tease me for it, but I never minded because I knew how often those labels saved the day( and saved time)- and many from my team were very appreciative of the system in place. If a cable seemed faulty mid-show, I’ d ask the team to mark it and set it aside in our“ repairs” box, for testing and / or repair later.
A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE.
Every item in the audio locker( full of mics, DIs, iPads, laptops, signal testers, adapters, etc.) had a label on it for our venue name, and every drawer had a label noting the quantity of each item, and it was reflected in the inventory list I had on file. And after every show, I asked my team to make sure we received every item back that we put out on stage- especially the expensive items. And every night, the audio locker with our most valuable items was locked up tight. We rarely had those items go missing. We often saw items like 1 / 4” TRS cables and power strips go missing, and it was difficult to have the staff account for the exact number of cables and power strips after every show under a quick turnaround. In this instance, I did my best to have labels on the power strips and consistency on the cable wraps / color coding. I found most artists were rather respectful and trustworthy, but there were some surprises- there was an incident once at a club where a drummer replaced our backline snare head with his damaged one, which wasn’ t caught until sometime later because we rarely used the backline snare drum( since most drummers preferred their own). Let’ s hope you don’ t have similar stories popping up at your home church!
Going into shows, it was always a struggle to gather the information I needed to prepare properly. I had many days where I felt frustrated trying to correspond with artists, or even to get their contact information. I quickly learned that many smaller bands don’ t even know what a stage plot or input list is, and instead of asking them to draw it out, I would simply ask for where they were standing on stage, what instruments they played, if instruments had pickups, if the amps had direct outs, and if the electronic items were mono / stereo,
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