Running The Sound ... The Basics

No matter what the brand and style of sound equipment used, this will at least get you up and running reasonably quick. Hook up the microphones and speakers as you would normally do(assumes basic knowledge of setup skills). Turn everything on. If sparks don't fly and smoke doesn't come out of the equipment we can move on (otherwise replace what smoked and fried and then move on). Turn up the channel with the microphone on it until you just barely hear a ring. Then back it off until the ring goes away. It is always a good idea not to have too many people in the room during the setup as they would get annoyed at the testing of the equipment. That's really all I ever do when setting up the equipment initially. Once people arrive at your venue, no matter whether a church, theater, or concert, you will have your starting points set for your microphones. They are normally at a sufficient setting there to be heard at most non rock concert events. Concerts have a similar set of rules. You would need to be able to adjust the settings on the fly at these events. If your a novice at sound equipment then you won't be by the end of the concert. Concerts also have instruments to deal with as do some churches which just plug into the board and turn to a reasonable level (some people may not like to hear it as loud as you do). There you have some very basic running of the sound equipment rules and maybe ideas.

Tonight's Show (Small Production) aka My church's VBS

The curtain broke in the middle of the show. Actually it was the 20 year old rope that broke. The curtain for some odd reason didn't move after that. It is amazing, however, how quickly it was fixed after the show. It only took 20 minutes and a bunch of elbow grease (a little real grease helped as well). This just shows the wide range of production areas I am involved in. I don't just work on lighting and sound. It is always good to know a little of everything cause you just never know when you'd need it.

Welcome to the new blog

Welcome to the new Control Your Stage blog. Hopefully this blog will contain relevant information for most industry professionals or novices alike. Guess we'll just have to see now won't we? My writing isn't perfect so forgiveness may be requested for typos which will probably happen.