Christmas Eve

Well another Christmas season has flown by and what fun and hard work it was. This year had an extra twist with Christmas Eve being on a Friday. This made for a quick turnaround for Sunday Services the day after Christmas. Fortunately Drew had a stripped down version of the Christmas Eve band so we could just take away some elements.

Here is the input list we had for Christmas Eve:
The first column is the channel line up, SI(in brownish orange) column is the input on the stage we plugged the microphones into so you can see the soft patching we did in the console.

Console Input Stage Input


Thanks to all who helped pull off this great weekend.

Barbershop, Show Choir, and a Soundguy

The other night I had the privilege of running sound for the Christmas show of the Duke City Sound, a Barbershop Choir. They sing a capella and usually have a barbershop quartet or two sing with them. They also invite a high school show choir and the 505, which is 25 and under a capella men's chorus, to sing do a few songs. The show is always great but there are some lessons I would love to teach to all the groups involved. Here at DSC we don't exactly take a huge amount of time for sound checks but we always do them. The Duke City Sound always spend a good hour warming up and singing on stage which makes for a great sound check and a great show,but I always have to remind them to do a sound check for the quartets( I will go over how I mic up the choir and the quartets in a later post). The show choir and the 505 never do a sound check. The show choir usually has at least one song with a CD as a backing music track. The choir's timing is off because they can't hear the CD and I have to make adjustments so they can get back on during the performance. If I had a sound check they could have told me whether or not they could hear. The 505 never stays on the Choir risers and ends up out of the sweet spot of the microphones. Both scenarios bring the performance of the choirs down. I can't state it enough, always do a sound check.

Percussion Microphones

With Christmas eve services coming up I thought we should look at what percussion microphones we are using at DSC.

Congas- I use the Shure Beta 56a on congas. They sound good and have a great mounting system.

Djembe- I use two microphones on the djembe. On top I use the Beta 98a H/C it mounts easy is small and it sounds good. Underneath I use an Audio Technica Pro25ax. It can handle the low end. If we are not using the Audix D-4 on the Thunder Tom I will use it on the bottom.

Cajone- I use the above mentioned Beta 56a. Gives good attack for snare sound and a tight low end punch.

Overhead- The Shure SM81 is the microphone of choice here. It is a classic.

Washboard- Christmas Eve will be the first time I have had a washboard on stage at DSC. I am using the Audio Technica Pro35. It makes sound like a washboard. Enough said

Cause for Praise Released

Cause for Praise our DSC Worship CD is finally here. You can buy it for $10.00 at the resource center at DSC. It is also available at www.digstation.com. I think it came out great and think you will enjoy. I thank all of you who helped make the live music and recording happen.

Bass Guitar

Here at DSC we don't use bass amps so I don't use a mic on the cabinet. Our regular set up is:
The bass goes into a Peterson pedal strobe tuner and then into a Tech 21 SansAmp bass driver DI which simulates a bass cabinet.

For our recording I used a the SansAmp setup with a Audix D6 on an Ampeg SVT Rig. This is a great combo if you are not worried about stage volume like we usually are at DSC.