There’s an old Broadway show tune that asks how you measure a year, which is made up of 525,600 minutes, and ironically about another virus pandemic…

It’s been a year since the tour ended and I flew home.

It’s been a year of pain, frustration, financial misery, despair and rage. I’ve spent most of that time sitting at home, literally counting the minutes as they tick by, all 525,600 of them. In that time, not much has changed. I’ve worked a few one-off jobs, a couple of recording sessions, and tried to see through the haze and make out some semblance of the shape of things to come. And yet everything is about to change—forever.

One year ago today I stood on stage with the Blue Man Group North American Tour for the last time. One year since I’ve touched a real sound system. One year since my future looked bright and rewarding.

As I have recounted in past blog posts; we were in Syracuse, New York when the entire performing arts industry was murdered by the douche-bag politicians that have enshrined themselves as dictators over the American people.

We got the call during load-in on March 12th that our run that week was being canceled. On March 13th we returned to the theatre to load out and then start flying home. At that time, we thought we would be off for a week or two, a month at most and then we would be able to return to the tour to finish out the rest of our schedule. On March 14th I flew home. I haven’t been back to work full time since.

The economic pain that the pandemic inflicted has been mind boggling. I earned less in 2020 than I have in any year since I was in college and working part time. And 2021 is shaping up to be even worse, which could end up being my worst year economically since high school if things don’t change soon. And by soon, I mean a matter of weeks, not months. There’s no way that I will be able to survive another year of this pain.

I’m sure that the rest of the industry won’t survive either. Many companies, producers, venues, artists and technical staff have already left the industry and won’t ever come back. We’re going to experience a brain drain the likes of which we’ve never seen before as our most skilled, experienced, and talented people leave for any other opportunity.

Tens of millions of hard working and gainfully employed people have been put out of work for no good reason other than fear and hysteria. The good for nothing scum sucking slugs who run our state and federal governments kowtowed to the fear and scare tactics of a few holier than thou government bureaucrats who themselves have not missed a single pay check this whole time. Countless millions of careers, lives, and businesses have been ruined by the draconian and unnecessary lockdowns and business restrictions placed on our industry and others over the past 12 months. Meanwhile the mega corporations who had the capital and resources to weather this storm have made more money than any other year in history because normal people had to buy their goods online instead of being able to visit brick and mortar shops.

I contend that the lockdowns were unnecessary.

I’ll say that again: I contend that the lockdowns were unnecessary.

If not for partisan political bickering and maneuvering; we could have gained control over the spread of this virus without resorting to the most fascist and totalitarian forms of rule we’ve seen since slavery was legal. And that in the long run we will realize that they did more harm than good. We have added nearly $6 TRILLION to the national debt and have lost many times that in personal income and business productivity and have ruined the minds of a generation of children who have been forced to sit in front of a screen all day long instead of interacting with their friends and teachers directly.

The realization of the real damage from this pandemic will not be measured in lives lost to the virus, but in the lives lost to bankruptcy, suicide, mental illness, apathy, and scorn for the modern political systems that caused this ruination.

And I don’t believe that we will go back to normal life as we knew it. Things have changed forever. This was a watershed moment for our species, and we failed.

My own career as a professional audio engineer is hanging by a thread. I have one last ditch attempt that I will make at trying to find full time work. And if that doesn’t work out, then I am saddened to say that I will be pursuing a change in career and will start school to be a truck driver.

Yes, I am already scheduled to start CDL school on April 14. If I can’t find a way to go back to work full time by that point, then I will have to kiss my 18 year career as an audio engineer good bye. Coming to this decision has not been easy. I have been mulling it over for nearly a year, since it became apparent that our tour wasn’t coming back any time soon. It has been the saddest and most gut wrenching process I have undertaken. And I know that I will hate every day of it.

If this one last attempt at finding full time work in the live sound or recording industries doesn’t pan out; I will spend every minute of every day for the next 25 years working a job that I hate and bitching and moaning and stewing over how a career that I loved was ruined by a bunch of selfish, egotistic, holier than thou, government bureaucrats (i.e. scum sucking slugs) who only care about the papers and books they will get to publish after they have ruined the lives of millions of ordinary people like me.

And then, maybe, in 25 or 30 years I’ll be able to retire and then finally die after finishing a career that I hated every minute of every day of.

It’s been ten months since the tour ended and the live entertainment business was murdered by the pandemic. And nothing has changed.

Of all the industries affected, live arts and entertainment has been hit hardest, and has been prevented from restarting the most vehemently.

The “experts” have suggested that we may be able to restart the entertainment business and start having concerts and theatre shows again sometime in the fall of 2021 if the vaccination program is successful. That’s a mighty big IF, by the way. That means that it would be well into 2022 before things really get going and shows are built and rehearsed and able to book dates and routes.

It’s easy for those experts to tell those of us in the industry that is most affected by this pandemic to “just hold on another six–no nine…well, maybe twelve months”, from the comfort of their cushy taxpayer funded government jobs when they have not missed a single paycheck during the past ten months of Hell. And it only shows just how out of touch they are with the world in which they live. These “experts” are scientists, of course, scientists that study and deal with viruses and infectious diseases.

The problem with science is that is exists in a vacuum. It exists by itself and devoid of interaction with the rest of the world in which we live. When a scientist studies a topic they focus narrowly on that one single item with little to no regard for anything else that they determine to not be affected by that one problem. In order to properly study a topic in science you have to discard anything that doesn’t directly affect the topic you are working on. The world is simply too big to take into account the infinite variables that can affect every topic of study.

