A very successful charity gig. Jen organised this Summer Music Festival at The Anchor Inn, Eling Totton for A Voice for Jayden. Loads of acts from DJ Bill to SO Sound Choir, to acoustic acts and full bands.
I volunteered to handle the sounds. Started assembling the drumkit and then the PA system. Im not a sound guy per se but I got knowledge on how to setup and help out.
First act was The SO Sound Choir, they got their mini portable PA amp, it's Alto busker I think. It's where their backing track comes out and their Choir Master's mic is plugged in. So, there's not much for me apart from they asked me to put aside our PA speakers because there's loads of them who turned up and they needed the space on our tiny stage. So I just put the speakers down and they did their set.
Second act were Colleen and Tina doing acoustic act. One guitar, two mics. They got a DI box where Tina's mic and guitar/ukulele were plugged in. So I just need to hook it to our PA. I then just setup one more mic for Colleen and that's it.
Third Act was Tony, acoustic solo. He's got a pedalboard with everything he needed. I just needed to give him two XLRs for his mic and his acoustic guitar. Pretty much straight forward.
Oh, I forgot to mention our stage monitor. It's improvised as well. I hooked it up through Aux Send to my Bose S1 Pro and then through Bose's line out to Jen's Samson Expedition XP. Tony said the monitor sounds great. Well it's a solo acoustic act so there's not much loud noise in the way like drums or guitar amps, bass, etc.
Then next act was Take Cover. Full band. We didnt mic'd up the drums. The guitarist got a Kemper amp and cab. And wants it DI out to our PA. The bassist said initially he's fine but eventually used his DI out from his amp and plugged to our PA. Lead vocals got his effects I think and a wireless mic. So just XLR from us to his mic setup. But I think we had problems with gain staging plus our PA is not that big to handle guitar and bass. But that's what we got and had to make do with it. So the downside was, the vocals was a bit distorted. But it sounded more like effects and the show must go on so yeah. We managed to get by.
Next act was Regional One, proper rock indie band. Really good and they are already touring band so yeah proper gear, etc. Again downside was our PA plus their guitarist got a massive Marshall tube amp and my guitar cab is an improvised 1x10 Celestion VT-10. I mic'd it up and he still managed to get by. Their bassist got a DI, so from pedalboard, straight to their mixer. They brought their own mixing desk and the vocalist was the one in-charge with their setup. I just had to plug their mixer to our PA. I managed to do justice to their sound.
Next was acoustic act again, The Jays. Simple setup, just acoustic guitar and then two vocal mics. They brought their own mics for the guitar and backing vocals. I just need to provide the XLRs and the acoustic guitar mic was a condenser mic so I turned on the phantom power. Their lead vocals uses our own mic. They got a drummer but no bassist. So our own bassist, joined in and jam with them. I just plugged his bass straight to the PA.
Last act was us, The Wildcards. We initially decided to use our newly purchased mixer, the Behringer Air XR16. But our drummer decided the setup was already good and said will just use it to save time from swapping stuff. But because it was agreed before hand, as soon as the previous act finished their set, I unplugged the cables so it's ready to be setup for our new mixer. I had to put it back again and good thing there's raffle going on so we got plenty of time to setup. I even setup our singers gear. She's got TC Helicon Voice Live Play. Also I unplugged our floor monitors because we are using in-ears. But then I was too busy setting up that I forgot to set up my own in-ears and focus with the rest of the bands in-ear. My guitar and our bassist got sort of similar setup. Im using a mini amp head which is Vox MV50AC with line out. Then my 1x10 guitar cab. He's using Trace Elliot ELF mini bass amp head which got DI out and then a 2x10 Fender Rumble bass cab. So both of our gear goes to the mixer for our in-ear and just minimal volume for the PA. Drums not mic'd in. Just vocals. We are doing backing vocals so all together we're using three mics. That's our setup.
I survived my duty as the soundguy and one of the performers as well. So it was a super fun day for me.
