Tag Archives: Priorities

When The Control Surface Fails

You may have to reboot – or you might not want to.

Please Remember:

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.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Back in “the day,” we got wind of an exciting development: Consoles now existed that had a measure of independence between the actual audio processing and the control system. If the controls – the “surface” – had a problem, you could restart the surface without interrupting your show. Neat!

Of course, only the big boys and girls had access to this. I still have in my possession a pair of digital consoles that do not allow that kind of behavior. When they were newly built, the asking price per each was $3000. Nowadays, you can swipe a card for $450 and get the DSP part of a digital console equation that’s noticeably better.

These new, mini-consoles are designed to connect to a tablet or computer via a network, presenting a virtual surface through the external device. The convenient and fast way to do this is over WiFi, and it’s great when it’s really working…but it’s not so great when something goes amiss. (To be brutally frank, it’s another case of “It takes a pretty darn spendy wireless unit to be as good as a $5 cable.”) The console keeps charging along, passing audio without a hitch. You, on the other hand, are sitting there, somewhat alarmed that your display is freezing and lagging like a Tenderfoot Boy Scout on his first cold-weather hike.

So, what do you do?

Well, first, I would urge you to remember that disrupting a show or event is the last thing you want to do. Second, you need to keep in mind that some control is better than no control at all. Third, having no control at a critical moment will disrupt the show. (You see, Simba, we are all connected in the great circle of…mic cables…no…loading in and out…no, that’s not it…)

Anyway.

The point is that if you reboot your surface, or the WiFi module that communicates with it, you are no longer a “pilot in command.” Instead, you’re a pilot strapped to a jet that is going to do whatever it was last told to do, come hell or high water. That might be a good thing; A right thing. It might also be the wrong thing, or a thing that’s so horrifically bad that you want to hide your eyes and run for an exit. In whatever state you are, you are going to be stuck until the surface or network is back up. How long will that take? A few seconds? A minute? Several minutes?

You may not be able to be sure.

If the problem is degrading your control, but not completely preventing it, keep what control you have. Only reboot if you actually lose control, and that’s what you need to do to return to the driver’s seat. If it looks like you’ll soon be forced to let the system drive itself for a bit, try to use what influence you have left to make your mix stable and accommodating of coming changes. Open all channels that might need to be un-muted in the next while, and pull your output masters down a bit to guard against feedback.

Otherwise, just let the situation ride. Things might be clumsy and disconcerting, but you’ll be able to get through.

And have an alternative control connection available if at all possible. Like something that uses a $5 cable.


Monitor-World Is Not A Junior-Level Position

Mixing monitors is a mission-critical task, not an “add-on” to FOH.

Please Remember:

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.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Worrying about Front Of House (FOH) doesn’t keep me up at night. Monitor-world, on the other hand…

It’s not just because an issue at FOH is much easier to hear, and thus much easier to correct swiftly and in detail. (Although that’s part of it.) It’s not just because midstream communication regarding monitor needs is difficult – exponentially so as the detail-level of a request rises. (Although that’s part of it, too.)

It’s because getting the monitors right is absolutely crucial to a successful show. If monitor-world isn’t doing its best, the musicians won’t be able to do their best, and if they can’t do their best, the most stupenfuciously awesome-sauce FOH mix will be a mix of musicians WHO ARE STRUGGLING. I don’t want to be forced to choose, but if I am compelled, I will take incredible monitors and mediocre FOH without hesitation.

Every day of the week.

And twice on Sunday.

Yet, for some reason, there has been a tendency to elevate the FOH audio human’s position above that of the monitor engineer. It’s as if there are two species of noise louderizer in the world, Homo Sapiens Mixus Audienceus and Homo Sapiens Musicius Keepem-Happyus, with the latter being an underdeveloped version of the former. Well, that’s a load of droppings from an angry, male cow if ever there was such a thing.