And therein lies the rub: Humans exist in a world full of infinite variables, not in a cold sterile vacuum. We live, eat, breath, and interact with each other in that noise that is filtered out by science in order to study the one single topic that it focuses on so intensely.

Music and art is the physical expression of the human soul. It is the link between the physical and spiritual worlds and transcends the limitations of this physical corporeal existence that we call life.

Anyone who has played a music will instantly understand the deep and often breathtaking spiritual connection that occurs between two or more musicians when they are playing together. It is a level of spiritual elevation that is achieved in no other way in this physical world. If you haven’t played a musical instrument before, it’s near impossible to express this connection and spiritual communication that occurs during this exchange.

Over the past ten months science has knocked humanity down, ground it’s neck into the mud and suffocated the very soul and spirit of the human race to within inches of it’s life. Our musicians and artists have been forbidden from playing together. Our elders have been locked away in jails and forbidden from seeing their friends and families. The lives and careers of tens of millions of artists and musicians have been sacrificed on the alter of the false god that is science. And we’ve been forced to stay home and let our brains rot away on the mindless drivel of streaming the latest steaming pile of crap that masquerades as movies and television these days.

That’s no way to live.

When this pandemic was raging in the spring and summer I told my wife, point blank, “if I get the corona virus, and have to be put in the hospital, I absolutely DO NOT want to be put on a ventilator.” Because the use of a mechanical ventilator permanently damages your lungs and diaphragm, I knew that if I went on one I would never play the saxophone again. To me that was a fate worse than death. And I didn’t want it.

Luckily, when I did catch the corona virus and the resulting COVID illness in late October, it was mild enough that I didn’t need to go to the hospital. Really I’ve had colds that were worse, and fevers from tick born illnesses that were higher. And my lungs have recovered sufficiently on their own that I can now play the saxophone again at the level that I could before getting sick.

So where am I now?

Standing at the precipice of the most severe and gut wrenching decision I’ve ever had to make.

Over the past ten months I’ve lost well over $60,000 in income. I will lose at least as much in 2021. I’ve lost a year and a half of my career. I’ve slipped in and out of depression multiple times. I’ve been kicked out of the unemployment system for over four months now. I’ve become bitter and angry and have let my frustration with the lack of government help consume me. And I’ve lost what little faith I ever had in our government’s ability to affect real change in the lives of people. And in a sick and twisted irony, I have all the time in the world to play music now, but no one to play it with.

It should be all too apparent to everyone by now that our leaders are totally and completely incompetent, incapable of affecting positive change in the lives of the people they represent, and are totally and 147% out of touch with the real world. I don’t know why anyone would ever expect anything different from our elected and appointed leaders. They are politicians after all and they are incapable of feeling empathy or concern for anyone except themselves. They rank somewhere between algae and cockroaches on the evolutionary ladder.

For the last 25 years, I have dedicated my life to the arts. I’ve played music. I’ve recorded music. I’ve mixed music. I’ve even taught music and tried to help others learn to record and mix music. My life has been focused on helping to strengthen that bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds that only art and music can provide.

And now I’m about to give it all up and walk away from it for the rest of my life. Like so many others I won’t make it to next fall for the arts and entertainment business to come back. Our lives, careers and the very lifeblood of the human race sacrificed on the alter of science.

So I stand here at the precipice of making the hardest and most severe decision of my life. With one foot already off the cliff, do I push forward? Or do I retreat?

EIGHT months ago to the day, the entire live performing arts and entertainment industry took a bullet to the head. The Corona virus pandemic fired a lethal shot at point blank range to the entire industry and took over 12 million workers with it. March 12, 2020 will be forgotten as the day that the arts died.

A year ago I was on tour with the Blue Man Group. We were somewhere in the middle of Arizona or New Mexico doing a string of split weeks. Having spent most of September and October running up and down the California coast playing split weeks and one-nighters; we were happy to finally get a change of scenery. Plus Arizona and New Mexico smell a lot better than California does.

I had made my peace with the tour some weeks earlier when we were in Denver and committed to staying through the end of the tour. The tour was scheduled to run through June 14, 2020 after moving to the Midwest and east coast in the spring, including a two week run in Washington D.C. in May. That would have put us at 33 weeks on the road and playing more than 260 shows in 60 different cities across the United States and a week long run in Monterrey, Mexico.

We didn’t make it.

I had started to pay attention to the Corona virus pandemic in about mid to late February. The Chinese government put the whole province of Wu-Han under a hard quarantine to try to get a handle on the spread of the virus. The scum sucking slugs turned politicians that run our country were screaming at each other, arguing about whether certain actions such as closing the boarders or travel bans were racist or xenophoic and how there was nothing to worry about…blah, blah, blah… In hindsight, it all seems so trite and trivial now.

On March 12, 2020 we were loading in to The Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York. We had just come off an eight day long, four city run which included two one-nighters back to back. So we were looking forward to sitting in one place for a few days. It was a pretty normal day for us, and we were supposed to spend four days playing five shows. About an hour after we came back from lunch during our load in, we started hearing some chatter from the local stage hands; rumors and whispers, more checking of phones than normal. And then we started hearing more rumors, rumors with more weight. The local business agent, and our production management started talking. Then word came that the scum sucking slug Governor of New York was going to shut down all public gatherings of 1,000 people or more.

What!? The Landmark theatre holds 3,000 people, and we had a nearly full house booked for our opening night. We got unofficial word that our entire run in Syracuse would be canceled. Then we heard that the shut down order was being extended to groups of 500 or more, and then mere minutes later to no groups of 100 or more. Within two hours the State of New York had banned all groups of 10 people or more and all public performances of any kind. Then it was official. We were well and truly fucked. So we stopped load in. We cleaned things up and put the stage in a safe state so that we could leave it over night. We would return the next day to load out.

