Private Parties With Good Food And Music

[George]

Hello All,

I just got home from a rather interesting gig. Work was a lot of fun for once. We got asked to participate in a large private party for 6500 employees of a high tech company in South San Francisco in their parking lot right on the SF bay. The event was kept low key to prevent advance notice on who the musical choice was and keep it a suprise. On Wednesday the heavy gear came in and the tents and stage were dropped and secured (it gets windy there). Thursday the truss, canopy, audio, video, generators, and crowd control fences went in and the caterers began to set tables. Friday morning the surrounding streets were closed, the food and beverage was brought in while the sound and video got final tweaks and crowd control and security personnel took stations. There were free full bars and the best catering I have seen since I worked the Concourse De Elegance a few years back and they were set to handle 6500 and then some.

The crew acommodations backstage were great and I managed to actually lavish in it for once. I usually have to be in charge of engineering and that means Mr. last minute fixit is what I am and you never get to do anything but run from one little fire to another putting it out as quickly as possible and repeating until it's over. Not this time, Our company couldn't participate directly because of labor contract issues so we rented our cameras and mobile TV control system to an outside production company a friend of mine runs and my wife and I got all access passes and none of the headaches of staffing and managing the event along with almost full value on the equipment rental. Cake and eat it too. I missed the opening act because I was stuffing my face at the buffet like there was no tomorrow.

Before I reveal the main artist (it's a real suprise, really), I will talk you through some details in the images so you won't be bothered by text when you view the images. The video screens (another friends company) are 6mm LED panels (cool technology) and are 8" thick and come in 3'x4' sections. For perspective, the LED video walls flanking the stage are 24 feet wide. The curved speaker clusters flown just inside the LED walls are a new technology called Line Array and the audio was excellent, studio immaculate, yet loud enough to really party, with bass like you would never believe. Chest thumping at 100 yards and still clear as a bell. Another local company provided the Line Array loudspeakers and certain subsystems, but the main artist airshipped in the entire front end for mains, monitors and all instruments of course from London overnight priority-one each way! The supporting acts brought in their trailers and took off what they needed (they were both on tour and detoured for this gig).

The video crew shot features my two friends (Steve & Barry) shading, switching and directing cameras. This little TV production area was in the front corner of the tent on the right just under the LED video wall. In the shot looking over the monitor mix engineers shoulder, I am standing right where video control is and looking across the stage. The sound right there was excellent of course. Barry and steve had to wear in-ear adapters and noise-cancelling headsets to be able to communicate with the camera operators. We had three broadcast cameras on full studio control there. One front of house (FOH) at the mix position with a long lens, one stage left to get the money shot of the main artist (he was positioned facing cross stage toward us) and one in the pit (the open space just beyond the crowd control barriers at the front of a stage). We didn't get to keep the tapes, but take it from me, some good television was made earlier this afternoon and it's on a tape somewhere.

Here are some of the still photos I got to keep. Oh, you ask who the talent was?

There was a R&B singer I wasn't familiar with, Matchbox 20 and someone else who's name I just can't quite seem to remember. Maybe these pictures will help.

This will be slow on a dialup connection (400k maybe), sorry.

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy the photo's, I enjoyed taking them.

--

Regards,

[kimel]

Wow...I SOOOOO work for the wrong company! Last time we had a party it was an "employee appreciation event" where the employee's were solicited for donations to pay for the pies.

[Shooter Grrl]

OHMYGAWD - that's Elton John!!!!!!!! YOu are so freakin' lucky! I hear he puts on the bestest show!

[gm iprod]

Well, he's not bad for a balding Queen named Reg.

Saw him when he came to New Zealand a few years ago, bestest is not close, it was bloody amazing. 2 and a bit hours full on.

[AGYoung]

I saw him at an indoor concert, seats right infront of the engineer's board. Best sounds I have ever heard.

He puts on one hell of a show.

[benos]

Man, what fun! On the set list I noticed Tiny Dancer and Levon. Man, would'a like to have seen that show. IMO Elton's best album was his first - Tumbleweed Connection, and his second best was his second album - Madman Across the Water. Two awesome albums!

be

[SiG Lady]

That was SO cool of you to bring back the photos...!!!! I mean, really.

I saw him in in the very early 70s at the Bekeley Community Theatre (venue holding perhaps a few hundred souls)... He wore a chartreuse sequined suit, short hair, and those bloomin' big pink sunglasses. God, he looked weird.

