FWIW,

Mixing that half time show has to be the hardest thing to do in the sound business.

No real sound check, hardly any rehearsal.

The most adversarial setting for wireless mics on the planet at any given moment.

Plus you are just getting splits from a another person doing the FOH mix... who may or may not care what they are sending you.

No actual facilities for doing the work... you get to mix live, simultaneously to surround, stereo and a mono compatible mix... in a production truck with some Wharfdale DP8.2s bolted to the tin walls... with freakish sounds of the crowd and industrial noise leaking in through the walls.

Plus you get to enjoy diesel fumes from the 50 other satellite trucks in the sat truck lot.

Also you get to enjoy the pleasures of using old beat up corroded patch bays and conduits that were installed when the city low balled a contractor to build the stadium.

Also because of the wide spread distribution and the CODECs and MUXing you are in the wild west. Someone on Cable may get one sound character while someone on Satellite gets something else and Broadcast is different as well. It's just a total nightmare.

Worse than that two houses on the same technology can get two different results because two routers may e converting CODECs on the fly simply because of localized logistics.

I have several friends who have surrendered the A-1 mixer hot seat in live football television because it is often times just an impossible situation.

On top of that there are almost no facilities for lodging... the last time I was asked to work a Super Bowl the hotel was 100 miles away. the shifts were 18hour days, and there was no parking within 3 miles of the stadium... NO WAY!!!

Food becomes a logistical nightmare as well... the mess hall never has food available when you have down time and the local businesses have lines out the door and crazy wait times.

There is no harder media gig than the Superbowl... it is super sized un-fun... and some of the guys simply will not work it no matter how much money is put on the table.

I'm not excusing the results... but I can guess how it happened.

Who won?

best regards,
mike

My thoughts on the super bowel halftime "show"

 I knew it was headed down hill when the first words.... Tonights gonna be a good night....came out of my TV autotuned.   Then Ferg's mike wasn't on until half way through her first solo line.... Since the male vox were so drastically autotuned and they seemed to be chanting something about  "Pump it up....make it louder"  I thought they were asking for more monitor.... but then I though, maybe that's the words to this little ditty they're singing.  Then poor Ferg, couldn't seem to find the correct pitch to the song ..... I'm thinking she needs autotune as well.

Yeah it was bad. From the lack of talent on stage to the mix..... but to be honest, and after reading Mike's comments above, I can understand why. (on the mix anyway).. there is no excuse for booking crap talent.  I don't recall ever hearing a superbowel half time musical act that really sounded good.

At some point, not to far into the "show" I popped in my ear buds and listened to some real music until I saw the teams back on the field kicking off.

Yeah, about the WHO..... the sound was pretty bad on that show as well. The whole aging rockers thing for that show was also not well thought out.  Isn't there a talented modern day act that would play the gig.....? On further though......

You see..... I'm thinking that what Mike said about the sound techs not wanting that gig due to the downsides that go with it..... perhaps all the good talent also look at it the same way, from the musician's point of view.... who wants to get up in front of hundreds of millions of people and sound bad? Well, with the exception of Christina Aguilera. Unless they really need the money from the gig to pay the rent.

Reminds me that I am getting older.  Pop music targeted for the younger people out there. Now it is at the Super Bowl level. Too bad though. Not much of value in the performance. Autotune to the max.
 
My favorite commercial was near the beginning of the game where they immitated one of those home remodeling shows. The host brings in the couple and shows off the new kitchen remodel. We see a rather basic American style kitchen with a bucket of Bud Lights on the counter. The husbands eye's go wide open as he approaches the bucket of beer. The wife stays back and says nothings has changed.  Then they move on to the family room or something. Well, l liked it.
 
 

even with the half time disaster that it was, I think the worst musical part of the super bowl was Lea Michele singing America the Beautiful.  My wife said, "why do modern pop singers always scoop to the pitch?  I was always taught that was not allowed."

Black eyed peas were bad, bad, bad.   They suck anyway, but they were bad at sucking last night.   The led light suits on the back up dancers was kinda neat. but that was all I got out of it.  I can see where mixing the sound might be a nightmare, but sh*t it was only a pre-recorded music track & 3 vocal mics.... how hard could it be to turn them on & balance the levels?   I realize perception may change from viewer to viewer but it seems pretty unanimous to me... the levels were messed up.   She can barely stay in key most of the time, I wonder if she had a lousy monitor system?

For a minute there, the way the announcers were bragging the show up, I thought we were going to see the cast of Glee doing the half time show, or possibly playing football.

There's no excuse imo for the sound to be the way it was. I understand about mixing on the fly for surround and all that, but to have 3 out of 4 mic's off 20 seconds in to a song ... that ain't right. That's amateur crap. We're not talking about a little home town football field with 50 parents sitting on aluminum bleachers, we're talking the freaking Superbowl. 100's of millions of dollars were exchanged.