That night we went back to the hotel and had a company meeting. At this point, no one really knew anything about what was going to happen. Our run in Syracuse had been cancelled, as well as two of our upcoming runs over the next two weeks. The short term plan was for us to return to the theatre the next day and load out and then everyone would fly home for a two week lay off. And then we would return to the tour once the pandemic passed and finish out the tour, possibly with an addition at the end to pick up the cities which we had to cancel.

I was skeptical, at best, that we would be returning at all. I was nearly 100% certain that the tour was going to be done and the whole world was looking at something much bigger than anyone could imagine. To that end, I packed and flew home with my personal Pelican case which had my personal tools and audio gadgets for the tour. The rest of the crew opted to leave their Pelican cases on the trucks, and it was more than three months before they were able to get them back.

An unforeseen catastrophe had struck the entire world wide human population: something that no government or organization anywhere on the planet was prepared to deal with. And it single handedly killed several entire worldwide industries, leaving 10s of millions of people out of work and with no way to find alternate work in their industries.

By the time I had returned home from the tour on March 14th, the whole world had changed. Cities and states were issuing lock down and quarantine orders like they were going out of style. Every live arts or entertainment event, concerts, tours, local performing arts venues, symphonies, ballets, operas, theatres, movie theatres, bars, clubs and restaurants, cruise ships, tourist destinations, state parks, fairs, beaches, conventions, trade shows, churches and schools; all were shutdown by scum sucking communist slugs (mayors and governors) trying to one up each other as they tested the limits of their self declared authoritie.

We were hopeful that things would blow over and we would be able to finish some of the tour. But as the days drug on, we started to hear about more cities that had been canceled due to the pandemic shutdown orders. Eventually the whole rest of the tour was canceled. We were hopeful that we would be able to start back up in the fall again. But that too failed. And now we have no official word on when or if the tour might start back up again.

The rest of the touring industry was in the same boat. Every music tour across the whole world cancelled. The Broadway League shut down all of Broadway, taking every theatre tour with it. Every show in Las Vegas closed. Every music venue in Nashville closed. London’s West End closed. Film and television production in Hollywood and Atlanta stopped. Local performing arts venues all over the country in every city shut down, some of them permanently. Production companies have gone bankrupt and had to sell off their gear. Millions of workers in the entertainment industry, many of whom are contract or freelance gig workers have been left out in the cold from the few measly peanuts that the government has offered as “help”.

As the weeks drug on, I slipped into a depression that lasted nearly five months. I was like a ship lost at sea, in the middle of a hurricane, and with no power and no rudder control. I had no work, no income, no projects to work on. There were no places to play music, and no bands that wanted to rehearse. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything except grocery shopping for two full months. I spent weeks on the phone trying to call the Maryland unemployment office. Calling all day long; one day I spent more than 10 hours on hold with no answer on the other end.

And now here we are, eight months later and little has changed. I’ve been kicked out of the unemployment system for more than two months. I’ve worked a couple of one-off jobs, a day here, day and half there. But still have no significant income of any kind. There’s no help coming from the government. And millions of workers in the entertainment and live events industry are staring at mounting debt, and empty bank accounts, calculating how much longer they can hold out. Some have already left to take other jobs. Others I’m sure have made more…permanent choices.

The whole industry is dying. Actors, musicians, technical crews, and management are all facing the most dire of choices as they struggle through this shut down. Having their jobs and careers pulled out from under them by the government and the scum sucking slugs that run it, they are left with no good choices. We’re going to see a brain drain of talent; experienced and skilled artists and technicians that will be leaving in droves seeking other employment opportunities. My estimate is that by the end of 2021 when things finally start to open back up and shows start playing again; the whole industry will be 75% smaller than it was. And wages are going to drop by as much as 50% for those who are left as too many workers compete for too few jobs.

With the vaccine still months away, and full distribution estimated to take at least 6 months after initial availability: there’s no good news yet for the industry. And still, once the vaccine is available and widely distributed it will take 6 months to a year to start putting tours and shows together to restart production. It’s going to be 2022 before we see a full restart of the industry. That will be nearly a full two years of shut down. None of us can wait that long.

One day the public will wake up and start to ask what happened to all the concerts and theatre shows that they used to go to. And it will be too late.

The industry is already dead.

The past few months have brought some pretty significant changes to my life. It’s been a fast few months.

In July, I left my position as the house sound technician for the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

Since then I have been freelancing as a systems designer, consultant, live sound engineer, and recording engineer…and working on one other project which I will detail in a later post. It’s a surprise!

Almost immediately after leaving my position at with the City of Tulsa Tulsa Performing Arts Center, I started working nearly full time on a project that I have been working on for over four years: Gathering Place Tulsa. Gathering Place, is a $350+ million dollar, privately funded public park located on 100 acres along the Arkansas riverbank in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s the largest privately funded gift given to a public entity ever in the history of the country (supposedly).

For the past four plus years, I have been the audio systems designer and consultant for the Gathering Place project. I’ve designed and speced audio and production equipment along with a good friend and colleague from the Tulsa PAC Buddy Wilson. We have worked with the project architects, construction contractors, electrical contractors and the permanent staff at the Park to ensure that the audio, video and production systems meet the needs of the intended usage. Some of these systems include in-house audio and video systems for lectures, movies, presentations, music festivals, and small one or two performer shows.

Everything culminated in an opening weekend gala concert over the weekend of September 6 and 7, 2018. The headline music act was The Roots. We brought in a large mobile stage and huge PA system, consoles and lighting systems. It was a long few weeks getting the Park up and running and everything went very well.

