One great thing about working for The Neptune Theater is that they are a part of STG. That means that I am able to work at the Moore very easily. The plan is to go hang out with my friend Dan until I know the P.A. inside and out. Then when Dan goes on tour I’ll be his fill in. That is until I go on tour.
Dan and I have always shared gigs. I got him a job at Staging Techniques in the repair shop about 4 years ago because he got me a job with Saturna touring as a guitar tech at the same time. Now my friends Dan and Kevin have been giving me all the work I need. It is great to have friends like these. It is rare in life that you can find one friend like this, but some how I have many. This is thanks to the The Vera Project. Many of my best longest lasting friends are from The Vera Project. This blog is dedicated my good buddies Dan Droz, Ryan Rood, Rowdy Gleason, Rafael Echeverria , Josh Peterson, and many more.
I recommend The Vera Project to anyone looking to learn how to engineer, produce or to find great friends.
My first 2 shows at The Moore are Built to Spill and Jeff Beck. I can’t think of any better way to spend my night then watching these two classic great bands and learning the sound system at the Moore. Built to Spill was awesome. It was great to see how comfortable they were playing together as they played some extended versions of their songs.
I spent about half the show side stage by the monitor desk, a Digidesign Profile digital mixing console. I spent the other half of the show at FOH where Dan was using a Yamaha 3500 analog console. There are a number of things I appreciate about a full-featured professional console like the 3500. I like how big it was and how there was a knob, fader or button for everything. No menu screens to get lost in. It was broken into 2 sections of 24 channels with the master section in the middle. It could easily support 2 or more large bands without having to do any re-patching at the console. I also liked the solo in place feature that you can use during sound check. When the solo in place button is pushed when you solo a channel you will only hear that channel through the P.A. The Digidesig Profile is also a very impressive console. It can do everything the 3500 can and do it in less space. Plus it is totally flexible with compressors and gates on every channel, and total recall.