged up!

Racks in Forli, Italy

WSM has proved to be quite useful software, but I do find it very sluggish, especially when Remote Access is initiated, making it quite fiddly to change frequencies etc through the software. I have used it to update the frequency tables on the receivers quite easily, however, so I can now flick between the frequencies I tend to use quickly on the fronts of the receivers themselves. I’ve even gone to the effort to match the channel numbers on the receivers with those on the transmitters so that everything is uniform. I think it’s quite a tidy system now, and I’ve learned quite a lot through getting it to this point! I’ve found that the combination of a paddle antenna on one diversity and a ground plane on the other improves the overall stage coverage – with the extra boost of the stage signals from the directional paddle, and the general omni-directional reception of the ground plane for the wings. Again, coax cable length has proved to be an important factor for strong RF levels!

Trieste, Italy Stage/Auditorium

So, there was a quick summary of the trials and tribulations of the radio mics. Another area of the gig which has taken up quite a lot of my time has been the keyboard system! There are three keyboard chairs on the show, and the arrangement requires that they play quite a wide variety of sounds. With some numbers, I have noticed they will go through multiple patch changes within a couple of bars! As a result of this, and the quality of samples required for the rich orchestral arrangements, they have chosen to use a computer based sampler/patch management system. We are using Windows XP machines from the previous tour running a program called Forte to manage all the patches and NI’s Kontakt for the sampler plugin. The custom built computers are quite a clunky 4u each, and I believe over the years they have undergone some tweaks, but they seem to be holding out rather well (*touches wood!!!!!!*). We are currently investigating 1u Windows 7 64bit servers to see whether these might be a tidier replacement, but we think the fan noise from these will be unbearable in the pit!

I have spent an awful lot of time on improving the infrastructure for the set up. As it was handed over to me, everything was very awkward and time consuming when moving the show between venues. There are a lot of small elements to the system, which make it very tedious, such as all the pedals, Kenton volume meters, numeric keypads, TFT screens and all the gubbins that help connect it all together. More importantly, there was no quick way to swap to the backup computer should there have been an issue on any of the machines, making it very risky. Our re-prep week in Orbital before going to Germany on the last leg allowed me time to re-rack all the PCs into two racks (from the five clumsy and bulky 8u racks). I included a KVM switch for local rack control of the PCs, VGA and USB over Cat 5 systems and custom built patch panels to allow re-patching and plugging up a whole lot easier and quicker! I also addressed the messy cabling etc around the keyboards by putting all the interconnects into small rack mount patch boxes with custom built patch panels to accept the pedals, VGA and USB over Cat 5 and midi over XLR etc etc! I’ve now also got round to building small boards, which hold all the gubbins that sit on top of the keyboards – making the set-up and pack down time a lot quicker and tidier. The keyboard system we’re using is a fairly new concept to the industry, so we’re all just finding our feet and gradually working towards creating an ideal setup for touring, which will hopefully be replicated on other shows.

Just one of the new improvements!

The next story involves Florence, an outdoor venue, no decent roofs over the stage and lots of water!! I think this video will pretty much sum it up!

Basically, we turned up to the Boboli gardens to find no roof over the wing space on stage and only a sun gazebo to cover our FOH area! The band was due to go in the wing space on Stage Left, along with all our racks etc (let alone all the props and costumes!). So when we first arrived, we popped the question as to whether there would be a roof, to which they replied “Yes, it will be built later”. When we came back off lunch on the fit-up day, we found the locals starting to build this contraption with black plastic, which as you can see in the video, later became a quick change area/props store. Originally, however, they intended it to be for the band! It was way too small and, on top of this, we could see that it certainly would not be watertight! We had to soldier on, however, as ultimately, it was their show, and we just had to do what we do with their guidance and ultimate decision-making. As evening drew in, however, the heavens opened, and I have never seen scenes like it! We did our best to make everything as watertight as possible with the tarps and sheets of plastic we had, but after the deluge we left the fit-up early and called it a night, because it was impractical and almost impossible for us to continue.