Here are some pictures from the opening weekend:

Park wide light show for the VIP Donor’s Opening

The Boathouse Overlook. Look close, you’ll see some Meyer Sound MM4-XP speakers under the lights:

Mixing my first band for the grand opening festival, the Hot 8 Brass Band from New Orleans, LA. No soundcheck because their flight was delayed and they walked on stage as soon as their set was supposed to start.

Thousands of people turn out to see and hear The Roots.

More light shows.

Even a nightly laser show. The lasers look super cool when it is drizzling, as the rain drops make a diamond sparkling effect in the lasers.

18 double 18″ subwoofers for the Roots.

The Lodge Great Hall with Meyer UP4-XP speakers in the ceiling for background music, lectures, and movie presentations.

Meyer UP4-XP’s custom painted to match the ceiling wood tones.

This week at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, we have the Oklahoma Music Educators Association (OMEA) “All-State” Music Conference in the building. This is the primary music education advocacy group for all school music programs, from elementary through college, in the state of Oklahoma. They take over most of the hotels and convention space in downtown Tulsa for a good four days in about the 3rd week of January every year. This includes our building where the All-State Band, Orchestra and Mixed Chorus rehearse for two long days and then perform on Saturday along with the Women’s Chorus and the Wind Symphony. An All-State Children’s Chorus and an All-State Jazz Band rehearse and perform at other venues in downtown Tulsa. For us it involves one day to set up in every room that we have and then three long 16-hour days in a row while the groups are rehearsing and performing. It’s an exhausting week.

I’m always a little nostalgic during OMEA, because I happen to have been a member of the All-State Band in 1998. It was my first time setting foot on stage at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and it was a little intimidating and somewhat awe inspiring. Nowadays, I know every nook and cranny of the building like the back of my hand and being back stage before, after, and during a show is nothing special. I’ve done it literally thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of times now.

To earn a spot in one of the All-State ensembles, students undertake a competitive audition process in the fall of every year. For the band and orchestra students, this is a very long and arduous process and involves as many as four rounds of auditions over a couple of months and is extremely competitive depending on what instrument they play. Those that are talented and fortunate enough to earn a spot in the All-State ensembles are often sought after by colleges and universities and offered talent based scholarships to play music in college. For many of them it is the fulfillment of years of hard work, thousands of hours of practice and private lessons, and the culmination of their high school music careers.  They get to spend three days working with nationally and internationally renowned conductors and clinicians and play some of the best music literature in the field with the best of their peers. These kids are the best musicians in high school in the state of Oklahoma. A very select few earn a spot in the All-State ensembles three years in a row; these students are the best of the best.

My senior year of high school, ’97-’98, I was fortunate enough to earn a spot in the All-State Band (actually I earned two spots, more about that in a bit). I got to perform on stage at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center with the Oklahoma All-OMEA Band in January of 1998, 20 years ago almost to the day. I played 2nd chair tenor saxophone in the OMEA All-State Band. This was for me the culmination of my high school music career and signaled a transition to my efforts as a saxophone performance major in college. It was the end of three years of hard work with two different saxophone teachers and many thousands of hours of practice and dedication. I’m sure that I annoyed the hell out of my parents and siblings practicing for hours and hours non stop as much as I could. For three years I was focused on this singular goal of “making All-State”. And it paid off.

The saxophone auditions for All-State are one of the more grueling audition processes. Because there are a fair number of saxophone players in the high school band programs all across the state there are a lot of players that try to earn a spot in the All-State Band. And they only take up to eight players total: four altos, two tenors and two baritones. But they don’t have to take all of those slots if there are not enough qualified players. So, if you are one of the hundreds, or even thousands of alto saxophone players in the state, you have to compete against everyone else for just one of four slots. And to do that, you have to make it through four different rounds of auditions: two at the first round of auditions in October or early November (usually at your all-region honor band auditions), and two more in December at the final round of All-State auditions. And then there are a few masochistic players who take upon themselves the burden of auditioning on more than one instrument. I was one of those players!

This was my secret weapon. Every year I auditioned on alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. They had the same music and playing the different saxophones is not really that difficult once you make some minor adjustments in your embouchure and hand position. So, every year, here I was lugging around nearly 80 lbs of saxophones and saxophone cases, my music bag and music stand and whatever else I had with me. This was in the days before teenagers had cell phones surgically attached to their hands and faces. I did usually have a Sony Walkman and later a Discman music player and head phones with me though. I almost never bothered to bring any text books or study materials with me on band trips or music auditions because, well, why bother? That would negate all the fun that you have on these trips.

Let me stage the stage for you:

In the fall of 1997, I was  a senior in high school. I was 18 years old (so legally an adult now), had spent the summer working for MerCruiser building boat engines, and played first chair alto saxophone in the marching band that fall. I detested marching band. Hated it with a passion unequaled to any and viewed it as not only a hindrance to any legitimate musical endeavor, but actually the antithesis of art. All the good that the arts do, football and marching band undoes. My band directors were none to keen with my view of the primary function of their job with the public school district. I had on numerous occasions been threatened with expulsion from the band program or the after school jazz band because of my attitude. At one point, I failed to have my marching band music memorized. My band director called me into his office and chewed me out and chastised me for being the section leader and not having my music memorized. I told him that I was concentrating on learning my All-State audition music. He was furious, and demoted me to last chair alto saxophone. I only laughed a little. But a week or so later I finally had it all memorized. I don’t remember if I even bothered to try to get back to 1st chair or not, since I viewed being 1st chair in marching band as a dishonor any way. On to the All-State auditions.

