hello my name is dave rat and i want to share with you today my strategy towards mixing
rock shows um or mixing bands live so i'll show you what i do at least i'll use the chili
peppers as an example um i have a couple kick mics um and i always want two kick mics that
we have a spare kick mic if one goes down you go to the other they're two different
tones but you know having a spare is good i have a snare top snare bottom hi-hat rack
tom floor tom floor tom ride cymbal pair of overheads and maybe a drum machine or something
if there is one on that tour so there's chad there's a drummer handwriting's great all
right so next we got flea uh bass if we want a bass clean a bass dirty di queen di dirty
di and a bass mic so we have three inputs for him uh we've got john which will have
a guitar left guitar right guitar i don't know center mono and then guitar what we call
guitar three uh which is the other rig and finally we have vocals where we've got uh
vocal flea vocal anthony vocal john or josh as the case may be nowadays um there's some
other stuff coming off stage but there's the basic fundamentals of a four-piece rock band
the key here is when you have your various uh band members uh some you know there'll
be certain songs where maybe a bass player switch to a certain base so quieter the drummer
will uh chad will play extra hard uh keeping these entities in check so that your balance
your mix stays balanced is is the key and you really want to have your drum to bass
to guitar level somewhat manageable and then take your vocals put those 6 db on top or
so 3 to 6 db on top so they remain clear and the band still has to maintain the dynamics
of the show but you don't want things to go way out of whack so how do we keep all these
things in check here's what i do i take my vocals and i run them into a stereo sub group
so here we've got some sub groups
and we'll use a vocal sub group left and right i'll take all my guitars and i'll run those
into a stereo subgroup
i'll take my bass i'll run that into a mono group i'll take my kick and snares those right
there and i'll run those into a kick snare group which is mono mono and then um i'll
take my toms rack floor floor and they will come down and hit a group toms left and right
and finally i will take my metal stuff everything made out of metal and those will go into the
metal group
left and right okay so now we've got our ten groups here we've got vocals guitar bass kick
snare toms and metal these ten groups are panned out left right left right mono mono
left right left right what i'll do now is i'll put compressors i'll put compressors
on each one of these groups 10 compressors
i don't link them in the stereo the reason you don't link a stereo group let's say on
the vocals
is that or let's use a guitars example the reason you don't link guitars is if the guitar
is heavy to one side let's say the guitar left is heavier than the guitar right it's
louder then it would be it would come out here if you have your compressors linked it
would sum the two left and right on the uh listen part of it and it would turn down both
sides so it wouldn't rebalance that ratio the head left heavy guitar would stay left
heavy um we want these compressors to even that out we don't want to fix it but we want
it to moderate it all these comps i run at about a two to one to four to one compression
ratio three to one's my norm so i'm not using a tremendous amount of compression which allows
when it gets heavier on the left side the guitar is heavy to the left it allows it to
be louder but not that much louder it still keeps things in balance we really don't want
half the arena or half the venue you have blasting guitar on the other side not to hear
guitar so that moderates that that's the way you don't link compressors
when you're doing stereo another reason you don't do that is because um if you hit the
like and unlink button with something that's stereo and it's got some nice stereo dynamics
maybe toms you've got them panned left and right um it tends to make sound it tends to
make it sound more mono it collapses a stereo image when you unlink them they're moving
uh they're compressing separately so stereo image imaging is maintained um so now we'll
do is we'll go through and set a ratio on all of these compressors we'll set them all
at zero threshold all the way across and all exactly at the same we'll put them let's say
all three to one compression ratio and then the vocals will set the threshold at let's
say plus four
so now what will happen is assuming all this ins all these instruments sound correct when
you drive them into these compressors um all your instruments will try will have a harder
time getting louder after they reach that zero db point zero um threshold and your vocals
will continue to get loud after plus four what this does it forces your vocals to want
to be on top so it'll keep that together not only that if the guitar gets four db goes
to plus four and you're at three to one it's only going to go to plus one and a third so
plus 4 db over 0 goes to 1 in the third so you've only gained a db over let's say your
guitar is right at zero so your guitar does come up a db but not 4db it doesn't step on
it it just gets a little bit louder so it keeps it in check so now what happens is your
entire mix regardless of what's going on it wants to stay mixed if you've got all your
meters about zero you've got your level set pretty well you've got your comps all matched
it almost forms an auto mix situation there's some other things that are interesting about
this setup as well if you take a vca now vca all vca is is a remote control anything assigned
to that vca is remotely controlled by a single fader you can take everything on your board
all your input channels and assign it to vca1 or let's say use vc810 because we're going
to use the other vcs for something else um and if i bring that vca up it's the exact
same thing as me going over and having 24 fingers or whatever and turning all those
up at the same time and keeping the ratio and balances between them so it's a real easy
way to remote control turn up all the faders so we've got vca 10 is all our inputs
now we take vca11
and we assign all of our groups to vca11 our group faders this is going to be our groups
this allows you to do something really cool if you bring up vca 10 you're turning up all
your inputs before the compressor thresholds which means that as we bring vca 10 up you're
you're on your compressors you have your gain meter and you've got your gain reduction your
gain reduction as you bring up your inputs your gain reduction will can will uh increase
so you'll start to see more compression because you've turned everything up before the threshold
but if you turn up your vca 11 which is on your groups those faders are after the compressors
so that takes whatever compression you have it takes the entire thing and turns it up
if we take vca10 and vc11 and we turn up 10 and down 11.