Florence, Italy

The next day was opening night, and we still had no suitable location for the band that was watertight. All of our equipment was damp from the general moisture in the air or soaking wet from the driving rain, we were very behind with the fit-up, and the likelihood of opening that evening looked increasingly unlikely! We were very nervous about powering up, but after letting the equipment air a bit and dry out in the little sunshine we had, we gave it a go. This is when we found that we had lost our PM1d control surface, of which we only carried one of on tour around Europe (up until this week!!!!). We can only assume it was from water/moisture damage. We had back ups of every other element to the system, but not this! It was at around this point again I think that the heavens opened, and you can see Dan in that video trying to make a distress call to Orbital under our ‘shelter’ for the racks! Things were going from bad to worse as it approached midday on opening night! After trying a few things out such as replacing batteries in the desk etc, a local phoned around all the PA companies in Italy and eventually found a desk in Rome, which they got shipped up to us immediately. Whilst all this was going on, we managed to find a new location for the band in a couple of the dressing room tents in the field behind the stage, which our band multi reached within a metre of excess!! Moving all the kit over there took until around early afternoon, and it was going to be a tight squeeze for them, but at least these tents were watertight with decent flooring etc! The schedule for the day was restructured around our situation, as our original sound check time of around 4pm obviously wasn’t going to happen! I can’t remember what time our new desk turned up, but I think it was at around 4 or 5pm, with our show due to start at 9pm. The pit was just about done by this point, and the sun was shining thankfully, so spirits became quite optimistic! There were a few hiccups with updating firmware versions etc when trying to load our show into the Rome desk, but eventually, we were all systems go! It was just when I was powering up and handing out the radio mics for the delayed sound check, however, that I had my first glance at what was to be RF hell! Really not what I wanted to encounter on top of everything else a few hours before the show was due to start! Against the odds, the show did open on time, with a fairly uneventful first night! We were absolutely amazed and couldn’t believe it was actually happening! The show played 3 out of the 5 nights without any major hitches, but there was plenty of rain during the days, so we took it in turns to cover ‘rain watch’, with the tarps and rubber brooms at the ready!

Florence Stage Left Wing

Florence Stage!

It turns out that Italy doesn’t have such strict laws governing the use of the UHF spectrum as the UK currently has (until 2012 at least anyway!), and so I found that the airwaves were very busy, not leaving a lot of room for my 28-32 channels of radio mics! With a load of re-jigging around, I eventually managed to get all but some of the B mics into the show effectively, using every single bit of free spectrum that I could find amongst the digital TV, military signals and mobile phone data! This did take a couple of days to hone after I’d managed to get decent scans of the airwaves, but I was quite pleased with my efforts! It was during this week that I finally got the information from Sennheiser to set up the system how I explained earlier, which was very good timing, because I needed all the help I could get with the monitoring of the damn things! This trend continued into Forli, the next venue, but suddenly with a roof over our heads, it was all a lot easier, despite it being a basketball stadium! Being open to the elements and without the RF shield of bricks and molter, Florence was the hardest venue RF wise……. well….. and for everything else of course!!! The rain-themed get-out from there reminded me of my power distribution days at Gofer on festival sites! I was half expecting to find a Mr Whippy on the band multi that traveled under the stage and across the muddy field to their tent! Fortunately, I think we got away with just mud, grass and leaves!

Florence Band Tent and Dressing Room Tents!

Florence Dressing Rooms and Wigs/Wardobe!

So Forli was where we sifted through our kit to find the damaged equipment, of which there wasn’t too much of to our amazement. Orbital had sent out a new desk on next day delivery to Florence, which we didn’t use until Forli, since we had the Rome one for the whole week to avoid losing any further Orbital desks, and the only other bits of damaged kit were AV related, such as TFT screens and a few cameras. Quite a bit of our speaker rigging became quite rusty as well, but on the whole, we got away very lightly! After Forli, our freight week to Germany became a re-prep week in Orbital for us to check everything through, and for me to sort out the keyboard system as I mentioned earlier. I believe there is still a big insurance claim being pursued for the damaged kit, which included scenery and LX equipment too of course. I think the producers in Florence were pretty gutted after only managing to do 3 out of the 5 shows, but not half as gutted and cheesed off as us for going to the effort of putting in this big production into an extremely awkward venue for just 3 damn shows, and knowing that we could have started the get-out two nights before, since we didn’t do the last two nights of the week!!

