WAMU’s Bluegrass Country is broadcasting live from Nashville September 26-30. Click here for a complete schedule of our live programming. In addition to our broadcast, we’ll also be blogging daily. Today’s blogger is Bluegrass Country audio engineer Erin Stamper.
Support for today’s blog comes from Pickin’ in the Panhandle.
Ready…Set…Here We Go…from Nashville! Our ton of radio gear equiment (okay, more like a quarter of a ton), in 9 separate boxes, is unpacked. The mics have been tested. We’re ready to go live, but it took a little work to get us here…
I’m Erin Stamper, and I’m a sound engineer at WAMU’s Bluegrass Country. I’ll be running sound for our live broadcasts from IBMA’s World of Bluegrass. So the process of getting us, and our equipment, to Nashville takes a lot of time and planning. It’s a little hard to take pictures of planning, but I’ve tried to capture a bit of what it takes to get us from Washington D.C. to Nashville. It starts with an empty box…
…and ends up with nine (a few aren’t pictured here)…
With what do we fill nine boxes? Well…computers, cables, cords, microphones, headphones, adaptors, mic stands (that’s the big, tall, black box in the front), and t-shirts (hundreds of them). All the things that power the larger items and make sure they’re communicating with each other.
Below is “the rack.” It holds some of our most of the important stuff, like the sound board and our CD players (and a few odds and ends). It also protects the equipment from the ravages of the 650+ mile shipping trek. Our fabulous Bluegrass Country t-shirts help protect our equipment too! We’ll be hunting down some bubble wrap for the return trip.
Close it all up. Tape it all up. Fill out the mountain of shipping forms. And keep your fingers crossed that the shipping company doesn’t loose (or destroy) one of them. Then we get to Nashville and undo it all. After a couple of hours, it still looks a little rough, although a studio is starting to take shape.
Finally, controled chaos. Mic checks…check! Line checks…check! And we are ready to roll.
Listen in on our live broadcasts Monday, September 26th – Friday, September 30th right here on bluegrasscountry.org, or if you’re in the D.C. metro area on 105.5FM and 88.5FM HD2.
A little side note…our equipment may have arrived relatively unscathed, but my foot did not. A piece of our equipment decided to bite back during packing, and one fractured toe later, I’m limping around Nashville. Oh the price one pays for good sound! Enjoy the music!
