Tonight’s the night!  The big Spring Concert is finally here!

I’ll be rushing to switch over from last night’s musical to prepare the stage and the sound for my kids to perform.  It’s a lot to do, but I’ve done it so much that it should go fairly smoothly.  Whenever I setup the sound and run the cables to various amps and mixers, it really boils down to having the quiet alone time to get them done.  Quiet alone time is rare when you’re setting up in a gymnasium at a school.

The basic plan is to use my Middle School Music Ensemble students to put all the drums and keyboards and such onto the stage.  Then I can begin the process of running extension cords, power strips, DI boxes, XLR cables, and instrument cables all over the stage.

Like the play, I’ll have to chain some additional mixers into the main digital mixer that outputs to the gym’s speakers.  The main mixer only has six channels, so I’ll use a Yamaha mixer with about ten mono channels for the various keyboards and synths.  If necessary, I have my trusty Peavey mixer that I purchased in 2007 (!) to get us over the finish line.

The school invested in some additional wireless microphones a few years ago, which makes mic’ing vocalists much easier.  I have five to play with, so that dramatically cuts down on how many cables and additional mics I need to run.  I’m just praying that these cheap instrumental cables don’t develop shorts.  It seems very difficult to find a strong cable with endurance anymore, and even the budget options are getting more expensive versus even five years ago.

My poor Middle Schoolers won’t really get a chance to soundcheck, but I’m not worried about them.  They know their tunes inside and out, and as long as they can hear each other through the monitors, they’ll be fine.  My High School Music Ensemble should get a chance for a proper soundcheck, which will help me balance everything, too.

It’s going to be a long one, but it’s going to be awesome.

See you on the other side!

—TPP