For FOH, you basically mix one show, a show that, as I mentioned, you yourself hear in detail. You generally get to make decisions unilaterally, and your path to those decisions is through your own interpretation of your hearing.

In contrast, monitor-world is the mixing of many shows to multiple audiences of one (sometimes eight or more). Those shows may have wildly different needs, and with wedges, each show bleeds into and heavily influences all the other shows. There may be a subtle detail that’s driving somebody crazy which is difficult for the operator to hear. Every significant choice has to filtered through the interpretation of another person, and nuanced communication is anywhere from challenging to outright impossible. At any given moment, you have to keep some sort of mental map about what’s going where, and also about what was recently changed (in case a problem suddenly crops up). Modifications have to be made swiftly and smoothly, and if you make a mistake, you have to be able to backtrack surgically. Panic is lethal.

To crib from The Barking Road Dog, mixing rock-and-roll monitors in realtime is not a skill possessed by a large number of people involved in the noise louderization profession.

…and then, there’s the gear side. It’s not uncommon to hear of a smaller audio provider upgrading a “point-and-shoot” FOH rig, with the old boxes being “demoted” to monitor duty. This sometimes happens by default or necessity. It’s certainly the reality in my case. But to do that intentionally doesn’t make sense to me. The boxes where being laser-flat across the audible spectrum helps stave off disaster? The boxes that have to stay “hospital clean” at high volume? The boxes that have to be able to produce large, uncompressed peaks, so that performers can “track” their own output? Those boxes are needed in monitor-land! (Seriously, if I ever get my hands on a bunch of disposable income, I’m going to bring my monitor rig UP to parity with my FOH system.)

So, no. Monitor-world is not for the intern or second-banana. The person running it is not a “junior” or “second” engineer. The gear is not the stuff that couldn’t cut the mustard at FOH.

What happens on deck is the bedrock, THE crucial and critical foundation for the show as a whole. It should be treated as such at all times.


Panning

Localization is a great idea, but it’s not my top priority at FOH.

Please Remember:

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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As an FOH guy, I haven’t really given two hoots about regular stereo for many years. Since I also sit in the monitor-beach chair, though, I find stereo – or rather, multichannel output, interesting and helpful on occasion.

Why the difference?

Your Friend, Localization

Let’s start by saying that “localization” is a good thing. A listener being able to recognize a specific point in space where a particular sound comes from is very useful when many sounds are happening together. It increases perceived clarity and/ or intelligibility; Instead of hearing one giant sound that has to be picked apart, it’s far more mentally apparent that multiple sounds are combining into a whole.

When localization gets tossed out the window, volume and tone are pretty much all you have available for differentiation of sources. This can lead to a volume war, or just high-volume in general, because it’s tougher to get any particular source to really stand out. The fewer differences you have available, the bigger the remaining differences have to be in order to generate contrast.

The thing with localization, though, is that its helpfulness erodes as the consistency of its perception decreases. In other words, it’s best when the entire intended audience is getting the same experience.

Everybody Getting The Show That’s Right For Them

In monitor world, consistency of perception is generally not much of a problem. I’m basically mixing for an audience of one, multiple times over. Even with wedges and fills all banging away and bleeding into one another, we can construct a (relatively) small number of solutions that are “as right as possible” for each band member. Very nifty things are possible with enough boxes and sends. For instance, everybody in the downstage line might get two wedges. Wedge one might be just vocals, with each singer’s mic emphasized in their own mix, and the others faded into the background. Wedge two could be reserved for instruments only. With the vocals having their own position in space, they become easier to differentiate from everything else. These benefits of localization are consistent and maximized, because everybody has a solution that’s built for just them (and then balanced with all the other solutions happening on deck).

So, that’s monitor world. Do you see the potential problem with FOH?

In monitor world, assuming I have the resources, I get to hit each listener with at least one box each.

At FOH, I have to hit MANY listeners in many positions with only a few localized boxes in total. (A PA can be built of arrayed speakers, of course, but you generally don’t separately perceive each element in an array.)

