Live show help!

[spioraid]

Guys,

A friend of mine from PA called me up the other day and asked if I could do sound for a benefit concert he's putting on. Essentially he said it's this small cancer-research-benefit show hosted by a small organization he's made that helps in adolescent cancer awareness.

Knowing him, I was assuming this was going to be cafe gig - church fellowship at best - kinda show, I told him no problem, I'll bring what I can and he can rent a basic PA system.

Well, I get a message from him tonight saying he's got a target audience of 1,000 people and possibly two stages, the second being entirely acoustic. Recording the shows is required too. So in short...I'm freaking out a tad.

I've done FOH for medium-large venues before and I've been sound-tech lacky for a lot of gigs, but I've never done anything of this sort before. Especially since I'm starting off with zero equipment in the house to work with. I've got my own recording studio equipment (mics, stands, laptop, cables, etc.) so I've got some ground to start on but I'll be renting the rest.

Any help of any kind would be incredible. Even it's just a title to a book I should read. Thoughts, ideas, warnings, video walk throughs D) would be great!

My sincerest thanks to everyone!

-Andrew

 

[Nebulous]

Wow! All the best with that one dude. Sounds like a big one, but I'm sure you'll feel great if you pull it off.

 

[ahjteam]

To be honest: It's not any harder to mix for 10 people than it is to mix for 1000 people. If you just have enough time for preparations and just do everything calmly without panicking, it will go smoothly. Just get another guy to handle the acoustic stage and it shouldn't be a problem

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

If you just have enough time for preparations and just do everything calmly without panicking, it will go smoothly. Just get another guy to handle the acoustic stage and it shouldn't be a problem

+1. If you have to set everything up in a hurry and try to do everything by yourself (the main stage FOH, the acoustic stage FOH [which, of course is impossible, if there are bands playing simultaneously] and the recording of both), you're either screwed or an extremely talented engineer I am by no means an expert on this, but from my FOH experience I know too many things to do at the gig and I can't do any of them properly.

 

[spioraid]

+1. If you have to set everything up in a hurry and try to do everything by yourself (the main stage FOH, the acoustic stage FOH [which, of course is impossible, if there are bands playing simultaneously] and the recording of both), you're either screwed or an extremely talented engineer I am by no means an expert on this, but from my FOH experience I know too many things to do at the gig and I can't do any of them properly.

Haha, thanks for the encouragement guys! That's another problem I'm facing though, nothings been said about any extra help. I mean it's not that hard to find 3-5 guys to help me move stuff, but it's sounding like I'm the only one there with experience. If that's the case I hate to be a jerk but there's only so much I can do. I also still haven't been given a budget on yet on how much I can rent...

Hopefully this will prove I'm a really talented engineer and not a screwed one

Again, my thanks to all.

 

[-Noodles-]

+1 to the comment above, live sound isn't really that different when you're doing more people.. the only difference really is the size of the system you're running.

I'm looking for a typical 1,000 person spec for you.

I'll edit with information if i find it.

Good luck!