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Young FOH Guns

Marc Dufresne

Young FOH Guns

A Quartet of Exceptionally Talented Young Guys “Know What All the Knobs Do” and Are Turning Them for Some Big Names

“I’m not sure what I wanted, but I knew I wanted to take what I learned there and try to have fun,” says young FOH engineer Eddie Map. “There” is a school for sound engineering, and it’s interesting that three of four of the “young guns” highlighted in this article all have that formal training, and the fourth has formal music training. In the past, most got enviable gigs by just figuring it out as they went, driven by passion and persistence. But while today’s gear seems to demand serious education, these four certainly are not lacking any passion and persistence — or exceptional talent for that matter. They all come from different places and got where they are in different ways, but they are already out with big acts doing a remarkable job like a seasoned professional.

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Keep Frozen Until Show

For the 2007 Canadian Winter Games, they only heated the venue enough to keep the FOH gear operational. . .
 
Whitehorse, Yukon, with its population of 23,000, has a cozy, small-town feel, as people have time to chat, and cars stop for people to cross the street even if the traffic light is green. This city is also one of the best places to see the mysterious phenomenon called the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. During a clear winter night when there is a high level of solar wind, the electrons discharge like florescent lights, and tourists come from all over the world hoping to see the sky light up in green swirls.
 

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How to Benefit from Headroom

Once upon a time I was working for the original large-scale rehearsal/ rental company in Los Angeles. We got a gig for a super-high-profile show at The Century Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom: a $1000-a-plate benefit concert with Stevie Wonder.

We got in at 3 p.m., miked everything up quickly and got ready for soundcheck. That’s when the promoter — who was also mixing front of house for the show — came up to me freaking out and saying he can’t mix! All the faders are about a third of the “normal” level, the subgroups a little higher, and the masters are at 25 percent.

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Get Naked

It’s a much scarier thought for me than it is for Jenna Fischer

I was reading the most current issue of Wired the other day and was struck by something they called “radical transparency” — the notion of being totally open and honest with your customers as a way of inspiring loyalty. (It is very much an extension of the kind of bottom-up hierarchy that I discovered in the books Out of Control and The Cluetrain Manifesto, both of which I wrote about a good two years ago.)

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Better Heard and Not Seen

How do you get big if it’s your job to be transparent?

“How do I get into the big time?” was a question that was recently asked of me. How indeed? Although I understand the person’s desire for success, and seem to comprehend what is meant by “the big time,” I seriously have no absolute viable solution to the query. The good news is that for any neophyte seeking a job in the audio business there are many available avenues to “The big time.” The bad news, on the other hand, is that once you arrive at your destination it may not seem as glossy as “the big time” you once expected. Therefore, I must say that it’s not as much the destination as it is the journey, because if one keeps seeking the big gig just around the corner, then it becomes increasingly difficult to see that they may have finally arrived.

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We Are on to Something Here

Two industry deals get worked out, but maybe not in the way planned …

The music industry has always had an ambiguous relationship with Clear Channel — you may have disliked their practices, but no one could deny their influence and ubiquity. The live sound community especially has had an intense link with what had once been the 600-pound gorilla of the concert production business. When Clear Channel tired of some of its entertainment holdings and spun off the concert production business in December 2005 in the form of Live Nation, a couple of interesting strings remained connected. One of those strings just got resolved — sort of — and it really underscores just how important the live music industry has become to the entertainment sector overall. 

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Bleeding in a Different Sort of Way

Sometimes you need to stand up for your price, before you get squeezed dry

From time to time we hit on an issue in FOH that’s like a live wire to our readers and our writers — not surprising since they’re all audio professionals. One of those threw some sparks this month for Steve La Cerra. This month Steve amplifies on Larry Hall’s “You Book; You Pay” article from the February 2007 issue of FOH. Don’t worry, next month he’ll be back examining high tech issues for us, but until then: Game on. —ed.]

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Tips and Tricks: Is That Really a Line Input?

How to make sure you get what you want out of a pre-amp.

At Aphex, we manufacture outboard microphone preamplifiers. We believe that they are great sounding, and that opinion is shared by thousands of users. We did notice, however, that a few customers complained that they could not hear the quality improvement that they were expecting. When we inquired as to how our preamplifiers were interfaced into their systems, we found that almost all the problems arose from the confusion over whether or not an input that is labeled “line” is a true line input.

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The EQ Strip: Getting Down to What You Need vs What You Want

Frequency equalization has come a long way in mixing consoles for live sound. Also known as bass and treble, or low/ mid/high controls, today’s high-end mixing consoles offer near full parametric adjustments on four or more bands for each channel strip. The big question is, “Do you really need all that equalization flexibility?”

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Taking God on the Road

It may not be rock ‘n’ roll, but the band sure rocks

Over the last several months, I have talked to you about installing worship sound systems, dealing with the church hierarchy, training volunteers, getting paid, etc. What I have not spent any time on is mixing church, gospel and worship groups and going out on the road with a worship band.

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Turning Up the Heat

Chris Chandler matches up well with the wild rock show that is the Flaming Lips

Since the early ‘90s Chris Chandler has had an FOH seat for one of the most exciting and creative rock ‘n’ roll shows played onstage, led by Wayne Coyne and his merry band of pranksters known as the Flaming Lips. From the lead singer getting bounced into a crowd at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in a huge clear ball to space ships onstage to a cascade of balloons bounding down from the rafters to the entire band dressing up in animal costumes, Chandler has seen just about everything.

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