All of us have mixed sound for track acts, right? If that isn't a broad enough question, how about: have you, at some point, played canned music through a system? This is an important question because the majority of us have some particular music we use to listen to the tonal quality of our rigs, or our clients rig, once we are set up. For the most part we have at least one CD player on hand for just such a task. You may even have a Teac CD/cassette machine. They sold a lot of those back in the day. But before I take us for a stroll down memory lane, let me get to the subject of my piece this month. iPods are on the threshold of becoming the new source of choice for the canned music that we play and use in our business. Don't get me wrong, when I say "on the threshold" it may take many years to transition. However, we don't use 8-tracks anymore (do we?), and rarely will you find a cassette out there. The reason I believe we are going in this direction is because it makes so much more sense. First of all, you can stuff every CD you own into your iPod and it's all stored in a very very small package. A package that won't skip or stop if you bump it or drop it. A package that you just can't scratch. (Well, the music anyways–that brushed chrome gets more scratches than Outkast at a DJ convention.)
Currently I use an iPod for all my bumper music and I have a few particular songs I listen to when I am tuning a rig. I basically can walk into any briefcase gig, pull out my iPod and listen to the system using a song or songs that I am very familiar with. This one application has made my hired-gun work better faster and cleaner. But what has really intrigued me about the use of these devices is that I have had more and more track acts bringing their entire show on an iPod. I recently had a live rock act give me their iPod for the intro and outtro music of their show. For them (and me) it is simply an easier, more reliable format.
Just a couple weeks back, I was supplying sound reinforcement for a mid-sized Radio Disney show. The show consisted of 2500 kids listening to three of their favorite acts. All the acts used tracks, plus I supplied intermission music appropriate for the event. Two acts used the CDs and one used an iPod. The intermission music came from a laptop. (I haven't mentioned laptops because with the other formats out there I don't think I will have acts handing me their laptops for the backing tracks any time soon.)
Anyway, back to Radio Disney. I was running the track for the second artist through my CD player. During her show, the DJ/announcer asked my assistant to queue up a CD for his monologue. W i t h o u t thinking, my assistant (emphasis on ass) hit the eject button on my CD player and crashed the show. Here's the point. This probably wouldn't have happened with an iPod. Mainly because a small player like the previously mentioned sits right in front of me at the board. By the way, when the show went down, the singer (Kristy Frank) never skipped a beat. She finished the song a cappella. A real pro for a sixteen year old.
Another example of my own flexibility using my iPod took place just last Friday at a blues festival in Valencia, California. I realize by the time you read this there is a greater time lag but don't let that bother you. At any rate, I was running sound for a blues artist. She specifically asked me not to play any blues before her show. "How about a little country?" I asked. She wanted nothing to do with that so I ran though every genre I could think of until we settled on some Latin jazz. I simply scrolled to one of my Latin jazz artists and we had music. With more than a thousand songs on my tiny player, I can just about cover anybody's needs or desires.
I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these little players. Video can be added to a live performance easier than you can imagine. The reality of this format is that it has improved my business. I don't carry around any CDs to my shows. Of course I have a CD player and will have for many years, but eventually I will only bring one if the client request or a rider calls for it.
I would like to add a couple of practical things here. My personal CD collection supplied 99% of the music on my iPod. I have also bought some material on line and it has a very good sound quality. However, I have attempted to take material from another digital music player in MP3 format to my iPod and that sound quality was less than satisfactory. This information is probably neither here nor there for most of you. I am guessing that you can hear good from bad. If you can't you're in the wrong biz. I thought I would just save you some grief.
I think that transitioning into a small player format, whether it is an iPod or a cell phone should be fairly painless. (I'm probably underestimating the sheer number of you who still only listen to your enormous library of cassettes and 8-tracks.) All kidding aside, if I look at where this biz has come since I started my company, a lot has happened in a short time. Line array didn't exist just a few years ago, and a digital board was a rare and expensive commodity. Now just about everyone builds a line of flying boxes (whether they should or not), and you can probably find a coupon for some manufacturers digital board in a box of Wheaties.
