Tag Archives: Preparation

The Priorities List

An enumeration of critical tasks and considerations for making a live show work.

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The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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If you look at any desk that I use, you might not think that I have an ordered mind. It can be a little scary, I admit. I am of the opinion, however, that I’m capable of imposing order on certain parts of my mind – especially when there’s a show to be done. This is important, because I think that really pulling off a show requires some kind of plan. It doesn’t have to be written out in detail, but it has to exist in some form. You can’t just throw things together at random and expect them to work. A clear idea of what’s truly important is a really helpful sort of thing.

It did strike me one day that it might be interesting to attempt putting my basic, mental plan down in writing.

So, here you go.

The Pre-Game

Early Is The New On-Time

My general philosophy is that, if you’re early enough, you remove the need to worry about “the critical path.” The critical path is the shortest sequence of tasks necessary to complete a project successfully. Our project is the show, and the critical path for the show is the minimum necessary to survive the night.

Sometimes, that’s all you can do – but do you really want the bare minimum to be your best practice?

Nah.

The critical path for the show might be two vocal mics and a bit of level in the monitors, but that’s not really “full-service” and this IS a service industry. We have other things we can do…if we have the time. So create the time.

Make The Stage A Place You Want To Be On

Oh my. That stage is a mess, isn’t it? Cables are going everywhere from last night’s chaos, there’s gum stuck to various things, trash is strewn around, there’s a beverage glass jammed in a corner, and there’s a pile of wood fragments from that drummer whose hero is apparently Animal from “The Muppet Show.”

Guess whose responsibility it is to clean that up and make the stage look nice?

That’s right.

YOU have to have comfortable, happy musicians in order to do your job properly, and part of making people comfortable is presenting them with a working space that’s as nice as possible. So, get after it. You’ll be fine if you wash your hands afterwards.

Be Ready To Put Everything Through Some Part Of The Rig

Yes, it might be true that you technically don’t have to mic the amps or the drums to make the FOH mix work. However, just because you don’t need something in FOH doesn’t mean it won’t be wanted in monitor world. If you’ve got the inputs, plug things into them. Have the option available. The musicians will probably appreciate it, and that counts for a lot.

Also, make sure your gear is working during the course of setup. If a mic, cable, lighting instrument, loudspeaker, or whatever else is not cooperating, now is the time to find out. It’s easier to fix a problem before soundcheck rather than during, and much, much easier to fix a problem before the actual show is rolling.

A Tsunami Of Vocal

Vocals are often THE critical thing to get right in monitor world, so take the time to get a baseline sound that’s essentially pleasant, focused on the critical midrange instead of extreme low and high frequency “fru-fru,” and LOUD. You should take your basic cue from this chunk of Iggy Pop’s tour rider. (That’s where I got the “tsunami of vocal” bit.)

Now, yes, not everything will ultimately require “rock show” vocals in the monitors, but you have to be ready. You have to be prepared for situations where the ultimate volume isn’t that high, but the monitor-world loop gain is cranked. Start with the assumption that you need full-blown-rock-show level in the monitors, and make that work as well as you can. Make sure to kill your feedback problems as dead as they can possibly be killed. Test with all your vocal channels unmuted, because the total gain of the entire setup really does matter. A little bit of ringing is NOT acceptable. Do things as correctly as you know how.

If you’re particularly lucky, the musicians will be thoroughly impressed, and then ask you to turn things down. If you’re not particularly lucky, at least you’ll be prepared. (I have nothing against luck, and I acknowledge its ability to trump almost every other factor, but it’s not something you can plan on.)

Everything Else

For mics meant for other sources, you still have to have some idea of how they’ll work in monitor world. You do need to establish some kind of tuning to ward off their major problems regarding mixes for the deck. Your favorite instrument mic may have a tendency to ring at a certain frequency when you’re in a high-gain situation, so you need to get that under control. It’s possible that you’ll only have to take a look at the issue a few times – but you have to take that look.

Just as with vocals, the primary goal is to be able to supply the monitors with sound that’s basically nice to listen to, without a lot of “pre-emphasis” on any particular frequency range, and with plenty of level available. Run up the send level of an instrument mic and talk into it. Does it wound weird? Fix it.

Not On The Fly

Make sure your mixing console and/ or lighting system has “sane” presets applied. You want to be able to push things up in a hurry and have a result that is basically okay. Starting completely from scratch is a fun thing when you have rehearsal time and a single band to invest all your energy in, but that doesn’t happen so often in the small-venue world. (It’s especially rare when the venue signs your paycheck instead of an individual act or tour package.)

From a sonic perspective, if a mic is pointed at something and you push the fader up, the resulting sound should be a believable facsimile of that thing. From a lighting perspective, you should have several basic “looks” or “moods” that you can summon without having to think about it too much.

Don’t worry about your presets not being exactly right for everything. If they’re not helpful, you’ll recognize it and take steps to correct it (or learn to). If your preset works for the average case, it’s a good preset and will save you time. Dealing with something truly crazy has to be done on a case-by-case basis anyway, but the average stuff is what you’ll run across the most. That’s why it’s average.

Get The Band In The Room

I often say that loading the band in “is the job.” If the band isn’t in the room, and their gear isn’t in the room, then there isn’t going to be much of a show, right? So, get your hands dirty. Find some heavy stuff and move it. Not only does this help you actually get the show moving, it is often highly appreciated by the musicians. It’s a great way to actually show them that you’re all on the same team. It’s also a great way to prevent the band from getting fatigued before they’ve even played a note.

Also, to a certain extent, helping with the load in gives you a chance to really see the gear you’re going to be working with. If you see four toms for the drum kit, but you only have mics for three, you can make a note to get out another mic without having to be asked first. Did you run an XLR for the bass amp, but it doesn’t have an XLR direct out? Now you know, and you have a bit of time to get out a DI or set up a microphone.

But the main thing is to be helpful and facilitate the musicians being pleased.

Happy, comfortable musicians. Let that be your mantra.

Downbeat and Beyond

What’s Needed On Deck?

Your first priority is to get the stage sounding the way the musicians need it to sound. If they are comfortable and can play their best, then they will deliver the best show possible. Mixing FOH around what’s required for the musicians to deliver is a perfectly acceptable compromise. Forcing the sound on deck to conform to FOH in such a way that the actual performance is harmed? That is not an acceptable compromise.

This goes for lighting, too. If that super-moody light cue with the lasers prevents the players from seeing something they need to see, that just doesn’t work.

If the musicians are truly “in the zone” and fired up, that will translate to the audience. It will translate even if every production factor isn’t exactly where you might want it. You might not get to call your favorite light cues, or FOH might not be as clean and punchy as you might want, but the crowd is still very likely to be happy.

Vocals/ Melody, Then Everything Else

Anyone who tells you that drums and bass are the foundation of a mix is dead wrong. (There, I said it.) The foundation of the sound is the vocals. If there aren’t any vocals – either generally or just at some particular point – the foundation of the music passes to whatever carries the melodic theme.

