What do you do when the soundboard won’t fit in the gig?  You mix outside!

When working in live sound, it's important to be adaptable to the unpredictable and unexpected.   Concert touring is big business with contracts and lots of money at stake.  Canceling a show can be costly and extremely problematic.  The nature of being a sound engineer on tour with a band often presents many challenging circumstances.  You must be able to think quickly and overcome difficulties because the show must go on.

Here's a little story about a challenge I ran into on tour.

Years ago, I was working with the band Goo Goo Dolls, and we were on tour in the UK. During the tour, we happened upon a venue where my FOH Console was too big to fit.  I was mixing on an analog Midas Heritage 3000.  It was a 56-input analog beast, and we couldn't physically get it into the building.  Load-in was straight up a narrow stairway, and the console wouldn't fit through the door.  

The venue was on the third floor of a building. I took a preliminary walk around the venue to scope out the FOH mix position and find a small booth in the middle of the room.  With just enough room for the house lighting desk and their Digidesign console,  I quickly realized that there was no way my console analog was going to fit in this booth.  The house audio tech tried to convince me otherwise and began preparing to remove his desk.

At the same time, load-in was beginning at the back of the building, and it was a brutal carry straight up a long staircase.  Did I mention this was on the third floor and there was no elevator?  The Goo Goo Dolls do not travel light.  They have an entire semi-truck packed full of gear that the stage hands had to carry up the stairs to the stage.  These were not small road cases, some weighed in at several hundred pounds, but the local crew was all over it.  

When it came time for my H3000, it quickly became clear that we had a problem.  The console was too tall to be carried upright.  It wouldn't clear the low ceiling in the staircase, and it was too wide to be laid flat and carried that way.  We were told there was another staircase in the front of the building, so the stagehands pushed the console around to the front lobby.  When I got there, I found 10 guys gathered around the console, trying desperately to get it up the first few stairs and around the corner landing.  This was not good. It was a struggle, and it was highly likely that someone was going to get hurt, so I called out for everyone to stop.  

I suggested to my PM that I could set up and mix outside of the venue. I’ve had to do it once before with another act, and while it isn't my favorite thing to do, it is possible and right then it seemed a lot smarter than trying to wrestle this behemoth (weighing in at around 800 lbs) up 3 flights of stairs.

There is a secure enclosed area outside, behind the venue at the bottom of the load in stairs with plenty of space for my H3000.  The stagehands breathed a sigh of relief as we informed them of the new plan.

I set up my desk under a small awning that offered protection in the event of weather.  We were carrying a few Clair I-3 speakers for front fill, so I set two of them up in front of me to use as ‘Texas headphones’ for monitoring my mix.  One thing I had going for me is that Goo Goo Dolls don’t have any amps on stage, so stage volume is minimal and wouldn't be a factor in my mix.  

It’s a bit disconcerting when you are mixing a show and can’t see what is happening on stage.  So to deal with that, we set up a laptop on stage connected via a long ethernet cable to mine at the console.  Using the built-in camera and screen mirroring, I had a visual of the stage. 

During soundcheck, once I was happy with the mix in my monitors, I made a few trips up the stairs to the venue to hear how what I was doing outside, was translating inside. The key is hearing what the venue acoustics are doing to the mix so as not to overcompensate.   

My plan for the show was to have my audio tech stationed at FOH on clear-com to me.  He was very familiar with my mix and could let me know of anything that needed to be adjusted.

Once the show started, he called me with a few adjustments for keyboards and vocal levels, but other than that, everything else was sitting where it should be.  The band popped down to visit while the lead singer did a solo song, and they were impressed with my setup.  I actually enjoyed mixing outside by myself in the fresh air as opposed to being crammed into a tiny little booth surrounded by a lot of loud, noisy, and drunk fans.  I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to doing it again.  

The show was successful, everyone was happy, and more importantly, no one got hurt!

 By: Michelle Sabolchick