Andy
Honorary Member
Ok, here's my report as a follow up to my "from the other side" thread. It's a bit lengthy, but hopefully you'll get some amusement from it, & for those not so used to small festival stages, some insight too
Down on the Farm festival is a small local event in the heart of the Golden valley in Herefordshire (UK). Based on a cider farm, it caters for about 500 people with two stages. Stage 1 is in a metal sheet barn, the other in a marquee. I've included shots of the setting during setup so you get a feel for the event. This year, I'm ran sound / stage setup across 3 days plus performed with my band.
Stage & gear:
The stage is constructed from plastic pallets & straw bales, with a farm trailer as a drum stage to the rear. It's actually much more stable than you'd think, & sonically not that bad either. FOH system consists of 4 x FBT subs (two reversed to phase stage boom reduction) & 8 x FBT line array units. Total output is 20K RMS. We're running about 4K in monitoring with a selection of wedges + QSC 1K 3 ways for drums & keyboards. Desk is a A&H MixWiz3 16:2. 4 way monitor mix. Lighting is all LED - 3 truss rigging - consisting of 4 x 240W RGBW fan cooled barn door floods, 4 x 80W RGBW spots, 4 x 50W RGBW moonflowers, & a 200W RGB blinder.
To show lighting, I've included pictures taken during the day (Fired Up shot), & at night (Bordellos shot) As the barn walls are slatted, we sheeted off the stage potion of the barn to give at least some lighting affect in daylight.
I prefer to use a simple analogue desk such as the A&H MixWiz3 because of it's intuitive simplicity in a fast turnaround multi band application.
Band experiences:
Most bands were just fine to deal with, being modest, helpful, & accommodating, but the odd one or two needed to check their egos, both leading up to the event, & their demeanour on the day. I have included an image of a tech rider sent to me prior to the event. It's for a 5 piece rock band, who even in their biggest shows, use keyboards for one part of one song. This is a mini festival in a barn FFS! 9 way monitor mix & two keyboard stages? - I think not!
Drummer & drums experiences:
All drummers, except one, were gracious & helpful. Every drummer used their own kit. We did leave the Guru Tour series kit set up on the first night, & offered it's use to the 3 performing bands. Two said yes please, the first band drummer refused, instead, preferring his own kit on the basis he uses two mounted toms not one. His kit sound was bordering impossible to get sounding good, & I don't remember him using both mounted toms at any time during their set. As a consequence, the other bands didn't get to use the Guru - ah well
That aside, some kits were presented in a terrible sounding condition, with clearly zero gig preparation. In some cases, this was just laziness, but in many cases, complete ignorance of how to tune / prepare a kit. I'm used to this, but it still never ceases to amaze / disappoint me. Such crappy sounding kits were not limited to the less experienced drummers either - crimes were committed across the drumming expertise spectrum. A prime example of such a crime is included in the pictures. Two shots, & hopefully you can pick up the issue with the bass drum. Not only is it used in the reverse, he also has one spur facing forwards, & another one facing backwards - apparently to prevent the bass drum creeping towards him!!! That was a first for me, but as the drummer was the youngest & clearly least experienced of all the drummers, it was at least forgivable He actually played very well!
At least half the kits presented had totally dead sounding drums. Slack / no tuning, grossly over muffled, & in some cases apparently, deliberately so. Some drummers reporting that sound men prefer totally dead drums. That says more about the state of sound man quality than it does drummers.
Aside from hideous sounding drums, the biggest difficulty I faced was bass drums with built in mic's. Now, done well, such an installation can be time advantageous, but if you don't get it absolutely right, you're severely limiting the engineering options. I admit, I'm not a fan of internally mic'ing any drum, as (IMHO) it doesn't allow for the drum's total sound to resolve, but I do see some advantages if the drummer's tuning skills or sound man's mic placement skills are lacking. I don't get the argument on the advantage with a full resonant head either, as an internal mic doesn't effectively pick up the resonant head contribution anyhow. Of the 3 drums presented with internal mic's, two suffered from pronounced pipe resonance that took much longer to EQ out than setting up mic's ever could, & the other one was utterly dead due to excessive laundry infestation. I'm happy to answer deeper questions on live stage mic placement in this thread if there's any interest.
Ok, I think that's enough for now, except to add video links I hope you find informative / entertaining. All recorded with built in mic's with a Zoom Q3HD near the stage, & a Zoom Q8 at the desk position. In hindsight, I should have switched the cameras around, but didn't realise until it was too late Please select HD1080P or 720P on the Youtube "cog" & use headphones for best audio.