I can prove my assertion about the vocals.

“Your head is humming and it won’t go – in case you don´t know
The piper’s calling you to join him
Dear lady can you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?”

What song is that? That’s right! It’s “Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. Amazing that you knew that without any music being played. Maybe it’s because you could understand the vocals?

I’m not saying that “Stairway” (or any other song) isn’t a total package. I’m not saying that the iconic guitar intro doesn’t matter. I’m not saying that the rhythm section is unimportant. The way the song builds to a thundering climax is a great bit of fun, and a major part of the song’s overall success.

What I AM saying is that if the vocals or key melodic elements – like a guitar solo – are lost while you try to dial up a crushing drum-n-bass tone, then you’ve got your priorities wrong.

Adjust For The Sake Of The Show

If you’re going to make a sonic change, that’s great. If you’re going to make a lighting change, that’s great.

But make sure you can easily justify that change in terms of serving the actual show. There’s a piece of advice that was given by Dave Rat which I particularly agree with:

Don’t fiddle.

That is, don’t make changes for the sake of making changes. Your existence at the audio or lighting console is justified by the need for an operator to be present and conscious; no further justification is required. If the EQ on the vocal channel is working, and you can’t supply a reason to change it other than “I have to change something,” then keep your paws off the EQ. If the light cue looks fine, and you’re worried that you should flash some PARs or twirl some movers because, you know, you’ve got all these buttons and knobs… Really. It’s okay. Leave it alone.

Of course, if the light cue looks okay, and changing to another cue will totally punctuate the transition to the song’s bridge, then PUNCH THEM BUTTONS, COWBOY!

Context matters.

I do support the idea of experiments. If you want to try something because you’re curious, then that’s a good thing. However, take the time to figure out how to do the experiment without calling a lot of attention to what you’re attempting. Be as subtle as you can. “Roll” things in and out instead of jumping around, if possible.

By extension, this also means that you don’t have to drive everything all the time. Let the music ebb and flow. The balance amongst all the parts doesn’t have to stay exactly the same all the time. Having that balance change just might be part of the ride. There’s no need to manage all the faders all the time. They will continue to exist even if you don’t touch them.

Breathe.

Try To Keep The Audience Happy

This one’s tricky, because you have to have a certain amount of confidence in your production decisions. You have to know when certain requests aren’t physically possible, or really aren’t in the best interests of the show at large.

Even so, do your best to be aware of the audience’s needs. If the crowd is running for the exits while holding their ears, then ask yourself if you’re being unnecessarily loud. If somebody asks for more bass/ less snare/ a different approach to the top end on the vocals/ whatever, then try to accommodate them if you can. This stuff is subjective, and if you can make one more person happy without wrecking the experience for everyone else, you might as well try it. The worst that can happen is that everybody else will hate the adjustment, and ask you to put things back to where they were.

This goes for lighting folks as well. Watch what happens when you call different cues, especially the ones that put light directly into the audience. If a bunch of people suddenly look unhappy, change to a different cue and don’t call the offender again.

Aftermath

Socialization

Once the show is over, you still need to keep the band happy. Try not to rush them out of the venue. Let them talk to the folks who came out, because that will help them build their audience. It’s also nice for players to just generally depressurize after all the excitement. Don’t run the post-show playback (if any) too loud. Giving everybody some time to unwind is just a courteous thing to do, if it’s feasible.

Load Out

The performers are probably rather tired after all the excitement, so the after-show is another great time to help with the moving of heavy objects. This further cements the idea that you and the band are on the same team, with an emphasis on building a good relationship for the next gig.

Further, this means that you can be on point to ensure that the gear is watched. Gear has a nasty tendency to get stolen in the post-show chaos, so keep an eye on things. If the load-out is a multi-trip affair, and it looks like gear might be left unattended, then stay where everybody else isn’t. You might just prevent something from “walking off.” Then, when somebody else returns, you can make another trip with a heavy object.

Setup Begins At Teardown

If you do nothing else, grab the grilles and pop-filter inserts off the vocal mics and wash them thoroughly. A nice, fresh, non-smelly vocal mic is much more hygienic, and also communicates (in a subtle way) that you care about the performers’ comfort.

If you know that someone else has to use the stage before you come back, then you have to clean up now. Get the cables wrapped and the trash picked up.

It’s ideal, of course, to get cleaned up even if you don’t strictly have to. Something might come up before the next show, meaning that you’ll have less time than you planned for. No matter what happens, leave the stage in a condition that you can manage even if you don’t have all the time you want for the next show’s prep.

Now, loop back to the top and do it all again…

The Puddle Mountain Arc

If you have the space and technical flexibility, a semicircular stage layout can be pretty neat.

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Just last week, my regular gig hosted a show for The Puddle Mountain Ramblers. During the show advance, Amanda proposed an idea.

What if we set up the stage so that the layout was an arc, instead of a straight line?

I thought that was a pretty fine idea, so we went with it. The way it all came together was that fiddle, bass, and banjo were on the stage-right side, the drums were upstage center, and guitar plus another fiddle were on the stage-left side. The setup seemed very effective overall.

Why?

Visibility, Separation, and Such

The main reason for the setup was really to facilitate communication. PMR is a band that derives a good deal of comfort and confidence from the members being able to see what each other player is doing. Also, it’s just generally nice to be able to make eye contact with someone to let them know that it’s their turn for a solo. Setting up in an arc makes this much easier, because you can get essentially unobstructed sightlines from each player to every other player. An added benefit is that all the players are closer together on average, which reduces the difficulty of reading faces, identifying hand movements, and keeping time. (An arc is geometrically more compact than a line. In a linear configuration, the farthest that any two players can be from each other is the entire length of the line. Bend that same line into a circle or circle-segment, and the farthest that any two players can be from each other is the line length divided by pi. That’s a pretty significant “packing.”)

Another benefit of the configuration is (potentially) reduced drum bleed. In a traditional setup, an upstage drumkit is pretty much “firing” into the most sensitive part of all the vocal and instrument mics’ pickup patterns. In an arc layout, with the drums at the center, the direct sound from the kit enters any particular mic at some significant off-axis angle. This bleed reduction can also extend to other vocals and instruments, especially because the mics can easily be at angles greater than 90 degrees relative to other sources.

Of course, it’s important to note that – especially with wide-pattern mics, like SM58s and other cardioids – compacting the band may undo the “off-axis benefit” significantly. This is especially true for bleed from whatever source is commonly at the midpoint of the arc’s circumference, like a drumkit probably would be. For the best chance of bleed reduction, you need tighter-patterned transducers, like an ND767a, or Beta 58, or e845, or OM2, or [insert your favorite, selectively patterned mic here]. Even so, the folks closest to, and at the smallest angle from the drumkit should be the strongest singers in the ensemble, and their miced instruments should be the most able to compete with whatever is loud on deck.

