Recap Of My Gig At The Evelyn Hotel.

After becoming friends with Lachlan Hol in trimester 1 and 2 of uni, i have been given some pretty incredible opportunities in the melbourne live scene. He has started a production company and have been putting on gigs around melbourne, i was asked if i wanted to do sound for a gig because their last sound engineer pulled out last minute. After doing the gig at the Workers Club i impressed him enough for him to ask me to do 4 more gigs over the next few months. I did a gig on Australia Day at the Grace Darling Hotel and last thursday i helped him out at The Evelyn Hotel on Fitzroy.

Coincidentally i have been studying Live Sound at uni, so i was keen to implement the skills i have learnt there. So far i had been mainly winging what i was doing and reading online articles to try and answer some of the questions i had about becoming a good live sound engineer. Something that i have been struggling with and curious about the correct method of doing is monitors and how that should be mixed and how to communicate with band members so i can give them a mix they are comfortable with.

I turned up early to the gig 5 hours early and i programmed the Midas M32 with all of the scenes and pinked up all the amps and monitors to make sure everything was connected properly. I then set up the stage and did line checks on all the channels. 2 hours before the doors were to open, all 4 bands came in to do a sound check. As soon as the first band set up for soundcheck i realised that all of the preparation that i had done will have to be thrown out the window because some of the band members were not there/ they had brought instruments that had not been specified on the list and some bands were sharing members and the instrument changeovers was wrong to what i had been told. This was not a problem for me because by that stage i was comfortable with the system and could easily set everything up exactly how the band wanted it. During sound check i made extra sure that each member what happy with their monitors and assured them that if there was anything they needed, feel free to talk to me.

The show went well with little to no feedback (only when the singer dropped her mic in front of the foldback) and all band changeovers went smoothly. After the show many of the band members came up to me and thanked me and were very surprised to hear that i was new to live sound and this was only my 5th gig. I asked them for feedback about the sound and if there was anything they noticed that i could have done better and the only real feedback i got was that the soundcheck could have gone for a little longer. So next time i will organise the bands to come in a little earlier and soundcheck them for a little longer.