This creates a consistency problem. The folks sitting right down the center of the venue are usually in a great position to hear all the localized boxes. Start getting significantly off to one side or another, though, and that begins to fall apart. More and more, one “side” of the PA tends to get emphasized as the audible, direct source, with the other side dropping off. If different channels are significantly panned around, then, the panning can be a large contributor to different people getting a very different, and possibly incorrect “solution.”

It’s not that the people in the center never get a different show than the people off to the sides anyway, it’s that trying to mix in stereo can make that difference even bigger.

As much as is practicable, I want to be mixing the same show for everybody in the seats. That means that each speaker/ array/ side is producing the same show. (Now, if I get to have a dedicated center box or array that hits everybody equally and lets me localize vocals, well, that’s something.)

Another reason that I don’t generally expend energy on stereo mixing for FOH is because the stage tends to work against me. In plenty of cases, a particular source on deck is VERY audible, even with the PA, and basically seems to be localized in the center. This tends to collapse any stereo effect that might be going on, unless the PA gets wound up enough to be far louder than the on-stage source. Quite often, that amount of volume would be overwhelming to the people in the seats.

Caveats

First, I want to make sure that I’m NOT saying that mixing a live show in stereo is “wrong.” I don’t advise it, and I generally think that it’s not the best use of limited resources, but hey – if it’s working for you, and you like it, and it’s not causing you any problems, then that’s your thing.

Also, Dave Rat is a proponent of using relatively subtle differences from one PA “side” to another to help reduce comb-filtering issues in the middle. I think that’s an astute observation and solution on his part. For me, it’s not quite worth worrying about, but maybe it is for you.


The First Rule Of FOH

It definitely isn’t “Get control over everything.”

Please Remember:

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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Well, I’ve done it. I’ve gone and had my first, real disagreement on Twitter. I may be a real boy now!

The (actually very mild) dust-up occurred between myself and another engineer. He was miffed at my “Pre or Post EQ” article, because – for him – my approach was far, far too passive. His response was that the first rule of FOH is to get control over the show.

Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t agree.

First of all, Rule #1 for all audio engineering is, “First, do no harm.” This job is very much like medicine: Shut your trap, listen to the musicians, try to get to the root of the problem, treat people like human beings, and don’t rush to a diagnosis.

Second: Not everybody is like this, but the process of getting in control over everything is basically installing a dictatorship. Not everybody is on board, and they may swallow their tongues for a while, but a rebellion will brew.

…and, if they aren’t afraid of you, folks may do nasty things to you out of spite. Does that sound like a fun show? That sounds like a TERRIBLE show, one that flat-out sucks for you, the players, and the audience.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Being an audio human for live shows has basically nothing to do with molding every second of the proceedings to your will. That kind of thing can (and does) happen, but I don’t see it as the normative case for folks doing shows where muting the PA doesn’t totally mute the band. That’s the vast majority of us, by the way. Rather, this gig is a sort of collaborative Judo, wherein we utilize the momentum of the band to transfer the best possible show to the audience. Forcing your way to maximum control is the opposite of that – I’ve seen it in action. Wrestling control of the show away from the musicians has an overwhelming tendency to KILL their momentum.

The musicians’ momentum is what the audience came to see. In the grand scheme of things, nobody truly cares about how “fat and punchy” the drums are. Nobody truly cares about how radio-ready the vocals seem to sound. If the show momentum is off, that will be the thing that the patrons notice. They’ll be impressed by the mixing for a few moments, but they didn’t buy those tickets for that purpose.

Now, if you can get complete control and also maintain musician momentum, I’m all for it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have full control if that’s the natural state of the show. If it’s not the natural state, though, you’re wasting a ton of energy (literally and figuratively) by swimming against the current.

