Face forward - even if not moving forward

Well, last night was a first: my first time taking the skills as an audio technician and making a memorable night for this local Christian music artist - Gina Milanese. We all had a good time to simply enjoy her music along with a backup band consisting of local musicians who did a fine job rounding out her sound.

I've never done a local pub scene before. Never done anything outside of a church before. It was Gina's first public performance as a solo artist and I wanted to make sure it sounded good for all the people who were paying to come last night. All those years of learning to plan and organize paid off. I made sure she had each set planned for the songs she was going to do, when the draws were going to be done, and so forth. We had a limited amount of time and I wanted to make sure it all flowed smoothly. The drummer (who is our church's main drummer and the one who offered my services for the evening) said it was the most organized gig he had ever played in - and he's done a lot of them. A big "Thank You" goes to Gina's manager, Cathy Yanko. She did all the room setup. Gina's husband, Neil, did a PowerPoint that ran throughout the evening.

Unfortunately for me, the sound board was a unit built into a wooden rack with all the amps and equalizers mounted under it located in the corner of the tiny platform. I had to sit in the corner against the wall so most of the people wouldn't see me. I had the bass amp blasting in my right ear and Gina's stage monitor blasting in my left ear. It began hurting after about half an hour. Thankfully, I did have a couple of opportunities to jump off the stage and listen from the rear of the room to see if my sound balancing was decent. It was all good. Glad I had found the owner's manual for the sound board to read up on how some of the effects worked. Added a bit of room reverb to make her voice and electronic piano sound a bit larger.

I actually did get paid and I got the evening's poster signed by her too! Can't wait to do another one!