Hi,

been out too long to get some writing on the blog done. But... haven't been sitting still.

On the list since the last concert some very cool and larger shows and events have been passing.

23 th, 24 th & 26th been on the road with El Guapo Stunt Team being the opening act for Danko Jones, for shows in:

ANCIENNE BELGIQUE, BRUSSELS: very nice gig, and oh what a nice material, it was a bit difficult though since I was trying a lot of new things; an entire Audio Technica set which I had on demo. Some very nice sounding microphones they have: AT4040 on guitar is a real treat, a very open but not aggressive sound; ATM 450 on OH maybe a bit to bright but not as harsh as C451s or KM184s and really direct although they are just cardio they seem to be more unidirectional and there was also a AE3000 and a ATM350 clip on. Now I'm deciding which one I'm gonna keep. In fact I want all but budgets to tight.

PARADISO, AMSTERDAM: My first show on a D-Show system, and hey okay it's digital but it's the most rock'n roll sounding digital out there for the moment. Paradiso has the All Access plugin pack which contains the awesome TGI bus compressor and even if you don't compress it still sounds more analog. Lay-out of the desk gets a 6, it's hard to get used too not very clear what's what. But if I really have to take a digital console for now this is first choice.

DEN ATELIER, LUXEMBURG: This was the wierdest room to be in, sounded OK but wierd layout. And a Meyer system which still isn't my cup of tea. I can't seem to get used to it.

Afterwards I was of for a week in Ghent to setup a musical 'Alladin' : 24 wireless headsets, 2 backing tapes started by the director all on a LS9 fully programmed with everything on it fade-times, mutes, FX. I have been playing around with the internal effects of the LS9: multiband compressor on the backing track because they sounded a bit thin and lacked the sub I always looking for to get it all sound a bit like a DVD; and one scene I came up with a really nice echo-verb to emulate a cave and it was really the thing needed for the job. The entire production was done by one of my friends, I just did the programming. I saw the last show after I had been gone for 3 days and I really was caught into the piece.

During the three days I was of mixing 5 shows: 3 Guapo-shows, 1 Galacticos and the first Roadburg I did ever and it was very nice.

For the other shows I gonnan make another post soon. Included is a review of Groezrock 2008.

Blessings

The Reverend

Recently got asked to do sound for both The Galacticos and Roadburg. Second show was the first open air of the year. A Meyer sound set delivered by Stage-Unit and a MH3 at FOH (which in fact again was also Monitors) it was a real nice show, but there was a very inconvenient echo from the buildings that were behind FOH something around 300 ms. Still looking for a nice microphone setup with the Galacticos though. I'm trying a bunch of Audio Technica microphones right now, got a demo set with a ATM 250 DE, ATM 350, AT 450, AT 4040 (which is super nice on guitar) and a AE 3000 (of which everybody told me it was a very nice one for hihat but I don't really like it for that). I also had a super nice compressor which I'm surely going to buy, the Ridgefarm Boiler. It's a ultra fast compressor a bit to fast (even in slow mode) for drums which I intended it for. But it's really nice in guitars and on bass. will try it next week on synths.

Of to the next show in a rush right now: the Rockfest festival in Schaffen, a hardcore festival where I got to be system-engineer and maybe mix some bands gonna be fun. More about that later.

Blessings

The Reverend

Yesterday we had a soundcheck slot from 6 to 7 o'clock at the Sportpaleis. And tonight it's showtime from  20.01  till 20.05. Hope I get some more linechecktime at around 6 because I wasn't that happy with the sound.

Hope that it will be better when the room is full of peoples.

Blessings


The Reverend

I've not left my blog behind. I just took some time off, and went into the studio with El Guapo Stunt Team to record all the tracks for the new album. Although I did not do all of the recording; I did most of the patching from the studio to the protools and mitch's recording rig. Now the only thing left is editing and mixing the whole thing. Maybe we'll go to Motormusic at Koningshooikt or we do it at my place going backing to analog and mixing from there with some rental tube gear to fatten it up. But that's something that will be decided in the near future.

