Mother Of Invention
A typical gig for Jenkins and crew would be some type of festival outdoors, where multiple performances cross the stage all day long and into the night. About 99 percent of the time, there isn’t time for a sound check between acts, and most of these events will not have the budget to spring for a separate monitor console. As a result, Jenkins has become expert at running up to four mixes off the house console.
“In an ideal world, if we’re required to do more than four mixes it would make life infinitely easier to have a dedicated monitor desk,” he relates. “But usually there are no more than four anyway for most of the acts, so we put them out on aux sends post-fader. Music tracks accompany many of these festival acts during the day, so this way, rather than having to worry about turning an aux and a general fader down at the same time, we simply move one fader and do both.
“At the end of the night when the headlining band comes on and requires us to deliver more mixes, we can accommodate them, but it’s a scramble to quickly switch everything over to pre-fader. Most of the time, however, we can get away with doing monitors from the house console.”
Getting It Done
Wedges are the order of the day (and night) in most of Jenkins’ monitoring events, although if artists bring their own “ears” he can accommodate them. To make just such an order easier, everything is patched via patch panels in his amp racks with an output. Then, if someone wants ears, Jenkins can simply patch them into the appropriate mix for his or her stage location, mute the wedge channel, and the process is complete.
“Gear can be old, new, whatever, as long as it produces quality sound and does the job we intend it to do,” he concludes. “We’ve kept our profitability intact by focusing upon speed, efficiency, and being resourceful, using what we have in as many creative ways as possible. That, in this market, is the key to success.”
Gregory A. DeTogne is a writer and editor who has served the pro audio industry for the past 30 years.