Jason Cole - Production Nuts

Tokbox

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:54:00 +0000

Its time! Here is the link. Join us for some of "Our Favorite Things: Vocals"
http://www.tokbox.com/conf/zgc9f2qa87ntjsek/t

Please wear HEADPHONES and MUTE your mic. Mouse over your picture and you can turn off your mic there.

Amazing Post Production

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:04:00 +0000

I can't even begin to imagine the effort it would take to do a video like this. It's a little creepy, but truly inventive.

Thanks to Joshua Blankenship who turned me on to it.

TokBox Webinar

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:08:00 +0000

It’s time for another TokBox webinar session with my friends Mike and Dave. We have a lot of fun doing these and hope you enjoy them and learn something too. Coming up on Thursday, October 15 at 10pm eastern, 9 central time we will gather to discuss “Our Favorite Things: Vocals.” I will be focusing on effects processing mostly. The other guys will cover different things they like for vocals. Each of us will share some tricks and techniques we think you will find valuable. We will take time to answer questions as well. Get yourself signed up on TokBox and plan to join us Oct 15th.
Mike, Dave, and I have made a plan for a new webinar every month, except December, until May of 2010! If you have some ideas on subjects you would like to have us cover, please send them along or ask us about it on the 15th. I will post a link to the session about 5 minutes before start time here and on Twitter. Just a reminder, please, please, use some headphones for the session. Otherwise we have terrible feedback problems. It would be sad for all us audio geeks to have feedback when we can avoid it so easily. Just grab your iPod ears if nothing else. Hope to see you then.

Install Time Lapse

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:14:00 +0000

Our great Video Director, Kevin Dooley (@CaptainDooley), put up his camera during our install to document the process. This is 7 days worth of footage in 2 minutes. Enjoy.

Speaker Install Timelapse from Kevin Dooley on Vimeo.

New Audio System

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:58:00 +0000

This past week has been one of the most exciting I can remember in a long time. Those of you that follow me on Twitter (if you don’t why not?) are aware of the massive audio system upgrade that Lake Pointe church has been doing. I’ve gotten a number of questions so I thought I would put together some details and some better pictures in hopes of providing a good overview of what we did and why. First, some history.
Lake Pointe got this building back in the mid 90’s when the church that was in it could no longer afford to keep it. They and LP literally traded buildings and LP did not assume any more debt. A blessing to both churches for sure. The original sound system was in a speaker cloud over the stage that you can still see in some of the pictures and was filled with Community horns and subs.

In 1996, LP had Acoustic Dimensions design and install a new sound system. The system was all EAW including some custom made boxes all powered by Crown Macrotech amps. The console was a used PM4000.

Over the years the programming of LP has changed and grown into a very modern worship music style. The increase in the level of excellence along with the increased demands of programming and the age of the system it was apparent the EAW system was not up to the task. Even before I came on staff at LP there were plans to upgrade it as soon as possible. Numerous band aid measures had been taken to keep things running. The old system was just falling apart. Plans were put in place earlier this year with Clark Pro Media so when the time came the homework would be done. Little did we know then it come this quick. The steady decline culminated about 2 months ago when during a weekend service there was some major driver failure that caused most of one side of the auditorium to lose significant high end. The down hill slope we had been on just fell off a cliff. We did some SMAART testing the next week and learned that there was a lack of adequate coverage in 50% of our seating area. It was time to make a change.
About 2 weeks ago we installed the new Digidesign Venue D-Show console at FOH. This let us start working with our team and get them comfortable with using the desk. We also did not want to add this to the tasks that would be needed during the speaker install week. Just by changing the console, there was a very noticeable difference in the sound. Already a win.
The new system consists of 56 Meyer MICA boxes hung in 4 arrays in a LRLR configuration. There are 2 DF4 speakers at the bottom of each array to provide down fill coverage and 13 M1D’s on the front of the stage for front fills. We cover the bottom end with 18 700HP subs that fan out across the front of the room. Driving it all are 3 Meyer Galileo processors.

Clark did lots of work on configurations in the MAPP software to insure we would get great coverage all over the room. It’s incredible how accurate the software is in real world situations. It tells it like it is.

We started on last Sunday the 6th taking down all the old boxes. Monday was mostly a rigging day and getting front fills wired which are actually mounted to the front of the stage now.

Tuesday we got all the arrays up and stopped to listen with no processing and it was already amazing sounding.