Since El Guapo was recording I had my weekends off and had some time to do some other live mixing that I used to do when I just begun in audio engineering.
It's a operette company who were performing ' Die ZigeunerBaron' by Johann Strauss jr. All the singers were on Shure Wireless Beta 53 headsets, 23 plus 1 spare in total; plus a small ensemble with a special system that they were using.
It's a portable computer with a MIDI sequencer that is tapped into rhythm, so that the conductor can vary the tempo if a singer wants to keep a note a bit longer it is possible. I had some complaints about the sound quality of the MIDI sequencer.
All of it was mixed on one DM1000 that was fully packed with extra preamp/convertors, all outputs were used as well for left-center-right, monitors for the singers on stage and lines at the side of the stage and in the dressingrooms as well.
Since I just was there to replace their engineer for 4 shows, I didn't programmed it all, their engineer didn't use that much scenes. But I told him that next year he should that would make it all a lot easier.
I altered his balance and vocal compression though (to gain some presence in the vocals and make them come across in more soothing way), I also dropped the master volume, so everything would seem acousticly coming of stage. The real form of sound reinforcement as I see it.
Four shows on one weekend was really tyring, because the show asks for a lot of focus and concentration. But all went well, I even got complements of the public.

Next on my agenda was a micrphone course which was given by Peter Claes; it was really interesting and I'm using some of the stuff already. Like finally deciding to double mike all cabinets (it nearly doubled my input number for EGST), using SM 57/58 on overheads and hihat. And some more things about placement and compression.

Last thursday I did Starfucker at some bar in Roeselare on a Mackie  speakersystem with a  Allen & Heath console. The problem with the speaker system was that they putted up the 18" subs with the SRM450 cabinets that aren't designed to be used together or not without thought. The top cabinets were practically running into overload while the subs didn't get enough signal to drive that 18".

And yesterday, after almost 2 months of silence, El Guapo Stunt Team played at Hof ter loo. In the afternoon I also mixed another  band 'the School of Quiet' so I could already discover the defaults in the PA-system/room. I also used the demo-unit of the APEX dBC8 compressor, on all groups.
The El Guapo show was a bit of looking where it was going and constantly tuning the compressors, EQs and balance. But very soon it really sounded in your face but not that loud peaks of about 98 dB.

I was very happy with the achievement and the new things I tested, at the end of the week we're having a  PA rehearsal at the MOD room where we play the next day.

Blessings

The 'in an overly experimental mood' Reverend

Just got back from Brussels were I was doing monitors for Jerboa. As an act of friendship and to see Dizzee Rascal who was on stage right behind Jerb.

The Jerboa concert was fun to do, fun to see all those great people back after a month of nothing. And Jerb of you're reading this you know I want to do plenty more of those next year preferably at FOH position.

Dizzee Rascal was real fun although I wasn't that convinced by the Nirvana and White Stripes cover he did.

Hope to get some more intel on next years tours soon. El Guapo Stunt Team will surely stay (and look out for the new CD it's gonna be awesome I will get some pics of the studio seesions here if I can)
Southern Voodoo and Starfucker will also be around, and hopefully a lot of Jerboa.
I'm looking for some more, something different something jazzy or folky more acoustic sound and instruments seems a challenge to me.

Anyway I'm almost at the bridge now oh shit I forgot I got to send this shit out.

Blessings

The Reverend

Yesterday I got to do another Starfucker, had a nice chat with Sam, who apparently used to work for EMI Belgium. He had some great stories of him playing arcade games with Iron Maiden.

The Starfucker show was outside of Café Capital at about 0° Celsius. Damn that's cold to mix in. They were the second band up just at the end of the first band the cops arrived, ordering that the volume would be turned down, down by 50%. So that would be at about 80 dB.

I just started of soundchecking at a reasonable level. Then I turned everything except the vocals and the subs off.

And gradually I turned somethings up but ended up with just everything of stage, except vocals and sub. So that was a real hard job just to get an even balance.

It was also the first time I used my Optogates for Starfucker and they really enjoyed having them. The lead singer, Marlies, I had on Audix OM 5 which was I demo I recieved from amptec.

Ok this will probably be my last blog of this year, since another year has passed just like that. And this will be my last mix of the year I guess. Maybe some last minute things roll in, we'll see.

Anyway with Guapo to Amsterdam to perform 2 songs on a radio/internetTV show. Back from the Grave (n° 123 in the best song of 2007 list) and White Stripes' Icky Thumb (with a special twist towards Four Eyes)

Since we had already been in the club I was familiar with the room, system and desk.