Forli, Italy Fit-up

Forli, Italy Fit-up

Forli, Italy

Orbital Re-Prep, London

Anyway! The 7 or so weeks in Germany went relatively well. We had some frustrating times trying to find ways of rigging our PA and running cabling infrastructure into these magnificent opera houses and concert halls, which aren’t used to touring shows and especially large sound systems such as ours, but we had a great time in some truly beautiful venues.

Dresdon Semperoper Opera House

Dresdon Semperoper

Dresdon Semperoper

The musicians were spoilt in Dresden and Hamburg with their splendidly huge pits, which had all the proper stools, chairs, music stands and accessories for the job. Our MD, David, even had a fully motorised adjustable MD stand with height and tilt adjustment etc. We sometimes found the language barrier a bit of an issue, especially with the crew who didn’t know anything about sound either, so therefore had no initiative for the job! Despite having twice the number of crew, you’d sometimes spend just as long explaining the task as the task would have taken to do yourself! It was a blessing to have crew who were there just to tip and load trucks, however. Coming back to the UK on this short leg has been a bit of a shock, when it’s just us 3 in the Evita team and 2 locals who load and tip our full 27/28 tonnes of sound equipment into and out of the venue! The get-outs and fit-ups have been truly knackering here!

View from the Gallery in Bradford Alhambra

Well, apologies for the increasing length of my posts! I should really update this more regularly with smaller articles! I did start writing this in Dresden but never got round to finishing it until now! So after a few tense changes to the earlier parts and other inclusions from the German and current UK leg, it’s got rather long, but hopefully amusing and interesting! I’m hoping the video will have helped give you an understanding of how ridiculous the time in Florence was! It was a truly unforgettable week!

Thanks for reading!

The tech rehearsals and opening in Liverpool went pretty smoothly for us, with only a few issues and points of stress! There isn’t much to report from my side of things other than the typical Trantec S6000 issues including dodgy computers, power supplies, fans and RX cards that don’t always output audio!! I feel that I’ve become VERY familiar with the mainframes over the last few months what with all the boards, computers, software and fans I’ve replaced – not to mention the soldering of contacts which weren’t quite making (see picture!) with the typical Molex connector!

The main issues we were having earlier on in the tour was with RF reception. The picture below shows a line graph of the reception on both diversities of a principal standing centre-stage on their own during a show at the Liverpool Empire. Suffice to say, we weren’t very happy with that! Just for background info on our setup: we’re running 32 channels of receivers on 4x S6000 mainframes (8ch of RX on each). On a typical show, we use 28 receivers, leaving us with 4 spare channels.

The best solution to the bad RF reception, I’ve found, has been simply replacing our 10 and 20m N-Type antenna cables with 5 and 10m cables. The difference is astonishing, and has made it so much better. I really didn’t want to accept that the antenna length could affect the RF reception that much in the real world, but it does!  It makes antenna positioning a bit harder and maybe a bit further away from the stage in some cases than would be desired, but the advantages from shorter cable lengths far out-weigh the advantages from better positions! The tech guys at Orbital have also helped by showing me the shape of the filters on the head amps, which is obviously not perfectly linear across the ch66-69 band we try to cover with one set of antennas for 3 of the mainframes (24 channels).  We have another set for our ch62/63 frequencies to cover the further 8. By knowing the shapes of the filters, I can bare them in mind when choosing which cast to use on which frequency. I’ve also found that some of the RF link outputs from the mainframes are either lower in strength or completely not working, so this is also important to consider when working out the order of RF signal chain. We also make sure that each antenna plugs into a separate mainframe first before linking out, because if a mainframe loses power, it stops the RF link out. Therefore if both diversities went into the same mainframe first and it loses power, the rest of the mainframes would also lose BOTH antennas. I’ve also changed the layout of our cast across the mainframes so as to avoid principals who are often in scenes together being on the same mainframe – making my life easier should I lose a mainframe again! Another ‘covering my ass’ tactic I’ve employed is putting the frequency file on all of the mainframes’ computers and getting hold of a KVM switch so I can switch between the computers quickly to make setting adjustments and see what’s going on when they crash! It occured to me that if the master mainframe was the only one with the frequency file on and I lost that computer and mainframe, I would have to re-create a file from scratch on one of the other computers, which takes quite a bit of time. Not what you’d want to be doing during a show or even in the interval!! You have to bare in mind that with these receivers, you can’t do ANYTHING apart from PFL from the front panel, so everything relies on the software.