Someone missed a wire.

By Wednesday we had the front fills and subs all running. We did some very basic EQ and timing work as we had a big men’s ministry event that night. The system was great. On Thursday Will Sargent came in and began his magic and by late Friday all the DF4’s were up and the system had a solid tuning. I think I had some tears that night. All of us couldn’t be happier.

Communication is key

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:16:00 +0000

"that was Luke’s attitude too, when he found out Darth Vader was his father. But instead of talking about it, he overreacted and got his hand cut off. Instead, Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc, and they got ewoks. That all could have been avoided if they just communicated. Let’s face it, the ewoks sucked.”

— Hugo Reyes

Easter Opener

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:37:00 +0000

I wanted to share the opener from our Easter services. The singer is Matt Fuqua from The Afters in case you are wondering where you have seen him before. Matt is a great guy and we love having him around when the band is not touring.

The flowers you see on stage were all placed one by one, approximately 4000 of them. Many volunteers and staff did a great job with everything from set design to video to camera work. I'm very blessed to be a part of the team.

I hope to post some more over the weekend.

Drum Webinar

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:27:00 +0000

In case you were unable to join Mike, Dave, and me Thursday night for the drum mic'ing webinar, Mike was able to record it. He has edited and posted it for everyone to get the recap (link below). I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did. Please feel free to post any questions you may have and if I don't know the answer I'm sure I can get one for you.
We plan to do more of these webinars in the future. As always stay tuned to the blogs and twitter for the details.

Drum mic'ing webinar

Drum mic'ing and mixing

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:07:00 +0000

Thursday night at 10pm eastern, 9 central, Mike Sessler, Dave Stagl and I are hosting another TokBox session on drum micing and mixing. I am planning on stealing all of Dave’s tricks. (shhh… don’t tell him). All of us plan to post the link a few minutes before start time and also Tweet it.

All of you are smart tech people so here is the deal. TokBox is a wonderful tool, but must be used properly. First get some headphones, use your iPod ears, something, but no open speakers, can you say feedback? Second, when you join the session please look at your window in the upper right corner you will see a mic icon. Please click the icon to mute your mic until you have something to say. We really don’t want to hear you munchin’ on snacks while we are talking. You do not need to have a webcam to join us, you can just do the audio side if you wish.

An interesting thing happened last time we did this. I reconnected with a cousin of mine, John David Boring. We had not seen each other in years. You never know what might happen.

Dallas Media Tech Tweetup

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Come join us for some good food and good stories. I would love to hear what you are doing for Easter. Please follow the link below for details.

If you are not on Twitter yet, why not? It couldn't be easier. Even John C. Maxwell is twittering now. Twitter was recently profiled on both Nightline and Charlie Rose. What are you waiting for? Follow me when you sign up.

Dallas Media Tech Tweetup

ShareThis

Favorite Auditoriums

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:43:00 +0000

If you could pick a few large auditoriums in the US, say 2000+ size, that you think look great and sound great, what would they be? Here in Dallas there are several I think are great, but I need ideas from all of you. They do not have to be churches.

The End is Near

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:36:00 +0000

…well, not really. Today was supposed to be the last day we could use the 700mhz band for wireless gear. However, it has ALL changed. The past few days have seen a flurry of new notices from the FCC. The one that sticks out to me is an update on the public safety channels. The FCC has now mandated that the public safety sections of the 700mhz band must now wait to implement their use of those channels. Previously, they had already forced a delay by private companies to begin using their purchased channels, but had told public safety they could begin using theirs on February 18th, as had been the plan for the last few years. Here is what this means to you and me. We have until June 12th to vacant the 700mhz band. The FCC is requiring all users to cease using equipment in that band by then. According to FCC 08-188 (NPRM&O), Paragraph 14:

"As discussed above, the Commission and various affected parties, such as SBE and Shure, have contemplated that low power broadcast auxiliary devices would lose their secondary status, and would need to vacate the band, upon completion of the DTV transition. We therefore tentatively conclude to revise our rules to make clear that low power auxiliary stations authorized under Part 74 of our rules – including wireless microphones – will not be permitted to operate in the 700 MHz Band after the DTV transition."

There it is. No wiggle room. You have four more months to be compliant. I've read that the FCC has promised it will not delay the transition again. It is time your leadership understand they have no choice. Either stop using wireless mics or replace what you have. Most of the manufacturers have a rebate program in place to help offset the cost of these new systems. Check out Shure and Sennheiser to get more information.