A third “bit of nifty” that comes from an arc setup is that of reduced acoustical crosstalk from monitor wedge to monitor wedge. With all the wedges firing away from each other, instead of in parallel paths, the tendency for any one performer to hear the wedges adjacent to them is reduced. Each monitor mix therefore has more separation than it otherwise might, which can keep things “cleaner” overall. It may also reduce gain-hungry volume wars on the deck.

Downsides

There are some caveats to putting a band on stage in a circle-segment.

The first thing to be aware of is that you tend to lose “down center” as a focal point. It’s not that you can’t put someone in there, but you have to realize that the person you’ve put down-center will no longer get the visibility and communication benefits of the arc. Also, a down-center wedge will probably be very audible to the performers standing up-center from that monitor, so you’ll have to take that into account.

The more isolated that monitor-mix sources become from one another, the more important it becomes that each monitor mix can be customized for individual performers. If you were on in-ears, for instance (the ultimate in isolated monitor feeds), separate mixes for each individual would be almost – if not entirely – mandatory. Increasing the mix-to-mix acoustical isolation pushes you towards that kind of situation. It’s not that shared mixes can’t be done in an arc, it’s just that folks have to be inclined to agree and cooperate.

A corollary to the above is that the show complexity actually tends to go up. More monitor mixes means more to manage, and an arc layout requires more thinking and cable management than a linear setup. You have to have time for a real soundcheck with careful tweaking of mixes. Throw-n-go really isn’t what you want to do when attempting this kind of layout, especially if you haven’t done it before.

Another factor to consider is that “backline” shouldn’t actually be in the back…unless you can afford to waste the space inside the arc. If at all possible, amps and instrument processing setups should utilize the empty space in front of everybody, and “fire” towards the performers (unless it’s absolutely necessary for the amps to combine with or replace the acoustical output of the PA).

If these considerations are factors you can manage, then an arc setup may be a pretty cool thing to try. For some bands, it can help “square the circle” of how to arrange the stage for the best sonic and logistical results, even if pulling it all off isn’t quite as easy as “pi.”

I’ll stop now.

What Just Changed?

If an acoustical environment changes significantly, you may start to have mysterious problems.

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Just recently, I was working a show for Citizen Hypocrisy. I did my usual prep, which includes tamping down the “hotspots” in vocal mics – gain before feedback being important, and all that.

Everything seemed copacetic, even the mic for the drumkit vocal. There was clarity, decent volume, and no ringing. The band got in the room and set up their gear. This time around, an experiment was conducted: A psychedelic background video was set to play in a loop as a backdrop. We eventually did a quick, “just in time” soundcheck, and we were off.

As things kicked into gear, I noticed something. I was getting high frequency feedback from one of the mics, it wasn’t running away by any means, but it was audible and annoying. I thought to myself, “We did just give DJ’s microphone a push in monitor world. I probably need to pull the top-end back a bit.” I did just that…but the feedback continued. I started soloing things into my headphones.

“Huh, guitar-Gary’s mic seems okay. DJ’s mic is picking up the feedback, but it doesn’t seem to be actually part of that loop. That leaves…*unsolos DJ’s mic, solos drum-Gary’s mic* Well, THERE’S the problem.”

The mic for vocals at the drumkit? It was squeaking like a pissed-off mouse. I hammered the offending frequency with a notch filter, and that was it.

But why hadn’t I noticed the problem when I was getting things baselined for the night? Gary hadn’t changed the orientation of the mic so that it was pointing at the drumfill, and neither the input gain nor send gains had changed, so why had the problem cropped up?

The answer: Between my setup and actually getting the show moving in earnest, we had changed the venue’s acoustical characteristics, especially as they concerned the offending microphone. We had deployed the screen behind the drums.

Rolling With The Changes

Citizen Hypocrisy was playing at my regular gig. Under conditions where we are NOT running video, the upstage wall is a mass of acoustical wedge foam. For most purposes, high-mid and high frequency content is soaked up by the treatment, never to be heard again. However, when we are running video, the screen drops in front of the foam. For high frequencies, the screen is basically a giant, relatively efficient reflector. My initial monitor-EQ solution was built for the situation where the upstage wall was an absorber. When the screen came down, that solution was partially invalidated. Luckily, what had to be addressed was merely the effective gain of a very narrow frequency range. We hadn’t run into a “showstopper bug,” but we had still encountered a problem.

The upshot of all this is:

Any change to a show’s acoustical environment, whether by way of surface absorption, diffusion, and reflectance, or by way of changes in atmospheric conditions, can invalidate a mix solution to some degree.

Now, you don’t have to panic. My feeling is that we sometimes overstate the level of vigilance required in regards to acoustical changes at a show. You just have to keep listening, and keep your brain turned on. If the acoustical environment changes, and you hear something you don’t like, then try to do something about it. If you don’t hear anything you don’t like, there’s no reason to find something to do.

For instance, at my regular gig, putting more people into the room is almost always an automatic improvement. I don’t have to change much (if anything at all), because the added absorption makes the mix sound better.

On the reverse side, I once ran a summer show for Puddlestone where I suddenly had a “feedback monster” where one hadn’t existed for a couple of hours. The feedback problem coincided with the air conditioning finally getting a real handle on the temperature in the room. My guess is that some sort of acoustical refraction was occurring, where it was actually hotter near the floor where all the humans were. For the first couple of hours, some amount of sound was bending up and away from us. When the AC really took hold, it might have been that the refraction “flattened out” enough to get a significant amount of energy back into the mics. (My explanation could also be totally incorrect, but it seems plausible.) Obviously, I had to make a modification in accordance with the problem, which I did.

In all cases, if things were working before, and suddenly are no longer working as well, a good question to ask yourself is: “What changed between when the mix solution was correct, and now, when it seems incorrect?” It’s science! You identify the variable(s) that got tweaked, and then manage the variables under your control in order to bring things back into equilibrium. If you have to re-solve your mix equation, then that’s what you do.

And then you go back to enjoying the show.

Until something else changes.

Guest Post: So – You Want To Do Video

Please choose videographers who understand the prep and professionalism necessary to function well at a live show.

Please Remember:

Here’s a pull-quote for you:

“Especially if you’re trying to do it at a professional level, interfacing video production with the normal production of the show is not necessarily a trivial thing. To be brutally frank, shooting video (really shooting it, I mean) is a disruptive addition to the performance. Even if there’s only one video craftsperson involved, what has suddenly happened is that there is a whole new layer of crew at the show. These people have their own needs for space, power, audio, and lighting, and those needs don’t always line up neatly with everything else.”

You can read the rest of my article at Schwilly Family Musicians.

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond:” The Best Soundcheck Song EVER

Everything takes its place at an unhurried pace.

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Back in the days when I got to work with Floyd Show, I always preferred it when the night would start with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” Even when we’d had time to do extensive work on the show’s audio during the day, the luxury of “easing in” to the actual performance was something I savored.