Anyway! I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve found out about these over the course of the last three tours I’ve worked with them. Despite their many issues, they do have many great benefits. There aren’t many systems out there that are as flexible tuning wise and as ‘user-friendly’(!!!). I do wonder what their new systems are like that they’ve recently brought out. I’d hope to think that they have attended to at least some of the issues of the first generation!

Apart from that, the tour is going well. Keith is happy with his GrandMA, especially since finding space invaders on it! Thankfully, we haven’t had any more blowouts on our tour buses since our move from Aberdeen to Bristol. It did concern us a bit when we got on the very same bus on our last move from Edinburgh to Manchester, but it held out this time!! Next stop, Leeds Grand from Manchester Opera House…. why do I get the feeling that it’s going to be a very slow move!

So as I said in the last post several months ago, I’ve been touring with Cabaret to such delightful(!) towns as Derby, Carlisle, Malvern and Wimbledon amongst others! I had a cracking time with the really entertaining cast, band and crew. The show had a really nice sound to it, and works really well with the band in the pit – unlike Blood Brothers which, I think, benefited from a remote band for the drums and brass/woodwind to help create the ‘produced’ feel. Cabaret relied quite heavily on the acoustic sound of the band from the pit for some of the show’s energy.

Something unexpected, annoying and embarassing happened to me on the get-out from the York Grand Opera House. I managed a partial dislocation of my left shoulder just after packing up the pit! I was standing quite precariously on a mic stand tray on top of the MD riser removing the front-fills, when the tray tipped (due to me removing my other foot!) and slipped off. My legs followed but my upper body fell on the riser with my left arm outstretched to guide my fall. In doing so, the shoulder ended up in A LOT of pain and only thanks to the crew nearby, was I able to be turned over and sat up straight! I looked down at my arm, and it looked somewhat out of place, and only when I relaxed a bit, did I feel that I needed to rotate my arm. As I did this, I felt the arm pop back into place! The pain significantly dropped and at that point I was shipped off to A&E in an ambulance where they took X-Rays and confirmed nothing else major had been done to it! The technical term for the injury I incurred was ‘Subluxation with possible Rotator Cuff Injury’. It was a bit touch and go as to whether I was going to make the tour bus to Bristol, but with a bit of kicking up the nurses’/doctors’ asses, I made it in time for when they were loading the final few cases onto the back of our wagon at about 4am. Many thanks to the other departments who helped cover me on that one!! The shoulder is still niggling me every now and again, but the physio whom I saw in Bristol said it should make a full recovery!

My week in Bristol was a bit hectic, what with unexpected trips to the physio on top of the commutes on the train to Barking at 5am in the morning to get back for evening shows in Bristol! The day after the last get-out of Cabaret in Bristol, I headed straight down to Barking to continue with technical and dress rehearsals of Dick Whittington at The Broadway Theatre, where I was working on my first professional sound design. I had to use mostly in-house kit which was made up of a Funktion 1 PA and a Midas Venice desk with 2x XTA DP226s. I re-arranged their install quite significantly to improve the control over the different areas of the auditorium, and I used one side of one XTA to act as a processor over the vocal group for better EQ and to delay the vocals. The other side of this one was used to low-pass/EQ the subs and the other XTA unit was used to control the rest of the PA. The computer at FOH had Audiocore installed, so was controlling the local XTA via RS232 and linked through via an XLR tieline (on 485) to the other XTA in the amp room. I could access this over wireless VNC to tune the system.

I had Sennheiser G2s for radios with MKE2 heads. The re-termination of these turned out to be a mission. I went through 3 different types of locking mini-jacks to find some that worked well! Suffice to say, may I simply advise you to use Canford model number 43-251 for best value/functionality!

