Adventures In Playing And Mixing The Same Show

Karl Winkler Lectrosonics

System Tech
As I explained to Marsh during specification of the system, we needed a system tech who was really good with the LS9. Even though I’ve used digital consoles, including this model from Yamaha, I had to admit that I’m pretty rusty.

Marsh sent one of his young employees, Scott Boers, who turned out to be terrific. He was on time, had all of the right gear, was patient with me despite numerous questions on how we were going to do certain things, and he has a good ear to boot. He also made a couple suggestions along the way that I ended up agreeing with, including the one about miking the upright bass. Scott was just a pleasure to deal with.

The first church was right up there with some of the most interesting challenges I’ve faced. We’re talking about a room with polished stone floors, wood pews, and not one absorptive anything in sight. Fortunately, there were no slap echoes, just smooth, fairly bright, fairly long reverb. We’re talking an RT60 time of 3 seconds here…

After we set up the PA and tested it, I worked on getting rid of a certain “boom” in the bass, and then very slightly rolled off the top with -3 dB at 12.5 kHz to cut down on the “wirey-ness” of the upper solo violin registers.

I had Scott dial up a 25 millisecond delay for the left and right mains so that Debra’s sound would appear to come from the center cluster, since she was standing right next to it. This way, I felt, those in the center front half of the audience at least would not have the jarring effect of hearing the sound from one side or the other when the performer was right in front of them. This was especially important since no sound came from the instrument itself.

Back To Playing
Then, I picked up my good old acoustic violin and sat down to play the Dvorak 9th Symphony from the back of the second violin section. Whoa—this place had some serious reverb! It took another hour of rehearsing before the musicians and the conductor had a grasp on how to deal with playing in that environment.

Then we started in on the Adams piece, and I made my way back to the console to finish the rehearsal and get the balance right for the concert, to be held two nights later. My first concern was the perceived volume level—this place was kind of loud, along with the splashy reverb. But once we got going, it seemed O.K.

As we approached the end of the 2nd and final movement of the Adams, it did indeed get pretty loud. It took some serious pushing to make Debra’s instrument heard over everything else that was going on. The difference on the solo violin fader between the quiet parts and the loudest section at the end was more than 20 dB!

The first concert went well, although the wife of a trumpet player said she had a hard time hearing the soloist. Several others from the audience (including orchestra players who did not have a part in the Adams) said that the balance was good. I realized there may have been zones where the bright reflections of the church acoustics caused “hot spots” from the brass and percussion. Not much could be done about it, unfortunately.

Two days later, we did our second concert of the same program, but in a different church. The good news was that the acoustics were far better—there was still reverb, but it was much shorter and not nearly so splashy. The bad news was that it was a smaller room and a fairly serious challenge to fit everyone on stage. Nevertheless, we got it all to work. The balance was even better than on the first concert, and I received several compliments. At the end of the Adams piece, it was still pretty loud, but no one complained to me about it.

All Said & Done
I’d say the concerts were successful, despite my reservations about playing the first half in the symphony and then mixing the second half. It was pretty exhausting. And I did have to get all of my personal violin practicing done early due to my travels to AES the week prior to the dress rehearsals and concerts.

Would I do it again? Not if I can help it. But it’s good to know that I could if I had to. As a side note: I don’t miss unpacking, setting up, packing, and rolling cases before and after the gigs—I don’t know exactly how I used to do that day in and day out. I was younger then, I guess…