Last Sunday was the final day of the final iteration of a local music festival called “The Acoustic All-Stars.” It’s a celebration of music made with traditional or neo-traditional instruments – acoustic-electric guitars, fiddles, drums, mandolins, and all that sort of thing. My perception is that the musicians involved have a lot of anticipation wrapped up in playing the festival, because it’s a great opportunity to hear friends, play for friends, and make friends.

Of course, this anticipation can create some pressure. Each act’s set has a lot riding on it, but there isn’t time to take great care with any one setup. The longer it takes to dial up the band, the less time they have to play…and there are no “do overs.” There’s one shot, and it has to be the right shot for both the listeners and the players.

The prime illustrator for all this on Sunday was Jim Fish. Jim wanted to use his slot to the fullest, and so assembled a special team of musicians to accompany his songs. The show was clearly a big deal for him, and he wanted to do it justice. Trying to, in turn, do justice to his desires required that a number of things take place. It turns out that what had to happen for Jim can (I think) be generalized into guidelines for other festival-style situations.

Pre-Identify The Trouble Spots, Then Make The Compromises

The previous night, Jim had handed me a stage plot. The plot showed six musicians, all singing, wielding a variety of acoustic or acoustic-electric instruments. A lineup like that can easily have its show wrecked by feedback problems, because of the number of open mics and highly-resonant instruments on the deck. Further, the mics and instruments are often run at (relatively) high-gain. The PA and monitor rig need to help with getting some more SPL (Sound Pressure Level) for both the players and the audience, because acoustic music isn’t nearly as loud as a rock band…and we’re in a bar.

Also, there would be a banjo on stage right. Getting a banjo to “concert level” can be a tough test for an audio human, depending on the situation.

Now, there’s no way you’re going to get “rock” volume out of a show like this – and frankly, you don’t want to get that kind of volume out of it. Acoustic music isn’t about that. Even so, the priorities were clear:

I needed a setup that was based on being able to run with a total system gain that was high, and that could do so with as little trouble as possible. As such, I ended up deploying my “rock show” mics on the deck, because they’re good for getting the rig barking when in a pinch. The thing with the “rock” mics is that they aren’t really sweet-sounding transducers, which is unfortunate in an acoustic-country situation. A guy would love to have the smoothest possible sound for it all, but pulling that off in a potentially high-gain environment takes time.

And I would not have that time. Sweetness would have to take a back seat to survival.

Be Ready To Abandon Bits Of The Plan

On the day of the show, the lineup ended up not including two people: The bassist and the mandolin player. It was easy to embrace this, because it meant lower “loop gain” for the show.

I also found out that the fiddle player didn’t want to use her acoustic-electric fiddle. She wanted to hang one particular mic over her instrument, and then sing into that as well. We had gone with a similar setup at a previous show, and it had definitely worked. In this case, though, I was concerned about how it would all shake out. In the potentially high-gain environment we were facing, pointing this mic’s not-as-tight polar pattern partially into the monitor wash held the possibility for creating a touchy situation.

Now, there are times to discuss the options, and times to just go for it. This was a time to go for it. I was working with a seasoned player who knew what she wanted and why. Also, I would lose one more vocal mic, which would lower the total loop-gain in the system and maybe help us to get away with a different setup. I knew basically what I was getting into with the mic we chose for the task.

And, let’s be honest, there were only minutes to go before the band’s set-time. Discussing the pros and cons of a sound-reinforcement approach is something you do when you have hours or days of buffer. When a performer wants a simple change in order to feel more comfortable, then you should try to make that change.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t have a bit of a backup plan in mind in case things went sideways. When you’ve got to make things happen in a hurry, you need to be ready to declare a failing option as being unworkable and then execute your alternate. In essence, festival-style audio requires an initial plan, some kind of backup plan, the willingness to partially or completely drop the original plan, and an ability to formulate a backup plan to the new plan.

The fiddle player’s approach ended up working quite nicely, by the way.

