Well, I started this job 3 weeks ago, and I am already on vacation … I still haven’t done the web billing for September … Hope to get to that before September ends … I don’t want to give away a free month, and surprisingly no one has mentioned that they didn’t get a bill … Hmm … Originally I took the Octane job so I could have more free time to myself, and so far I haven’t even had any more free time … I guess this really has to do with not receiving everything I ordered from the music store yet, and not having things set with the system yet … I still have work to do on the system as well as doing things to the band gear to make the sound better each night … for example, the E609 mics hang on Quinn’s A cabinet just fine, but on Tripp’s B cabinet, the mic sometimes turns off axis and it drastically changes the sound … This also affects their ears so I am planning on sewing a couple elastic pockets on their cabinet grills to further avoid this problem … I still have yet to incorporate the DriveRack into the system as well as the other 3 amps that we’ve been pushing into clubs … Crowns aren’t light you know … The 1200 I got offa Pirylis has a custom PIP installed and I recently asked if he had the original and he did, so I have to swap that out for the horns … I have to make speaker cables to allow for 3 way stereo … This will require 3 cable runs to either side … 10 pairs which will actually be 12 pairs … 2 subs, 2 mids and 2 horns … I could jump the horns, but running 12/4 wire will just have the 3 runs with 2 pair each … I will jump the horns at the amp instead being that the Speakon connector at the cabinet is wired for the crossover in the cabinet …
Clubs I’ve been to since the last post are as follows: Reeds, Tinks, Montana West, Park City and The Whiskey Tango … It was raining at Reeds, and while we came in the back without any rain, we loaded out in the rain going down the ramp … What I envisioned as a very difficult load out with slipping worked out well … no slipping … Tinks was VERY far away … All the way up to Scranton … Montana West is just down the street from Ed’s Quakertown and it’s a very big room … Sorta like the old Bronco Bill’s … Park City was near The Meadowlands and it was a house system … They had It’s the Pigs open up for them there … Even though we brought in the light show, it was still considered a walk-in … The house system was 2 SR4732as flown and 8 JBL 15s on the bottom … It actually didn’t sound that bad, and the room isn’t that big … Sorta like a 15 North … And Whiskey Tango … Everyone was asking me if I was going to bring in my system being that I had mixed almost a year on their house system … I said that it was sort of like borrowing somone’s car … You’d rather drive your own …
After every show I ask who I can how it sounded … I am certainly very concerned with this … I still have the stress at the shows of doing a good job and hoping things go smoothly … Since the little trouble spots at The Ridge (first gig) I think everything has gone smoothly … The things that we need to do as a crew are to make sure we’re set up by the time the band gets there if they want to run a song or two … Otherwise, I think things have already progressed in that we’re setting up much faster … Then the load out needs to get faster and part of the problem there is the size of the truck and how to pack it each night … We still haven’t settled on one pack … It has been getting packed differently night after night … John is incredible with the pack … Each night there seems to be more and more room … but even though this happens, there still is the need for a larger truck cause stacking is not good … Not only does it require more muscle, the truck drives differently depending on the pack …
Anyway … so most people are telling me that it sounds really good … I have my own reservations cause there are things that I would like to sound better … In particular the drums … I think the kick drum could be fatter and the toms should sound better … The wood hoop kit that Bob is using sounds much different than the kit he used at the audition … While the kit sounds good when they’re all playing (read: in the mix), I think if it sounded great to me before everyone else started playing that the mix would just sound that much better … I have been going with very hot guitars as they specified they wanted it to sound … but one only need to listen to their CD When All is Said and Done and be able to tell how they should be mixed … Whenever they play an original, I hear that familiar mix and I really get into it … Some of the songs that I’m not familiar with yet, or don’t get the adrenaline pumping as much I kind of suffer through in that I am hoping it sounds as it should … Sometimes bringing Brian’s voice over those guitars is difficult, even with the Distressor … I am using the Symphonic a lot in this area, and it has been helping …
There are many people I promised to get to things this week (being that I’m on “vacation”) … and I hope to get to them … They include my father and some people need some recordings that I made with the minidisc transferred to CD … This requires re-recording the stuff to get it into computer format … Which reminds me … I have been sorta told that I shouldn’t record Octane … I don’t necessarily know why … I think Brian is afraid to immortalize a mistake or something? I don’t rightly know … Anyway, again, I hope to get a lot done so that eventually I will have this time to myself that I thought I was getting when I left the Whiskey Tango 6 night a week job for the Octane 2 or 3 a night job … I still work at The Whiskey Tango on Sundays nights … Regardless of who is there … It will help finance this huge investment I have taken on with Octane … New light show, and a lot of new PA gear … Whew!