Hello and welcome back to the channel. For this episode i thought we would talk
about cable management for a neat, clean, safe, and efficient stage. a
clean stage not only looks better for performers and the audience,
but also reads better on camera. and importantly, it's safer for performers
and presenters by mitigating and eliminating trip hazards.
it makes troubleshooting easier too. i have dave here to help demonstrate some
do's and don'ts. so let's get started. first, start with a
plan for the cable paths. try and stick with straight lines and 90
degree angles as you group your cables together.
usually, this will mean an upstage cable path and a downstage cable path...
with everything meeting at the audio snake, preamp, or onstage mixer.
you don't want a stage that looks like this.
next, run your microphone cables from the audio snake,
pre-amp, or on-stage mixer to your mics and D I's.
there's a tendency for people to want to start with the mic and work backwards to
the snake cable or mixer. for one thing, the onstage console or
snake cable is not likely to move, while the microphone very well could
need to move before setup is finished. it's better to have the slack at the mic
in a loose coil than it is at the snake cable. but bigger
picture, every cable is going to the multi-pair
box or on stage console. if all the cable slack goes there it'll
look like this-
and that will only get worse with every line ran.
starting at the microphone with the cable is also how you connect at the
snake and then look back and see this-... i call
this the clothesline effect.
starting at the snake cable or the mixer avoids all of the slack of
every cable in every channel ending up in that one place:
the snake or the mixer. and it keeps things much neater,
easier to troubleshoot, and easier to reposition mics and dis,
if need be, as the setup goes along. on that same thought: monitors. if you
have passive wedges and monitor amps, start at the amps with the speaker
cables. don't leave all of the slack for the wedges at the amps in a growing pile
of spaghetti. instead, bring the slack to the wedge and
leave a coil at each wedge. if you have powered monitors, start at
the console or snake with the driveline for each wedge,
and bring it to the wedge. slack at the wedge.
all of this can be accomplished without spending any money. it's just a matter of
pinning the stage with a plan. but that said, if you do want to spend a
little money, adding a sub snake or two, even a fan to fan snake, can help to
neaten the stage as well as speed up the pinning of the stage.
you can use a fan to fan snake to connect your monitor drive lines to an
amp rack for example. i recommend adding some tape for better
labeling so it's easier to read the channels for quick setups.
you can add sub snakes that run from your main snake preamp. or onstage mixer,
to centralized points on the stage... like to the drums, or near the drums, for
an upstage connection point... and another downstage for vocals or
downstage instruments like an acoustic guitar,
or whatever might be on the stage plot. with sub snakes,
many times you can use shorter length mic cables, which can speed up setup,
and especially speed up the after the show strike.
with a sub snake for your drums you could even create a loom of mic cables
dedicated to the drums, all marked and made to length, for a neat
and clean drum riser. on the subject of labeling, you can use
board tape or gaffers tape to label your sub snakes and cables.
for multi-band shows it's much easier and quicker to label the cables and
share channels, than to re-pin for each band. and digital
consoles allow us to save band settings from soundcheck
and recall them instantly when the band takes the stage.
once the stage is pinned we need to make sure we don't leave any trip hazards.
if any cables are in a likely walkway you can dress them with gaffers tape
or purchase some cable ramps to create a cable path that even a car could drive
over if that's what you need. these days there
are some inexpensive, smaller cable ramps that work well on stage for a quick way
to protect cables and protect people from cable trip
hazards. i'll leave an amazon affiliate link to these small
cable ramps in the text below. in this video
i mentioned terms like upstage and downstage.
if you don't know what these terms mean, i'll leave a link to a video that
explains commonly used stage terms. it's a helpful reference, especially for
anyone learning the ropes. i'll leave amazon affiliate links in the
text below for items like the gaffer's tape, the board tape
and the fan to fan snake. if you like information like this
please like and subscribe to the channel... click the bell for notifications...
...the patreon page link to support the channel is in the text below.
please check out the other videos... thanks for watching, and i will see you
next time!