The show well what can I say? It was to short but really nice. I was a bit nervous as I'm always when I come across a digital mixing board. But the result was good, pure good. The recordings they made DVD & CD sounded very nice.

About the new toys, the Optogate I chose not to use it because you might hear it in a recording for live radio. There also is a new toy, infact it has been on the tour with us from the beginning. It sounded good. And I new it was good.

Blessings to y'all

The Reverend

Today it was the last show with the Guapo guys, location was Altoope @ Tielt. A complete Mackie set was delivered to me, waw how happy was I. But in fact it was not really the material that was a setback, the room was amplifying everything around 100 Hz come of stage. So I didn't have to bother about the bass having enough low end ( but I did because I lacked a lot of sub coming from those Mackie subs), the room was filled with a resonance of about 100 Hz which muddied my mix very much. It was real hard to keep the vocals present same goes for the guitars.
So a lot of work in EQ'ing had to be done, although normally I don't use that much EQ on channels.

But the result was fairly OK, let's say it was the best I could do for this venue. And I hope the best anyone can become in this location.

More news  soon.

Blessings

The Reverend

(Ok, it's been too long till I post this story, but it was a hell of a week.)


Driving for way too long due to traffic jams, roadblocks and one police control at a gas station, looking thru all of our bags. So finally arriving in Chur. It was a large venue, with only 1 Electro Voice mid/high cabinet hung per side ( don't know the type) and 4 subs built into the stage. The sound wasn't terrible but we've in more pleasant situations. I brought my Optogates PB-05 along for the first time and wanted to use them, but apparently the phantom power was dead so no optogate would work. Palazzo was in that point of view a very bad venue. Nothing worked properly or there was no one around who knew how it worked. Like some ART reverb/delay unit with no tap or way to change the delay tempo.

Gaswerk the next day was with Clemi Kuster who's a nice guy, we agreed that I could soundcheck in the afternoon and leave most of my channels untouched by the other bands. Luxury is such a nice gift. During soundcheck none of my Transient Designer inserted channels were working apparently this was one of those types of desks that had the send/return on ring/tip instead of tip/ring like mostly all others. But after some rewiring my rack and a dozen of male/male and female/female busses all was running normally. Since it was the first time to use the Optogates I putted some time in testing them and fine tuning them, I even asked the light engineer to put on showlights during soundcheck just to see if the PB-05 would react to this. But they didn't.
Showtime was pretty late so everybody took some rest backstage before the show. The show was a good one with a nice recording as a result of it.

I'm of now to yet another search for some nice DI boxes (Countryman or Whirlwind are in the lead)

The 'luxuriously blessed with soundchecks' Reverend

check out THIS

Just putting up a quick correspondance from Gaswerk @ Winterthur.

2 shows went great:
yesterday Palazzo @ Chur
today Gaswerk @ Winterthur (as stated earlier)

More technical info (if I can remember) follows when home. Just one very important thing to put here is that the Optogate PB-05's were used for the first time here at Gaswerk and did their job super well. Definitly a keeper. More info on Optogate or for Belgium Sound Engineering Ludo Vleugels. I hope I can persuade a lot of you sound engineers to try this nice piece of engineering.

You hear me later this week with more insight on the performances.

Blessings

The 'optically gated'  Reverend

    Round 5 o'clock in the afternoon I got an urgent phonecall from Niels of Buffoon, they were playing a show at Den Hemel ( been there before with El Guapo Stunt Team, nice room with a decent PA system). They would be opening for The Go Find, who would bring their soundengineer but he had to cancel due to illness (hope you get better soon). So he asked me to mix both bands, I of course immediatly agreed.

When I arrived, The Go Find was already there. After tuning patchlists so we wouldn't loose time at change-over and everything was miked, a soundengineer walked in who was at very last notice contacted by The Go Find, so I wouldn't be doing their sound. I was a bit disappointed.

It was the first time ever I saw Buffoon, I knew Niels from my time with The Shovels and met Dave on some ocassions being a good friend of the Guapo musicians. The problem was that Johan ( soundengineer for the Go Find ) had soundchecked already and I was over his channels and since we had no recall-sheets I tried to change as little as possible most of the time just switching the EQs off. The show went great Gunther Liket of Vandal X assured me it sounded as the band likes it. Filthy, raw and a bit to loud. All the monitor sends were near feedback, I had to clean up some tracks especially the acoustic guitar that was resonating  around 250 Hz.