Talented though.

[EricW]

I've vowed to never go to another concert again, but Elton's the one dude I'd make an exception for. Even 20 years ago the guy had a reputation for putting on an absolutely first-rate show with every seat receiving excellent sound.

I'm absolutely blown away that any private company could pop for the several mil that it took to put that on. The talent alone must have cost a couple bills.

[George]

Howdy All,

I don’t have rock solid data on what Elton cost, but I heard that it was probably a million flat when I talked to the production manager for the event (but even he did not know for sure).

A hiphop singer that I can not remember opened and was well received, then Matchbox 20 kicked it up a notch and had the crowd swaying and screaming, but Elton was the star and he seriously rocked the house for a little over 90 minutes. His performance was surprisingly earnest, his entire band enjoyed what they were doing and even his crew danced as they did their jobs. I did find out that Elton uses Teleprompter for the lyrics and hides a little LCD display at the foot of the stage. The songs were called out by Elton and were not in the set list order. The prompter op was going a little nuts over this

All the acts were kept secret from the attendees (Employees and their families) and they were wowed by the opening acts, but Elton was a total surprise for the audience and when they heard the opening notes from “Levon“ un-announced, they went absolutely wild and then moments later when they saw that Elton had appeared at the piano they proceeded to drown out a sound system that should not have allowed that to happen

He played Rocket Man next and from that point on everyone watching from the stage wings was rocking along too. We had all the guys from Matchbox 20 crowding in stage left with us behind the monitor mix console and they were singing along and dancing like they were still out on stage playing. All the previous acts stayed to see Elton, he’s the man.

I wound up abandoning my wife to the crowd Matchbox 20 was forming around her optimum viewing position (she took all of the good shots we got) and went and hung out with Davey Johnstones’s guitar roadie (he was from Vegas and likes to shoot, but wasn’t hip to competition yet). I actually got to lend a hand on an emergency guitar string change by grabbing the incoming guitar from Davey and putting it on the work pad while Mike was rooting for a string reet quick. Way cool!

And yes Brian, he also played Tiny Dancer and I was just gone when I heard that live. He did not play Take Me To The Pilot though and I missed that a bit. I remember listening to the live broadcast of what would become the 11.17.70 live album back when I was a teenager and being blown away by Take Me To The Pilot. BTW did anyone else notice the takeoff on 11.17.70 on the backstage pass?

I have been involved in a lot of live events and various corporate shebangs before and even though this wasn’t the most spectacular event I have ever been involved with, it was the one I have enjoyed the most. I do thank you all for letting me share the little bit of magic I was lucky enough to have witnessed up close and personal.

Thanks again,

--

Geoff

[tightloop]

Simply unreal...seldom do you get to see a show like that...

[shred]

Very cool..

I had a similar opportunity once (though with a much less big-name star) at a company function years ago back in the internet boom. They had a big product-launch meeting, then said stick around for the band... but the band's plane was delayed, so almost everybody left. Me and a couple dozen people were left leaning on the stage for the show-- they went on with the full show with only a dozen of us. Said "you waited, we'll play". That was fun.

Elton takes the cake..

[GRD]

I've done alot of audio production, although I've been out of the biz for a little bit now. If you like good audio and have never been to a show with line array speakers in use, you don't know what you're missing. The cabinets couple and act as one large unit creating a phase-coherent non-spherical pressure wave that doesn't propagate according to the inverse-square law. What this means is that with regular speakers, the sound pressure drops as an inverse square of the distance. Basically, the front rows get clobbered in order to have a reasonable level at the rear of the house (think about a small ballon that you draw a little circle on, now blow the ballon up to twice it's volume - the circle is 4 times as large - that's how sound propogates through space - a given amount of audio energy ends up dissapating into that space and losing it's energy quickly). With a line array, there can be as little as 5dB drop from the front row to the back. This is most noticeable in the relationship between the high and low frequencies. With normal speakers, the sound becomes more and more 'bassy' as you move farther away (as low frequency sound waves carry more energy than high-frequencies) but with a line array, the sound stays sharp and crisp all the way to the back of the house. Another benefit the 'cylidrical' pressure wave these things create is that the sound drops off like crazy outside the pattern of the speakers. So they can be aimed to keep the audio on the crowd, and minimize spill to adjacent areas (maximizing efficiency). And they sound amazing (when run by someone who knows how to mix for that technology). It's the future of concert audio and it's way better. The engineer who took the first line array out on tour (with Bob Dylan) told me that after you've mixed on these things, there's line array and then there's everything else.