Three years in a row I auditioned for All-State. Every year I made it through the first two rounds of auditions in October to the final auditions in December. I figured that I should increase my chances by auditioning on all three saxophones, since they have the same music. (The OMEA committee has since separated the audition music for saxophone, so each instrument has different selections, which makes it harder to audition on all three saxophones since you have to learn six different very hard pieces). The final round of auditions is in itself an exhausting process. It always happens on the first Saturday in December at West Moore High School in Moore, Oklahoma, one of the biggest high schools in the state. Auditions start promptly at 08:00 (that’s 8:00 am for most of you). Every student has to draw a number to get their audition spot. If you are late: you’re disqualified. So you have to be at the school and registered for the auditions by no later than 7:30 am, which means that you show up about 7:00 am. Because our school was a good two hours away, we always stayed in a hotel in Moore the Friday night before so we would have a shorter commute the morning of the auditions. Our school always had a good dozen or so students that made it to the final auditions in December.

We would drive down after school on Friday, check in to our hotel rooms and then go to dinner and spend some time wandering around the local mall. My room mate on these nights was one of my best friends and clarinet player Michael Miller. We had a great time and it was a tradition of ours to buy a music CDs on these trips. One of these years, I think my sophomore year (1995), I bought my first Tower of Power CD T.O.P. and would form the basis of a life-long passion for the East-Bay soul and funk sound that is Tower of Power. This is one of those rare examples in public school where your teachers begin to make it appear that they might think about treating you, sort of, like an adult. They expect you to be somewhat responsible to get your butt to the bus and audition rooms on time without constant micromanaging, a privilege earned through the long practice and audition process.

In December of 1996, when I failed to earn a spot in the All-State Band, I knew I had to make some changes. It took a couple of months, but in February of 1997 I did something that would change my life forever. I found a saxophone teacher. And not just any saxophone teacher, the best saxophone teacher and most talented classical saxophonist in the entire state of Oklahoma: Linda Naylor, the adjunct professor of saxophone at The University of Tulsa. She was and is one of the most important people in my life and taught me more about music and life than almost any other single person in my life. She once told me that, after my first lesson with her, she thought to herself, “oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?” But she stuck with me. She changed everything about how I played the saxophone: my embouchure, hand position, breath control, reading skills, listening skills, counting, musical interpretation, even the length of my neck strap. EVERYTHING. She taught me how to play the saxophone. After six years of abysmal public school music education, she taught me how to actually play music. And even now when I teach my own daughter how to play her flute, I hear Linda’s voice coming out of my mouth. Using the same expressions and terminology to describe what all the various music terms and techniques are.

Linda, if you are reading this: I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me over 4 and a half years. You took me under your wing and taught me more than any other single teacher, and more than most put together. You were the biggest influence on my life after my parents, and now I get to pass those lessons down to my own daughter. 

So in December of 1997, I walk into the All-State auditions armed with a head full of new knowledge about how to play the saxophone and with nearly a year of intense saxophone lessons under my belt. I was confident and hopeful as I drug my three saxophones into West Moore High School. I had a plan. I had been working on the audition music, other etudes, solos, and sight reading with Linda for nearly a year now. I won’t go as far as saying that I could see the future, but I was pretty damn confident in the work that I had put in. And more than that, I was dead set on proving to my band director that the guy that he demoted a few weeks earlier to last chair was going to make All-State. I was focused on this singular task like a laser beam, cutting it down piece by piece.

There’s a process to the process of auditioning:

First: You have to put in the work. You’ve got to know the music forwards and backwards, at faster and slower tempos than what is marked. At this point, I could play my audition pieces from memory. But, I always used the music because the audition required different portions of the music to be played, so I had to make sure I was playing the correct segments of the music.

Second: On the day of the audition, you have to stay focused. Don’t let yourself get distracted by whatever is going on around you. Don’t run off with friends or get carried away chatting about whatever nonsensical thing teenagers talk about. Stay focused on the audition. That’s your job. You can have fun after the audition is over and you are waiting to hear the results.

Third: Do not, DO NOT play your audition piece in the warm up room. You’re tipping your hand to the other players if you do. Run some scales and chords, play something else, get some decent long tones in. You want a good solid warm up. And normally, the first time you play your audition piece is the best run you get out of that day. So save it for the audition room.

Forth: Be cool. Stay relaxed. Be confident, but not arrogant. And don’t get nervous. You’ve played this piece hundreds of time before, this is just another run.

All-State audition day at West Moore High School can best be described as barely controlled chaos. There are thousands of students there all hanging out in the gym, cafeteria, commons area and hall ways. The students from each school find an area to camp out for the nearly 16 hour long day. Pillows, coats, book bags, instrument cases and folding music stands litter every available piece of real estate possible. Your fellow students are charged with watching over each other’s stuff while everyone goes to their warm ups and auditions. It’s a base camp of sorts for the day.

When I get to the gym to warm up for my first round of auditions, I run some scales and some long tones. Play some other etudes and one of the pieces that I am looking at for my solo contest later in the spring. Then I notice one of the other girls playing saxophone, trying to learn her audition music at the last minute. She’s playing some cheap knock off alto saxophone and has Christmas tree garland wrapped around the keys of her saxophone and a big golden tree ornament hanging from the key guard. I think to myself, “Well, there’s one other person I don’t have to worry about”.