1/ A compilation video featuring a number of bands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYVxC54bdC4
2/ A shot clip of the Guru kit at soundcheck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdObUWSwBA
An exhausting 6 days, especially having to play a set & engineer the rest of the day. Regrettably, after line checking, I had to hand over to another engineer so I could play my set, & he under levelled my bass drum
Down on the Farm festival is a small local event in the heart of the Golden valley in Herefordshire (UK). Based on a cider farm, it caters for about 500 people with two stages. Stage 1 is in a metal sheet barn, the other in a marquee. I've included shots of the setting during setup so you get a feel for the event. This year, I'm ran sound / stage setup across 3 days plus performed with my band.
Stage & gear:
The stage is constructed from plastic pallets & straw bales, with a farm trailer as a drum stage to the rear. It's actually much more stable than you'd think, & sonically not that bad either. FOH system consists of 4 x FBT subs (two reversed to phase stage boom reduction) & 8 x FBT line array units. Total output is 20K RMS. We're running about 4K in monitoring with a selection of wedges + QSC 1K 3 ways for drums & keyboards. Desk is a A&H MixWiz3 16:2. 4 way monitor mix. Lighting is all LED - 3 truss rigging - consisting of 4 x 240W RGBW fan cooled barn door floods, 4 x 80W RGBW spots, 4 x 50W RGBW moonflowers, & a 200W RGB blinder.
To show lighting, I've included pictures taken during the day (Fired Up shot), & at night (Bordellos shot) As the barn walls are slatted, we sheeted off the stage potion of the barn to give at least some lighting affect in daylight.
I prefer to use a simple analogue desk such as the A&H MixWiz3 because of it's intuitive simplicity in a fast turnaround multi band application.
Band experiences:
Most bands were just fine to deal with, being modest, helpful, & accommodating, but the odd one or two needed to check their egos, both leading up to the event, & their demeanour on the day. I have included an image of a tech rider sent to me prior to the event. It's for a 5 piece rock band, who even in their biggest shows, use keyboards for one part of one song. This is a mini festival in a barn FFS! 9 way monitor mix & two keyboard stages? - I think not!
Drummer & drums experiences:
All drummers, except one, were gracious & helpful. Every drummer used their own kit. We did leave the Guru Tour series kit set up on the first night, & offered it's use to the 3 performing bands. Two said yes please, the first band drummer refused, instead, preferring his own kit on the basis he uses two mounted toms not one. His kit sound was bordering impossible to get sounding good, & I don't remember him using both mounted toms at any time during their set. As a consequence, the other bands didn't get to use the Guru - ah well
That aside, some kits were presented in a terrible sounding condition, with clearly zero gig preparation. In some cases, this was just laziness, but in many cases, complete ignorance of how to tune / prepare a kit. I'm used to this, but it still never ceases to amaze / disappoint me. Such crappy sounding kits were not limited to the less experienced drummers either - crimes were committed across the drumming expertise spectrum. A prime example of such a crime is included in the pictures. Two shots, & hopefully you can pick up the issue with the bass drum. Not only is it used in the reverse, he also has one spur facing forwards, & another one facing backwards - apparently to prevent the bass drum creeping towards him!!! That was a first for me, but as the drummer was the youngest & clearly least experienced of all the drummers, it was at least forgivable He actually played very well!
At least half the kits presented had totally dead sounding drums. Slack / no tuning, grossly over muffled, & in some cases apparently, deliberately so. Some drummers reporting that sound men prefer totally dead drums. That says more about the state of sound man quality than it does drummers.
Aside from hideous sounding drums, the biggest difficulty I faced was bass drums with built in mic's. Now, done well, such an installation can be time advantageous, but if you don't get it absolutely right, you're severely limiting the engineering options. I admit, I'm not a fan of internally mic'ing any drum, as (IMHO) it doesn't allow for the drum's total sound to resolve, but I do see some advantages if the drummer's tuning skills or sound man's mic placement skills are lacking. I don't get the argument on the advantage with a full resonant head either, as an internal mic doesn't effectively pick up the resonant head contribution anyhow. Of the 3 drums presented with internal mic's, two suffered from pronounced pipe resonance that took much longer to EQ out than setting up mic's ever could, & the other one was utterly dead due to excessive laundry infestation. I'm happy to answer deeper questions on live stage mic placement in this thread if there's any interest.
Ok, I think that's enough for now, except to add video links I hope you find informative / entertaining. All recorded with built in mic's with a Zoom Q3HD near the stage, & a Zoom Q8 at the desk position. In hindsight, I should have switched the cameras around, but didn't realise until it was too late Please select HD1080P or 720P on the Youtube "cog" & use headphones for best audio.
1/ A compilation video featuring a number of bands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYVxC54bdC4
2/ A shot clip of the Guru kit at soundcheck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdObUWSwBA
An exhausting 6 days, especially having to play a set & engineer the rest of the day. Regrettably, after line checking, I had to hand over to another engineer so I could play my set, & he under levelled my bass drum
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