Tremonti

Last weekend I went to see a band that goes by the name of their lead singer and guitarist, Tremonti.  Some may already know him as the guitarist of Creed and Alter Bridge and to say he in under-appreciated would be an understatement.  He just released his first solo album and this was his second show in Orlando.  His first show was in The Social and a rather small event, so lighting wasn't anything spectacular.  This time around he upgraded to The Beacham and had a much larger audience.  In terms of lighting, the rig wasn't particularly impressive: The overhead truss only held a handful of lights, about 8 or 10 at max and  there were only a few pars over the audience.  Also, all the lights hanging from the truss were movers, and even though there were a very limited number of them, the lighting designer made them count.

The LD didn't go over the top moving the lights during the songs.  Most of the songs were very fast paced and up beat but instead of moving the lights like crazy, the LD chose different color schemes to accent different parts of the song, always transitioning on beat.  The colors contained a lot of shades of red and orange to match fit the energy.  In one of the songs there was a pause and he took the opportunity to completely cut the lights just for that second.  When Tremonti went into their  one ballad he went to a cool blue scheme that was very relaxing and fitting and helped the audience to get into the song.  In spite of the fact that the audience didn't have as much energy as I feel like they could have, the LD did a noteworthy job during the concert and really knew the material.  Now that I have taken a few lighting classes, I feel like I can appreciate his work.

Lighting at the Hard Rock

A few months ago I went to see Slash and Myles Kennedy at the Hard Rock at Universal, which is a decent sized venue with plenty of movers and conventional lighting.  Opening for the headliners was a band called Redlight Kings.  They obviously weren't as big of an act as Slash was so when it came to lighting, the stage wasn't very brightly lit.  Their show consisted of a few par cans and Fresnels, but no moving lights.  Comparing it to the light show that came with the main act, the stage almost wasn't lit at all.  When Slash and Myles came on with their band, every light on the stage went up. 
There were a dozen moving lights overhead, more hanging on the left and right, and more sitting on the stage.  The band played a lot of covers from Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver so the lights were frantic and had a lot of red and oranges, warm lights to get the crowd moving.  They cooled down to bluish shades during the acoustic songs and ballads.  There were also several sets of blinding crowd light LEDs for when the crowd sang along. 
My favorite part of the night was when the band played Slither by Velvet Revolver.  The lights went green and purple to fit the mood of the song, which was completely different from how the light show had been the rest of the night.

Low end problems

            My second article was about low-end problems with subwoofer arrays.  The author begins by showing a visual depiction of a typical subwoofer’s omnidirectional pattern.  By itself, a single subwoofer unit has a perfectly omnidirectional pattern that is very easy to predict.  Instead, the problem occurs when subwoofers are paired with one or more other units that then begin interfering with the array.  The issue in dubbed “pattern narrowing” and causes the pattern to become more oval-shaped.  As more units are added there is a noticeable dent in the center of the oval.

            The problem is simple: phase.  The author shows some pictures of how subwoofers react with each other at different frequencies, with higher frequencies resulting in large lobes between the two and null areas coming out diagonally.  The higher the frequencies go, the more null areas are created because the energy is arriving out of phase in those particular areas, none of which can be fixed by amplitude or equalization.

            One solution is to add more subwoofers closer together to eliminate the null areas.  While this does create a much more consistent pattern, it does narrow the area that the subwoofers cover.  By physically moving the subwoofers into an arc pattern, the delay can cause the sound to even out a bit.  The problem can also be solved through digital delay but is a little less likely due to resources.

            Where it gets complicated is when the subwoofers are integrated into the full sound system.  Because of the crossover between the low and high frequencies, we once again have the same interference patterns as before with nodes.  In narrow areas, longer arrays can work well because of the large coverage in the center but this problem is difficult to compensate for. 

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/optimizing_the_low_end_run_gun_subwoofer_arraying_techniques/P4/

SPS Blog #1

I wrote my first blog on portable power generators because when I saw the title of the article, I realized I never gave much thought to supplying power to performances on the road.  When the article described the inner workings of a portable generator I pictured it in my head as a small-scale version of a windmill with the rotation of the rotor inside the windings of the generator creating the electricity needed.  Now it sounds like a generator is easy to get ahold of, but what’s more is that the generator not only needs to be quiet enough not to disturb the performance, but also need to provide a stable flow of electricity.  Both of these points were not immediately evident to me, but are very crucial when it comes to planning these events.  If the generator caused dips or spikes in the power supply I’m sure it would cause massive damage to all equipment connected to it.

In order to power large concerts I’m sure there is a huge power requirement.  The article says that generators measure their voltage in kVA, which stands for kilovolt-Amperes.  Luckily, the article also provides a link to www.onlineconversion.com for easy calculations on power requirements as well as converting units to whatever you may need.

There is a governor on the generator to monitor power output and in addition, circuit breakers are also built in so that they can immediately shut off in case of a spike.  To put it in perspective, construction type generators can fluctuate by as much as 25%, which already seems like quite a bit.  However, performance type generators need to narrow that down to about 1.5% to be usable.

            Craig Leerman, who wrote the article, gives a few tips at the end to provide ease of use of portable production generators.  The most important one I noticed was probably to install a ground rod or tie in to the generator.  In terms of both personal safety and for the good of the gear, ground lines would be at the top of my checklist for operating one of these.  Also, just like a car engine, generators require fuel, water, and oil to continue running smoothly.   Therefore it is important to monitor and check these levels regularly as a shortage of any one of those would stop the concert and could possibly damage the generator.  Even worse would be if it happened mid-show.

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/portable_power_the_secret_life_of_generators/live

Not much to say, just a quick video close up from the lights at Best Buy.  As you can see there are a lot of color changing LEDs and strip lights.  There were actually no movers so maybe they don't sell them at Best Buy.  They reminded me of the light show when I went to see Slash at Universal.  They weren't as hectic then but they did go through a lot of color schemes to keep the mood changing.

Here are some comments on other blogs:
http://josuil.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-lava-lamp.html

Unfortunately I didn't get a video of lights, but down on Orange Avenue are these lights hanging from the trees.  They look like glow sticks but the blue light pulses down the length of the glow stick and it makes for a cool sight.  I couldn't stop watching them and almost walked straight into traffic. 


Here are a few posts I made on blogs by Josuil and Chris:

http://josuil.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-lava-lamp.html
http://cmortonshowpro.blogspot.com/2012/07/day-19.html

I went to go see The Dark Knight Rises last night at the Regal Winter Park Cinema and for the first time noticed this interesting picture on the wall on either side of the theater.  It's hard to see but basically it's a nighttime landscape with the stars and moon lit up with bulbs.  The moon fixture also gave the light an orangish-red hue.  It was obviously for decoration since the lights were nowhere near bright enough to light the theater, but they looked good within the picture itself.  For some reason it reminded me of a nativity scene.