Sure, nothing quite compares with the rush of, say, having the first set be “Dark Side Of The Moon.” The intro plays, building to a feverish peak, and then “shwOOM!” The guitars take you into “Breathe.” It’s really cool when it works, but there’s always that nagging fear in the back of your mind: “What if something doesn’t quite happen correctly?” Anything short of a catastrophic failure is insufficient to allow the show to stop, so a problem means that the impact of the show-open is wrecked…AND you’re going to have to fix things in a big hurry.

Anyway.

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is, in my opinion, THE template for a “soundcheck” song. Soundcheck songs are fantastic tools to have handy, because (let’s face it), the small-venue world is full of scenarios where the only option is grab-n-go. Combining an actual first song with a soundcheck lets you keep the show moving, maximizing your play time and audience engagement while getting things sorted out on deck. Not all soundcheck tunes are created equal, though, so learning the lessons available from “Shine On” is a Very Good Idea™ when it comes time to craft your own “multitasker’s minuet.”

Take Your Time

Because soundcheck songs naturally happen at the top of a set, the instinct is to start off with a bang. This is unhelpful. A fast tune means that the time available for an audio-human to catch, analyze, act on, and re-evaluate any particular problem is hugely compressed. Several musical phrases can go by while a tech tries to get sorted out during a lively song. The more phrases that go by without a fix, the more “wrong” the show seems to sound. A fast song, then, tends to push the show opening towards sounding bad. (You don’t want your show-open to sound bad.)

“Shine On,” of course, answers this issue in exactly the right way. It’s a leisurely piece – downright dreamy, actually – which means that the person managing the PA noises doesn’t have to rush around. They can focus, listen, and act deliberately. If something is wrong, it’s entirely possible to get a handle on the issue within a couple of musical phrases. Even very sticky problems can usually be wrangled by the end of the song, which allows the show to continue smoothly without stopping.

If you want to come out of the gate like a racecar, you need a proper soundcheck. If you’re going to do things on the fly, please fly slowly.

Everything Has Its Own Space

Another excellent feature of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is that it spends a long time being a series of solos. You get to hear the keys, then a guitar chimes in up front, then the other guitar plays for a bit, then you get some more keys, and then everything fires together with the drums. After that, you get some uncluttered drums along with another guitar solo, and then some vocals that happen over some subdued backing from the band. Next, you get a chance to hear the vocals against the higher-intensity version of the band, and finally, you get some saxophone over both gentle and more “wound-up” backgrounds.

Everything has a time (and quite a lot of it, due to the song being slow) where it is the front-and-center element. For an audio-human, this is tremendous. It gives a very clear indication of whether or not the basic level of the part is in a reasonable place, and it also still manages to say a lot about whether the part’s tonality is going to work in context. Further, this kind of song structure allows us to get as close as possible to a “check everything individually” situation without actually having that option available. The audio human gets time to think about each instrument separately, even though other parts are still playing in the background.

The antithesis of this is the soundcheck song where everything starts playing at once, usually with everybody trying to be louder than everybody else. The tech ends up losing precious time while trying to simply make sense of the howling vortex of noise that just hit them in the face. With nothing “presorted,” the only option is to struggle to pick things out either by luck or by force.

Again, if you want to start at a full roar, you should do that at the shows where you have the opportunity to get the roar figured out in advance. If you don’t have time to take turns getting sorted before the show, then you have to use the show to do that.

Waste Nothing

Some folks treat their soundcheck song as a bit of worthless rubbish. They toss it out to the audience as though it has no value, seemingly in the hopes that the showgoers will ignore it. It’s as though the band is saying “this isn’t real, so don’t pay attention yet.”

But it IS real, and the audience IS paying attention. A soundcheck tune is part of the actual show, and should NOT be a throwaway. It should be a “first-class” song that’s done as well as is possible.

Of course, because it is a soundcheck song, it probably shouldn’t be the tune that relies most on everything going perfectly. Songs used to get around production issues are tools, and you have to use the correct tool for any given job.

“Shine On” is a real song. It’s a very important part of Pink Floyd’s catalog, and was crafted with care. Floyd Show never (when I worked with them) played the tune with the idea of taking a mulligan afterwards, which is also what I would expect from the actual Pink Floyd. If the show was opened with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” the show was OPENED. We were not casually testing anything; we were going for it, even as remaining technical issues got sorted out.

You should care about your soundcheck song. It’s a real part of your show, a part that should be intentionally crafted to meet a specific need: Connecting with your audience while a mix comes together.

The Board Feed Problem

Getting a good “board feed” is rarely as simple as just splitting an output.

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I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked for a “board mix.” A board mix or feed is, in theory, a quick and dirty way to get a recording of a show. The idea is that you take either an actual split from the console’s main mix bus, or you construct a “mirror” of what’s going into that bus, and then record that signal. What you’re hoping for is that the engineer will put together a show where everything is audible and has a basically pleasing tonality, and then you’ll do some mastering work to get a usable result.

It’s not a bad idea in general, but the success of the operation relies on a very powerful assumption: That the overwhelming majority of the show’s sound comes from the console’s output signal.

In very large venues – especially if they are open-air – this can be true. The PA does almost all the work of getting the show’s audio out to the audience, so the console output is (for most practical purposes) what the folks in the seats are listening to. Assuming that the processing audible in the feed-affecting path is NOT being used to fix issues with the PA or the room, a good mix should basically translate to a recorded context. That is, if you were to record the mix and then play it back through the PA, the sonic experience would be essentially the same as it was when it was live.

In small venues, on the other hand…

The PA Ain’t All You’re Listening To

The problem with board mixes in small venues is that the total acoustical result is often heavily weighted AWAY from what the FOH PA is producing. This doesn’t mean that the show sounds bad. What it does mean is that the mix you’re hearing is the PA, AND monitor world, AND the instruments’ stage volume, hopefully all blended together into a pleasing, convergent solution. That total acoustic solution is dependent on all of those elements being present. If you record the mix from the board, and then play it back through the PA, you will NOT get the same sonic experience that occurred during the live show. The other acoustical elements, no longer being present, leave you with whatever was put through the console in order to make the acoustical solution converge.

You might get vocals that sound really thin, and are drowning everything else out.

You might not have any electric guitar to speak of.

You might have only a little bit of the drumkit’s bottom end added into the bleed from the vocal mics.

In short, a quick-n-dirty board mix isn’t so great if the console’s output wasn’t the dominant signal (by far) that the audience heard. While this can be a revealing insight as to how the show came together, it’s not so great as a demo or special release.

So, what can you do?

Overwhelm Or Bypass

Probably the most direct solution to the board feed problem is to find a way to make the PA the overwhelmingly dominant acoustic factor in the show. Some ways of doing this are better than others.

An inadvisable solution is to change nothing about the show and just allow FOH to drown everything. This isn’t so good because it has a tendency to create a painfully loud experience for the audience. Especially in a rock context, getting FOH in front of everything else might require a mid-audience continuous sound pressure of 110 dB SPL or more. Getting away with that in a small room is a sketchy proposition at best.