Mike Sessler posted this chart showing who has what frequencies. You can find even more details in this article, including maps of the US showing details of what the big players, Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcom own.

I hope you have enough data to help your church make the needed changes. I’ll be glad to answer questions if I can. Happy frequency hunting!

TokBox - Join us now

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:34:00 +0000

Come join us right now at http://www.tokbox.com/conf/7v87az6an8rqyxtw/t for a discussion of the upcoming 700mhz transition.

Talk it out

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:26:00 +0000

On Thursday, February 12th, Dave Stagl, Mike Sessler and I are hosting a Tokbox session at 9pm central time where we will discuss the upcoming 700Mhz transition. We all have questions and we hope to try to put our heads together and make some sense of the confusion. If you have wisdom to share or would like to ask questions this is a great opportunity.

I do recommend that you use headphones and a mic during the discussion as it can create feedback loops otherwise. It would be sad if a bunch of audio geeks have feedback problems. I will post both here and on Twitter the link for the Tokbox session a few minutes before 10pm on Thursday. You can see my tweets in the right column or just subscribe to my feed.

Functional Social Networking

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Yesterday a group of local church tech guys gathered for lunch. It was a great time to catch up and learn what everyone is doing and where they are going. I got some good tips from Tom at Bent Tree about resolving some issues we had on our Venue. Learned about construction projects going on for several other churches and had a great time. We talked about the 700 Mhz band issues. There are some church leaders out there that are sticking their heads in the sand and not preparing for the coming storm. Especially in big metro areas like Dallas, I feel for these guys who are going to have to deal with some hard services in a few weeks (40 days) when things stop working. I'm praying for you.

There were seven of us from four different churches and one from Worship House Media. In putting this together there were no emails, no phone calls, only Twitter and Facebook updates. I was curious if anyone would show to be honest. If you have any doubts of the power of these social networking tools put them aside and jump on board. Its such a great way to communicate. Bobby Gruenewald posted a story about going mobile over on Swerve. With the tie in of Twitter and Facebook to cell phones via text messages, it reinforces the Church's need to keep up with new communication technologies.

How are you or your church leveraging these technologies to reach people?

Dallas Church Tech Gathering

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:29:00 +0000

For those of you in the Dallas area, there is a group of church tech people meeting at Mariano's Hacienda Tuesday the 6th for lunch at 11:45. Its a great time to just relax and hang out with people who deal with so many of the same kinds of struggles. A chance to talk about the good and the bad. A place to share ideas and get advice. A chance to laugh at our general goofiness and a chance to pray for each other and our community. Hope you can join us.

Christmas Eve and The New Year

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:35:00 +0000

The New Year brings much anticipation for me. I am glad the holidays are over and I’m ready to focus on what’s next. The Christmas season always bring great things however and this year was no exception. Lake Pointe saw over 21,000 people attend Christmas Eve services across all our campuses. I know lives were changed and that is why all the work, the planning, the time away from family is all worth it.

I hope you enjoy watching the service.

Lake Pointe Church Christmas Eve 2008 from JasonCole on Vimeo.

In case you are wondering, there are 67 Christmas trees on stage. We were using 77 inputs, plus playbacks and returns. The orchestra is made up of players from the Dallas and Fort Worth symphonies. Each year they come and bless us with their amazing talents. It’s a great honor to have them with us. We were also blessed by having Jason Castro with us this season. Lake Pointe is Jason’s home church and where he started singing. Always nice to have him back.

What were your Christmas Eve services like this year?

It's Gettin' Hot In Here

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:15:00 +0000

Sometimes I just have to share because words can't even begin to describe. I might pass this along to our Classic service director and see if he wants to give it a try.

Thanks for indulging me and thanks to Jason Curlee who pointed it out.

FCC White Space Ruling

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:24:00 +0000

Yesterday the FCC made their ruling to allow use of unlicensed white space devices in the broadcast spectrum. This has lots of implications on all of us that use any wireless mics. The FCC ruling opens up the possibility of anyone coming in our facility with a device that could potentially interfere with our wireless mics. They plan to have an online database where we can put in our location and what we are using that will hopefully tell any device that comes in our location what frequencies it can not use. Honestly, I suspect that level of technology will be difficult to implement anytime in the near future. It could be sometime before any of those are actually available on the market. My hope is that the technology will work as promised. Here is part of the ruling.

