By George Petersen
People often ask me about the differences between live and studio engineers, and I chuckle at that suggestion, because other than honing basic skills like mic selection, gain structure, etc. — that’s about where the similarities end.
Time is a major factor. Live engineers just don’t have 4-5 hours to tweak a hi-hat sound. And I can’t recall a time when studio denizens were concerned with how humidity and temperature changes between sound check and showtime would affect high-frequency performance.
Preparedness is everything, but more often than not, live work involves thinking on one’s feet and coming up with on-the-spot solutions.
A recent example of this occurred to FRONT of HOUSE contributor Steve Savanyu. The gig is listed in this month’s Showtime section (page 20), but such listings of crew and gear don’t always reveal the whole story.
Working with his regular client, the Akron Symphony Orchestra, during a rehearsal of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, Savanyu was chatting with maestro Christopher Wilkins who lamented that playing on a stage — even with a nice orchestral shell — the players didn’t experience the same reverberation signature as a large acoustical space.
It would have been easy to just pump some digital-reverb foldback onto the stage area. Yet Savanyu took a more organic approach, setting up a monitor rig behind the shell, facing the stage’s concrete rear wall, fed by a special orchestra “FX mix.”
Working like an acoustic echo chamber, the reinforced sound bounced off the concrete, entered via a slot opening in the shell and acoustically blended with the stage performance.
This created the desired effect without using artificial reverberation, and everybody loved the result.
Nicely done!
