hello my name is Dave Rat and I want to share  with you today my strategy towards mixing rock

shows, or mixing bands live I'll show you  what I do and use the Chili Peppers as an

example I have a couple kick mics it's going to  have a snare top, snare bottom, high hat, rack tom,

floor tom, floor tom, ride cymbal, pair of overheads  alright so next we got Flea bass and we're going

to run the bass clean DI, a bass dirty DI, clean DI, dirty DI and a bass mic so you have three inputs for him

guitar left, guitar right, guitars center or mono  and then go to what we call guitar three which is

the other rig and finally we have vocals where  we've got vocal Flea, vocal Anthony and vocal John or

Josh as the case may be nowadays 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  subgroup so here we've got some subgroups and

we'll use a vocals subgroup 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 and then I'll take my toms

rack floor floor and they will come down and  hit it 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 ten compressors I don't link  them in the stereo the reason you don't link a

stereo group or let's use a guitars example the  reason you don't link guitars is if the guitar

is heavy to one side and 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

rights on the listened part of it and it would  turn down both sides so wouldn't rebalance that

ratio the left heavy guitar would  stay left heavy, 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 2:1

or 4:1 compression ratio 3:1 is my norm so I'm not using a tremendous

amount of compression which allows when it gets  heavier on the left side 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 to have blasting at or on the other side

not to hear guitar, so that moderates that that's  why you don't link compressors when you're doing

stereo. Another reason you don't do that is because  if you hit the stereo link button with something

that's stereo that's got some nice stereo dynamics  maybe toms and you have got them panned left and right, it tends

to make it sound more mono, it collapses the stereo  image, when you unlink them they're

compressing separately so the stereo  imaging is maintained so now what we'll do is we'll

go through and set all of these compressors we'll  set them all at zero threshold all the way across

and all exactly the same we'll put them let's  say at 3:1 compression and then the vocals

will set the threshold let's say plus four so  now what will happen is when you drive them

into these compressors all your instruments will  try will have a harder time getting louder after

they reached at 0 DB point zero threshold and  your vocals will continue to get louder up to

+4 what this does is it forces your vocals to  want to be on top so to keep that together 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 all a 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 of the  VCA one or let's say use VCA 10 if I bring that

VCA out it's exact same thing as being 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

VCA 11 and we assign all of our groups to VCA 11  our group faders this is going to be our group's

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 if you turn up  your VCA 11 which is on your groups those faders

are after the compressors if we take VCA 10 and VCA  11 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 VCA10 which reduces the amount of  compression everything seen and you make up gain

off of VCA 11 everything comes out of compression  so your mix becomes more dynamic and more open

sounding 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 is extremely powerful and  allows you to change the the sonic signature the

way that the band sounds very easily in real-time  oh if you have an analog console and you take all

these compressors and you have them all in a rack  right next to each other you can look at your rack

you can see what's compressed you can tell that  the guitar player turned up instantly by because

you can see that he's more in compression it was  before you can see if I mics 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 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 Vox effects they also are routed

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 and  relationship so you want and the you know 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 rack tom effects you're using or floor tom  drum effects they would be routed back into there

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 look at the audience

reaction I want to watch the band on stage and be  in tune with that I much prefer the guitar player

step on a stomp box and have that guitar jump  10 DB smashing the compression here fattens the

guitar up automatically comes up but still doesn't  step on the vocals if I got one person singing

lead vocals singing and then all of a sudden  the backgrounds come in the overall vocal mix

compresses and keeps those three  vocalists 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 alright hope

that helps and if I think of something else to  share that's interesting I'll do another video on