The small band was made up of Phil Gostelow on keyboards, who also composed and arranged the entirely original (and great!) musical score, and Simon Pembery on drums. We managed to use his acoustic cymbals with a V-drum kit thanks to some isolation using perspex screens and heavy tabs! The rest of the arrangements were on click track – including a lot of the ensemble kids’ vocals and some sound effects that had to be timed to music. It was the perfect opportunity for the first outing of my redundant Qlab system, which I spoke about in the previous post. To date, it has been performing very well *touches wood!!!!!!*, with only a couple of issues that we ran into.

The first was forgetting to tell the hard drives not to go to sleep under the power saving settings in System Preferences, so every now and again there were a couple of glitches occurring after around 2 seconds of playback (the buffer in Qlab is 2 secs!). This was obviously resolved after I realised this! The other issue was a bit of a scare to say the least, but I think we sussed out the root of the problem. On our first open dress rehearsal just after the interval, Qlab started triggering several successive cues on its own in the middle of another cue. We had to show stop to sort the problem. Unfortunately, in the panic, Phil forgot to flip to the redundant system and just hit the ‘stop all’ button, so I was left unsure as to whether it was a computer issue or triggering issue from the F8 and the buttons.  The only clue left was that the B system was left several cues behind the A system, but not where we expected it. To add to the confusion, the problem had happened before, apparently, when I wasn’t around – just after putting in a new music stand lamp. After removing this lamp, the problem went away. The very same music stand lamp had been put in just before the open dress, so it was assumed that maybe some strange sort of electrical induction was occurring, causing the F8 to trigger Qlab. I wasn’t particularly happy with this diagnosis, obviously! After a few calls to various friends including Mr Breward and Mr Threlfall and some head scratching, it suddenly occured to me when going to sleep that there was an outside chance it could be down to a sticky space bar key on the keyboard, which of course is the ‘go’ button. Much to my delight the next morning, I gently wiggled the space bar key from side to side and it started triggering cue after cue. I felt happier that this had been the root of the problem. Certain bass notes could probably have been able to set it off; not including an over-excited/animated MD in the pit where the system was positioned!

Anyway – all was good in the end, and I believe they’re having a very good run to date. I could have done with some front-fills in the venue to help fill gaps in the sound down at the front of the stalls and to help with the imaging further back, but all in all, it’s ok. Matt, the operator, was doing a sterling job on a desk which isn’t the easiest by far to mix a musical based panto during the rehearsals and when I left him. This gig reminded me of how dependent I’ve become on digital desks with so much on-board processing and having so many things recalled automatically from scene to scene – not including how long fader paths are incredibly handy! The desk was really quite limiting on this gig. You know how we like to bus things in theatre! This wasn’t very easy with just 4 groups, a master mix bus and 6 auxillaries with fixed pre/posts! It helped that we had a couple of ‘Formula Sound Que18s’ for band monitoring, as I was able to split line level kit down at the pit rather than waste auxes etc at the desk. These were great, and I can see why they used to be popular before the days of Avioms! I should imagine they were a pain to tour back in the day, though, what with the Edac multipin connections and their sheer size!

For fear of boring you to death with the length of this post, I’ll try to sum up my 2nd Dick Whittington experience efficiently! As I write this, I’m working on Stoke on Trent’s panto at the Regent Theatre as No2 for Colin again. It’s another Ben Harrison design – just like Blood Brothers and Cabaret – and it’s a tidy system with a mixture of the theatre’s and Orbital’s kit. We’re using Sennheiser G2s on the gig just like the Barking panto, and I’ve been impressed again with their performance compared to the Trantec S6000 systems I’m used to touring these days. This is the first time I’ve No2-d a show with them in. The pack sizes are rather large and maybe not as robust on first impressions, but I have nowhere near as many issues as I do with the high-end Trantec kit. Their RF is terrific and Orbital have made a wise decision to mod them to 3-pin Lemo over the locking minijacks (which, as discussed above, can be dodgy). I could do with a clever monitoring system so I don’t wear out the jack sockets on the fronts of the receivers or the headphone jack, but apart from these small complaints, I love them! *touches wood*! I wonder whether Sennheiser have shot themselves in the foot with these, since they are so good. Will people be too fussed about looking at their 3000/5000 range when the Evolution gear is such good value for money? The 3000/5000 kit is in another league, but are the advantages worth the extra pounds for most applications? I still don’t feel experienced enough to comment on their sound even though I’ve now worked with all of them on different tours since you get used to their individual sound each time!

