Tech Work at Fremont Abbey Arts Center, part 3

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday March 4, 2010 – Tech Work at Fremont Abbey Arts Center, part 3

Taking the work with sound reinforcement the next step. Those who were available arrived at Fremont Abbey at 6:30 and loaded in the equipment. Since last week, the additional speakers, cables, stands and a snake had been acquired, so we would be able to work with the full system. For this rehearsal the risers also came down from storage, allowing us to work with the challenges of laying cables in our performance configuration.

Setup was relatively quick. By shortly after 7, everything was set up, and we were beginning to do a basic soundcheck. Joel arrived with his gear and set up and soundchecked as well. Hearing him in stereo through a proper PA was very encouraging. Everyone was in the house by 7:30, and so a more formal soundcheck proceeded. Some work was necessary to balance the 4 speakers and make sure that Ryan, the soundman, and the channels routed the way they needed to be. We were experimenting with an arrangement for the speakers we had not yet tried.

My sense of things was that we needed to simply play as much as possible, getting used to the sound of ourselves amplified in the room, before we dove into the technical side of adjustments, which can turn into something of a black hole if we are not careful. So for the first hour we simply called repertoire and played, stopping to tweak the sound as minimally as possible. The House Team again sat in various places within the room, providing feedback on the sound. We experimented with improvs that included Joel, some of them stand alone versions of “when ready, begin”, and others more deliberate, with specific key orientations, designed to set up particular pieces of repertoire. Both of these showed a lot of promise, with the potential of integrating Joel’s contribution.

After some discussion, we concluded that the speaker arrangement was not working in the room. Our final arrangement last week was superior in sound, but awkward in the space, and so I suggested a kind of compromise between the two. After a bit of tweaking, running Sigh and a Kiss as our test piece, we arrived at something that was a clear improvement.

Back to running repertoire and improvs. Jaxie was in the middle of the room, Joel in position off to the side, contributing to the improvs. I had the sense that Joel will need monitors for this.

At 9:45 a quick wrap up of what we had learned, then tear down and load out.