Sounds of Silence...
Our rehearsal this week marked the first time we(read: Jason)hooked up our sound system in its entirety. Upon lugging our massive speakers and subwoofer up flights(plural!) of stairs and down mirror-filled hallways of doom (for which I was very fortunately absent), we were greeted by the sounds of silence....and static. I am sure Casey and I constantly asking Jason the questions, "What does this mean?" or "What does this thing do?" sped the process along quite nicely. Glad we could help.
Once we had Michael Rowfones up and running, it was time to prep for our TV gig. 1 time on our system + 20 second clips of songs= 2 much to account for. We definitely had some frustrating moments, but I think the 15 minute "effects" session we had in between allowed us to blow off some steam. Hearing Casey sing tenor and bass simultaneously is something one must experience to believe.
Singing on Mike Rowfones is an interesting thing. The main difficulty I have is the issue of "volume wars". For example, you are watching TV and your sibling/roomate/spouse(I hope not all of the above) is watching or listening to something in the next room. You begin to have trouble hearing your own, so you turn up your volume a little. Nice, right? Well, they in turn do the same thing. This goes back and forth, little by little, until you neighbor calls and says "they can hear it fine on their TV and don't need surround sound." The same thing happens when singing on a system; everyone must constantly be checking their volume and be listening for balance. It adds a very different set of challenges in addition to the regular musical ones. From what I understand, Jason has some mystical knobs and buttons that can limit the volume at a pre-determined level; I do believe eyes glazed and drool flowed when he tried explaining it to me. I don't really remember.
Dono