we can maintain about the same overall level to the audience but we're pushing everything
into compression so everything your mix becomes more compressed and more contained if you
go the other way
and you turn down vca 10 which reduces the amount of compression everything's seen and
you make up gain off of vc11 everything comes out of compression so your mix becomes more
dynamic and more open sound this ability to take a fast song and push everything into
compression by grabbing two faders and maintain volume and then reverse that process for a
slow song and have everything be very dynamic and open uh is extremely powerful and allows
you to change the um you know the sonic signature the way that the band sounds very easily um
in real time if you have a analog console and you take all these compressors and you
have them all in a rack right next to each other um you can actually look and see or
on the vu meters or the on the console meter bridge you can see vocal guitar bass kick
snare toms and metal stuff and you can actually see your individuals banned humans and what
they're doing um and if all your meters are reading even you know your mix is pretty well
balanced um if you have all your compressors grouped in a certain area you can look at
your rack you can see what's compressing you can tell that the guitar player turned up
instantly by because you can see that he's more in compression than he was before uh
you can see if the mic is down if one side of the venue is not receiving guitar you can
see that the left-hand guitar group is down or the or whatever it is so you've got a really
good overall indication of what you're presenting the audience another another um oh why do
i use um stereo sub groups when these vocals obviously if i am going to pan them it might
be panned slightly um but not much because i really want everybody in the room to hear
flea i want everyone to hear john i don't want to pan them out and the reality is in
larger venues and in most venues a lot a lot of people are just in front of one cluster
and they're not receiving a stereo sound from both sides one of the aspects of this that's
important is using the stereo subgroup for vocals is not only to have a little bit of
panning maybe on the background but the effects for the vocals the vocal effects box effects
they also are rooted into that same group and the reason you do that is when these vocal
group compresses you want it to compress the effects as well you don't want the vocals
to become more and more compressed and then have the effects just get louder and louder
in relationship so you want and the you need a stereo group to run the stereo effects also
you want to be able to control your vocal entity when you bring down those vocal groups
you want the vocal effects to come down with it the same applies with any um rectum effects
you're using or floor tom drum effects they would be rooted back into their kick and snare
effects a little tricky because i have a mono group if you have enough you could use a stereo
group for that that would be great uh typically a lot of boards don't i'm in the habit of
using a mono but for a stereo snare drum effect it'd be nice to have the stereo group there
typically i just run the stereo the syndrome effect mono um what else guitars i do use
stereo guitars there's a left rig a right rig and they have different dynamics so i
do need that stereo group and they are panned out that is um one of the secrets to how i
mix rock shows and um keep things sounding good and
refrain from hovering over the board throughout the show and i'm actually able to um focus
on the way the show sounds rather than chasing the various volume levels throughout the show
if i find myself looking at the board and having to turn something up and down multiple
times and set up scenes to account for all that then i really haven't set this up properly
and that's i don't like to be chasing stuff around i want to look at the overall picture
of the show rather than micromanage the actual volumes i want to listen to the tones of the
system i want to look at the audience reaction i want to watch the band on stage and
be in tune with that and really stay away from that micromanaging of of this guitar
is too loud this is too soft and having to uh even like ride things like guitar solos
i'd much prefer the guitar player step on a stompbox and have that guitar jump 10 db
smash into compression here fattens the guitar up automatically comes up but still doesn't
step on the vocals if i got one person singing leave vocals singing and then all of a sudden
the backgrounds come in the overall vocal mix compresses and keeps those three the three
vocalists uh not that much louder than they were with one singer so the vocal to instrument
ratio is maintained keeping those ratios in check keeping them automatically keeping themselves
in check and that's what this setup can do for you all right hope that helps and if i
think of something else to share that's interesting i'll do another video on that awesome so thank
you for hanging out and i hope you found this video and others that i do interesting and
informative and check out soundtools.com take a look at the products i personally designed
some solutions for the pro audio industry analog over cat5 a bunch of testers and other
useful tools ratsound.com has got our sales department rental department install department
we sell a wide variety of pro audio and av gear we do installations small to large and
we do rentals for everything as small as local clubs and backyard parties all the way up
to coachella festival and artists like pearl jam jack johnson blink182 and thanks for hanging
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