BLOG 1

I read Live Sound’s article on Adele’s tour and was very interested in what the mix engineers had to say about their own take on audio. FOH Engineer, McDonald, describes in detail how he mixes Adele’s voice and how he chose a special microphone that he believes suits her perfectly. He says “it’s smoky-smoky rich and R&B straight from the ‘60s… it pushes, really projects” about Adele’s voice, which is why he chose a SKM 500-965 G3 microphone for her. One of my weak points would have to be judging someone’s voice and pairing it with a microphone or plug in, it is reassuring that a lot of people are able to do that so maybe with practice I will be there someday. I found it strange that the crew rent their gear at every stop (so the article stated at first but I guess they kept a few things the same), rather than traveling with all the gear at once. I do not believe I would consider that (at the moment, at least), but it definitely is true that they are being kept on their feet and that makes it more exciting. I think for internal safety reasons, I would like to be working with the same equipment while I’m mixing for a new live audience each night. I love how the front of house mix engineer has his favorite board that he mixes on most of the time. He claims it to be small and portable, I kind of want it already. It is interesting to me that people have preferences to certain audio boards while at the end of the day; each board is technically doing the same thing just differently. He quotes “when you’re done, you just fold it up, carry it away under your arm, and everyone loves you” about his iLive-T112 console. I giggled while reading that and it makes me want to try out the T112, because it’s nice when “everyone loves you”.

An interesting phrase the monitor and front of house engineers said was “cruise controlling”. From what I believe, McDonald in house can control his and the monitor engineer, Campbell, gain structures from his T112. Campbell runs monitors on the exact same board, so I assume it is nice to work on the same boards and be able to patch the gains together. It would be cool to “cruise control” two boards in one of our labs at school.

Although I am not a huge fan of Adele’s music, I can still respect her to the sense that she is a very talented new woman singer, who is not your average star, physically. I always read or watch segments about her and how she is not a your typical female artist like Katy Perry or Alicia Keys, according to appearance. It is always nice having a raw and earthy female making their way to the top quickly without looking entirely perfect. Also I noticed that each touring crewmember listed is a male. It used to bother me that females, according to articles, do not tour often. Now it just makes me grin reading it, because hopefully in the future I can be one of those few female names on a touring crew.