Again, I’ve rattled on! In short, Stoke is going well; the local crew are fantastic and a really good laugh!

Next on the job front is Whistle Down the Wind in the new year. We start off in Liverpool for two weeks, which will be a tough couple of weeks. The venues on the list look great and it sounds like it should be a fun show to mix. Unfortunately I won’t get a day off between panto and Whistle. We literally come down in Stoke on the Sunday with a get out that evening, then we’re starting at 10am the next day in Orbital for prep in London. Oh well…I shouldn’t really complain!

All that leaves me to say at the end of this epic post is that I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’ll try to update this on a more regular basis with more ‘bitesize’ chunks!!

So here I am a year on after joining Blood Brothers, and it seems like it was only yesterday I was doing my first fit-up in Plymouth! The picture shows the last ‘Tell Me it’s not True’ sound check in Leeds, which was probably one of the best venues on the last tour – partly down to the fantastic green room food!! (I’m sure we all put on weight!)  The truck lift (also above) was also well behaved. I can’t imagine how the ins and outs used to be before this!! I have another week on Blood Brothers in Bournemouth as a crossover with Becky, the new No2, the move to Bromley, then I’m off to join the Cabaret lot until Christmas – taking in such delights as Birmingham, Derby, Carlisle, DUBLIN!, New Brighton, Shrewsbury, Bristol etc etc etc…

The last week was spent in Orbital re-prepping Blood Brothers and Cabaret. Both of the shows have been moving over to the new racking system Orbital are introducing. I spent most of the time on Blood Brothers, and I believe we’re one of the first shows that’s moved over to the new system including the Sound of Music tour. As you can see in the picture below, it’s very pretty with the in-built LED lighting (switchable to both blue and white!), and the integral power distribution (with Powercon) is very neat. There were a few teething issues with fitting our gear into the racks, however, as Orbital are trying to make everything entirely modular, which makes it harder to customise some of the racking within the same footprint as before. The new Socapex patch panels get a big thumbs up, our new radio rack section with TFT screen included etc is very compact, and moving over to Powercon entirely has cut down on general power distribution I think. All in all, I think the fit-ups will go EVEN quicker!

Another project I’ve so very nearly completed (just a couple of software things to sort out), has been my redundant QLab system with two Mac Minis and 828MK3s. On my two weeks off, I finally got round to building my ’8ch analog audio + MIDI’ switchover unit, and racking it all properly. It took several days of pretty solid soldering, cabling, head-scratching and racking whilst my parents were away (rather fortunate as I took over several few rooms in the house!). Anyway, the pictures below show the finished product, including remote triggering buttons! Please let me know if you’re interested in using it on your next show!! I have one penciled in for it on a Panto in Barking which I’m designing at Christmas… it may well be looking after the click tracks if I can convince Phil (the MD) that it’s reliable!!

Well, that’s it for another geeky update for you! I’m off to Bournemouth tomorrow to camp again for my final week on Blood Brothers, and the weather looks as though it’s going to be great! Should hopefully be a fun week!

Here in Shrewsbury around 10 of us have been camping about 1 mile away from the theatre in a lovely little campsite set in the Shropshire countryside. Nick (touring LX) and I hired a couple of bikes to make the ‘commute’ a little easier. Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn is only around 6 months old I believe, and has been fun to work in. Blood Brothers is the biggest show in there to date. The theatre is very well resourced, but it seems a shame that the main auditorium has a relatively small capacity. As a result, despite there being a perfectly adequate pit, the band have been remoted to the other venue within the same building to allow for extra seating at the front. To allow this to happen we had quite a ’round the houses’ multi run of around 100m. I think the band are happy as they basically have their own theatre, which is quite impressive for a 2nd venue with its full counterweight flying system etc.

Here are some pics of the camping and inside my ‘abode’! (complete with electricity and mac/mobile broadband through my phone! I never intend to rough it fully!!)

…and here is the latest brass section ‘pin-up!!’…