I see this a lot lately, I mean, look at the commercials. They weren't witty at all, they were low brow, low intelligence vanilla crap designed to appease certain segments of the population without any regard for the 95% of the rest of us. It's all part of the everybody get's a trophy and nobody's better than you mentality that's being poured down everyone's throat.

I just wanted to watch some frickin' football, with manly beer commercials, hot babes, and some frickin' Clydesdale's, and some good music. There weren't even any cheerleaders! Why did I have to give that up for a barroom full of men singing Tiny Dancer and a black woman smashing a white girl in the face with a soda can? There was only one commercial at the very beginning that showed a sexy woman and it was long before the game even started. Even the Go Daddy commercials were terrible this year. What, a couple of pair of legs, that to be honest, looked like they could have been a couple guys. You never actually saw the bodies/faces attached to the legs with the way they cut the camera.

That wasn't even music, there wasn't even a band! It was some guy bustin' a beat in X1 on his 6.5" paper coned studio monitors with a 99$ Subwoofer from Best Buy. I'd gladly trade all those eunuch's dancing around in LED lights (heaven forbid we use any other kind of lighting or we'll kill Earth, Mars, and possibly the Sun and send the universe in to an out of control spiral in to a black hole for all eternity) for a 4 piece band of aging rockers who can barely walk on stage anymore.

Looks like I can scratch the Superbowl off my list of the ONE football games I watch a year now.

Bub

achers, we're tall part of the everybody get's a trophy and nobody's better than you mentality th there wasn't even a band! It was some guy bustin' a beat in X1 on his 6.5" paper coned studio monitors with a 99$ Subwoofer from Best Buy.

SO you heard Bapus latest song???

Never let the black eyed peas play the super bowl again >> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Never-Letting-the-Black-Eyed-Peas-Play-the-Superbowl-Again/128135303923409

spacey


It doesn't make sense for them not to have
the sound system squared away.
That show would lead one to think this was the first time
they ever had a half-time show.
And especially when they have viewing screens like that.

I do think it was bad enough that somebody will be looking
very hard at correcting the problems.
Everybody was making excuses on the morning news.
Sad.

What is really bizarre was that they even had trouble setting up the temporary seating for paying people yet....I don't recall seeing that happen either...mmmmmm....

craigb


The peas gave the Super Bowl a black eye with that performance.  Good to see that it wasn't just me that thought they were awful.  I'm guessing that you won't find many positive comments on any forum that revolves around making music!

Everyone's giving the Black Eyed Peas (BEP) a bad review here and to be fair, I think the original decision which BEP's made was the incorrect one. They should've learned a good lesson from Milli-Vanilli and just used a CD (even if it skipped a few times, it would've had better sound...).  

Bub

I gotta disagree with you on that one. Last year they had Bruce Springsteen,and although he's, well, Springsteen, he hasn't exactly been on top of the charts for many years. McCartney or The Stones either. All very popular, but definitely not with the today's generation and none have been on the charts for years, possibly decades.

Just a technicality... Last year's Superbowl (#44, year 2010) entertainment featured "The Who" (actually a decent halftime show). Springsteen was Superbowl #43, year 2009. Time flies, eh?

 

KenB123

Bub

I gotta disagree with you on that one. Last year they had Bruce Springsteen,and although he's, well, Springsteen, he hasn't exactly been on top of the charts for many years. McCartney or The Stones either. All very popular, but definitely not with the today's generation and none have been on the charts for years, possibly decades.

Just a technicality... Last year's Superbowl (#44, year 2010) entertainment featured "The Who" (actually a decent halftime show). Springsteen was Superbowl #43, year 2009. Time flies, eh?

Damn, you're right! Where the hell was I last year during the Superbowl? Hmmm, I can't remember. I never saw The Who, that's why I don't remember them. Now I'm going to be trying to remember why I didn't see it all afternoon! DOH! :)

Guitarhacker


WOW.... What we all missed....

this is the result of the CHICKIFICATION of Football carried towards it's ugly and disastrous ends.

It will probably get worse in the coming years....from the game, to the commercials, to the half time fiasco.

Finally! Someone who gets it!

;)

I wonder if music companies recall defective acts the way car companies recall automobiles?????

Zuma


Personally I've never liked all the ancillary crap that goes along with the SB. I wish it were no different than a regular season game. At halftime I want to hear the analysts break the game down and then get back to the game. But that just ain't never gonna happen. And the commercials, just like modern music, simply reflect how shallow and creatively constipated our society has become. It is as Roger Waters so eloquently stated: "This species has amused itself to death."_

I can tell by the look in your eyes that we don't see many things the same way.
I can say I've never really evaluated the quality of "life" or musically entertainment by
watching the super bowl.
And by Eric Johnson's new release...I'd say things are going very well with music.
Personally I always thought half time was a break to re-stock.