Throughout the course of the day I warm up and play my auditions four times: two for alto and one each for tenor and baritone. The year I auditioned, there were 92 alto saxophones auditioning. And I think 21 or 22 tenors and 16 baritone saxophones auditioning. (Remember earlier when I said they only take four altos, and two tenors and baritones each?) I’m pretty sure that my success was sheer luck and came down to the sight reading. I distinctly remember walking out of my tenor audition thinking, “Man, I NAILED that sight reading!” I don’t know what it was, if it was just the right tempo that I chose, not too fast to tangle up my fingers, and not too slow to make it apparent that I couldn’t play it, or it that it just laid under my fingers just right.

After all of the auditions for each section have been completed and the scores tabulated, the results are posted, section by section, on the inside window of the main office of the school. About mid afternoon when the smaller sections have completed their audition process, everyone starts gravitating towards the main office of the school to wait for the results. And cheers erupt each time a section is posted as kids see the final results. Some dreams are made. Lots of hearts are broken.

There’s this magical moment during the day, when one of the people working on tabulating the scores comes out of the office before the scores are posted and they yell through a bull horn that they need to see such and such student. That student is summoned to the office because they auditioned on more than one instrument and they made it on more than one instrument, so they have to decide which one they are going accept. That student gets to hear the results of their audition before everyone else does. But, that simple announcement of calling them to the office announces to everyone that they made it. If you are one of those students, you are greeted with high-fives, pats on the back and fists in the air as you walk to the office to pick your instrument.

For me, this happened about 6:00 in the evening. Now remember, we had been up since about 5:30 am and at West Moore since about 7:00 am. And four auditions and 11 hours later I found myself walking into the tabulation office. My band director is in the back with a shit-eating grin on his face, and one of the other directors tells me that I made 2nd chair tenor saxophone and 2nd chair baritone saxophone in the All-OMEA Band. Before he could even ask which one I wanted, I told him, “I’ll take tenor!”. He says, “Ok, please don’t tell anyone until the results are officially posted”. Yeah…fuck that noise! As I walk out of the office, my friends from my high school band are all standing there: word has gotten out. My buddy Mike asks, “well, which one is it?” “2nd Tenor!” More high-fives and cheers were to be had.

The adrenaline rush keeping you going all day through this process begins to drain away and you start feeling dead tired all of the sudden. You find a place to nap until the rest of the students in your school are done and everyone is ready to leave. That year we had four students from our band that made it to the All-State Band and Orchestra and two alternates. A pretty good showing for our school at that time. My friend Mike also made it to the All-State Band on clarinet. So, we got to room together during the festival.

A week or so later you get your official paperwork and music in the mail for the All-OMEA Festival in January. You start practicing a new round of music. And this stuff is hard. Really hard. Like REALLY damn hard. The hardest stuff you’ve ever played. More intense lessons with Linda to get me ready to play the music in the festival.

The week of the Festival rolls around. We get two days off school. The school paid for our hotel rooms and food for the three days we are at the OMEA Festival. It’s an intense three days of hard playing and rehearsing. You spend ALL DAY in rehearsal except for a few breaks. Now, I was playing at lot at this point in my life, usually about three hours a day during the week and up to five hours a day on the weekends. But most high school music students don’t play anywhere near that amount and certainly not at this level. By the end of the first day all of the brass players and double reed players were nearly dead, and we had two more days to go! Even I wasn’t quite ready to spend eight or nine hours playing in a single day.  My chops were shot by the end of the second day and I barely made it through the concert.

At some point on Friday I turned to my friend Mike and said, “Hey, do you realize we haven’t seen our band directors since Wednesday night?”. He says, “Yeah, I was  thinking about that earlier.” Here we are, on a school sponsored trip and we haven’t seen our teachers in almost two days. It was the first time that I had been treated like an adult by any school teacher ever. I guess they expected that the level of maturity to take the time and effort required to make it to All-State meant that we could be afforded the rights that we deserved. We were literally on our own for a good three-days to get up and get to rehearsals and meals on our own. I wouldn’t experience this level of respect by educators again for more than another year until I went on tour with the TU Jazz Band my freshman year of college–but that’s another story.

I don’t actually remember much about the concert. But, one thing I do distinctly remember is siting in rehearsal on the Chapman Music Hall stage. While the conductor was working with one of the other sections for a few minutes I was looking around, and noticed a giant gaping hole downstage in front of where we were playing. I could have sworn that there wasn’t a hole there earlier. Then a few minutes later, I see some guys coming up through that floor. They were riding the automated pit lift up with some piece of equipment or another. It was the first time I had seen a movable orchestra pit. The day of the concert, we played some music. And then it was over. Once again that adrenaline rush subsided and we had dinner after the concert and went home. And then, we had to go back to playing in our regular high school band, which was kind of a let down after playing in the All-State Band.

The equipment I used for the All-State Band auditions and concert:
King Super 20 tenor saxophone
Selmer S80 C** mouthpiece
Vandoren V16 #4 reeds

20 years ago, I thought my path would take me to being a professional saxophone player or teacher. But, here I am, 20 years later: a professional audio engineer sitting in the sound booth of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center turning microphones on and off for the All-State concerts as another generation of young music students pursues their own life in music. It’s been a long few days and I have lost a full night’s sleep over the last three nights. But, I wonder if I was destined to be here..to work in the same building that started me down this path of working as a professional in the arts and entertainment industry.

I don’t get to play anywhere near as much as I want to these days. Working 60 and 70 hour long weeks for multiple weeks in a row at the Tulsa PAC and family responsibilities doesn’t afford me the free time to dedicate to my first love. I still consider myself a saxophone player above, beyond, and before all else. But, every year I tell myself, “This year. This year, I’m going to hit the woodshed and get my chops in shape and find a band to play with.” And then I never find the time.

Well, maybe this year will be the year, finally.

