all right I'm Dave Rat and this is the first in a series I'm gonna do on sound
tips for pro audio and audio humans in general I've collected a bunch of notes
over the years some I've shared in various ways Twitter or responses to
people asking me questions some are new and I just thought I may go through and
read some of these things that I've kept notes on and share them with you in a
video format
this is for analog you got a pair of analog consoles and you're
struggling as a front of house engineer to get your talkback mic on oh you've
probably experienced that where every time you go to line check the monitor
engineers meet at the talkback mic the tip is carry a female female male XLR Y
adapter unplugged the lead vocal from the back of your console and plug in the
Y adapter and plug your talkback mic into that Y adapter as well that way you
are able to talk back down the lead vocal mic which is almost always on in
the monitor system monitor engineers you probably not be too happy about this but
it is a way for us front of house engineers to communicate and do that a
few times and that talkback mic will find its way to be on when you need it
hopefully number two if you are a front of house engineer work up hand signals
with your stage technicians with your monitor engineer with your drum tech
based at guitar Tech's such that you're able to line check
without picking up the talkback mic the reason would be first of all the
talkback mic isn't always on and we don't have to harass a monitor engineer
with it secondly it just makes things easier you don't have to leave the
acoustic space talking to the mic okay hey snare a rack you can just look at
the monitor engine let the drum tech per se and I do I've mixed many huge venues
in mix position 100 to 200 feet away the text can see it so you get a signal set
together something like kick drum snare drum hi-hat racks overheads cowbell bass
guitar vocal Center vocal that side vocal that side I can go through
triangle cowbell get the listen and you could pretty much get them worked out I
actually talked to the text work out a series of signals and I'm able to go do
sound check without ever speaking into the mic hopefully all right number three
free cueing a sound system set your analyzer mic near yourself or where your
mix position ears are um while you're tuning the system so basically do your
initial test with the analyzer mic near you EQ the system get it sounding
correct or and then move the mic down to the audience level and readjust
but you've already when you move it from your position down to the audience level
you'll see a differential there again I will run also run to analyzer mics one
by me and one by the audience so that I can see I can hear what I'm hearing and
then I can switch to the mic that's down at the audience level and I can look at
the visual difference on smart or the analyzer so that I can extrapolate those
two because what you hear at the mix position especially if you're on a riser
is not usually the same as the audience level that you're looking for
and it helps you extrapolate the correct sound number four for dynamic bands why
the drum kit and to both gated and non gated inputs with a VCA on each set this
is really cool I did this for quite a while I've done it depending on the
drummer of the band how much I'm using gates if you have a gated set you run
those gates super tight and you've wide or you've digitally patched those same
inputs into another set of drum channels on a VCA and you've got a set without
gates now what you can do is for a fast song with a lot of noise in it where the
drummer's hitting hard you can bring up your gated set and run that and then
when they go to a slow part of a song or if they're playing a very quiet open
song we don't have a lot of stage noise you can VCA slide over to the non gated
set and have this open roomy sound and not hear those gates and not be messing
with your gates in the middle of the show additionally you're able to mix in
the gated and non gated sets together and have partially gated instead of
controlling all your thresholds you've got this easy way to slide between those
two drum sounds that can be very helpful um number five oh these are in no
particular order by the way they're just arbitrarily written as I thought of them
when mixing listen think adjust don't fiddle imagine the camera on you and you
will be made to justify every knob and fader change after the show I see it as
many years I've spent not always an engineer mixing large shows but I've
also spent many years as a PA technician working for numerous sound engineers
ranging from beginner to very very advanced and one thing that I do see or
I have seen is early on the show the mix comes up clean
they get the mixed together and then fiddle it into oblivion where they're
constantly adjusting needing something to do
getting bored or trying to perfect things and then pretty much destroy
things or drive things up to the limits and run out of headroom every motion you
make should have a reason behind it you shouldn't just constantly mess with
stuff and now that you're thinking about that you'll probably notice yourself or
other people doing it where they're constantly over the board the less you
do the better it is as long as it sounds good all right what are we on number six
this one's kind of cool if you're playing a really really echo-y
reverberant venue where pretty much when you walk in you know it's just gonna
sound like ass for the show
you can't win that battle you've done everything you've done you've got your
system set up it's not shooting but reflecting off the roof you've got
everything covering the right areas hopefully there's enough people coming
in to dampen a bit as a last resort or as a kind of cool trick in the house
music that's played before your band I'm gonna back up a little bit the goal
isn't the goal is to have the best show you possibly can and the environment is
beyond your control or within the environment that was in within the
parameters that are within your control the support acts play its echoey the
echoey you've Cana you're the headliner or whatever you are even if your support
at the end between house music sneaks and reverb into there put a reverb
effects and come back in and very very slowly over the course of the set change
turn it up louder and louder and louder such that no one notices this house
music is getting more and more distant echoing until it sounds like shit then
when your band comes on and you kill that reverb in the house music can you
play the differential between the house music and your band will make or give
the impression that come up with an incredibly tight and
clear mix that illusion won't last long but it's enough to get the audience
locked in and establish that initial connection which is one of the most
important parts of the show all right speaking about highly reverberant venues
when mixing in highly reverberant venues use more compression on the peaks you
definitely don't want large differentials between the normal state
the the average volume and the peak volume and the reason is if you've got
your vocals at this level and you've got a snare drum spiking up to that level
the tail end of the reverberation of the snare drum will the snare drum will come
up and come back down spike and it won't necessarily kill intelligibility you
won't be able to hear during the snare drum beat but who cares but their tail
and of that big peak will carry the reverberation out for a period of time
and kill and intelligibility for whatever duration that reverb time
allows it to be louder than the vocal by compressing the snare drum down or any
transient instrument down then those tales personally doesn't light up the
room those tales are lower and your intelligibility will increase so yeah
using limiters and compression more so in highly reverberant environments can
be advantageous number eight technology is important and useful but never forget
that the final quality of your work is the human ear and that has to do with
not getting lost in technology don't get so lost in reverbs and and I mean I'm
repurposing analyzers and and transient transfer functions and phase grafts
it's your ear not only your ear the audience is ear the technology doesn't
need to look perfect it just needs to sound good so don't lose track of it
number nine if you're ever thinking a rock show is too loud
try going to a Top Fuel race or an air show and be humbled yes
even with our biggest most powerful sound systems we deploy we are just
small peanuts in the big scheme of loud I'm not making a judgment call one way
or the other I'm just saying that those things are really loud and number 10
why mix from a riser oh yeah so you can hear what the audience doesn't hear I
mix from the ground or one foot maximum height whatever possible being on an ego
platform may make you feel important or it may I'll actually let you hear things
that you might not hear on the ground but if you can hear them on the ground
of the audience level what good is it makes you job a lot harder and your
probability of a positive outcome for the general public is demand
the proportional to how much higher your riser is than the audience who's
listening to your work get down low get a foot riser mix from
the ground and then have a foot or two foot high box stand on top of that box
when you need to hear something more clearly and then get back down to
audience level also that's beneficial for the promoter because you're blocking
less sight lines get all your gear down low it's beneficial for the audience
members who are behind you more people get to experience a show and you're less
distracting from our to purpose which is to connect the artist with the audience
not necessarily for us to be seen all right so hopefully those are helpful let
me know write me some comments I read them all and I will do some more of
these I've got a big pile of them cool cool