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

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