A much better solution is to lose enough volume from monitor world and the backline, such that FOH being dominant brings the total show volume back up to (or below) the original sound level. This requires some planning and experimentation, because achieving that kind of volume loss usually means finding a way of killing off 10 – 20 dB SPL of noise. Finding a way to divide the sonic intensity of your performance by anywhere from 10 to 100(!) isn’t trivial. Shielding drums (or using a different kit setup), blocking or “soaking” instrument amps (or changing them out), and switching to in-ear monitoring solutions are all things that you might have to try.

Alternatively, you can get a board feed that isn’t actually the FOH mix.

One way of going about this is to give up one pre-fade monitor path to use as a record feed. You might also get lucky and be in a situation where a spare output can be configured this way, requiring you to give up nothing on deck. A workable mix gets built for the send, you record the output, and you hope that nothing too drastic happens. That is, the mix doesn’t follow the engineer’s fader moves, so you want to strenuously avoid large changes in the relative balances of the sources involved. Even with that downside, the nice thing about this solution is that, large acoustical contributions from the stage or not, you can set up any blend you like. (With the restriction of avoiding the doing of weird things with channel processing, of course. Insane EQ and weird compression will still be problematic, even if the overall level is okay.)

Another method is to use a post-fade path, with the send levels set to compensate for sources being too low or too hot at FOH. As long as the engineer doesn’t yank a fader all the way down to -∞ or mute the channel, you’ll be okay. You’ll also get the benefit of having FOH fader moves being reflected in the mix. This can still be risky, however, if a fader change has to compensate for something being almost totally drowned acoustically. Just as with the pre-fade method, the band still has to work together as an actual ensemble in the room.

If you want to get really fancy, you can split all the show inputs to a separate console and have a mix built there. It grants a lot of independence (even total independence) from the PA console, and even lets you assign your own audio human to the task of mixing the recording in realtime. You can also just arrange to have the FOH mix person run the separate console, but managing the mix for the room and “checking in” with the record mix can be a tough workload. It’s unwise to simply expect that a random tech will be able to pull it off.

Of course, if you’re going to the trouble of patching in a multichannel input split, I would say to just multitrack the show and mix it later “offline” – but that wouldn’t be a board feed anymore.

Board mixes of various sorts are doable, but if you’re playing small rooms you probably won’t be happy with a straight split from FOH. If you truly desire to get something usable, some “homework” is necessary.

Convergent Solutions

FOH and monitor world have to work together if you want the best results.

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In a small venue, there’s something that you know, even if you’re not conscious of knowing it:

The sound from the monitors on deck has an enormous effect on the sound that the audience hears. The reverse is also true. The sound from the FOH PA has an enormous effect on the sound that the musicians hear on stage.

I’m wiling to wager that there are shows that you’ve had where getting a mix put together seemed like a huge struggle. There are shows that you’ve had where – on the other hand – creating blends that made everybody happy occurred with little effort. One of the major factors in the ease or frustration of whole-show sound is “convergence.” When the needs of the folks on deck manage to converge with the needs of the audience, sound reinforcement gets easier. When those needs diverge, life can be quite a slog.

Incompatible Solutions

But…why would the audience’s needs and the musicians’ needs diverge?

Well, taste, for one thing.

Out front, you have an interpreter for the audience, i.e. the audio human. This person has to make choices about what the audience is going to hear, and they have to do this through the filter of their own assumptions. Yes, they can get input from the band, and yes, they will sometimes get input from the audience, but they still have to make a lot of snap decisions that are colored by their immediate perceptions.

When it comes to the sound on deck, the noise-management professional becomes more of an “executor.” The tech turns the knobs, but there can be a lot more guidance from the players. The musicians are the ones who try to get things to match their needs and tastes, and this can happen on an individual level if enough monitor mixes are available.

If the musicians’ tastes and the tech’s taste don’t line up, you’re likely to have divergent solutions. One example I can give is from quite a while ago, where a musician playing a sort of folk-rock wanted a lot of “kick” in the wedges. A LOT of kick. There was so much bass-drum material in the monitors that I had none at all out front. Even then, it was a little much. (I was actually pretty impressed at the amount of “thump” the monitor rig would deliver.) I ended up having to push the rest of the mix up around the monitor bleed, which made us just a bit louder than we really needed to be for an acoustic-rock show.

I’ve also experienced plenty of examples where we were chasing vocals and instruments around in monitor world, and I began to get the sneaky suspicion that FOH was being a hindrance. More than once, I’ve muted FOH and heard, “Yeah! That sounds good now.” (Uh oh.)

In any case, the precipitating factors differ, but the main issue remains the same: The “solutions” for the sound on stage and the sound out front are incompatible to some degree.

I say “solutions” because I really do look at live-sound as a sort of math or science “problem.” There’s an outcome that you want, and you have to work your way through a process which gets you that outcome. You identify what’s working against your desired result, find a way to counteract that issue, and then re-evaluate. Eventually, you find a solution – a mix that sounds the way you think it should.

And that’s great.

Until you have to solve for multiple solutions that don’t agree, because one solution invalidates the others.

Live Audio Is Nonlinear Math

The analogy that I think of for all this is a very parabolic one. Literally.

If you remember high school, you probably also remember something about finding “solutions” for parabolic curves. You set the function as being equal to zero, and then tried to figure out the inputs to the function that would satisfy that condition. Very often, you would get two numbers as solutions because nonlinear functions can output zero more than once.

In my mind, this is a pretty interesting metaphor for what we try to do at a show.

For the sake of brevity, let’s simplify things down so that “the sound on stage” and “the sound out front” are each a single solution. If we do that, we can look at this issue via a model which I shall dub “The Live-Sound Parabola.” The Live-Sound Parabola represents a “metaproblem” which encompasses two smaller problems. We can solve each sub-problem in isolation, but there’s a high likelihood that the metaproblem will remain unsolved. The metaproblem is that we need a good show for everyone, not just for the musicians or just for the audience.

In the worst-case scenario, neither sub-problem is even close to being solved. The show is bad for everybody. Interestingly, the indication of the “badness” of the show is the area under the curve. (Integral calculus. It’s everywhere.) In other words, the integral of The Live Sound Parabola is a measure of how much the sub-solutions functionally diverge.

(Sorry about the look of the graphs. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t give you large-size graphics unless you subscribe. It’s still a really cool website, though.)

Anyway.

A fairly common outcome is that we don’t quite solve the “on deck” and “out front” problems, but instead arrive at a compromise which is imperfect – but not fatally flawed. The area between the curve and the x-axis is comparatively small.

When things really go well, however, we get a convergent solution. The Live-Sound Parabola becomes equal to zero at exactly one point. Everybody gets what they want, and the divergence factor (the area under the curve) is minimized. (It’s not eliminated, but simply brought to its minimum value.)

