Dave Rat Blog Friday April 13 RRHOF

Oh, I so hate working TV gigs. Being a sound guy at a televised concert is like being a fine chef working at McDonalds, it is all about pleasing the masses and the importance of my gig in the bigger picture is somewhere between annoying and meaningless.

The deal is that the attendees are such a small fraction of the people that will see/hear the concert via TV and other recorded mediums that as long as what I do is less than catastrophic, the internal venue sound is crazy low on the list.  That said, Gary Lanvy is heading up production and way on his game and a pleasure to work with. It is great to see Bryan Olsen and all the Firehouse guys and so in good company, a nice big dive into the clusterfuck hurry up and wait world of constant changes and piles of complexity.


Welcome to the Red Hot Chili Peppers getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! And personal tanti aside, it is cool to see such a great group of guys that worked so hard, so long get recognized.

Sort of cool to have production in the theater that is behind the stage, Mission Control!



Some gratuitous shots of Chad's kit fully mic'ed

Flea's rig with the custom super close to speaker beta98 setup

And so goinf to miss all the Santigold band and crew.  You all are awesome and see ya at Coachella next week!

**** Sound Tip ****

I pull the fader knobs off of 250HZ and 2.5K on the graphic EQ's I use to EQ the main system. I then tape them to the back of the unit so they don't get lost.  

The missing fader knobs allow me to feel where 250 and 2.5K are so I can EQ without actually looking at the EQ. It is faily easy to count my way to any other frequency very quickly as the frequency doubles every three faders. Three faders down from 2.5K is 1.25K and so on.  This allows me to be able to find frequencies quickly in the dark and also EQ the system while standing and listening without having to keep moving my head, losing my sonic reference point. 

Dave Rat