Every Semester Hawker College have two moderation concerts for their music classes assessment by third party musicians not associated with the school. The first evening is traditionally performances by the Classical class, then at least five numbers by the Jazz band, each piece highlights solo’s by the different students. The second evening is for the contemporary class, consisting of mostly bands of three members to five members, however some solo pieces or duets are often heard too.
This school semester I was contracted in to organize, tech rehearse and run these two shows so they ran smoothly as the previous semester was not so good. It also gave the students a nice big end of year performance for the year twelve leavers to remember. I pulled some strings and brought in some extra equipment from a good mate of mine Adrian Rytir from FX Group as well as some front of house audio equipment from Eclipse Lighting and Sound, whom I work for.
Before I go any further I’ll just quickly list all the equipment we had involved:
Lighting
- In-House Lighting (White Stage Wash, Blues, Coloured Battens)
- 2 MiniMac’s
- 2 Moving Head Profiles
- Laptop with Sunlite Interface + Touch Screen
Sound
- In-House JBL L+R plus Center Subwoofer
- Behringer 24 Channel Sound Desk
- 2 x dbx Graphic EQs
- SFX Processor for Reverb
- Behringer 4 Compressor Unit
- 20-way Stage Box
- 3 SM58’s, 1 Beta58
- 2 Dynamic Microphones
- 7 piece drum microphone kit (2x OHs, Snare and Bass used only)
- 3 DI’s
- Guitar Amp
- Bass Amp
- Baby Grand Piano
- 2 sends of fold back, each to 2 wedges.
For this production the lighting wasn’t as important, Sound was a much higher importance due to the students being assessed, however in saying that Adrian brought in some of his gear to test around with and get a better feel for his Sunlite software – added to the overall show greatly!
A Typical Student
I have done these moderation concerts before with the in-house equipment – never enough – and have found learnt that musicians generally don’t know a thing any further than 2 meters from them. What I’m implying is they have no clue of the real sound out in the audience, that they are not balanced and too loud. Taking this as experience I had words to each band that came on during the rehearsal as to how it should work, that I am mixing them front of house, that as long as they hear themselves fine as a band – it’ll all be ok. With the exception of the Jazz band (although the guitarist was more of a rock guitarist and still turned up too loud), all guitarists were too loud and drummers found the need to bash their kits. I respect some of the pieces called for this, they sounded great respectively.
Learning by Hearing
It was a big learning curve operating for this concert as I prefer Lighting, but as Sound is still very unknown to me I thought a school production was a very good place to experiment and get the feel for things. I prepped myself a week or two before by reading articles on sound mixing, proper use of compressors and equalization. While this still didn’t prepare me completely, I am pretty sure I had the hang of it at more than a basic level by the end.