Uh, yeah.  Maybe not so much.  Even now that I’m often on shows with the best digital consoles in the world, guest engineers are still carrying outboard gear.  Hardware preamps, compressors, effects.  Sometimes a laptop full of plugins and an analog i/o interface.  And now it seems that the Waves Live package is gaining ground.  With platform specific and generic interface options, Waves Live can provide a plethora of plugins for your digital console.  But, what do you need to make it work?  A Sound Grid Server, Host computer, Interface cards for your console or a generic i/o, plus all the relevant software and plugins.  So here we are once more, buying more gear to add to our supposedly self contained consoles.

Truly, everything old is new again.

Please check it out and be sure to recommend it any young teachers you know who are facing the interview process.

You can find purchase options for the audio book and print materials on their site or you can get directly to the audio book on CD Baby.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Still, the last few months haven’t been without activity.  Shows at the local venue included Gordon Lightfoot, Soul Asylum,  Starship, Rare Earth, Martina McBride, John McDermott, Jeff Foxworthy and more.  In addition, covering for an injured coworker kept me pretty busy over the summer with general operations and maintenance too.  Also had some factory training on the Biamp Vocia system that’s being installed to handle paging & background music throughout the venue.  The main room is getting a new L-Acoustics Kudo PA that I’m looking forward to working with when I get back.

Thanks to Audio Images for throwing a few extra days of work my way this summer.  First at the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls and then at Kingdom Bound Festival.  It had been many years since I last worked a major Christian festival.  It was interesting to see what things have changed and what hasn’t.  Also fun to see which artists and crew remembered me from years past.  Got to catch up with a few old friends and made a couple new ones too.

The Frugal Studio is undergoing yet another software upgrade.  Though it was only this past spring that I upgraded to Sony Vegas Pro 10, I decided to pony up and move right into version 11.  They bundled it with some extra software and made the upgrade price pretty attractive.  However, this also necessitated a move to Windows 7 64 bit.  So far all the software installation, including dual boot with the old XP setup, has gone pretty well.  Hardware upgrades will have to wait a while.  but fortunately I don’t tax the system too heavily.  I have added a total of 5TB of storage to the studio in the past six months.  So, for the moment, there’s plenty of room for new work and to organize and backup older material.

Lastly, just this week I had the chance to get out and visit with the old boss, John Michael Talbot.  In nearly ten years together on the road, we never played a date here in my hometown.  Yet, JMT was able to book a few multi-day parish missions in my area this trip.  We spent some time catching up and I stayed for the first part of the evening.  It’s a much scaled down version of our previous tours.  John Michael’s carrying a small Bose PA with no lighting.  He, Viola and helper Peggy are traveling by minivan, no bus.  It’s great to see them going at it and doing what God asks of them even in these most difficult times.  Surprisingly, that little Bose PA doesn’t sound bad at all either!  Things like that might just put guys like me out of business!

More updates will come as I have new info and the time to post.  As always, if I can be of any help to any of my readers be it live event production, studio production, install design or anything else- please just drop me a line or give me a call.

Local poet/artist Eric Johnt was in the Frugal Studio with some video editing for his exhibit at the Arts Enrichment Center.

Zeo Brothers had me along for the Momentum Conference in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  Spent the week mixing monitors and doubling as system tech.  Aaron Keyes was the worship artist for most of the week.  Had the full compliment of EV XW12 wedges to supplement in ears on stage and the EV XLd rig flying out front.  Gotta say I really like the XLd PA.  Compact, easily handled by one or two guys and it sounds great right out of the box.  Felt a little old loading out staging alongside 25 year olds though!

Aaron Keyes

I’m not a super creative, visual arts kind of fella.  But, I’m a pretty darn good nuts and bolts video tech and editor.  Most of what I do in the Frugal Studio (in addition to audio mixing/editing) is archival transfers, simple restoration, presentation edits, special purpose DVD authoring.  If you’re looking for help with a project don’t be afraid to ask!