Salvation Army - Durham

Elvet Methodist Church, Durham

On the 18th of August 2012 a friend of mine and I where employed by a particularly kind lecturer to drive up to Durham and record a salvation army gig at Elvet Methodist Church. I drove up in my pickup truck with all the gear, which only included: my M-Audio fast track pro, a laptop, some XLR cables, a mic stand and a pair of SE electronics pencil condensers.  

http://www.elvet-church.org.uk/

The orchestra was brilliant, as were the other acts that performed!

 We set up within half an hour or so but it took us a little while to set the gain levels because of the diversity of acts at the event. We managed to troubleshoot this by using the -10db pads of the microphones and the audio interface, we then reduced the pre-amp gain on the M-Audio fast track pro in order to simply prevent any digital clipping.

We decided that it was better to be safe then sorry and gave ourselves plenty of headroom to prevent clipping, I think the highest input signal was around -30db but we did this because we knew we could just boost the signal on the old Cubase post production and save ourself from the grief of a digitally distorted 2.5 hour track. If I could do it again, I would have been a bit braver with the gain structure BUT we learn through our mistakes and apart from the gain structure not being optimized, nothing went wrong at all.    




The church was packed full of interesting people and the room sound was nice, big and ambient, as expected. Perfect for an orchestra in my opinion.


I think at one point I even met a Lord! He seemed like a nice chap and was just curious as to what we where doing with a microphone in one of the seats.

Here I am, hard at work with my little rig set up in my control room at the back of the church

Easy Audio and Lighting

As part of an additional Enterprise module from the music technology course at Middlesbrough college, a group of young passionate students, eager to break into the industry where given the chance to form their own company. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Easy-Audio-Lighting/319778074699044

The Easy Audio crew (that's me on the far right) 

Some nice star cloth and par cans here

So with the help of a kind lecturer we set out to start a PA hire firm, getting work around the Teesside area, we hired out some of the college's audio and lighting equipment from the music technology department and offered our services as aspiring audio technicians. The primary goal of this operation was to gain real life experience in the industry, start networking to gain a foot hold in the local music scene and getting paid beer money didn't hurt too much either!

You don't really learn live sound properly unless you experience it first hand. Learning the theory is essential... but you have to go out and get the experience in order to really know what your doing. At this point in time there's still lots I need to learn but I'm looking forward to doing so and after this brilliant little module, I can honestly say that I have learned an absolute tonne from it and gained much more confidence to work in the industry.

  

The beginning of an unpredictable story

Hi, my name is Thomas Munro and this blog is dedicated to documenting my journey through the music industry. I'v been a student at Middlesbrough college for two years now, studying the strange and deeply subjective field of music technology. I live in Eaglescliffe, Stockton-On-Tees which is a bit of a weird place I guess, everybody here calls it a dump but there are some good points to it (though I cant think of too many apart from parmos and my friends and family).

My VOX AC30 recorded with my RODE nt2a

I started my musical life listening to bands like AC/DC and learned to play the guitar. My first guitar was an Argos strat which put me off stratocasters for years. I upgraded later on to an Epiphone Les Paul which I still have now and it sounds pretty decent (I just wish it stayed in tune) now I have a Gibson SG classic with P90's which sound fat as hell and a Gibson es 335 dot diamond in black which is just the most amazing guitar I'v ever played, it's actually a limited edition from the Gibson custom shop, here's a hyper link to the story of it: http://www.fatneckguitars.co.uk/#/gibson-es335/4545584572

My first good amp was a VOX AC30CC2 and I love this amp. It's impractical as hell and it's an absolute bitch to carry around because it weighs so god damn much... but my god, it sounds heavenly if you want clean tones. I have recently bought a Marshall Class 5 which is a perfect little 5W class A tube amp that I fell in love with the moment I first tried it in the shop.

Middlesbrough College by Steve Mayes

In my two years at Middlesbrough college I have learned so much and made some good friends on the way, just about all the lecturers are brilliant, as long as you respect them enough to get work in when needed and don't act like a complete idiot. I cant wait to start my last year here because I just want to learn more and more. I love meeting fellow students that are as passionate about music and the technology side of it as I am. Middlesbrough college is a great environment to learn through conversations with fellow students, and lecturers are always more than willing to pass on knowledge and advice.