Confetti Celebrate

is a college event hosted by Confetti (who would've guessed?) to celebrate the end of the college year by showcasing all the students' final work. Our work here on the Technical Events course is showcased in the form of us operating and managing the show.

Unlike all the other shows, this one was a little more... chaotic, to begin with.

My initial understanding was that this event was going to be similar to Radfest, that being me learning an entirely new console, as this time, I decided to take a different role than usual:

Monitor Engineer.

Using the Allen & Heath DLive console.

I don't remember the model number for this one, but I know it wasn't the Radfest C3500 model.

The day before the event, Lewis (we were working together) and I were briefed on the event by one of Metronome's in-house operators, who we thought would be working with us the next day. Although the monitor console wasn't on show

The brief was mainly for the FOH role, so we were shown the DiGiCo SD12 instead.

the in-house guy was still lovely and was thorough and in-depth in showing us its functions.

The Day

Everything was going swimmingly until we realised that the in-house tech from the day before hadn't shown up.

Chaos ensues.

This set a cascade of domino effects in action. Another one of Metronome's house-techs had to be immediately brought in with ~30mins notice, so props on them for managing with such little warning.

Unfortunately, this meant they weren't aware of what the setup was going to be, so it took a little longer to get the Monitor Console out, and understandably, there was a much greater focus on helping the FOH team compared to us. We managed to set up the DLive, but we were going in quite blindly.

Once I finished patching, I came back over to Lewis to see what was happening with the Sound Check. To begin with, we weren't getting certain channels until we managed to fix that. (phantom power)

Everything seemed to be on track until we realised that the Front of House console wasn't receiving any channels from us. It appeared to be a communication issue between the DLive and the DiGiCo SD12 console at FOH. The even bigger problem was that, as Sound Check was starting, everything started to get quite intense, and we came to a realisation that we needed to sacrifice the dedicated DLive monitor console and run monitors from the FOH DiGiCo SD12.

This meant two things:

1. Monitor & FOH roles would have to be combined.
2. We needed an entirely new, rotating order of who would operate which bands.

1. Meant that there'd be 4 of us surrounded on one console.
2. Meant that each of us would operate one whole band each, but balance both FOH and Monitors at the same time on the console.

This wasn't the most convenient, but it certainly fixed a lot of issues.

Then,

the audience came in while we were still setting the monitors up at FOH. We literally had to go "screw it" and go hell's lose, no monitors with the first solo acoustic act, and no pre-set EQ for FOH.

Eventually,

the show properly began. We were running behind, but we gradually managed to fight back against the time and put a show together, one EQ and compressor at a time. Dual-wielding FOH and Mons will always be an experience. But what can I say? Getting an opportunity to mix on such a behemoth console is always a delight!

After the show ended, the gang and I, knackered out of our minds *(did I mention it was a 14hr shift?)* got some sweet icy treats, and they were oh so yummy.

...mmmyummymilkshake...

Eventually,

we all went home, and I collapsed into sleep.

Many zzz's,

Finlay Wilson @ thesound.engineer