- Gabe

[George]

You are right on the money there Gabe, Line Array has also taken over in Corporate as the preferred technology for voice intensive applications. Servo technology (Meyers, Apogee, etc) is on it’s way out as a result now.

Even though the sound was great onstage where we were hearing the MSL-4 sidefills along with all the stage sound from the instrument amps, out at FOH (Front Of House) it was “pristine” and just as Gabe mentions, at a roughly similar sound pressure level in the pit as it was 100’ behind the FOH mix position. Amazing stuff. If you look in the photos, you will see Line Arrays hanging just inside the LED Video Screens. Of course, there was a 12 foot high stack of subwoofers on the ground at each side of the stage too!

--

Regards,

[GRD]

You can do worse than MSL4's for fills. It's amazing how much level you can get from such a small stack with the line array technology, too. The first time I 'walked the house' with a line array in use I was amazed. It was like someone had suspended the laws of physics. The sound was uniform left to right and front to back.

The crew was all dancing at your gig because they didn't have to load all those damn cabinets anymore!

You know the roadie's creed, right? "If it's green smoke it, if it's white snort it, if it moves screw it and if it doesn't move put it in the truck."

- Gabe

[SiG Lady]

Thanks for the line-array explanation. Wow. Seriously.

[George]

The crew was all dancing at your gig because they didn't have to load all those damn cabinets anymore!

You are right on the money about the number of cabinets, and it was a local company providing the mains and fills. But Elton only had his monitor and FOH mix engineers and the instrument techs with him and you know those guys never hump PA

You know why sound engineers only count to two (ya know, testing 1, 2, 1, 2), because on three you are supposed to lift

Conversely, do you know why lighting truss is made out of aluminum (Tomcat anyway)? So it won’t rust while you are waiting for it to get off the friggin’ ground!!!

Please don’t get me started on musician jokes, it’s just too easy.

--

Regards,

[GRD]

You dig that, SL? Here's a little bit of more coolness about that speaker technology: one of the big problems with a regular concert speaker array is that above a certain frequency, the cabinets are not 'coupling', and a line array solves that. Here's the thing: wavelengths have actual length, the lower the frequency, the longer the length of the wave, crest to crest. High frequencies are only a couple millimeters, real low bass can be as long as a couple tractor trailiers. Two speakers that are center-to-center less than 1/4 of the wavelength 'couple' at that specific frequency. They work with each other and vibrate as a single unit.

The wave that those two speakers create is phase-coherent - it's like one waveform, instead of two (very similar) waveforms that then meet in the air and combine - always slightly less than perfectly, and sometimes alot less than perfectly. That less-than-perfect combining creates a resulting waveform that is not exactly what the speaker put out, or what the mixer or source material requires. That's what hits your ears.

It sucks, basically, to some degree, when referrenced to what the pure waveform should sound like.

The reason it sucks is because when the two similar-but-unequal waveforms meet in the air, they are not necessarily at the same point in their 'phase'. One may be at it's crest and another only at 99% of it's crest. If two waveforms of equal frequency and energy meet in the air exactly out of phase (one at perfect crest and another in it's trough) they'll actually cancel completely. Dead silence. [way cool anecdote= you can take two of Elton's 12ft subwoofer arrays that George was talking about, stand exactly in between them and have someone run a single low bass tone through them loud enough to make your hair move. Then the engineer can put one stack out of phase (the speakers are travelling inward, while the other stacks speakers are travelling outward) and it will instantly be so quiet you can hear the paper of the speaker cones whoshing through the air. You will be able to see the cones moving like crazy, but hear nothing. Cool, huh ]

This is what is happening to the sound as it leaves a regular concert speaker array, in all directions at almost all frequencies it is combining in the air in weird ways. This kind of smears the sound and also makes it uneven across the venue. When the mix engineer gets it sounding good in one spot, it'll sound like ass somewhere else and it's pretty much impossible to get it right everywhere. The problem is that the speaker array is not coupling, because the speakers are too far away from each other at all but the lowest frequencies.