What’s interesting is that The Live Sound Parabola still works when the graph drops below zero. When it does, it’s showing a situation where two diverging solutions actually work independently. This is possible with in-ear monitors, where the solution for the musicians can be almost (if not completely) unaffected by the FOH mix. The integral still shows how much divergence exists, but in this case the divergence is merely instructive rather than problematic.

How To Converge

At this point, you may be wanting to shout, “Yeah, yeah, but what do we DO?”

I get that.

The first thing is to start out as close to convergence as possible. The importance of this is VERY high. It’s one of the reasons why I say that sounding like a band without any help from sound reinforcement is critical. It’s also why I discourage audio techs from automatically trying to reinvent everything. If the band already sounds basically right, and the audio human does only what’s necessary to transfer that “already right sound” to the audience, any divergence that occurs will tend to be minimal. Small divergence problems are simple to fix, or easy to ignore. If (on the other hand) you come out of the gate with a pronounced disagreement between the stage and FOH, you’re going to be swimming against very strong current.

Beyond that, though, you need two things: Time, and willingness to use that time for iteration.

One of my favorite things to do is to have a nice, long soundcheck where the musicians can play in the actual room. This “settling in” period is ideally started with minimal PA and minimal monitors. The band is given a chance to get themselves sorted out “acoustically,” as much as is practical. As the basic onstage sound comes together, some monitor reinforcement can be added to get things “just so.” Then, some tweaks at FOH can be applied if needed.

At that point, it’s time to evaluate how much the house and on-deck solutions are diverging. If they are indeed diverging, then some changes can be applied to either or both solutions to correct the problem. The musicians then continue to settle in for a bit, and after that you can evaluate again. You can repeat this process until everybody is satisfied, or until you run out of time.

With a seasoned band and experienced audio human, this iteration can happen very fast. It’s not instant, though, which is another reason to actually budget enough time for it to happen. Sometimes that’s not an option, and you just have to “throw and go.” However, I have definitely been in situations where bands wanted to be very particular about a complex show…after they arrived with only 30 minutes left until downbeat. It’s not that I didn’t want to do everything to help them, it’s just that there wasn’t time for everything to be done. (Production craftspersons aren’t blameless, either. There are audio techs who seem to believe that all shows can be checked in the space of five minutes, and remain conspicuously absent from the venue until five minutes is all they have. Good luck with that, I guess.)

But…

If everybody does their homework, and is willing to spend an appropriate amount of prep-time on show day, your chances of enjoying some convergent solutions are much higher.

How To Be Demanding

Be nice, be early, and know what you’re talking about.

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I was mostly done with the “wordcloud” graphic up there when I realized it was all basically about one thing. As an audio-human, most of my perception of “demanding” has to do with, well, audio. (Audio in monitor-world especially.) However, being demanding can happen across any aspect of show production. Audio, lights, staging, costumes, whatever – any area can be one where you might want to be picky.

Now, “picky,” and, “demanding” don’t really have the best connotation these days. They conjure up visions of spoiled people who can’t possibly get anything done unless everything is “just so.” You know…whiny primadonnas who are so fragile that an inconsequential mistake by catering could wreck the whole show.

But there’s honestly nothing wrong with being fastidious about the production of your show, IF you go about it the right way.

So, how do you go about being demanding in a good way? Well…

1. Be Polite

If you want to be picky, learn how to be polite. Professional show-production folks can (under the right circumstances) be inspired to move heaven and earth for you if you’re nice. Diplomatic requests in a diplomatic tone of voice – and backed up by patience and understanding – send the message that your desires come from a respect for everybody else’s craft. The unspoken connotation is that this thing is being built by a team, and you’re counting on the appropriate team member to “come through for the organization.” When that attitude comes across, it inspires respect and extra effort.

(Politeness plus enthusiasm is even more effective. Excitement and fun are infectious. If you can get people fired up and smiling, you can pull off amazing stuff.)

The flipside is acting like a brat. Depending on how much clout you have, you may still get your wish…but that wish will be granted by folks who want less and less to go the extra mile, and more and more want to just be DONE with you. You really do not want that.

Politeness is actually pretty easy. If you can stay calm, use words like “please,” “thanks,” and, “may I,” and then wait for a bit while changes are made, you’ll probably be fine.

Also, let me be clear that being diplomatic is not the same as just accepting everything silently. If you ask for a change, and you’re not sure if it’s been made, then you can always politely ask for an update or confirmation. If you handle the asking carefully, you’re much more likely to get a rational explanation of what’s going on. If it turns out that your request can’t be met, and you get a quick explanation as to why, then you’ve still come out ahead: You’ve been given a tool you can use to stay polite. Demands that aren’t reasonable stray quickly into being impolite, just by default. Becoming aware of what’s possible helps you to stay reasonable.

2. Be Early

All the politeness in the world can be quickly undone by asking for something at the wrong time. If you want to be picky, then make sure that you and everyone else have the time necessary.

There have been multiple occasions in my career when I’ve been asked to make changes on a production, and my internal thought has been “I’ve been here all day, and you couldn’t ask this until now?” Some changes, especially those that involve moving pieces of staging that are proportionally large or adding several inputs, are really not good to drop on people. A lot of prep may already have been done with the assumption that things were configured in one way. If that configuration changes, you may be inadvertently asking for your change…AND for a lot of other things to get rebuilt in a rush.

In the same vein, being detail-oriented requires time. You have to be able to identify what you don’t like, get it fixed, and then test the fix, and it’s hard to do that with just seconds to go. You want the lights to be a very specific color, and focused on very specific places? Cool! But that takes a while. You want to put together five, very specific and intricate monitor mixes? Cool! But let’s do that with three hours until “doors,” instead of three minutes.

I personally love, LOVE working on shows where we come in early and take our time. It means that we can be careful about everything, troubleshoot, get everybody what they need, and just have smiles all around. It’s a million times better than trying to muddle through a bunch of intricacy at high speed.

If you want the standing necessary to be demanding about your show, then you must give yourself (and everybody else involved) enough time to do it all properly.

3. Know What The Heck You’re Talking About

It’s really hard to be effectively fastidious if you don’t know what you’re being fastidious about. If you don’t cultivate the vocabulary and technical knowledge necessary to speak intelligently about production issues, then all you’re left with is the ability to make vague pronunciations about what you dislike. If you can’t nail down exactly what you want to change, your chances of getting it changed drop precipitously.

Also, I’ll throw it out there that not knowing what’s going on prevents you from allocating enough time to work through your show’s production. (See heading #2, above.) For instance, you don’t have to know everything there is to know about lighting, but it does help a lot if you can coarsely identify different fixtures. If you aren’t wild about a color choice, it’s good to be able to figure out if a light can change color via remote command (lots of LED fixtures and most incandescent “movers”), or if the light requires someone to manually switch a color gel (most “static” incandescents). Remote control is “cheap” in terms of time and effort, whereas a physical change is relatively difficult.