Folks, it’s not “our” show. It’s the band’s show, and we are helping with it. We do get partial credit, and we may get an outsize portion of the blame, but – deep breaths, people! I’ve mixed plenty of shows that, to my mind, sounded rather poor. Some of them, in the opinions of audience members, were my fault when they really weren’t. Some of them, also in the opinions of audience members, sounded absolutely stellar (while I was grinding my teeth into fine powder over how terrible everything was). It’s okay! There are people who think I’m an idiot, but there are enough people who think the opposite that I’m not worried.

If something’s really amiss, comment on it, but don’t force your way into the captain’s chair. Interestingly, you’re far more likely to be promoted to that seat if you demonstrate an ability to collaborate with what’s already going on.


Pre Or Post EQ?

Stop agonizing and just go with post to start.

Please Remember:

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.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Oh, the hand-wringing.

Should the audio-human take the pre-EQ split from the amplifier, or the post-EQ split? Isn’t there more control if we choose pre-EQ? If we choose incorrectly, will we ruin the show? HELP!

Actually, I shouldn’t be so dismissive. Shows are important to people – very important, actually – and so taking some time to chew on the many and various decisions involved is a sign of respect and maturity. If you’re actually stopping to think about this, “good on ya.”

What I will not stop rolling my eyes at, though, are live-sound techs who get their underwear mis-configured over not getting a pre-EQ feed from the bass/ keys/ guitar/ whatever. Folks, let’s take a breath. Getting a post-EQ signal is generally unlikely to sink any metaphorical ship, sailboat, or inflatable canoe that we happen to be paddling. In fact, I would say that we should tend to PREFER a post-EQ direct line. Really.

First of all, if this terminology sounds mysterious, it really isn’t. You almost certainly know that “pre” means “before” and “post” means “after.” If you’re deducing, then, that setting a line-out to “pre-EQ” gets you a signal from before the EQ happens, then you’re right. You’re also right in thinking that post-EQ splits happen after all the EQ tweaking has been applied to the signal.

And I think we should generally be comfortable with, and even gravitate toward getting our feed to the console from a point which has the EQ applied.

1) It’s consistent with lots of other things we do. Have you ever mic’ed a guitar amp? A drum? A vocalist? Of course you have. In all of those cases (and many others), you are effectively getting a post-EQ signal. Whether the tone controls are electronic, related to tuning, or just part of how someone sings, you are still subject to how those tonal choices are playing out. So, why are you willing to cut people the slack to make choices that affect your signal when it’s a mic that’s involved, but not a direct line?

2) There’s no reason to be afraid of letting people dial up an overall sound that they want. In fact, if it makes it easier on you, the audio-human, why would that be a bad thing? I’ve been in situations where a player was trying desperately to get their monitor mix to sound right, but was having to fight with an unfamiliar set of tone controls (a parametric EQ) through an engineer. It very well might have gone much faster to just have given the musician a good amount of level through their send, and then let them turn their own rig’s knobs until they felt happy. You can do that with a post-EQ line.

3) Along the same track, what if the player changes their EQ from song to song? What if there are FX going in and out that appear at the post-EQ split, but not from the pre-EQ option? Why throw all that work out the window, just to have “more control” at the console? That sounds like a huge waste of time and effort to me.

4) In any venue of even somewhat reasonable size, having pre-EQ control over the sound from an amplifier doesn’t mean as much as you think it might. If the player does call up a completely horrific, pants-wettingly terrible tone, the chances are that the amplifier is going to be making a LOT of that odious racket anyway. If the music is even somewhat loud, using your sweetly-tweaked, pre-EQ signal to blast over the caterwauling will just be overwhelming to the audience.

Ladies and gents, as I say over and over, we don’t have to fix everything – especially not by default. If we have the option, let’s trust the musicians and go post-EQ as our first attempt. If things turn out badly, toggling the switch takes seconds. (And even taking the other option might not be enough to fix things, so take some deep breaths.) If things go well, we get to ride the momentum of what the players are doing instead of swimming upstream. I say that’s a win.


