Gigging query - What to send soundman

[dinverro]

We are playing an all day event soon and will need to get on stage quick. Nearly everyone else will be standard guitar/drummer setups whereas we use a laptop with midi controllers as well as a few hardware synths. Would we be best getting a decent mix with some speakers and then routing it through our own mixer and basically giving the soundman a stereo out? (vocals will be separate though and maybe hardware synths too)

The stereo out will be all the drums as well as a midi keyboard and some bass and melodic loops.

Advice and or what you do would be great!

Cheers,

[dinverro]

forgot to say the venue is a relatively large one (1000 capacity roughly) with big sound system..

[oddstep]

Definitely send a stereo feed and get the mix right on your own mixer. I am guessing the speakers will be used as monitors. Make everything really mobile... wheels fitted, that sort of thing and try to get your powersupplies consolidated so you don't have to find loads of plugs. Get everything as wired up and set up as you can. Its boring watching people assemble midi signal chains. Pitch black has made a really good video that has loads of peripheral detail about setting up stuff in flightcases that double as desks and all sorts of obvious timesavers.

[chris vine]

Your stereo mix onstage might not translate as the same thing in the main PA.

So I'd keep the bass and drums separate - you have no idea what the bass response of the room is, it could be a complication for the FOH engineer. Otherwise you are on the right track, finding a balance between ease of setup and flexibility.

my 2 pence

[dinverro]

Ok cool - so if I send a stereo feed with drums and melodys and a separate mono out for bass then, that is cool......

[cubehog]

I´d go with an 8track multicore-out. We´ve done the stereo-lineout-thing, which resulted in a very difficult mixing situation and it was very stressful to think about levels, freq, dyn, etc. while performing songs.
We ended up buying an 8-channel-multicore from stereojack (bal.) to xlr-male b/c of the stage boxes. We had our performances always in some sort of liveband context, so I can´t comment on Dj´s setup.
It was more band orientated stuff.

If you put trust on the FoH-mixing-guy you´ll be better with your performance. After a few runs we decided to give the foh-guy subgroups. drums, bass, instruments, vocals. categorized like this,
it is easier for the sound engineer and you as the peformer.
Usually the venue plays a big part in the overall sound. You can´t be focussed on this while being on stage. Sometimes soundcheck circumstances and the following live situation are very different.
You need one person who is able to adjust to the sound in this particular venue.

Clear instructions and your part of professionalism are in your hands. It is then up to you to give the best from your side and hope that the soundguy knows what he is doing.
Have some faith in this and you can enjoy the perfomance.

Good luck.

der Ivo

[chris vine]

Cubehog has given good advice there. much better to seperate everything for the soundman, really.

Depending of course if they are lazy or interested in doing a good job or not

[dinverro]

We have a part band setup similar to something like Hot Chip/Magnetic Man perhaps..... My laptop soundcard is a Focusrite Pro 24 Dsp which has 6 outs. 2 of our 3 vocals go through Ableton on outputs 5 and 6 so that is two outs already used. I also trigger drums, bass and some melody parts from Ableton and there is a midi keyboard as well. How would I route this through the last 4 outs (each one being mono). Would it be better to send drums out as a stereo (1+2) and then bass on mono (out 3) and melodies/midi keys on the last mono out (4)? It seems to me the best thing to do in a lot of ways is to get vocals, drums and bass separated....

[siddhu]

Whenever we've sent multiple outs to a "generalist FOH" person, we hated the mix!

IMHO if you are kind of DJ style i.e. no live instrumentation, mix it yourself and send it to the FOH who can fine tune the stereo feed for the venue.

A very good friend of mine who has been doing the sound for most of the major festivals in France for over 20 years also strongly suggests that it's always better for an electronic act to send a stereo feed to the FOH UNLESS they have their own dedicated FOH engineer who knows their music and has been working with them.

But as always, YMMV!

[siddhu]

Also remember that if for any reason you can't do a full soundcheck, sending a stereo feed is a better failsafe than sending stems and not knowing how the FOH mixer will treat/mix them

[bicarbone]

Good advice here!

(Summarizing for myself):

If you trust your mix and trust the FOH, get drunk together before the show.

If you trust your mix but don't trust the FOH, send him a stereo feed.

If you don't trust your mix but trust the FOH, send him stems.

If you trust neither your mix nor the FOH, bring an ipod and your own PA.

[chapelier fou]

Agreed with above !

[chris vine]

[luddy]

If you trust neither your mix nor the FOH, bring an ipod and your own PA.

If you do this, please post the show date here so we can show up and watch you set up your own PA system and drive it with an iPod. We'll get drunk with the FOH guy.

-Luddy