For the live performance we had to perform an original song created by each of the members. The songs we each composed were ‘Sometimes’ by Caitlin Cregg, ‘I hope’ by Eleanor Larkin, ‘We Could Fly’ by Ellie Burke and finally ‘Mars’ by me creating the set name of “Sometimes I Hope We Could Fly to Mars”. Throughout the course of this post, I will discuss my roles in each of these songs as well as the entire performance. For both Caitlin’s song “Sometimes” and Eleanor’s “I hope”, I performed the guitar parts on a Taylor electro-acoustic guitar. I connected the guitar to an AR-133 Active D.I box with a Jack lead. This then connected to a patch box which linked to the Behringer X32 Compact Mixer and further the Studer Vista 1 Digital Mixing Console in the studio for recording. To hear myself and others playing whilst performing, we connected the wedges to Behringer X32 compact digital mixer to control the levels of each individual wedge. I played the Roland RD-800 for Ellies song “We Could Fly”. We connected this to two DI boxes, right and left to get a stereo effect for the piano. Like prior, these then connected to a patch box then to the Compact mixer and finally to the mixing console in the studio.
A few days prior to the performance, we conducted a soundcheck in which we checked to see if both mixing desks were picking up signals as well as ensuring that the levels for each wedge, microphone, amplifier, and keyboards were all correct. To alter the volumes of each instruments, we first had to send each individual microphone to a bus, making sure sends on fader was selected, turn down all other faders and gradually increase the level on the mic we were checking by moving the faders up. We used the same method to alter the EQ level, starting by sending each microphone to a bus. When this was done, I selected the effects button on the side of the display screen to bring up the EQ editor. The bus faders were then used to control the amount of volume at certain frequencies and so if the microphone sounded “boomy” we would drag down the faders between 120hz and 180hz whereas if it sounded “tinny” we brought down the level of the high-end frequencies. We did this for each microphone.
As my song was surrounded by the theme of Autumn, I decided to use a burnt orange background to replicate the colours of this season and set the scene for the performance.
As the song was a slow and meaningful, I wanted the focus to be on the lyrics. For this reason, I did not perform in an eccentric manner but instead performed emotionally and told the members of the band to do the same. Moreover, an excitable and chaotic performance would not match the tone of the song due it being a sad love song. I have attached the performance of ‘Mars’ below.
Sarahs Sound Dubbing Blog 