Enter the line array. The speakers are arranged in the cabinets in such a way that all the tweeters form a ‘line’ from the top of the array to the bottom, so do the mid-range cones and the low-freq cones(which don’t have to be quite as close together, due to the frequencies being lower and the waveforms being longer). Two tweeters, one on top of the other, on the far right and left side of the cabinet are close enough to the tweeters in the cabinet above and below them that they actually couple to fairly high frequencies (like 13,000KHz or so). So you have a whole mess (maybe 20 or more) tweeters all moving like they were one gigantic uber-tweeter and the resulting waveform is just about perfect. There’s no in-air combining to create a mushy out-of-phase mess anymore. It just moves out as one coherent wave. This is why a line array sounds so clean no matter where you go.

It’s very cool.

- Gabe

[GRD]

Please don’t get me started on musician jokes, it’s just too easy.

Ain't it though? It's almost unfair. Ok, just one:

What do you call a bass player without a girlfriend?

Homeless.

Or how about the drummer who locked his keys in his car? He had to break the window to let the bass player out.

How do you know when the union roadie is dead?

When the donut falls out his hand.

Of course, we know the drum riser's level when the drummer drools evenly out of both sides of his mouth.

Hehehe.

- Gabe

[George]

Being a bass player, I will offer;

Q: What’s the difference between a bass player playing in tune and a poltergeist?

A: There‘s no difference! They are “both” figments of your imagination.

By the way, most speaker technology only sucks on the negative cycle of diaphragm excursion, it “blows” in the other direction!

Coherency is what we strive for in our technology presentations, but arriving there is never a clear path. BTW, Line Array is old tech rediscovered. I played bass in the late 60’s and early seventies through an Ampeg SVT amp using a primitive form of Line Array by using eight 10” drivers that would have been totally unsuitable for the task of low frequency reproduction otherwise and that system not only thundered, but didn’t have to be put in the corner of the stage to couple the room. The bass from that cabinet was a very room filling thing back then compared to a lot of other systems of the times. i won’t even discuss what we put up with as PA back then. The instrument amp backlines were usually much better than main PA’s back then and only vocals and percussion went through them in a lot of cases.

--

Regards,

[SiG Lady]

Uber-tweeters... Just imagine. Thanks for the additional thrill of line array. Really.

...As I sit here reading about clock speed, sine waves, pulse waves, Megahertz and clock multipliers. Nice coincidence.

[GRD]

You're very welcome, SL. Next time you go to a concert, go up to the front-of-house mix guy and ask him "Hey! how many watts y'all pushin'?". They love that.

Great point about the Ampeg cabs, George. A good friend of mine (also a bass player) runs one of those cabinets. I've moved refrigerators that were lighter than that thing.

- Gabe

[George]

Ive moved refrigerators that were lighter than that thing

Then I guess you also are familiar with the old Acoustic 360 bass cabinets, they were another beast of the era. It is very interesting that you have a friend still playing through an SVT. Tell him not to burn out the top or blow any drivers, those things are worth big bucks if they are in pristine shape.

The Line Array effect is the main reason you used to see walls of instrument amps in the stage backlines back then (60’s, 70’s and early 80’s). It really coupled whenever you stacked that many cabinets. The stacks of old Fender open back guitar amps (Super Reverbs, etc.) used to sound really good from behind too

--

Regards,

[SiG Lady]

No, I think I'll NOT ask about watts... but rather should terminology-drop on them about their 'line array' though (and a few of the other things you mentioned). I love to lay the unexpected upon folks like that.......

[George]

Hi Siglady,

Make sure it is Line Array first. Traditional cabinets in flying configuration can look a like LA to the uninitiated.

There is more than one Mfg of these systems and they all do not look alike, JBL, Renkus Heinz, Bose, ElectroVoice, Meyer Sound, etc. Do a lookup on each and you will find Mfg cut sheets that show what the various systems look like singly, and in stacked configuration. Then don’t just look at them from the front at a show, look at the rear and side too, because there are a lot of three way (honk, tweet, woof) traditional systems out there that can look very similar if you don’t look close. Better to ask Watt’s Up Doc? in case they are still running stuff that sucks and blows

--

regards,

[GRD]

When I used to work around Seattle just a couple years ago, they were pretty easy to get as rental back-line. Must be all the reggae out there. The dreads loooove the 8 by 10's.

- Gabe