Build Monitor World With FOH Open

If there was anything that helped us pull-off Jim’s set, it was this. In a detail-oriented situation, it can be good to start with your FOH (Front Of House) channels/ sends/ etc. muted (or pulled back) while you build mixes for the deck. After the monitors are sorted out, then you can carefully fill in just what you need to with FOH. There are times, though, that such an approach is too costly in terms of the minutes that go by while you execute. This was one such situation.

In this kind of environment, you have to start by thinking not in terms of volume, but in terms of proportions. That is, you have to begin with proportions as an abstract sort of thing, and then arrive at a workable volume with all those proportions fully in effect. This works in an acoustic music situation because the PA being heavily involved is unlikely to tear anyone’s head off. As such, you can use the PA as a tool to tell you when the monitor mixes are basically balanced amongst the instruments.

It works like this:

You get all your instrument channels set up so that they have equal send levels in all the monitors, plus a bit of a boost in the wedge that corresponds to that instrument’s player. You also set their FOH channel faders to equal levels – probably around “unity” gain. At this point, the preamp gains should be as far down as possible. (I’m spoiled. I can put my instruments on channels with a two-stage preamp that lets me have a single-knob global volume adjustment from silence to “preamp gain +10 dB.” It’s pretty sweet.)

Now, you start with the instrument that’s likely to have the lowest gain before feedback. You begin the adventure there because everything else is going to have to be built around the maximum appropriate level for that source. If you start with something that can get louder, then you may end up discovering that you can’t get a matching level from the more finicky channel without things starting to ring. Rather than being forced to go back and drop everything else, it’s just better to begin with the instrument that will be your “limiting factor.”

You roll that first channel’s gain up until you’ve got a healthy overall volume for the instrument without feedback. Remember, both FOH and monitor world should both be up. If you feel like your initial guess on FOH volume is blowing past the monitors too much (or getting swamped in the wash), make the adjustment now. Set the rest of the instruments’ FOH faders to that new level, if you’ve made a change.

Now, move on to the subsequent instruments. In your mind, remember what the overall volume in the room was for the first instrument. Roll the instruments’ gains up until you get to about that level on each one. Keep in mind that what I’m talking about here is the SPL, not the travel on the gain knob. One instrument might be halfway through the knob sweep, and one might be a lot lower than that. You’re trying to match acoustical volume, not preamp gain.

When you’ve gone through all the instruments this way, you should be pretty close to having a balanced instrument mix in both the house and on deck. Presetting your monitor and FOH sends, and using FOH as an immediate test of when you’re getting the correct proportionality is what lets you do this.

And it lets you do it in a big hurry.

Yes, there might be some adjustments necessary, but this approach can get you very close without having to scratch-build everything. Obviously, you need to have a handle on where the sends for the vocals have to sit, and your channels need to be ready to sound decent through both FOH and monitor-world without a lot of fuss…but that’s homework you should have done beforehand.

Trust The Musicians

This is probably the nail that holds the whole thing together. Festival-style (especially in an acoustic context) does not work if you aren’t willing to let the players do their job, and my “get FOH and monitor world right at the same time” trick does NOT work if you can’t trust the musicians to know their own music. I generally discourage audio humans from trying to reinvent a band’s sound anyway, but in this kind of situation it’s even more of something to avoid. Experienced acoustic music players know what their songs and instruments are supposed to sound like. When you have only a couple of minutes to “throw ‘n go,” you have to be able to put your faith in the music being a thing that happens on stage. The most important work of live-sound does NOT occur behind a console. It happens on deck, and your job is to translate the deck to the audience in the best way possible.

In festival-style acoustic music, you simply can’t “fix” everything. There isn’t time.

And you don’t need to fix it, anyway.

Point a decent mic at whatever needs micing, put a working, active DI on the stuff that plugs in, and then get out of the musicians’ way.

They’ll be happier, you’ll be happier, you’ll be much more likely to stay on schedule…it’s just better to trust the musicians as much as you possibly can.