The band was excited about the gig and so was I.

Johan also did a great job on the Go Find which was a quieter set with more space for definition and detail. It was just the amount the PA system could handle.
Anyway I made new friends hope to meet Johan on myspace sometime and I had a great night out. Also thanx to Theo and Niels for calling me and Dieter for the Go Find vinyl.

Hope to give you guys some pictures soon but first I need to have the camera fixed.

Blessings

The Reverend

Second and for now last one with this band of warm and loving people.

 

Arriving early we ran over the needs for the band then everyone arrived except JesseRobot who was getting in later with only a quick line-check. After a nice and easy soundcheck we went to eat. Well some food they get you, damn that's good cooking. Some nice conversations we had during diner, I will put some up here just to give you a picture of what it was like.

A question was raised if vegertarians are allowed to eat meat-eating plants. Or if the should only eat the meat of carnivores, because the also eat meat and a vegetarian doesn't like thought of meat being eaten.

Some musical riddles were unfolded C29 is it a G or a B?  

9 o'clock, showtime. I really went for it ( as I do all the time when I like the music), and the result was pleasing. The mix is still a bit shady in the low end but that will get some work in the near future. If there is another occasion to do mix them live. I got some nice compliments of the crowd, some of them are real familiar with Jerboa's sound and also Jerb himself congratulated me. It's always nice to have a good feeling about a show and getting recognized for it.

 

Hope to hear and meet the Jerboa crew again soon. And see you guys at the next blog.

 

Blessings

 

The Reverend

Today it was my first time with Jerboa, replacement for Dany. I had been studying the CD & recording from their live performance @ Pukkelpop last summer. This kinda music is really my thing not that I listen to stuff like this all the time but it's really something I could enjoy mixing and I did. Nice chaps too.

I had a Midas Heritage 1k at my disposal and an very nice array of FX M5000, SPX 1000, SPX 990 PCM 71 and a D2. I used all the FX on vocals except the PCM which I putted on percussion to get it less direct and more layered.

Soundcheck was loud. A habit that remains from the shows with El Guapo Stunt Team. But it's a large room and I didn't know how many people were to come, so I wanted to be able to go loud if necessary.

At showtime, 15 people were in the room, kind of like an open rehearsal. That was a bit of an issue soundwise. Because there wasn't that much damping of the low end as I would have liked.

But the show went great I had my FX practically all the time as I liked them and as Jerb likes them too. The balance between everything didn't need that much work as I thought it would be. At the end of the set I had just a problem with the amount of percussion I was getting of stage (timbales can go very loud); because I was trying to get the overall volume down. So I had to stay as loud as was given to me by the volume of the percussion.

 

It was about 4 years ago that I had been to the Botanique back in those days we had to run along some shows for my education at SAE. And my tudor from back then is still working there, Bernardo former engineer for Deus and other. It was fun  seeing him again and get to Boss him around (just kiddin').

It was in all a fun show the people that did come loved it and so did Jerb who is getting an exact copy of my mix.

Now of to do some Starfucker.

 

Blessings

 

The Reverend

My second time with Starfucker, also me instead of Dany who is by the way of for a show with Sioen in Maleysia, lucky ass he is.

Berkenbeat, for the first time I got to see the Killbots live on stage, man they blow some serious raw rock of stage man. I was pleasantly surprised, I would although like to see them when they have their proper sound engineer with them. This time it was up to Frut to do their sound, man does he go loud man, this was practically inbareble.

The room had a very strange architecture and layout. The stage really functioned as I radiator of it's own. So FOH wasn't a fun place to be trying to keep it from being too loud and aggresive.  

For Starfucker we threw in some OM-7's on vocals with which the monitor-guy apparently had some problems with, which ended in some furious discussions. I have been doing monitor with them and never had one problem when changing from SM 58 to OM 7. There is no EQ needed and it doesn't feedback. Only when you put it VERY loud.

The Starfucker show was a bit off they weren't having the best day but I knew the result was the best the room could handle under these given circumstances: chaotic soundcheck with inserts dropping on and off.

 

Blessings

 

The Reverend