On top of falling in love with playing bass (and later guitar), I became the guy in the band who wanted to bother to learn how to make the PA sound good and balance the band for shows. As the years went on, I started learning more about live sound and really enjoyed being any part of shows from either side of the stage. After I moved to Las Vegas I had the opportunity to work in the field of live sound and had some great experiences.
One of the things I loved (as silly as it seems) was working the bench as the shop tech. Even the most basic and minor repairs gave me the sense of a job well done. It was a nice break from pushing or counting inventory in show boxes, swapping rack equipment, testing gear and new configurations and everything else we did at the shop. But it was also something I was pretty good at. I loved making cables and adapters and generally taking the broken (we called it brokeback mountain, because at one point the pile of cabling in need of repair was huge - though we aren't sure exactly what happened on the mountain....) and making it useful. I loved the idea of cannibalizing a ruined item and using its parts for something new. In the past few years, I have dabbled in my own guitar repairs, which helped fill the void now that my days and nights are so full of work and band stuff.
I took some time on Saturday morning to clean off my workbench (an old computer desk that lives in a little spot in the back of the garage) and opened up a new soldering iron I had bought a few months ago. I had a few projects in mind and Sunday afternoon I sat down, turned on the radio and got to work! I took a trash Direct Box and mounted a stereo 1/4" cable wired to the XLR jack and then made an XLR to 2 1/4" mono ends. This will allow me to use a longer cable for my main guitar (which has a stereo 1/4" output) - without having to buy really expensive 'Y' cables. Yay me!!! - Truth be told: I was going to put the stereo jack in place of the XLR and use the Direct box's two mono outputs for each side of the split signal, but I couldn't get the XLR rivets undone and couldn't find my dremel tool.. While my fix added an extra component (the tails hooked to an XLR plug) it meant that I had a useful product at the end of the day rather than a barely started project!!
One of the things I loved (as silly as it seems) was working the bench as the shop tech. Even the most basic and minor repairs gave me the sense of a job well done. It was a nice break from pushing or counting inventory in show boxes, swapping rack equipment, testing gear and new configurations and everything else we did at the shop. But it was also something I was pretty good at. I loved making cables and adapters and generally taking the broken (we called it brokeback mountain, because at one point the pile of cabling in need of repair was huge - though we aren't sure exactly what happened on the mountain....) and making it useful. I loved the idea of cannibalizing a ruined item and using its parts for something new. In the past few years, I have dabbled in my own guitar repairs, which helped fill the void now that my days and nights are so full of work and band stuff.
I took some time on Saturday morning to clean off my workbench (an old computer desk that lives in a little spot in the back of the garage) and opened up a new soldering iron I had bought a few months ago. I had a few projects in mind and Sunday afternoon I sat down, turned on the radio and got to work! I took a trash Direct Box and mounted a stereo 1/4" cable wired to the XLR jack and then made an XLR to 2 1/4" mono ends. This will allow me to use a longer cable for my main guitar (which has a stereo 1/4" output) - without having to buy really expensive 'Y' cables. Yay me!!! - Truth be told: I was going to put the stereo jack in place of the XLR and use the Direct box's two mono outputs for each side of the split signal, but I couldn't get the XLR rivets undone and couldn't find my dremel tool.. While my fix added an extra component (the tails hooked to an XLR plug) it meant that I had a useful product at the end of the day rather than a barely started project!!
The other thing that I haven't been doing regularly in the past 5 years is live sound. I used to help out with my old church's sound, and have done a few things with the band (though our bass player Jason is a full-time sound guy, so I usually defer to him!) and I had forgotten how much I enjoy it.
I've been given the opportunity to help out at my new church and have been loving every minute of it. I've got to run the Behringer X32 mixer, which is a great full-featured digital board that I hadn't used yet (it is so amazingly intuitive that if you are looking for something and think you know where it should be, you probably know where it is!).
Sunday morning I was reminded again why I love music on both sides of the stage. The band was cookin' some tasty gospel grooves, the 'Praise Mob' was full of life and singing strong and I got to walk around the room during soundcheck and close my eyes and listen. I could easily distinguish all the different instruments as they played together. The kick drum and bass were full and there was no shortage of their support for the piano, guitars and vocalists (without the mud that sometimes jams things up). At one point I sat down and crossed my arms on the chair in front of me, placed my forehead on my arms and closed my eyes. I was amazingly pleased with the mix - and I was only a small part of that. All of the pieces knew where to fit in so that the muddy mash of frequencies wasn't even an issue, and the vibe and mojo of the groove was just right.
All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good weekend!
I've been given the opportunity to help out at my new church and have been loving every minute of it. I've got to run the Behringer X32 mixer, which is a great full-featured digital board that I hadn't used yet (it is so amazingly intuitive that if you are looking for something and think you know where it should be, you probably know where it is!).
Sunday morning I was reminded again why I love music on both sides of the stage. The band was cookin' some tasty gospel grooves, the 'Praise Mob' was full of life and singing strong and I got to walk around the room during soundcheck and close my eyes and listen. I could easily distinguish all the different instruments as they played together. The kick drum and bass were full and there was no shortage of their support for the piano, guitars and vocalists (without the mud that sometimes jams things up). At one point I sat down and crossed my arms on the chair in front of me, placed my forehead on my arms and closed my eyes. I was amazingly pleased with the mix - and I was only a small part of that. All of the pieces knew where to fit in so that the muddy mash of frequencies wasn't even an issue, and the vibe and mojo of the groove was just right.
All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good weekend!