Mastering & Live Performance

[febraro]

Hello guys,

I'm guessing this is a pretty newbie question. I'm currently in the process of planning a live set (I've been using Live strictly for production so far) and naturally I want to break down my songs into their individual tracks such as percussion/synths/vocals so I can have a dynamic performance. My question is: how do you deal with the mastering in this situation? Obviously when you work with stems the whole concept of it is pretty much lost, but I consider mastering quite important in shaping the overall feel of my songs, not just in a "make it loud" kind of way, so the possibility of losing that in a performance situation worries me a little.

So when playing your own tunes live do you just export the parts without any mastering? Do you apply the master effects to each part individually (which doesn't sound likely)? Do you not export stems at all and just DJ the songs out?

Thanks in advance.

[h0ch.grat]

Oi,

you cannot master your live set, as you don't know what will happen in terms of which clips / sounds you will end up using.
A track might sound good (mastered) on it's own, but as soon as you combine it with elements from other tracks or do improvise on it, the whole arrangement does not work any more.
So keep it clean and simple / unmodified from the beginning.

What I do - and advise:
prepare each sample / midi clip individually, so it sounds good, not normalized to the max but leave some headroom
You normally - in session view - use one track for bass lines, one for leads, one for ...
Insert a basic eq in every track in the session view, with a matching basic setting for a bass line, kick, lead, ...
Now if your sound gets dull or overloaded you can use the respective eqs to save you (I got a separate panel on one of my controllers reserved just for that purpose - with easy and fast access to the eqs)
I have a compressor on the master out that I can use to adjust peaks from hi hats or low bass rumble but seldom use it at all

hope this helps

[Tarekith]

No mastering for any of my live sets here. I let the sound guy worry about the overall volume and tone depending on the room, that's their job.

[Kent_in_CO]

yeah, +1 to what Tarekith said; leaving it to the soundguy is always preferable.

In lieu of that - if the soundguy is too drunk/high/apathetic, or there IS not soundguy - you'll have to act as your own live sound engineer. Fortunately it's not that hard; check out this article I wrote about the process: http://raincomputers.com/pro/live/awesome-live-sound/

Some performers will play out with a compressor or limiter on their master channel. Never done that myself, but it's worth a shot.


Kent // SEVEN7H WAVE // http://soundcloud.com/seven7h-wave

[salatspinatra]

Although many good venues will have an outboard limiter/compressor, I play with a brick wall limiter which is practically NEVER pushed. It's only there because I do some rather out-of-hand things, and if I haven't properly contained the frequency range that I'm processing or a plug-in starts to screech, I don't want the audience to pay for it. But that's not mastering, per se. Some performers have a tolerable template for these things, but there's an exception for every rule. That's why it's a separate workflow.

[febraro]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm not sure I was totally clear though, I didn't mean 'mastering' as in putting compressors and other plugins on the master channel as you're performing. What I wanted to know is how you approach switching from session to performance basically (i.e. do you just take all the parts as they were when you were mixing or do you apply some sort of EQ/effects to each of them like h0ch.grat said in order do mimic the volume level, harmonic excitation and other things the mastering process usually provides).

I don't worry too much about volume levels as there are multiple ways to crank it up if you need to like Kent_in_CO's article shows, but I usually do quite a bit of EQing and exciting when mastering my songs and that helps in shaping the sound of the mix pretty dramatically sometimes. So that's basically what I'm worried about, how can I maintain these characteristics in a performance situation. Maybe I just need to mix better and not mess so much with the tracks on the mastering stage? Or maybe just chill and let the sound guy handle all that?

[Tarekith]

I take all my parts just as they were in the mix down when I export stems for live use. I may do some slight rebalancing of the the levels once everything is in my live set project, just to give the whole set more consistency.

[nemoy]

i've bought an RNC, (really nice compressor) for about 100 bucks, and it's always on my
Master Channel, when i play live. Basically it kind of glues everything together, and
pumps a bit. i kind of like that.

And in adition to that, i have the kickdrum ducking quite everything else slightly.
(using the ableton compressor) that makes kick drums appear louder, than they actually are

Check out some of my videos, if you're interested in how it sounds...

[HorusProject]

hey Nemoy i enjoyed watching that video, I am always impressed with live sets like that, Tim Exile does some amazing stuff live with controller and his voice and stuff, I would love to learn how its done

[chrisbarthp]

Just go and learn clyphx, it's the best thing for clip based performances. Basically it let's you put settings in a clip name so when I launch this drum loop, I know it's going to launch with x effect settings and y mixer settings. And it's free. Monster.

[HorusProject]

that is deep stuff, woa

[HorusProject]

regarding the stems used for live sets do you normalise them when using them in a live set or keep them at the level used for the mix?

[Tarekith]

I keep mine the way they were in the mixdown. You want to leave yourself some headroom in the set overall so you're not clipping later on, and normalizing everything will just make it take that much more work to avoid.

[M-bition]

This is what I do: I always use the same mastering rack (compressor and limiter) on my master channel while producing and performing.
The audio routing in my producing template is pretty much the same as in my performance template.
This helps me to play all my tracks while live performing but still having a reasonably good audio quality.

I know different tracks need different mastering settings to get the most out of it but I can live with this. It works for me.

[NF]

Hi,
as a live act I know that only 20% of the clubs have sound guys- from this 10% with professional experience.
in my experience the best to keep sound clean should be following chain on the master:
utility (for volume control) --> EQ 8 in high qual mode for hard and small banded cutting/ (no boosts in here!) --> Multiband compressor for best results (expander function is from my side not recommended on a sum mix) & soft saturator in hi end mode -->
EQ 8 in high qual mode with wide and smooth cuts/boosts to polish the sound*² --> EQ 3 and FX Racks (for DJ like FX and max 0dB!!) --> limiter that only dips the GR and is not hot driven!

*²: you will never youse all 8 EQs. So you have 2 or 3 to cut soft/ hard if the PA needs that!

try to think in Groups: Drums, Bongos, Baselines, Synths, Performance (real synths to edit), etc. and prepare the groups with the right FX to save CPU power.
try also to work on audio to save cpu. put clips in RAM mode if your HDD is overloaded.
try to keep as max dynamics as you can. so bee careful with Compressors etc.
try to cut 10 times with an EQ instead of boosting once.

for your structure think for session view in pop mode: intro, part A, fill in, part B, bridge A, part C, etc.
as everyone should have learned in school

often it's better to have a lower volume then the DJ before but good sounding gig than an high volume and physically compressed PA.
the crowd will thank you

at least: palying first time live with Live (and a good set & good sound) will blast your brain (on a good PA),
because you have so much dynamic, a DJ never will have in his dreams

have fun!