Electronic Music Production

I went to see John Farnham last night, it must be about his 20th comeback concert and, as he joked, definatly the Last Time he would perform. The show was good, but not great. I have to admit that I don't know all of Johns work, manly only listened to Whispering Jack over the years but I was still surpised to realise how many of his other tracks I knew since many of them where hits during the early 90' and tracks like Freedom had been used in advertising. His voice is still top notch and he still gets around the stage all right given that he is about 60 years old. I like the venue, I had not been to the Lyric Thearter at Start City before. It's very modern, not to large, has comfortable seating and the sound is great quality, using Myer M Series flying stacks, however I did find the mix a little off putting.... and this is where the show fell apart for me. First thing I noticed when I sat down was that the sound guy was positioned off to the side of the stage, behind the stage curtain. I thought to myself, how could it be possible for him to make an acurate mix from sitting over there, it then became apparent that it was not. It seemed that they may have pre-auditioned the mix and saved the setting in the mixer and recalled setting for each track, with fingers crossed. This was became painfully obvious to me when there was a solo from the male backup singer, a Baratone, as he went to solo and sung the low note I heared the distinct click of the EQ and the low freqencies suddenly jumped, I sure most people would not of noticed this little slip of timming but it was like dogs proverbiales to a trained ear. Another little thing that I noticed was that the bass guitar was not loud enough and was not gating off, so it lost it's punch and sounded muddy in the background of may of the tracks especially the tracks from Whispering Jack. There is alot of programing on that album, it's very good quality, much of the bass is programmed and compressed up nicely to sound real punchy this effect was lost on the live stage. Infact it seemed that the mix was really geared up for his newer stuff because that sounded much better, those albums (33 1/3 & Chain Reaction) tended to be recorded with live musicians and not programmed. One other thing that was missing was onstage percussion, there would have been some much more groove if there was a precussion player, especially during Touch Of Paradis e it was bland without it. There where a few other little things that erked me aswell but I'll save you from bordem and end here. I only too one picture since I forgot to take my good camera and only had my phone.