So here I am almost four months on, and it only seems like yesterday that we were opening Whistle Down the Wind at the Liverpool Empire, and before that, rehearsing back in London. I went down to rehearsals for the last couple of days to do mic fittings and some cast recordings for sound effects. Below is a picture of the first keyboard rehearsal and our makeshift mic stand for a 414, since we weren’t sent a proper one!! (One for the Dodgy Technicians Facebook page??!!)

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!

Firstly, sorry for the title of the post, but after all the ‘dick’ jokes I’ve been hearing of late in the two versions of Dick Whittington I’ve been working on, it almost felt inappropriate not to try to make one myself!

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!

Just thought I’d share a few photos from Crawley and Shrewsbury where a few of us have been camping! We were lucky enough in Crawley to be able to camp on the theatre’s ground, directly behind the stage! It was great and we obviously saved a lot of money! Much footie and cricket was played in the glorious weather… it felt like we were on holiday until around 7pm!

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!!’…

Just thought I should stick a post up to let you know that I haven’t left the country or anything else exciting! There isn’t really much to report work wise. I’m still keeping busy on Blood Brothers, with the odd fit-up here and there on Cabaret before Christmas in Liverpool and Malvern(!). We’re in Coventry at the moment on the first of two weeks with a week off after here (having already had one just before here too!… EXCELLENT!). Swansea is next I believe followed by a host of other delightful provincial UK towns and cities before the current contract ends in July at Leeds!

Just to warn fellow sound engineers… the picture above probably shows one of the worst sounding venues in the UK; The Caird Hall in Dundee. We had a week in there prior to our week off. Suffice to say, after part of the ceiling falling down in our remote drum room on the morning of the first night, the fire alarm sounding with an evacuation during sound check and a reverb time of approximately 3 years, we knew we were probably going to have to work hard for our immanent week off! We pulled through relatively unscathed, and Dundee as a town were chuffed to bits with the show - evident through their particularly complimentary reviews. Guess it’s not all just about how it looks and sounds!

Anyway, please contact me if we’re in your town or nearby! It’s always nice to catch up with familiar faces!