The wider point here is to acquire the ability to discuss problems in a way that facilitates helpful responses from other people. The more specific you can be, the better. Declaring that “the monitors suck” doesn’t help anyone to stop them from sucking. There are a lot of things that can suckify a monitor mix. Being able to say things like, “the guitars are too low in this wedge here” is very helpful. It tells an audio-human a lot about what isn’t right, and also (by extension) how to fix it.

Having high expectations for your show is a good thing. Getting those expectations met can often boil down to knowing what you want, having enough time available to make what you want happen, and being able to ask for what you want in a diplomatic way.

A Vocal Addendum

Forget about all the “sexy” stuff. Get ’em loud, and let ’em bark.

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This article is a follow-on to my piece regarding the unsuckification of monitors. In a small-venue context, vocal monitoring is probably more important than any other issue for the “on deck” sound. Perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t talk directly about vocals and monitors AT ALL in the previous article.

But let’s face it. The unsuckification post was long, and meant to be generalized. Putting a specific discussion of vocal monitoring into the mix would probably have pushed the thing over the edge.

I’ll get into details below, but if you want a general statement about vocal monitors in a small-venue, “do-or-die,” floor-wedge situation, I’ll be happy to oblige: You do NOT need studio-quality vocals. You DO need intelligible, reasonably smooth vocals that can be heard above everything else. Forget the fluff – focus on the basics, and do your preparation diligently.

Too Loud Isn’t Loud Enough

One of the best things to ever come out of Pro Sound Web was this quiz on real-world monitoring. In particular, answer “C” on question 16 (“What are the main constituents of a great lead vocal mix?”) has stuck with me. Answer C reads: “The rest of the band is hiding 20 feet upstage because they can’t take it anymore.”

In my view, the more serious rendering of this is that vocal monitors should, ideally, make singing effortless. Good vocal monitors should allow a competent vocalist to deliver their performance without straining to hear themselves. To that end, an audio human doing show prep should be trying to get the vocal mics as loud as is practicable. In the ideal case, a vocal mic routed through a wedge should present no audible ringing, while also offering such a blast of sound that the singer will ask for their monitor send to be turned down.

(Indeed, one of my happiest “monitor guy” moments in recent memory occurred when a vocalist stepped up to a mic, said “Check!”, got a startled look on his face, and promptly declared that “Anyone who can’t hear these monitors is deaf.”)

Now, wait a minute. Doesn’t this conflict with the idea that too much volume and too much gain are a problem?

No.

Vocal monitors are a cooperative effort amongst the audio human, the singer(s), and the rest of the band. The singer has to have adequate power to perform with the band. The band has to run at a reasonable volume to play nicely with the singer. If those two conditions are met (and assuming there are no insurmountable equipment or acoustical problems), getting an abundance of sound pressure from a monitor should not require a superhuman effort or troublesome levels of gain.

So – if you’re prepping for a band, dial up as much vocal volume as you can without causing a loop-gain problem. If the vocals are tearing people’s heads off, you can always turn it down. Don’t be lazy! Get up on deck and listen to what it sounds like. If there are problem areas at certain frequencies, then get on the appropriate EQ and tame them. Yes, the feedback points can change a bit when things get moved around and people get in the room, but that’s not an excuse to just sit on your hands. Do some homework now, and life will be easier later.

Don’t Squeeze Me, Bro

A sort of corollary to the above is that anything which acts to restrict your vocal monitor volume is something you should think twice about. If you were thinking about inserting a compressor in such a way that it would affect monitor world, think again.

A compressor reduces dynamic range by reducing gain on signals that exceed a preset threshold. For a vocalist, this means that the monitor level of their singing may no longer track in a 1:1 ratio with their output at the mic. They sing with more force, but the return through the monitors doesn’t get louder at the same rate. If the singer is varying their dynamics to track with the band, this failure of the monitors to stay “in ratio” can cause the vocals to become swamped.

And, in certain situations, monitors that don’t track with vocal dynamics can cause a singer to hurt themselves. They don’t hear their voice getting as loud as it should, so they push themselves harder – maybe even to the point that they blow out their voice.

Of course, you could try to compensate for the loss of level by increasing the output or “makeup” gain on the compressor, but oh! There’s that “too much loop gain” problem again. (Compressors do NOT cause feedback. That’s a myth. Steady-state gain applied to compensate for compressor-applied, variable gain reduction, on the other hand…)

The upshot?

Do NOT put a compressor across a vocalist such that monitor world will be affected. (The exception is if you have been specifically asked to do so by an artist that has had success with the compressor during a real, “live-fire” dress rehearsal.) If you don’t have an independent monitor console or monitor-only channels, then bus the vocals to a signal line that’s only directly audible in FOH, and compress that signal line.

The Bark Is The Bite

One thing I have been very guilty of in the past, and am still sometimes guilty of, is dialing up a “sounds good in the studio” vocal tone for monitor world. That doesn’t sound like it would be a problem, but it can be a huge one.

The issue at hand is that what sounds impressive in isolation often isn’t so great when the full band is blasting away. This is very similar to guitarists who have “bedroom” tone. When we’re only listening to a single source, we tend to want that source to consume the entire audible spectrum. We want that single instrument or voice to have extended lows and crisp, snappy HF information. We will sometimes dig out the midrange in order to emphasize the extreme ends of the audible spectrum. When all we’ve got to listen to is one thing, this can all sound very “sexy.”

And then the rest of the band starts up, and our super-sexy, radio-announcer vocals become the wrong thing. Without a significant amount of midrange “bark,” the parts of the spectrum truly responsible for vocal audibility get massacred by the guitars. And drums. And keyboards. All that’s left poking through is some sibilance. Then, when you get on the gas to compensate, the low-frequency material starts to feed back (because it’s loud, and the mic probably isn’t as directional as you think at low frequencies), and the high-frequency material also starts to ring (because it’s loud, and probably has some nasty peaks in it as well).

Yes – a good monitor mix means listenable vocals. You don’t want mud or nasty “clang” by any means, but you need the critical midrange zone – say, 500 Hz to 3 KHz or 4 KHz – to be at least as loud as the rest of the audible spectrum in the vocal channel. Midrange that jumps at you a little bit doesn’t sound as refined as a studio recording, but this isn’t the studio. It’s live-sound. Especially on the stage, hi-fi tone often has to give way to actually being able to differentiate the singer. There are certainly situations where studio-style vocal tone can work on deck, but those circumstances are rarely encountered with rock bands in small spaces.

Stay Dry

An important piece of vocal monitoring is intelligibility. Intelligibility has to do with getting the oh-so-important midrange in the right spot, but it also has to do with signals starting and stopping. Vocal sounds with sharply defined start and end points are easy for listeners to parse for words. As the beginnings and ends of vocal sounds get smeared together, the difficulty of parsing the language goes up.

Reverb and delay (especially) cause sounds to smear in the time domain. I mean, that’s what reverb and delay are for.

But as such, they can step on vocal monitoring’s toes a bit.

