Reverse surveying Hendrix concert

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RideTheCrash

RideTheCrash

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I am working on a project for one of my classes. The basic idea of it is to survey certain elements of a show and write down what you can note. It doesn't have to be perfect, just what you see. It's more geared towards sports games, but concerts are allowed to. I have a DVD for Hendrix playing Berkeley on May 30th, 1970 which I'm doing. So far I'm doing fairly well, but thought you guys might have some input.

Jimi appears to have 3 Marshall full stacks. I see a few random mics, but it's hard to pinpoint how many are setup on these stacks. The camera is rarely, if ever on Billy Cox, so I have no idea what he is using. I assume he is mic'd up. All I need to know is audio placement. A vocal mic for Jimi and however many amp ones, and for drums there seems to be a right overhead and a low center overhead, possibly a snare mic and mics for his rack and floor tom.

I'm also unsure of the monitor placement. There seems to be one center stage (very box like, not like the wedge kind I normally see today), and probably one on the side past the camera. There only like 3 cameras for this show, with limited areas which they go, so it's hard to see the entire stage.

Is anybody familiar with Hendrix concert setups?
 
Heh, yeah I was hoping I might have the honour of him popping in for a suggestion, but we'll see.
 
Fuuny you should post this now. I just finished watching a short documentary on Band of Gypsies! Not that that'll help you. :D
 
Those big amp stacks for guitar and bass were basically the PA system for guitar and bass. You were damn lucky if they put a mic on your amp. Drums were usually one or two overheads to catch the ride and crash and the toms (and often the snare). If you got lucky, you got a mic for the snare. They'd mike the kick, and the rest were vocal mics.

Most groups left it to the event soundman as far as choice of mics and placement.

If you watch videos from various shows, you'll see his vocal mic change every where he went. Bands carried their amps, instruments, effects, and the rest of the system was left to where ever they played.
 
I'm reading a book on Hendrix a friend loaned me, Black Gold or something.

Berkeley 1970 May... its mainly about what was recorded and what is bootlegged, not much on gear and setups.

I think I'm at the part where he' starting to crash and burn, even on stage the burn out on repeatedly being asked for Foxy Lady and Purple Haze is getting to him...not much interest for his "new bizarre" stuff.
 
There was definitely at least 2 mics on Jimi's stacks. I'll just watch the soundcheck part for a while and see what I catch. I have other DVDs, like the Woodstock one, but it kind of sucks because it's not all the songs he played. It also has the Band of Gypsy guys on congas or whatever who's mics have been taken out of the mix. I'm not sure why they did that for this disc, but you can see them banging away the whole time and not hear a single thing from them.

Thanks a lot guys.
 
I don't know what the camera guys were on, but that quick zooming in and out on random things is seizure inducing.

Anyway, I was going to show a snapshot, but it's not cooperating. That box center stage must be a monitor, but it looks like there is a small mic on it, it's hard to say.

Also, I can understand the amps would basically be the PA, but what about Jimi's vocals? Surely they have had vocal mains somewhere in the venue?
 
Yes ..... Harvey said the amps were PA for the guitar and bass. PA's back then could barely keep the vox loud enough usually so the git amps would have to carry themselves.
 
Yeah, I know, I just wasn't sure if the venue had mains somewhere or what was going on. I've gotten some better shots since. Jimi has 3 full stacks, the middle stack has it's top cab mic'd (top left speaker-ish) and his bottom cab of the stack closest to Mitch is mic'd too. Billy has two full stacks with the same sort of idea - one middle cab mic'd and the other has the bottom cab mic'd.

Mitch seems to have an OH mic over his right side crash and ride, another OH which looks to be centered over his kick/rack tom, definitely a mic for each tom and a last mic almost looks to be a vocal mic, but it looks like it's kind of over his snare/hats, but I'm not sure. I don't know if Mitch or Billy did backup vox or not.

And last but not least, I assume the camera men just used camera mics? I guess that's the most crucial thing for me to figure out. Actually, it was probably just recorded off the board and then the different camera shots were edited together later along with the recordings? Probably...I imagine any sort of camera mic back then would have been horrid, if they even had them.
 
Often, those second mics you see went to a separate film mixing board that would be synched to the cameras.
 
Why don't you ask one of the guys that worked with Jimi, Buck Munger? Buck was the rep for SUNN amps at the time, and worked with MANY artists. He's a decent guy too. You can contact him through his Two Louies music magazine in PDX :

http://www.twolouiesmagazine.com/

Here's a photo of Buck helping dial in one of Jimi's SUNN amps. :)
 

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