How To Buy A Microphone For Live Performance

A guest-post for Schwilly Family Musicians

Please Remember:

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.

vintage_microphone-wallpaper-1280x800

From the article: “At the same time, though, a LOT of mics that are great for recording are a giant ball of trouble for live audio. Sure, they sound perfect when you’re in a vocal booth with headphones on, but that’s at least one whole universe removed from the brutal world of concert sound. They’re too fragile, too finicky, too heavy, their pickup patterns are too wide, and you can’t get close enough to them to leverage your vocal power.”

The whole thing is available for free, so go ahead and take a gander.


Should You Go To Audio School?

I went, and I loved it, but I don’t universally recommend it.

Please Remember:

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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I’m not entirely sure if me being a graduate of The Conservatory Of Recording Arts And Sciences reflects well or poorly on the institution. I definitely did NOT walk out of there and summarily change the world, but I have made plenty of friends and mixed a whole bunch of shows that were well received.

In any case…

I went to The Conservatory. I loved it. It was the best academic experience of my entire life. You would think, then, that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone considering a run in this business that they also go to school for the craft.

That’s not the case, though.

At the level of the general population, we are slowly waking up to the reality that the “diploma in hand” is really not a golden ticket. Our collective, aggressive somnolence in regards to this realization can be partially excused; For a long time, school was THE key to the brighter future. There was quite a long count of years where the piece-o-paper did indeed function well as a gate pass to getting a gig. There are some professions that still absolutely require proof of getting through the coursework to even get started. For many occupations, though, successful passage through related education is now a pretty mediocre commodity. You went to school? So? The 10,000 other people who want to do this job also did.

Having the education on your resume is no longer anything that makes you stand out from the pack. It’s not at all rare.

But higher-ed institutions of all types, especially those that really need your tuition dollars, won’t tell you that. They live on your believing that the best way to get into [insert profession here] is to have some sort of diploma. Like I said, though, the diploma no longer marks you as exceptional. It just shows that you were able to spend enough money and hang on long enough to get your credit hours.

From the above, you might think that I’m against school. I’m not. I’m against believing that school is something that it inherently isn’t.

School is not, at its core, an entry card into a profession or socio-economic group. It can act as those things under certain circumstances, but that’s not inherently what school is.

School is actually your becoming familiar with basic concepts and vocabulary such that you have a chance to understand your real education, which is the doing of the work in real life. It’s the mental foundation for asking the really interesting questions, questions that tend not to be covered in school.

(There are educational institutions which get into those questions, but they do so only at the very highest levels. Original research, the prime-example of this, is not school. It’s “doing the work in real life,” just in an academic setting where the goals are more than making a profit this month.)

The point of school is to make you able to learn something later, when you’re not in the classroom, lab, or other controlled environment.

So, if that’s the premise I’m going with, why would I NOT encourage you (like crazy) to go to school for sound? Doesn’t recording or live-audio school give you a crucial foundation for a future life in noise-louderization and electron inconveniencing?

Well, it can, but it’s not the only way to get there.

I went to recording school at just around the turn of the century. Digital consoles were out there, but were still a revolutionary concept for a lot of us in the classroom. The music industry still revolved around rock bands being recorded in big, expensive rooms through big, expensive consoles, connected to big, expensive outboard gear. CPU-based audio workstations were just at the doorway of competing with Pro Tools rigs running DSP cards. The project-studio revolution was definitely in full swing, but audio was still in a place where you could spend a lot without getting a lot.

You also have to realize that the Internet was in the midst of revolutionizing everything, but not nearly as far along as it is now. Information that’s easy to find these days was still difficult to ferret out then. YouTube, and a million people doing “how to hook up your sound system” did not exist. Not everybody posted their manuals and free(!) editor software online.

What audio schools had at that time was full-featured gear, actual studio rooms like what were in vogue, information, and the opportunity to do “lab” work that combined all that. They could charge you a fair amount for the privilege, and be basically justified in doing so. They were riding that bleeding edge of a business that traditionally worked on the “master and apprentice” model anyway, but had become big enough for commoditized education to handle the basics.