If it isn’t a specific need for the band, it’s best to leave vocals dry in monitor world. Being able to extract linguistic information from a sound is a big contributor to the perception that something is loud enough or not. If the words are hard to pick out because they’re all running together, then there’s a tendency to run things too hot in order to compensate.

The first step with vocal monitors is to get them loud enough. That’s the key goal. After that goal is met, then you can see how far you can go in terms of making things pretty. Pretty is nice, and very desirable, but it’s not the first task or the most important one.

The Festival Patch

Hierarchies are handy, and if you’ve got the channels, use ’em.

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Last weekend, my regular gig hosted a Leonard Cohen tribute show. It was HUGE. The crowd was capacity, and a veritable gaggle of musicians stepped up to pay their respects to the songwriter. The guy in charge of it all (JT Draper) did a brilliant job of managing all the personnel logistics.

On my end, probably the most important piece of prep was getting the patch sorted out. If you’re new to this whole thing, the “patch” is what gets plugged into where. It’s synonymous with “input list,” when it all comes down to it.

For a festival-style show (where multiple acts perform shorter sets and switch out during the gig), getting the patch right is crucial. It’s a pillar of making festival-style reinforcement basically feasible and functionally manageable. A multi-act, fluidly-progressing show stands or falls based on several factors – and the patch is one of those supercritical, “load-bearing” parts that holds a massive quantity of weight.

If it fails to hold that weight, the wreck can be staggering.

But we got the patch right, which contributed greatly to the show being well-behaved.

Here’s the patch that actually got implemented, as far as I remember. The stage locations used are traditional stage directions, given from the perspective of someone on the deck and looking out at the audience:

Vocal (Down-Right)
Vocal (Down-Center)
Vocal (Down Left)
Vocal (Drums)
Guitar Amp (Center-Left)
Guitar Amp (Center-Center)
Guitar DI 1
Guitar DI 2
Guitar Mic
Bass DI (Unused)
Bass Amp DI
Keys DI (Unused)
Percussion Mic
Guitar Amp DI
SM58 Special
Empty
Empty
Empty
Kick
Snare
Tom 1
Tom 2
Tom 3
Tom 4 (Unused)

Why did it turn out that way?

You Have To Get Around Swiftly

Festival-style reinforcement demands that you can find the channels you need in a hurry. The biggest hurry is to get to the channels that are absolutely critical for the show to go forward. Thus, the vocals (with one exception) are all grouped together at the top of the patch. It’s very easy to find the channels on the “ends” of a console, whereas the middle is a little bit slower. If everything else went by the wayside – not that we would want that, or accept it without a fight, but if it happened – the show could still go on if we had decent vocals. Thus, they’re patched so they can be gotten to, grabbed, and controlled with the least amount of effort.

You’ll also notice that things are generally grouped into similar classes. The vocals are all mostly stuck together, followed by the inputs related to the guitars, then the basses, and so on. It’s easier to first find a group of channels and then a specific channel, as opposed to one specific channel in a sea of dissimilar sources. If you know that, say, all the guitars are in a general area, then it’s quite snappy to go to that general area of the console and then spot the specific thing you want.

A final factor in maintaining high-speed, low drag operation is making the internals of each patch group “look” like the stage. That is, for a console that’s numbered in ascending order from left to right, a lower-numbered patch point denotes an item that is closer to the left side of the stage…from the perspective of the tech. When I look up, the first vocal mic should be the farthest one to my left (which is STAGE right). The point of this is to remove as much conscious thought as possible from figuring out where each individual mic or input is within a logical group. Numbering left-to-right from the stage’s perspective might be academically satisfying, but it requires at least a small amount of abstract thought to reverse that left-to-right order on the fly. Skipping that abstraction gives one less thing to worry about, and that saves brainpower for other tasks.

Of course, now that I’ve said that, you’ll notice that the first guitar amp is actually on the wrong side of the stage. That leads into the next section:

Things Don’t Go Precisely To Plan

So…why are there some inputs that don’t seem to be numbered or grouped correctly? Why are there channels marked as unused? Didn’t we plan this thing out carefully?

Yes, the night was planned carefully. However, plans change, and things can be left unclear.

Let me explain.

Not everything in a small-venue festival-style show is necessarily nailed down. Getting a detailed stage plot from everybody is often overkill for a one-nighter, especially if the production style is “throw and go.” Further, circumstances that occur in the moment can overtake the desire to have a perfect patch. In the case of the guitar amps, I had thought that I was only going to have two on the deck, and I had also thought that the placement would be basically a traditional “left/ right” sort of affair. That’s not what happened, though, and so I had to react quickly. Because the console was already labeled and prepped for my original understanding, bumping the whole patch down by one would have been much harder than just patching into the empty channels at the end. Also, from a physical standpoint, it turned out to be more expedient to run the first guitar line over to the other side of the stage than to pull the center-center microphone from its place.

I clearly labeled the console to avoid confusion, and that was that.

The unused channels were a case of “leaving a channel unused is easy, patching in the middle of the show is hard.” During the planning for the night, it was unclear as to whether we’d have acoustic bass or not, and it was also unclear if we’d have keys or not. When the time came to actually plug-in the show, those unknowns remained. As such, the wise thing to do was to have those channels ready to go. If sources for those inputs materialized, I’d be ready with zero fuss required. If I wasn’t ready on those channels, and it turned out that they were needed, I would have to get them in place – potentially in the middle of the night. If those channels were never needed, all I had lost were a couple of inputs, and a few minutes of running cable at my leisure.

Look at all those “if” statements, and it’s pretty clear: The penalty for setting up the channels and not using them was very small compared to the advantage of having them in place.

Spend Channels, Get “Easy”

Now, what about that SM58? Why not just swap one of the other vocal mics, save time, and save space on the deck?

That seems like it would be easier, but it actually would have been harder. For starters, the other mics on the stage were VERY unlike the SM58 in terms of both output level and tonality. Yes – I could have set up a separate mix for the act that used the 58 (which would have fixed the tonality issue), but my console doesn’t currently have recallable preamp levels. I would have had to remember to roll the appropriate preamp back down when that act was finished. That might not seem like much to remember, and it isn’t really, but it’s very easy to forget if you get distracted by something else. Using one more channel to host the special mic basically removed the possibility of me making that mistake. It also removed the need for the act and me to execute a whole series of actions – on the fly – just to make the mic work. I set a preamp level for a channel that was ALWAYS going to belong to that microphone, and built EQ settings that would ALWAYS apply to that microphone, and we did the show without having to futz with swapping mics, changing mix presets, or rolling preamp gains around.

In a festival-style show, trading one spare input for a whole lot of “easy” is a no-brainer. (This is one reason why it’s good to have more channels available than you might think you actually need. You’ll probably end up with a surprise or two that becomes much easier to manage if you can just plug things into their very own channels.)

An orderly, quickly navigable festival patch is a must for getting through a multi-act gig. Even when something happens unexpectedly and partially upsets the order of that patch, starting with a good channel layout helps to contain the chaos. If you start with chaos and then add more entropy, well…