Live Event #1

The first live event for this class was KCMEA Jazz Day. At KCMEA Jazz Day, schools from around Kern County and students from BC took part in performances and workshops featuring jazz music. Everything wsa hosted at BC Panorama's indoor theater and it was a very good turnout. The event took place on April 7th and basically ran all day. The shift that I picked up was from 1pm-3pm and I had fun!

For the setup, we had a variety of instruments and singers. Such instruments included a piano, vibraphone, saxophones, drums, basses, guitars, trumpets, trombones, flutes, clarinets, and other percussion elements. From what I can remember, the only instrument that required a DI was the bass, a keyboard that was later brought in, and a guitar. The piano was mic'd with two ksm137s, one for the lower strings and one for the higher strings. The drums were mic'd with a beta91 for the kick, Sennheiser e604 for the snare, and two sm81s for the overheads. One guitar was mic'd with a beta58 with the other guitar, saxophones, trombones, trumpets, and woodwinds were mic'd with sm57s. The additional percussion elements used beta58s while the horns used SE4400a's. The vocalists and emcee's used wireless 58s which I had connected to the receiver the day before.

Overall, we used about 24 channels even though we had 32 available to us. The digital mixer, a Behringer X 32, took a little bit of effort to get used to. But once I became familiar with everything, it was like riding a bike.

Some challenges I had with this event keeping my ears focused. A difference between working live vs in a studio is fatigue. When you're working live sound, there's nowhere to escape when your ears get fatigued so it's important to focus and step back from certain sounds so that everything doesn't sound the same.

Another challenge I ran into was working quickly for solos. Honestly, it was more fun than challenging and I loved having to work fast so that certain instruments could be heard. It was interesting having to adjust the levels of certain instruments because everyone plays differently. Some people played really aggressively while others were passive and quiet.

When it came to the acoustics of the room, it felt as though high end and mid frequencies were boosted. It was very easy to hear the horns, but not as easy to hear the piano. That's where boosting, cutting, but also panning helped. Being able to sonically replicate what we see helped the mix so it didn't sound as cluttered.

Some things that went well were the transitions between emcees and actively adjusting the levels based on what song was being played. The more I mixed, the more I became more confident in trusting my intuition. I remember having to adjust the levels on the kick drum a few times because it didn't quite fit the jazz genre. I also remember bringing up the levels on the bass because I added warmth and fullness, similar to bossa nova music. Overall, I want to continue being optimistic and quick while also being mindful of a mix in terms of its genre.