The plan with the Yamaha is now to mic the basic snare drum/2x cymbal kit with one unidirectional mic, assign the two electro-acoustics and the keyboard to a channel each. Now with the Yamaha’s 4 channels all assigned, I’m to connect the Yamaha’s stereo out to the portable PA’s stereo input. That leaves three mics for three channels on the portable PA, with one channel free and Bob’s your uncle.
I was worried whether this set-up would work and it did, thankfully. The next challenge was to get the mix right. I was glad that I opted to have the instruments plugged into the Yamaha as it meant I was able to pan the channels to the directions I wanted as the portable PA was merely plug-and-play. There was a problem as I expected which was the portable PA’s 2x150W power wasn’t up to project the sound as best as one would want it. It was a bit of hit-and-miss with the volume which saw me walking into the audience and back to check if the vocals were audible or not. I even assigned certain members of the audience to tell me if the volume was inaudible or not. The mix was somewhat fine, but I had to resign to the fact that we hadn’t enough juice to provide a better sound. When asked what we had for the Gig@Sheffield, I told them we used a 2.4kW system meant for a venue with a 350-strong crowd (Waq told me he only used approximately 1.8kW for our gigs and even that’s loud as a mutha). From where I was (my left ear was virtually next to the PA speaker on stage right), the mix was fine as was the volume (obviously) – but as expected when one is seating at the back of the hall, the sound wasn’t much to shout about.
Nevertheless, I felt that the evening’s bidan terjun stint as a soundguy was somewhat enlightening. I guess if they wanna do this again next year, it’ll be best done with a PA with a bigger wattage or, better still, give Waq a ring!
