GIG REPORT! Jazz in the trenches, low end style.

[c.gymer]

Morning all. I should be doing other things, but having had the pictures on the laptop for a while now I thought I really should get this done.

So the gig was at a small jazz venue in town (100 cap), in the upstairs music room of a well known restaurant chain here in the UK. The artist was a young lad who does a pretty cool Sinatra-esque thing, appearing that night with a quartet consisting of drum set, piano, electric 5 string bass and sax/flute. Having done FOH for them before I knew already that the band were really good, as was the vocalist.

The venue has the FOH position set (irritatingly) in a cupboard to stage right, and houses an Allen & Heath GL2 board, a Lexicon mpx500, graphics and amps.

Due to the space constraints I decided not to bring out a splitter and use the direct out puts of the GL2 to feed the instrument and vocal mics into my 828mkIIs analogue inputs, and then use two channels of Octopre LE for the left and right pair over ADAT.

In hindsight I should of brought the splitter as the GL2s direct outputs were set post fade. It wasn't a big problem as I was also doing FOH that night, so I worked the problem rather than complain about it (to myself, which wouldn't of got me very far anyway).

The patch list was as follows:

1: kick drum, Sennheiser e602
2: snare drum, Shure SM57
3: overhead left, Shure KSM 27
4: overhead right, Shure KSM27
5: bass DI
6: piano (bass strings), CAD m179 (cardoid, no pad, no hpf)
7: piano (treble strings), CAD m179 (cardoid, no pad, no hpf)
8: sax, Shure SM57
9: flute, Shure Beta 57
10: vocal, Shure SM58
11: main left, Audix F15
12: main right, Audix f15

The piano mics were on a gaffer tape bridge and the pianist had the lid at half stick.

The drum overheads were in a recorderman set up, phase aligned to the kick and snare drums.

The main left and right were something of a pain, as I couldn't position them out front facing the stage as the venue was too small, and there were too many tables and people walking around to do so safely. As a compromise I set them up on a fully extended boom stand as high as I could in the centre of the stage.

The mics were routed into mono channels in Reaper and recorded at 24/48. I prefer to use Samplitude, but for some reason it won't assign inputs properly, so for location work I've been running Reaper as it has been so stable for me in testing. There was a minidisk back up mixed from the Motu cuemix and sent via analogue outputs 3 and 4 so should the system crash, there would still be a stereo mix (I'm too skint to afford any better right now, but as money allows I will be buying some new kit (a Joeco Blackbox and an Edirol R4 are on the list...)).

I'm mixing right now, and so far the client seems pretty pleased. I'll see if I can post some samples, but in the mean time I hope the pictures (taken on my camera phone) give you an idea of the show and the setup.

Comments, questions and criticism wanted and welcomed! Thanks for reading.

[boojum]

Looks great. I love jazz and live jazz is my fave. I hope it has come out well. Post some samples for us, eh?


Thanks

[avebr]

Looks really nice!

I'm curious to hear at least a snippet of it - specially a bit with only the piano mics (I will try something similar!).

Congrats!


all the best,
ave.

[c.gymer]

I'll see what I can come up with.

[DCtoDaylight]

Originally Posted by avebr

Looks really nice!

I'm curious to hear at least a snippet of it - specially a bit with only the piano mics (I will try something similar!).

Congrats!


all the best,
ave.

Yeah, I'd be interested in that, too - I'm digging the gaffer tape mounts!

[Remoteness]

Well done; I also would like to hear what you captured.

[loujudson]

This isn't really so low end; I have recorded live jazz like this with one stereo mic and a vocal mic... into a cassette deck! (long ago and far away.)

Looking forward to hearing it. One fo the most impressive things is the musicians are wearing suits! That looks so professional.

L

[c.gymer]

Man, cassette is low end! That said I used to record quite a few of my friends shows on a four track cassette with a stereo pair to supplement the 2 bus mix from FOH. That was rather low end and I must confess I do rather miss it!

[loujudson]

Twas the best I had at the time... Sony WM-D6 walkman. 60 dB S/N, better than Lps... .

L

[NorseHorse]

Had a gig two weeks ago which I thought fit your description of jazz-in-the-trenches. I've attached the picture. Note the drop-ceiling... without ceiling tiles. I took the opportunity to drop two KSM141s instead!

Ten tracks total mixed live-to-stereo on a Soundcraft M12, no outboard. Songs cut to flow smoothly and some reverb added in post. Emailed to the director the next day in time for rehearsal for the "big gig" (the day after that).

[boojum]

NH, pls explain what the additional other eight channels were. Spots I am assuming. The Shures look pretty far back to catch the front row. Are my eyes deceiving me? Posting a sample??

[NorseHorse]

1,2,3 - Saxes - SP5s
4,5 - Bones/Trumpets - KSM141 pair
6 - Upright piano - NT5
7 - Drumset - NT5
8 - Bass - DI from amp
9 - Extra solo/MC mic - SM58, then SP5
10 - Elec. Guitar - SP5 in front of amp

I was happy to use the drop ceiling for this gig. A mic pair out in front to get an "ensemble" sound would have picked up way too much of the PA, which wasn't sounding particularly good, and the stage could hardly accomodate any extra stands of any sort.

I moved the 141s several times during their rehearsal. I had them out too far initially and it was sounding trombone-heavy. The trombones leak into the sax mics, so I found favoring the trumpets in the 141s allowed the trombones to settle in just fine.

Had some issues throughout the show with the solo mic (provided by the house). The level was extremely low. At first the sound guy thought it might be my splitter, so he ran it direct and I set up an SP5 running straight to me. He was still running into problems, and we eventually figured out the SM58 was busted.

Not sure yet whether I want to post a sample. Was done on the fly, and I've hardly had a chance to review it.

[c.gymer]

Looks like a nice show, Norsehorse. Any samples?

BTW I promise to sort out samples soon (still waiting for the client to approve them!).