Features

An Oregon house of worship upgrades its audio with digital advances and state-of-the-art sound equipment. 

A few days after workers finished the new sanctuary and massive thrust stage of the First Baptist Church in Eugene, Ore. — with little re-hearsal time in the space, and less time for the technical staff to comprehend the full scope of their options — the Oregon Bach Festival or-chestra and choirs, under the baton of conductor Helmuth Rilling, took the stage to perform Bach’s Mass in B Minor to a packed house of 1,250 eager classical music fans. 

One modern church gets maximum sound for a minimal cost

When the members of the Rolling Hills Christian Church started to discuss a multipurpose room built with top-notch audio and video gear to help them reach out to the community, Mark Thompson, principal of Clarity Audio Systems, was tapped for his expertise.

"They have a very contemporary worship style, and they wanted to be able to fully support everything they do in their services,” Thompson said, explaining the church’s goals. “In addition, they didn’t want to have to bring in outside audio for touring groups. Plus, they wanted the space to be available as a community center.”

I was talking with a local sound guy the other day who told me they were “one 150-foot Ethernet cable away” from implementing complete system control from a laptop at front of house. It was not so long ago that if those of us in the sound tribe even knew what Ethernet cables were, we thought of them as something we used to hook our computers into a network and not something we would use on site at a gig.

Bartha Audio/Visual Helps a Skin-Care Firm Pull Out All the Stops for Its Annual Celebration.

Corporate gigs don’t have the glamour of a rock show, but they also don’t have the same requirements — a lot of times they have more. Corporate events aren’t only about pumping lung-crushing SPLs — trying to maintain intelligibility and fidelity with a larger dynamic range than a rock show, while battling video, and lighting, is where the skill portion comes in. Bartha Audio/Visual recently used all its skills to turn the MGM Garden Arena into a convention hall for skin-care firm Arbonne’s annual National Training Celebration, and then reinforced a marching band to rock out the attendees.

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.

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.

We are embarking upon the high season of live sound production, and it is good to think about the items that will be plaguing us and our crews during this time. This article is a compendium of ideas from the authors and a call to action before the summer gigs become imminent.

Audio In the Big Leagues

I’m standing at front of house inside L.A.’s Staples Center the night before the 49th Grammys broadcast. I’m surrounded by some of pro audio’s biggest heavyweights, and the mood is best described as “watchfully relaxed.” After six grueling days of install and rehearsals, the crew is ready to wrap and get ready for show day. 

Oakland's Paramount Theatre is a cultural hub for the city, with all sorts of musical and comedy tours hitting the stage as well as local civic events, graduations and the Oakland Speakers' Series. Every so often theatre management shows a vintage film, which returns the venue to its original movie house glory.

The theatre, which seats around 3,000, opened in 1931 with the express goal of showing the major motion pictures of the day. The art deco style that was hip 76 years ago is still eye-catching, and the venue boasts a handful of unique charms.