 

When I was in college at The University of Tulsa, spending countless hours in the damp, cramped and musty basement practice rooms of Tyrrel Hall (then the home of the School of Music); the dream of the department was the “new music building”. A mythical carrot held out in front of every prospective music student for decades. In the late ’90s and early ’00s it became an almost sarcastic joke. No one thought that a new building would ever be built. Well that eventually changed. The Lorton Performance Center was finally built and became the new home of the School of Music for The University of Tulsa when it opened in 2011. It is a wonderful and long deserved facility.

Because of reasons, the Tulsa Symphony had to move their annual December Holiday Concert from the Tulsa Performing Arts Center to the Lorton Performance Center at the University of Tulsa. And on December 2nd and 3rd, I had the opportunity to go with them and mix their show. I also recorded it for eventual broadcast on the Tulsa Public Radio station KWTU as part of their classical music program. As I write this blog post, I am in the final stages of that mix, which will be mastered and delivered to the radio station soon.

This program featured local jazz trumpeter and singer Jeff Shadley and his trio, as well as A Klezmer Nutcracker. Having mixed The Nutcracker for the Tulsa Ballet for the past 10 years, this Klezmer version was a refreshing take on the Holiday classic by Tchaikovsky.

Because I was unable to hang my normal recording mic set up; I approached this show in more of a pops orchestra fashion, with section micing on the chorus, strings, winds, percussion and close micing the Trumpet and vocals and Jeff Shadley’s jazz trio. 27 inputs total recorded from the Lorton’s Digidesign Venue D-Show console to their Protools HD system. I’m not a fan of the Digidesign/Avid live sound consoles. They are clunky, counter intuitive to operate, have a lot of wasted space, and have a difficult GUI to navigate. But I managed to get everything out of it that I needed and the show went off without a hitch.

Here are a couple of pics from the FOH console. I didn’t take any pictures of the orchestra mic set up. But they look like microphones in front of orchestra musicians.

 

This month is the Tulsa Symphony’s performance of Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem with the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. This will once again be broadcast on KWTU Public Radio Tulsa in about a month. This is a amazing piece of music and I am happy to be spending the next couple of weeks editing, mixing and mastering one of the most beautiful and powerful pieces of music ever composed.

Microphone set up is:

Main pair – 2x Neumann TLM 170R
Outriggers – 2x Neumann KM184s
Orchestra spots – 3x Neuman KM184s
House mics – 2x Neumann KM184s
Chorus Mics – 2x AKG C414-BULS and 2x C414-XLII
Soloist spot mic – Audio-Technica AT4050

Fourteen inputs total for this performance.

Protools HDX with Focusrite Red 4Pre and Red HD32R running on Dante with a Yamaha CL5 and a pair of RIO 3224D i/o racks.

The dress rehearsal on stage at the Chapman Music Hall at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center; with full symphony, chorus and soloists.

Main pair of Neuman TLM170R mics and the Neuman KM184 house mic in the background.

Sometimes you have to compromise your mic position because of the needs of the live performance. This staging was set up to provide the horns a bigger area behind them for reflection and the extra seats for the chorus did not require a full row.

New this year, we have added a full digital audio workstation to the in house arsenal of audio gear at the Tulsa PAC. A new Mac Pro enclosed in a Sonnet Tech xMac Pro Server Thunderbolt expansion chassis houses our Protools HDX card, and two 1 TB solid state drives, one 1.5 TB hard disk drive, and two external USB 3.0 hard disk drives, all 7200 rpm. Counting the Mac Pro SSD, I have 6.5 terabytes of online storage in this set up. This rack also houses a Focusrite Red 4Pre and a RedNet HD32R Dante to Protools HD bridge which give me access to recording all 64 channels on the Dante network that our Yamaha CL5 and dual RIO 3224D i/o racks offer. We also use this DAW for playback with QLab 4 by Figure 53.

Many of my initial recordings will start out on this machine. But I will transition to my personal Protools system at home for editing, mixing and mastering, which is good because I have many more and better plugins than the building does.  🙂

For the ninth year in a row I mixed the Tulsa Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker.

I was on a quest to do something a little different for this year’s production since I’ve long since gotten bored with it. One suggestion that I received was to set up use an automixer for the orchestra. Our Yamaha CL5 has a built in 16 channel Dan Dugan Automixer. My orchestra set up was 14 mics this year, so it fit nicely into the 16 channel Dugan automixer.

The Dugan Automixer is meant to be used primarily for voice for talking head type events. I’ve used the Dugan before, mainly for floor mics for tap dance shows and I think it works well in that respect and gets a little more gain before feedback. So I was curious to hear how it would fare in an orchestral music environment.

So, the thing about Yamaha’s implementation of the Dugan Automixer is; is that it takes up 8 channels of the graphic EQs on the CL5’s Number 1 Virtual Rack. Meaning that you can’t have both graphic EQs and the Dugan inserted at the same time in that rack. If you want to use 16 channels of the Dugan Automixer, then you have to use up 16 channels of the graphic EQ. So that leaves you will only Virtual Rack Number 2 for your graphic EQs, if you need them. It’s not a big deal for me, since I rarely use the graphic EQs on our standard console set up.

My set up is identical to last year’s set up, which you can read about here:

Eight Years Mixing The Nutracker

Except that I added one extra Shure SM81 for the percussion section since they were more spread out in the pit this year. This gave me 14 channels in the pit orchestra and fit nicely in the 16 channel Dugan Automixer.

Overall I was happy with the performance of the Dugan in orchestral music. It seemed to have a little more gain before feedback which I think helped the smaller orchestra sound a little fuller overall.

