A little advice to all you LIVE performers...

gabster · Post by **gabster** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:30 pm

Very interesting topic!

We had experienced this on our own skin. We did a gig a couple weeks ago with a three piece band (acoustic guitar, trumpet & electronica).
The venue was low key with a very forgiving/oblivious audience with NO SOUNDMAN (!).
We had control over our monitoring mix via headphones (which included a click track), and as well as over the house mix. All this controlled by the vocalist/guitar player who had a Makie VLZ1606 on stage (!). In the end we gave a L & R mix to the house.
Although we had a decent monitoring in our headphones we heard from certain people with ears that there was a lack (or excess) of certain instruments, etc.

What we learned so far is what you all seem to reinforce: The need of separate outputs for the house, and a sound man/woman with an ear or at least understanding" for this kind of music.

It is too much thinking to do on stage anyways as a performer, so adding another technical mix to be too stressful.

I think though that having a control over the monitoring mix by the performers is a plus - be that via Aviom system or a simple mixer on stage from where the levels can be set before hand (or even saved) it is a plus for both the performers (so that they aren't at the mercy of the sound engineer) and the sound person - who has one less thing to think of and does not need to deal with performers who cannot hear this or that, etc.

Just a thought...

Gabi.

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:28 pm

I haven't done a live none-DJ gig since the late 90's and that was a nightmare. We started by giving the house system separate feeds for each keyboard but we soon put an end to that when too many engineers would completely kill a fader when they didn't see bouncing lights on a track. And yes, we did tell them to not kill any of the tracks just because they don't see a signal. It's good to find out that sound engineers now know that keyboards and drum machines don't have feedback.

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:31 am

beats me wrote: It's good to find out that sound engineers now know that keyboards and drum machines don't have feedback.

Hah. true dat. Also for me it's a huge risk that the FOW guy will hear all the buzzing and chaotic noise that's in my music on purpose and logically, assume it's not supposed to be there and try to eq things the whole set to "fix it".

That's actually happened several times. "Wait, your drums are supposed to studder out of time like that? far out man".

BENJ-AMG · Post by **BENJ-AMG** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:16 pm

I don't know why anyone would trust the house engineer to mix for you when you can do it yourself on stage and just send a stereo out to the house board. I've seen some real trainwrecks occur when electronic bands get complicated with their routing. I just wouldn't be able to stand it. We submix it all so we can control each element and then give it to the house. What thy do from there is difficult to control but at least we control the volume relationships within the tracks.

BTW we play with Adult. on Saturday

gabster · Post by **gabster** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:30 pm

I don't know why anyone would trust the house engineer to mix for you when you can do it yourself on stage and just send a stereo out to the house board. I've seen some real trainwrecks occur when electronic bands get complicated with their routing. I just wouldn't be able to stand it. We submix it all so we can control each element and then give it to the house. What thy do from there is difficult to control but at least we control the volume relationships within the tracks.

Makes sense - and that's what we've been planning too. Volume-wise it all works out well. The problem comes when a certain instrument stands out (or gets lost) in a front mix even if it sounds well on the monitoring system simply because if the difference between the house and the monitoring speaker setup - some tend to manage certaing frequencies better than others.
For example, the performer(s) adjust the bass so that it will sound great in the monitoring mix but on the house - that same signal - might need some EQ boosting, etc. otherwise it mught be too weak. Having just a Stereo out mix, the sound man can do nothing on the bass to boost it.
Having separate output of each (or at least grouped) gives flexibility to the sound man to do a balanced mix.
I know, that means you will have to trust him etc.

I think it is a give and take issue... Ideally is to have your own mix guy who knows your music well and how it suppose to sound in a given venue.

Gabi

najrock · Post by **najrock** » Thu May 10, 2007 7:44 pm

yo... its funny you mention that show... i assume it was in chicago...

one of my good friends emailed me after she went to that show... she said that it was the best live sound she had expierianced EVER at a electronic show. she said, and i qoute, "it felt like a wall of sound was falling on my head, my belt unbuckled itself and my feet were tingling from the floor shaking."

so, props to you my friend. apparently you are very good at your job.

ohiowa · Post by **ohiowa** » Thu May 10, 2007 9:40 pm

najrock wrote:

one of my good friends emailed me after she went to that show... she said that it was the best live sound she had expierianced EVER at a electronic show. she said, and i qoute, "it felt like a wall of sound was falling on my head, my belt unbuckled itself and my feet were tingling from the floor shaking."