Wireless microphones will be protected in a variety of ways. The locations where wireless microphones are used, such as sporting venues and event and production facilities, can be registered in [an internet] data base and will be protected in the same way as other services. The Commission also has required that devices include the ability to listen to the airwaves to sense wireless microphones as an additional measure of protection for these devices.

Read the full story.

Moving day

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:39:00 +0000

We made a decision to move our FOH console to the other side of our booth in the main auditorium a couple weeks ago. The decision was based on our observance that several of our regular audio mixers were running the top end a bit on the harsh side. We have determined that there must be a high frequency drop out right at the FOH position. It just happens that the other side of the both is right in front of a delay box that sounds good. By moving the console to the other side of the booth, our operators are in the direct line of a speaker that is tuned correctly. The hope is that we will get a better mix. Damon and I did a good bit of planning and got all the things we needed to make it happen.

The move was a rather daunting task. It took 3 people most of a day to move the console and connect all the new snake extension lines. We also moved one rack full of outboard gear, compressors and EFX to a new rack that sits next to the console. All the playback devices and wireless receivers are staying put. We rarely use them for a service anyway and we have a wired remote attached to the CD player that works at the new console position so if needed we can still start a CD playback. I actually like the new position a lot more than the old one just from a line of sight stand point. It just feels better. Even when we redo the system I think we will leave the console in that position.

It has been known for a while that we are in desperate need to replaced our old speakers. We have been working with our friends at Clark ProMedia on a plan to upgrade, but as you can imagine it is very expensive and since we were forced to replace all our wireless gear recently, its going to be after the first of the year before we can make any significant move on the new system.

Oh the troubles we've seen...

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:27:00 +0000

The install of our new wireless systems is proceeding with a bit of a speed bump along the way. The 3732 systems are working very well with no RF interference. The new IEM systems have been another story. The frequency sweep done by Sennheiser a couple of months ago seems to not be accurate anymore. All of our IEM systems are in the B band, which is 626 – 662 Mhz. Sennheiser assigned all of our IEM systems based on open channels in that range. Since some of those are no longer available and we didn’t know they were gone, we got ourselves into a big mess.

It appears that at least one if not two TV stations have come online since the sweep was originally done. The almost square waves you see are TV broadcasts. We were told to use some of those frequencies for our systems. Bad idea as you might imagine. At the time we did not have access to the data you see in the picture. We knew we had problems and only survived the weekend because of the helical antennae and strong output from our IEM transmitters. Even with those, our worship team had RF dropouts. Without knowing where to move frequencies, it was just a complete guessing game.

We contacted Sennheiser who let us borrow the NET1 interface. The NET1 allows you to attach almost any Sennheiser receiver and do a frequency sweep using the available range of the receiver attached. The NET1 system in built into the 3732 boxes we have but not the 300 series IEM. Since they are in different bands we had no way to see what was happening. Once we did see the data it was a shock to us to see how little space is available. We managed to get all our systems in the open spots but have no margin left. We are going to purchase a NET1 box so we can continue to monitor all the systems across all our campuses. There is a new band being released by Sennheiser called the G band which will live between what is currently A and B bands for them. We are planning to exchange a few of the IEM systems we have for the new band in hopes of opening up more space for us in the future. We just have to pray no one decides to put up another TV channel in the 650Mhz range.

Wireless Upgrades Phase 1

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:56:00 +0000

This week we began the process of upgrading the wireless systems at Lake Pointe. We changed out the Shure U4 systems as well as a few UHF-R systems in our main auditorium to the Sennheiser 3732.

We also changed all the IEM and instrument wireless sytems as well. It was not as simple as I had hoped the process would go. Just the physical install took a bit more time that I would have thought. Lots of new cabling to deal with and learning the new systems. One funny moment happened during the install. We were trying to figure out how the battery packs for the SKM5200 hand helds work. There were 5 fairly intelligent tech people, each with one in hand, wondering how the batteries go in. It was pretty funny to watch us struggle. Yes, we did look for instructions, but could not find any information. We finally discovered they open like a PEZ dispenser. (Sorry I didn't take a picture.)

Once I got them all networked together and set IP addresses on all the 3732's, I started assigning frequencies per the chart that Chris from Sennheiser gave us using the Wireless System Manager software. Unfortunately, several of the frequencies we had been given we no longer available. I fired up the frequency sweep function in the software and found some open channels near the ones we had been given that were in the green. The Sennheiser software worked great in helping me find those available frequencies. In general, the upgrade went very well. It just turned out to take much longer than expected.

