Week 9: KFMA Day and Post-Production

Me in front of the stage

Meg Myers performing

Hey there everyone!

Today I have another exciting update, and some cool information to share. I attended KFMA Day 2016 last week, which is a major annual concert featuring a variety of popular rock bands. The acts I was able to see were:

Disturbed

Shinedown

Meg Myers

Highly Suspect

Red Sun Rising

SWMRS

This concert gave me a completely different perspective from my day with the band Styx, as I was able to see the differences between a one act concert (Styx) and a longer, multi-band concert. There were many similarities, including the setup and sound checks. Sound checks were frequent, and had to be done before each act got onto the stage. With more experience however, the setup time seemed to be much shorter, meaning the headlining acts toward the end of the night were fully prepared in much less time than the earlier acts.

Instruments and Lighting:

-Most drum sets were set up and placed around the stage long before the show in order to speed up setup time during the show.

-Gutiar racks were carted in and out in between acts, but the headliners' guitar racks were kept in the back for the entirety of the show.

-Very little lighting was used until the last three acts, and the majority of Disturbed's lighting was brought on directly before the band took the stage.

-Keyboards were very mobile. Several were set up and taken down for various bands that required one.

I also learned a considerable amount about the various roles of the sound engineers of each band.

-Until the last two acts, the engineers were positioned at the side of the stage.

-For Shinedown and Disturbed, several sound and lighting engineers were positioned in the center of the arena, so they could better understand the quality of the sound that was being projected to the audience.

-All sound checks involved raising instrument volume levels to appropriate volumes. When all the instruments meshed together and could be heard, the levels remained relatively constant.

KFMA Day definitely gave me a new perspective on concerts, particularly multi-act concerts, and taught me a lot about how live music is produced and created. I learned a lot more than I can fit into this blog post, but I know that I'll be able to use the information in my own music and performances.

Until next time!

-Noah