i'm very glad your friend had a good time, thank her for the compliment.
what it all boils down to is the running a mix yourself leaves the engineer's hands tied, i mix a band who has an MPC player, he used to send me a submix of what he did and it was ok, but in some rooms it would get out of hand with certain samples and what he needed to hear on stage vs. what i needed for the house, then we decided to split his signal and have him send me drums to one channel and loops to another, that has tidied things up quite nicely.

but you have to trust your engineer, i started mixing in the mid-90's and i know that most "sound dudes" couldn't comprehend a computer on stage, now, the majority of people making music use a computer to do it so it's a different time.

i'd rather have an enginer i trust mix my performances, that said, i also sub-mix a bunch of my samples and vocals/FX from the stage as we often play shows where the pa is minimal or we're trying to keep the number of inputs to FOH down as we're an opening act (not to mention that we run our own monitors from the stage), as soon as we're playing consistant venues and are headlining, i'll start splitting my outputs.

twinstates · Post by **twinstates** » Fri May 11, 2007 11:37 am

Surely if you have no live elements (i.e. mic'd up instruments) then you could master at home, check on a few different systems n then run the outs through the same combo of comps eq's limiters etc?

After all the dj or house sound guy doesn't change the levels of individual instruments on a track that the dj plays. . .

I can understand it's different for a band but for just plaing back loops etc with ableton surely that's the best solution. . .

Cheers

TS

New tracks up on myspace

http://www.myspace.com/aidantrax

compositeone · Post by **compositeone** » Fri May 11, 2007 1:06 pm

Machinate wrote:
tempus3r wrote:I agree that if you have a good sound engineer, sending things like a kick separately but I have had a sound engineer i'd trust with that maybe twice in 15 years and hundreds of shows.
Word - even though I haven't played out that much, this is totally the vibe I am getting too.

Basically, for me to trust an engineer so much that I send out more than two streams (kick+everything) it would have to be "my own" engineer, in other words an electronic musician him-/herself that I know to be of sound mind. The treatment of sound in electronic music is paramount, which is why I think many of us prefer to do our own FOH...

Word.

Was about to say that in most cases I would just not be able to to trust a generic live sound engineer as IMO they just don't understand the music. If you were touring and you could practice with the same engineer and have him at every gig running the show then that would be amazing.

botkiller · Post by **botkiller** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:35 am

I think there's a lot to be said for letting a house engineer do a little work for your sound - but it does of course matter on the engineer. I've been thru a couple hundred sound guys in live situations, and about ten of those have been capable of mixing *gasp* two XLR outs. As a result, I have taken to just mixing most all of my own signal. However, I am a sound guy at heart, both from studio and a live aspect, so I do actually know what I am doing on stage when it comes to audio - and I've worked with a ton of sound guys who say that they really like how I do things, so hopefully they mean it when they say it

Yeh · Post by **Yeh** » Wed May 16, 2007 8:42 am

Well, that's the way I work live: stereo outputs for beatloops, synths, vocals and mono for kick and bass. Because we also work with live musicians, not all sound engineers get it. Quite frustrating on festivals if you don't have a soundcheck.

Because of that, there's a lot to say for 'just one stereo pair DI' but our drummer wants separate beatloops and bass on his monitor. He doesn't want a clicktrack. So just stereo doesn't work for us.

By the way: I used Live live for one year, but switched back to Cubase because it's more stable (on all computer setups I use) and demands far less CPU.
I'll keep using Live as my main composing tool.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Wed May 16, 2007 9:03 am

Yeh wrote:Well, that's the way I work live: stereo outputs for beatloops, synths, vocals and mono for kick and bass. Because we also work with live musicians, not all sound engineers get it. Quite frustrating on festivals if you don't have a soundcheck.

Because of that, there's a lot to say for 'just one stereo pair DI' but our drummer wants separate beatloops and bass on his monitor. He doesn't want a clicktrack. So just stereo doesn't work for us.

By the way: I used Live live for one year, but switched back to Cubase because it's more stable (on all computer setups I use) and demands far less CPU.
I'll keep using Live as my main composing tool.

you could set up your own monitoring system for your drummer and still be able to send a stereo pair to the main system. just got to fork out a few bucks for a set of monitors for your drummer.

Yeh · Post by **Yeh** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:01 pm

[quote="Johnisfaster"]you could set up your own monitoring system for your drummer and still be able to send a stereo pair to the main system. just got to fork out a few bucks for a set of monitors for your drummer.[/quote]

Good advice, funny I've never thought about it.

Thanx

A little advice to all you LIVE performers...

Errrm,

Re: A little advice to all you LIVE performers...