A few times a year I volunteer to an arts organization and serve as their “house sound and light guy.” I usually run sound and do the lights for the traveling acts if they don’t have a tech with them. The auditorium is in a rural Minnesota area, but even so, we try to host a professional quality event for our concert goers and guest artists.
Small details such as pre-show and intermission music in the lobby area before the show make a big difference. Often I toss a CD of royalty-free light music into my ‘go bag’ before I leave home – to play through the house and lobby speaker systems. Sometimes I put on my “radio voice” and do the lobby announcements.
Getting the right blend of background music, voice-over, and a pleasing overall level can be tricky. There is an existing “Intermission Signal Bell” built into the lobby amplifier system…. but no ones uses it because it sounds like something out of the stone age.
I’d often thought: “how could I automate this task and make it stupid-crazy simple?” Wouldn’t it be nice to make it easy and available so that ANYONE could do it and get consistently good results? That way, any teacher or student at the school auditorium could just press a button and have prelude or intermission music start up in the lobby for their concert or program.
So that was the beginning of the need – what follows is my solution.
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