For this video, instead of looking at a
large concert setup, I thought we'd look
at how I handled a Small Town Festival
earlier this summer...
and point out some tips along the way.
I try to have dedicated cable paths
upstage and downstage, like you see here,
to keep things neat.
the downstage cable run will have the
house PA speaker runs, downstage AC drops,
monitor feeds, and a downstage sub snake,
which is typically going to grab vocals
and acoustic guitars.
the upstage is the same, with a power run
and an upstage sub snake. in this case
the house snake is immediately upstage
left, so it can grab some stage left backline,
if needed. For small shows like this
I'm using AC stringers with multiple
taps every few feet, versus the AC quads
and twist locks I'd be using on larger
stages. And as you can see cable ramps
are strategically placed.
I've got four powered monitors, each on
its own mix, across the downstage.
I dropped a fan to fan audio snake at the edge
of the stage for sends to these monitors.
That's quicker than individual home runs
all the way to the dl-32, and easier to
troubleshoot as well!
Being powered, the wedges can be moved
around or easily struck if need be.
there's another monitor upstage center
for the drums.
For an event like this I'm typically
going to plan for four to five wedge
mixes. with multiple bands, if it's going
to be more than that then that's
definitely a situation where I want a
monitor engineer on the show to make
things move more efficiently.
For multiple band shows, try and create a
backstage or off-stage area for the
bands to prep their gear while the other
band is on stage. This will make
changeovers go much quicker!
Mark your mic lines. You don't want to
re-run lines from scratch at the
changeover. You want to be able to reuse
these lines and channels at the
changeovers. if you don't mark them, you
won't remember what is what. there will
be distractions! things will get moved...
unplugged... by bands and others... and you'll
lose track.
On festival stages like this, there is
simply not time to start from scratch
for each band.
If your headliner is on ears and RF, then
it becomes really easy and quick to
strike the unnecessary lines and things
from the stage before their set starts.
this gives them a cleaner stage, but this
gives YOU a head start on the (load-)out.
this venue has lighting already installed.
I just need to add some downstage fill
lighting to go with that. and to
interface with all of that, I ran
Ethernet from a laptop at front of house,
running Chamsys MagicQ,
which is free software so I'll leave a
link to that and other things in this
video in the text below,
and then that connects to a Chaveut AN-2, a
two Universe artnet node.
in many ways, smaller shows like this
present more challenges than larger
shows. with the smaller production size
there's less crew on hand to help with
issues when they arise, with no monitor
console there's no monitor engineer so
one less Tech on hand.
[soundcheck from FOH]
The bands are not all full-time bands so
they might be arriving when members get
off work. that leads to hurry up and wait...
and then hurry up again!
the smaller stages leads to logistical
issues just to fit everything.
it's always a good idea to take a few
minutes to think about the best location
for your equipment and how that will
impact the cable paths and the band's
backline placement.
for more info about Cable Management I
have this video. there are links in the
text below. thanks for watching and I
will see you next time!