Let the Commencements End

As it turns out, there are a lot of high schools in the Atlanta area. This is the week that thousands of young men and women are thrust upon the "adult" world in a ceremony known both as commencement and graduation.
We've been doing one high school's graduation for several years now. They were joined by Georgia Tech a few years ago and Georgia State last year. Apparently this year somebody distributed a memo because we're doing no less than EIGHT of these events...More are promised next year.
The high school shows are pretty shoestring events. No line-arrays and delay stacks hanging from the sky here.
There are three to six hundred graduates sitting in chairs on the field with the stage on the field at the 35 yard line. The parents and families sit in the regular end zone seating and are covered by the normal house PA system. We're using speakers on stands to cover the students, any band or performance space adjacent to the stage, and the stage itself. A couple mics are placed on the stage, two for the band, and three or four for the choir, if needed. A 12 or 14 channel snake runs back to the FOH space near the center of the end zone wall.
At FOH I have a CD player and/or Instant Replay, a channel or two of outboard EQ, VOG mic, and the Yamaha 01V96 mixer that we got last year.
I think I'll do a separate post detailing what it's been like for me to adjust from the analog to the digital mixer world but I will say that it's *NICE* to have decent EQ and compression on every channel.
The graduations are all pretty similar but there are variations between the schools. One has a dance ensemble, another has a big choir, while a third had no performers at all, using a CD to play the anthem and pomp.
There's usually no "tech" rehearsal so there are the inevitable surprises: "Oh crap! There's a singer on stage for the Alma Mater." "Woah, the band is playing...no mention of THIS in the program." An MC-like kick-off announcer before the procession? How about the soloist who leaps on stage while the whole class was singing a tribute song and looked for all the world like a hooligan? I kept the mic off but the band director later told me that was part of the show... Who knew?
Fortunately I kept on my toes for the most part and didn't really miss anything.

It was a really good run of shows, actually. I still have trouble getting a loud enough stage volume for the on-stage dignitaries to hear well and still having enough gain before feedback to handle the "quiet talkers" and the ones who don't talk towards the mic. There's always more to learn. But all-in all, I think everybody heard most everything.
It was a good feeling when it was over. That sure was a lot of names...

CW