 

Today we had a load in for The Tulsa Symphony Orchestra for their concert to take place Saturday evening. Since I don’t have to do anything for the load in; I’m sitting at my desk reading about SSL consoles and Nuage control surfaces. I get a call over radio from our electrician. He asks me if I want to come up on stage and talk to the symphony’s production manager about hanging mics and recording the show.

“Umm…sure. I’ll be right there.”

Last year I recorded, mixed and mastered all of the symphony’s performances for broadcast on the local public radio station. But this year, no one had contacted me about hiring me to do the mix and master AND they did not mention recording in their preproduction info (I usually get an extra audio hand to help me run and check mics during load in). I was kind of bummed because I thought they either didn’t like my work and found someone else, or they cut the recording out of the budget this year. Either way I thought I had lost the contract and the fees that go with it, which is a nice little bit of extra income.

So I walk on stage and the PM for the symphony says they are recording all of their concerts for broadcast again this year and would like me to do it. (This is two hours AFTER the load in had started mind you).

“Sure, I would love to. When do you want to hang the mics?” Thinking to myself, rehearsal starts in three hours, and your piano soloist and conductor are going to be here in an hour…

“Can we do it now? We’ve got the guys for a four hour call and still have two hours left,” he says.

“Ok, let me go down stairs and pull the mics and cables.”

Long story short, it took me a little less than an hour and a half to hang and patch seven mics plus the solo mic for the piano which is on a short stand in front of the piano.

The mic set up is my, now standard, ten-mic orchestra set up:

• two Neumann TLM-170s as a main pair over and slightly down stage of the conductor
• two Neumann KM-184s 15 feet off center over the cellos and first violins
• three Neumann KM-184s about fifteen feet upstage at: center over the woodwind section and fifteen feet either side of center to catch the harp/timpani/percussion on stage right and the end of the low basses and brass on stage left
• an Audio-Technica AT-4050 on a short stand about five feet in front of the piano for the soloist
• And a pair of Neumann KM-184s hung from our lighting cove position about thirty-five feet into the house and thirty feet above the floor.

Everything runs into the house Yamaha RIO3224D I/O racks on our CL5, and recording is done via Dante Virtual Sound Card into Protools 10 on the house Mac Pro. I’ll do the mixing and mastering on my personal laptop and Protools 11 system with my Focusrite Scarlet 18i20 either at home or at Advanced Recording Concepts in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

The symphony is doing more shows this year than they did last year. They are adding a pops mini series and I think I’m going to get to record one or two of those shows also, so it’ll be a bit of a change from the standard classical symphony and soloist routine.

August 17th I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas to attend Meyer Sound’s SIM3 Training and System Design seminar with Bob McCarthy. The class ran from August 18th through August 21, 2015.

This class is an intense four day long class conducted by one of the world’s foremost sound systems designers. Bob McCarthy has been designing, building, tuning and optimizing (and fixing badly installed) sound systems since 1984 and has more experience than just abbot any one else alive in doing so. He is also a wealth of knowledge and has some great stories about the business that he has collected along the way.

This session was held in Fort Worth at the McDavid Studio at Bass Performance Hall right down town. There were about 15 students from as close as Fort Worth and as far away as Ecuador: a mix of sound designers, system techs, house techs, production company techs and freelance audio geeks.

Using microphones placed around the room at various predetermined locations, depending on what speaker you want to measure; you compare the sound coming out of the speaker to that of a clean signal that comes from a computer or other playback device, and are able to ascertain whether the live microphone sound meets your expectations of level, EQ, and phase coherency.  Other systems exist to do the same thing at various prices points, including: SMAART, SpectraFoo, SysTune, and REW, just to name a few. SIM3 is the measurement system sold by Meyer Sound and largely developed by Bob McCarthy.

Though the class is named SIM3 Training, it really is more of a general sound system measurement class, that just happens to use the SIM3 software and hardware system. Most other system tuning classes take a similar approach and purposefully try to be system agnostic. You do learn the basics of how to set up the software and read the data on screen, but the overall physics of sound and the math used in the software are the same no matter which piece of software you use. They differ only in the user interface, and access to different options that the designers and users have implemented to make their work flow the fastest and easiest for them.

While the SIM3 class was being conducted downtown; across town at the Gateway Church, Harry Brill was teaching a three day long class on SMAART. I have known Harry for close to 10 years now, and had the opportunist to take his class here in Tulsa back in January of aught-09. This is a somewhat rare occurrence: having two “competing” system tuning classes happen in the same city, during the same dates. So we couldn’t resist the urge to have a get together and planned to meet for drinks and dinner at the Flying Saucer in Downtown Forth Worth.  The two classes spent an evening talking audio shop and trading the sound nerd equivalent of big fish stories: each of us trying to out do the others with stories of the worst gigs and bad sound systems possible.

One of the many people that I got to meet at the SIM3 class was Ra Byn Taylor, who I have conversed with online for several years as we are both members of the the Theatre Sound Google Group. Ra Byn is a sound designer in Fort Worth and works often with the Texas Ballet Theatre, Fort Worth Opera and Dallas Opera. He runs a website called: audiomeasurments.com

On one of my evenings off I got to venture out and enjoy an evening at the Scat Jazz Club which was just a block away from my hotel. It was a nice place, located in a renovated basement. The entrance was through an elevator in the middle of an alley between two buildings. Granted it was the nicest and cleanest alley I have ever been in, but it was an alley none-the-less. You have to enter through an elevator. It felt like you were descending into a Cold-War era missal silo. The cover charge was only $5 and they had free refills on soft drinks, so it was an enjoyable and inexpensive evening.