The initial testing of the new 5200 vocal mics with the Neumann capsules went without a hitch. I was very please with the way they sound. The new 5212 beltpacks are so small its sick. (Also visible in the picture of the vocal mics in the picture above.) Our pastors have not seen them yet. I'm sure they will be happy with the size.

Over the next couple of weeks we will roll out the new systems to the rest of the of the building and the other campuses.

If you are wondering about the old systems, the UHF-R systems are moving to one of our other campuses as they are in the 500Mhz range and will be good for some time to come. The older U4 systems will be sent to some of our foreign mission partners where they can be used without much worry.

New Stage Set

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:52:00 +0000

We put up a new stage set for the upcoming series this week. The video wall is similar to what we have done before, but we built custom frames for he Coroplast and separated each panel. The floor of the stage is also covered in the same material and looks like an ice rink. It reflects the light in some very cool ways. I hope to shoot some video this weekend to post.

Thanks to Carlos for hosting Creative Chaos. I love seeing what the Church is up to all over the world.

Next step mixing

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:52:00 +0000

Training volunteers to better understand how to take the steps beyond the basics of mixing audio is one of my favorite aspects of my job. I love to help volunteers succeed. Its probably one of the reasons I enjoy being a Producer so much. For the rest of this post I am taking the perspective that you have a solid grasp of the basics for mixing. In other words, you have been doing it a while and want to dig a little deeper.

Two foundational principles I use when mixing:
1. It’s all about the low end.
2. It’s all about relationships.

How often have you heard a mix that the low end was a mess? Perhaps there was to much in general, maybe the vocals had a boxy, muddy tone. Maybe it’s the lack of definition in the bass guitar or it’s not there at all. There is so much acoustic energy in the lower frequencies they must be dealt with carefully and with intention. Virtually everything all the stage has some energy below 200 hz. This is the critical area of your mix. It’s all about the low end, get it right and everything else is much easier. It starts with system tuning, however for the sake of this post, I will assume you have things in order. System tuning is for another day and most likely beyond the scope of what I can do in a blog.
The two foundational principles are closely tied together when reality steps in. You can’t work on the low end without thinking about the relationships of your mix. If you think about the relationship of the kick drum and bass, how are the two working together within the low frequencies? I like to give the kick drum the very bottom end of the spectrum say 50-80hz and let the bass ride on top of that. One trick is to add a bit of 400-500 to your bass to let have more note definition. This is so dependant on your particular instruments and system so I hesitate to get too specific here. That’s a good place to start in finding the low end issues you may experience. Take time to dig into the relationship between kick and bass, it’s worth the effort.
Relationships Matter…
One simple way to help improve your mix is to examine the relationship between almost any two inputs and groups of inputs. If we think about volume level and volume level only in the relationship it will help you build the foundation for a better mix. This is not about making everything the SAME level, but finding the balance between inputs. Starting with the kick and bass as above, how do they fit together? Do they each have a distinctive tone and does either of them stick out? Now start working through the entire console, listening to just two things at a time, kick-snare, snare-toms, snare-hh, snare-acoustic guitar, bass-electric guitar, bass-acoustic, bass-vocal, snare-vocal, electric-acoustic, etc. Take groups of inputs and do the same process, drums-guitars, guitars-vocals and on thru the mix. Now for the fun part, you should to this all while listening to the entire mix running, not actually doing them separately with everything else off. Listen in your mind to two things at once and just those two. It may take a little practice but in the end you will get to the point where you can do this exercise in a few seconds. Up to now we have focused mostly on level in the relationships, but it extends to the EQ of everything as well. However, I am taking the perspective that you have each thing dialed in to a reasonable place already. You now have some foundation from which to work. Next post will be taking the relationship concept and adding dimension and depth and how to visualize those concepts.

Creative Chaos

jcsoundguy@gmail.com (Jason Cole) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:27:00 +0000

Thanks to Los, I'll add to the Creative Chaos today. We have been doing a series called Heart Attack over the past few weeks. It is about understanding how things like guilt, anger, prejudice, and jealousy. Kevin and the rest of the video team put together a great opener for the Jealousy message. You can check out the rest of the message at the Lake Pointe site.

Jealousy from JasonCole on Vimeo.