Thursday, July 30, 2009

Warped Tour Milwaukee, WI

Another one bites the dust! Today was pretty uneventful. It rained on and off for most of the day and we ate some deep fried cheese at catering for lunch. I finally got some pics of the front of house setup on our stage. We play each day on the solar powered Kia "Kevin Says Stage". 

Meet Tom McNabb! He is the Systems Tech, or better known do-it-all sound tech for the Kia Stage. After more than 6 weeks of touring so far he seems to be on auto-pilot mode. The way he walks around setting up the sound system is almost hypnotic. He could probably do it blindfolded by now, no problem. By the time the band shows up him and the rest of the Kevin Says crew have set up the stage, backline, and PA. Tom is more or less ready to roll by 9:30am and is either either plugging in the last of the
 microphones or powering up the console, which is a Yamaha M7-CL. The first thing I noticed on our first day was Toms setup of the User Keys.
 Its the best mixing setup I've seen so far on those handy little keys. 
He also uses the top bank of faders for a "flip to fader"  monitor system using 4 separate mixes, and the bottom row for mixing. 
It completely eliminates any confusion between which mixing mode you are in, so you are never caught trying to raise the lead vocal in the PA, but accidently end up sending it all to the lead singers wedge and getting a nasty look. Awesome! The Rack, Tap, Delay, Mute All, Talkback, and In-Ear send keys are well thought out too. Everything you need is right in front of you. 
Posted by Matt at 11:35 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Warped Tour Cincinnati

Although it rained for most of the day, as well as our bedbug incident in the morning, today summed up to be a pretty good time. Inward Eye played an awesome show and we met Down With Webster from Toronto. I also snapped a great pic of Dallas Green (singer/songwriter for Alexisonfire, and City and Colour) in his undies watching a show through the fence. If this pic gets huge let it be known that it came from here! The crowd seemed a little more "playful" here than in Atlanta. Special thanks go to a lovely guest for letting us snap a revealing pic. It was $2 for the conventional viewing, and $5 for a picture. Naturally I invested in the latter for your viewing pleasure...



Posted by Matt at 11:20 PM 1 comments

Warped Tour! Atlanta, GA

I am currently on Warped Tour with Inward Eye. Today was Atlanta, GA. A little too toasty for us Canadian boys. It was a nice 35 degrees Celsius (95F).

Here's the dates:

07/28/2009Atlanta, GA Lakewood Amphitheatre
07/29/2009Cincinnati, OHRiverbend Music Center
07/30/2009Milwaukee, WIMarcus Amphitheater
07/31/2009Detroit, MIComerica Park
08/01/2009Chicago, ILFirst Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
08/02/2009Shakopee, MNCanterbury Park
08/03/2009St. Louis, MOVerizon Wireless Amphitheatre
08/04/2009Kansas City, MOVerizon Wireless Amphitheatre
08/07/2009Boise, IDIdaho Center Amphitheatre
08/08/2009Salt Lake City, UTUtah State Fairgrounds
08/09/2009Denver, COFiddler's Green Amphitheatre

View Larger Map

I am going to try and give updates every day. Here's a couple pics of the tour bus area and the stage were playing on.















Posted by Matt at 12:39 AM 0 comments

Saturday, July 25, 2009

K-Array

Ever seen/heard of the K-Array? Its a line array style speaker system that is super thin and totally flat. I stumbled across some pictures of these online and I had to investigate further!

I decided to take a look at K-Array's larger system, the KH4. Each speaker cabinet has a dimension of 44" x 23.62" x 6.29" and weighs 103.6 lbs. In
comparison, LAcoustics largest cabinet, the V-DOSC, weighs 238 lbs and measures 51 x 17 x 22
inches. Take note that I am in no way comparing the audio quality of the two systems, just weight and size. I can't comment on that until I have actually heard the K-Array system personally.

The website states the following:

"The KH4 use twelve 8" inches cone drivers for low-mid frequencies with 2.5" voice coil, powered by six power amplifier channels. The mid-high frequencies section use five 1.75" voice coil compression drivers, that drive 1"x4" constant directivity waveguides. The drivers form an array exactly in the centre of the speaker, a mechanical system can perform different vertical coverage, from 7° to 37° on each KH4."

Wait a second. Thats a lot of speakers crammed into a large (thin) box. I dont really know how to feel about that. Im going to be honest though, as soon as I read the "twelve 8 inch cone drivers" part I instantly got reminded of the old Bose cabinets that didnt seem to stay popular for very long due to thier crappy sound quality. Once again I cant really give any positive or negative opinions about the K-Array system until I have actually HEARD it, I am just expresssing some thoughts.

The K-Array is far more popular in Europe than here in Canada so until I score a sweet tour across the pond, I'll have to wait and see if these systems become more popular in North America. My only hope is that I can sneak a listen to the P.A. at a trade show in the near future, or stumble upon a K-Array rig in my travels.

I really know nothing about this whole setup to be honest. Some would say I should really research this system before making a blog about it but anybody can go to thier website themselves and look it up, and the only other way is to call the company or talk to other Engineers who have heard and worked with K-Array systems. Unfortunately at this point in my career I dont know many european sound engineers so I am hoping to get some e-mails from people around the world to give me thier opinions! That way I can post more blogs and hopefully get a good idea about the K-Array system, and where it lays in the Line-Array hierarchy. So send me an email at matt@nosoundcheck.com and let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Posted by Matt at 10:14 PM 1 comments

Monday, July 20, 2009

Hiking In B.C.

I just got back from my trip to B.C.! I did a solo hike through the Babine Mountain Range near Smithers, British Columbia. Unfortunately I could only go for one night due to my knee getting injured but it was all well worth it. I saw some amazing views and snapped some incredible pictures.

The highlight of the hike was spending the night in an abandoned mining cabin. I was awakened at 3am by what seemed to be a pack-rat chewing on the side of the cabin. Naturally i thought it was a bear and I couldn't sleep for the remainder of the night. I ended up starting a fire and watching the sunrise. It was an experience I'll never forget.

Posted by Matt at 8:22 PM 0 comments

Thursday, July 9, 2009

A Cool Acoustic Tuning Trick

Anybody who has tried to tune an acoustic guitar during a live show knows that its pretty much impossible. All the sounds onstage combined with the boomy sub woofers get picked up by the sensitive pickups in the guitar and overpower the sounds of the strings.

I recently met Ryan Grant (Guitar/Bass Tech for Our Lady Peace), and the first thing I noticed when I walked up to his workstation was his Peterson tuner with a sweet mod. He took an old pickup out of an electric guitar and soldered a 1/4" connector to it. It sounds simple, but it works wonders. The magnetic pickups don't pick up stage sound at all, just the vibrations of the strings of the guitar. Just hold the acoustic up to the pickup, hit a note and tune it to perfection!

Posted by Matt at 6:02 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 6, 2009

Some Studio Time

I spent the day with Inward Eye at Soundwerx studio. They did some recordings for The ExploreMusic podcast hosted by Alan Cross.

Listen for the bands new single "Day After Day" out now on radio, and the release of their new album "Throwing Bricks Instead of Kisses" out August 18th 2009.
Posted by Matt at 10:12 PM 0 comments
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