The Dressing Room

Ahhh, the humble dressing room.

Doing corporate one-offs, as a touring engineer, you get to know a fair few of them. We've had a many of them, of varying quality. The difference between them has been practically from a tent with nothing, to a fully-catered, air-conditioned porta-room, to the usual hotel rooms. here's a few pictures.

Our backyard at Australian Gospel music festival:



let us in!



Big enough?



Finally, they read our rider!!!

Queensryche Support gig 11 July (I think)

A bit late, but I decided to write about this.

Friends of mine from Sydney, LORD (ex-dungeon) were supporting Queensryche on their tour around Australia. They Played at the Tivoli theatre. Gig went great and I was more thna happy with the mix. The kudo's I received from Queensryche's tour personnell and punters was great.

The system was the Tivoli's house system, which is a Soundcraft Series 5, going through Crown Macro-tech amps into a Nexo Alpha-E system.

Great night all around.

Sydney, Brisbane. 3-8 july

Always a calm before the storm.

After a few smaller corporate gigs (not really worth the post/photos) between Rockhampton and now, this last week hit me like a tonne of bricks.

It all started on the 3rd, where we went down to Sydney to do a corporate gig at the Hilton there for Phizer (a pharmaceuticals company). It was a Meyer P.A., with an A&H desk. Nothing especially interesting about this gig, except that it had a HUGE dressing room.

Then back to brisbane that night, where I slept at a friend of mines house, because the gig I had on the tuesday was our old favourite, shopping centre! This one was at Morayfield, and was two shows a day at 11 and 2. Sounds easy, but that 3 hour gap really gets to you, and you start eating way too much fast food and spending money on stuff you dont need.

Anyway, come Friday and we're back down to Sydney again for a gig for HAEFE, who make kitchen products. The brief for the show was to have the tappers dancing on 5 levels of scaff, which then after their performance, shoots Pyros and 'lifts off' to reveal a mobile showroom (bus) underneath. Was a GREAT effect, except that the dancers got a bit burnt by the pyros on their way off. The system was made up of Dynacord PA with a midas Verona out front. IT was a lot of 'guess' mixing, as I wasnt in the throw of the PA at all, and was up a level from where the audience were.

After waiting for 3 hours for the truss to come down (the downside of travelling with our own mics is that we have to collect them after the gig!) we got back to the hotel at 1am, and as our flight left at 6.30am, got up at 4.30. LACK OF SLEEP. Anyway, after getting back to brisbane, I bided my time in Maccas waiting for the Heavy Metal Festival that a mate had organised, which I had somehow been goaded into doing audio for.

It was another Dynacord system, but with the Venice out front, it didnt sound too bad. Anyway, I got heaps of props for a job well done, and after that effort I'm doing the headliner (LORD) when they support Queensryche this weekend. for that I will DEFINETLY have pictures.

Update: I have no pictures from Queensryche. They imposed a no pictures ban on us.

Rockhampton - Australian Beef expo

This gig was great, and was my first real oppertunity mixing on the new Yamaha M7CL...as well as my good old fave the PM5D. We did 4 shows on the 'Toyota stage', followed by the gala ball.

The M7CL is a fantastic audio desk, and was really easy to get to use (It took me 5 mins to work the basics out...and after watching the 'tour' on yamaha's website and getting the PC editor, I reckon i'm now an instant expert!). I'll definetly be trying to get this on the season of 'Project X' in november.

AGMF - 15th April '06

We took a short drive (EXTREME sarcasm) up to Toowoomba (after doing two shows at Australia fair that day) to perform at the Australian Gospel Music Festival. We were on a small(ish) stage inside a tent near a stall we had for promoting Raw Metals teaching studios. The PA was CPC's EV x-line D's with altec subs, with a verona at FOH. From all i've heard, it went down really well.

Australia Fair Shopping center - 10-15 April '06

Just a normal shopping center gig. I used the NT1A's for the first time in a shopping center, and they went well. The tappers are actually commenting to me on how good they sound, and they're getting the reflections!

Julia Creek Dirt n' Dust Festival, April 2 2006

Raw Metal Toured to Julia Creek (two hours east of Mt. Isa) to play at a Triathlon festival (which was pretty much a country-music festival). We had to fly to Mt. Isa and then drive to Julia Creek, which just involves kilometres after kilometers of flat plains that just seem to blend in to each other after a while.

ThAnyway, I used this as an oppertunity to test out my NT1A's as frontline mics (as I was mixing on an Allen and Heath M5000, which I'm really comfortable with), and was ASTOUNDED with the results! I'm impressed that an Australian company can produce such great mics at such extroadrinary prices. The gig went off well, with the female patrons liking us a LOT more than the male patrons.

No pictures, sorry, as my digital camera died!

Melrbourne Commonwealth Games '06

Raw Metal toured down to Melbourne for the Games this year, as the organisers put on a free festival featuring heaps of different acts, with us being one of them!

On the first day we performed in the 'Soundshell', which was the main stage. I got to use a EAW KF750/755 rig (which i haven't used since Norwest Productions) and a Yamaha PM4000. I've never used a PM4000 before, and it was good to learn to use an industry standard desk.

On the second day we had a performance on the smaller 'teaching' stage. The Irony was that I got taught. The story goes that they didnt have our then-standard-rider PZM microphones. What they did have was two large-diaphragm condensor microphones. All i could say was 'wow'. They sounded great, and two of them covered the whole stage! Needless to say, they are now on our rider (They were Mann R21's...we're using Rode NT1A's now).

Here's a pic of me at the PM4000 (smiling, as always!)