The final show of a life of String has finished. In that day we had a matinee and a evening performance. The matinee show went fine but again I got comments that the mid range was to loud and there wasn’t enough bass. So I spent the day editing the tracks to find a EQ that found a balance.
Overall the shows went well and the only mistakes which were made were down to cueing issues but they were easily fixed and myself and lighting were able to work together when a cue was out.
Before each show I would conduct pre show checks which were myself; checking if the amps were on, checking the levels on the amps, checking the desk was on, checking I was getting input to the desk, checking I was able to get sound and finally going through the QLab file quickly seeing if any edits had to been to songs which I had not changed. By doing this I avoided any mistakes with sound throughout the shows.
The production process was a bit touch and go for the most part. Although I had a clear understanding of my role I go confused to which was more important of sourcing tracks for the dancers or my sound design. However, I was able to complete my sound design as well as research tracks which wouldn’t be used in the performance. With enough planning I felt I was able to produce a sound design which was built round the directors vision and suited the venue.
My sound design despite all the comments about the bass being to much in my opinion thought worked well. I built my whole idea of what I want my sound design to be as the director pretty much gave me freedom on what to do. I chose to put 2 extra subs in because my idea of a dance show is different to what a rock band or musical is. This is because in a musical or rock show you have a band, singers, musicians etc. In dance there is no talking however there is the performance element of their body’s talking which is what I wanted to emphasise.
As this show from what the director said had a emphasis on bass I wanted to follow up on that and give a bit of impact when the bass hits so the audience can feel the music as much as the dancers.
The physical problems with having a large amount of low frequencies is that it rattles and shakes loose objects around the subs. I should of done a bit more of pre planning and anticipated what the subs would do a bit better and would of avoided re EQ’ing several times. However it worked towards the end because at my very first show file I was emphasising bass on every single song. Even though the songs were very mid and high range. I later changed to emphasise the bass on only the dubstep songs which is where the bass suited better. If I had even more times I would only boost the bass on the bits where I wanted the audience to feel like at the drops.
My whole design practically I felt work. I designed a PA where the audience had a good volume regardless from where they were sitting and the dancers could clearly hear the music where ever they were on stage.
Overall, the production went well. I needed to do a bit more research on sound and sound theory when designing and should of done a bit more research and listened to the songs more before I got them.
technicianben 