Do you know what’s changed since then?

The schools have newer gear.

They charge quite a bit more for tuition.

Gear with immense functionality has dropped in price.

All the information you need is available almost instantaneously, often for free.

Huge sections of the music business have stopped being “big industry,” and have returned to their DIY, “punk rock” roots.

What hasn’t changed at all is that “hands-on” time is still the most precious part of learning the craft.

To be brutally frank, as far as I can tell, for the price of an audio school program you can buy your own gear that – while certainly not top-shelf – will have all the features necessary for you to learn much more than the bare basics. Once you get comfortable with signal flow fundamentals, you could then start looking for bands to work with, and maybe even make some money while you establish experience. A diploma is worth very little compared to real experience, a reputation, and having some of your own equipment.

None of this is to write off academic audio programs entirely. If you truly want to go to school for sound, you should – but I would encourage you to look at non-traditional factors when choosing a school. Forget about the nameplates on the gear and the manufacturer-sponsored certification programs. Forget about whether or not the live-sound lab has the biggest and loudest flown array ever assembled. Forget about the stories of (a very small minority of their students, probably) who are working with giant artists and getting their names on industry awards that are mostly based on sales. Rather, think about:

How much hands-on time is part of the curriculum? The more there is, the better.

Related to the above, how much real, honest-to-goodness portfolio material will you have when you graduate? The more you can get, the better.

How much recruiting is done by potential employers at the school? Do local production companies go looking for graduates? The more of that there is, the better.

Will there be easy opportunities to meet and form relationships with people working at local, regional, and national levels? The more of those, the better.

We’re in a new age where the traditional barriers to entry are nearly nonexistent. If you’re going to go to school, go to a place that serves as a functional launchpad for your career, not merely a factory for people who can answer questions on tests. To use the language of Seth Godin, look for a place that prepares you to pick yourself, rather than for other people to pick you. If I had all of this to do over again, and I went to school, I would go to a school like that.

Heck, I want to teach there.


Dear Audio Humans

This is a service industry that just happens to involve sound.

Please Remember:

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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Dear Audio Humans,

It has come to my attention that a good number of our friends, the musicians, have had some unfortunate experiences with us. My conversations with these players, these people who create the noises we selectively louderize, have revealed that we often do a poor job of serving them. This is a bad thing, but it’s correctable.

I want to lead off by addressing a myth of monstrous proportions. It very well may be THE myth that drives the majority of these fraught encounters.

It is the myth that success in our job is about creating the very best sounds. It’s the fable that the single biggest measure of our success is audio quality.

Actually, no. Our job is to facilitate the creation of a show, by way of helping the musicians with the scientific and technical disciplines involved in the inconveniencing of electrons and air molecules. Helping. Service. This is a service industry, and the musicians are almost always our biggest client when it’s all said and done. If they aren’t happy and cared for, we’re failing – no matter how perfectly tuned the PA is, or how awesome that snare-drum sounds out front.

You see, Maya Angelou was exactly right. She’s quoted thus: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Corollary: No musician goes home humming the FOH mix. They go home remembering their emotions about the show. If, because of us, they remember how frustrated or insignificant they felt, perfect phase alignment of the crossover point between the subs and tops doesn’t matter for crap. I can tell you for a fact that there are musicians who have played at class-A venues, and who have been treated very poorly. Do you know what those musicians talk about? They talk about the venue’s name, the name of the company responsible for production, and how seriously pissed off they still are at the lack of decorum shown by the crew.

Not a word about the awesome mics.

Not a peep about what name was printed on the monitor-wedge grilles.

Not a syllable about how many watts the PA could dissipate.

But they could write us all an epic-length poem on the effects of jerkdom.

So, in a practical sense, what does this mean?

First, let’s remember to smile and shake hands.

With everybody, including the opening act(s).

(The opening acts are real people playing real music, and are not any less important to the show than the headliners. If anyone says anything to the contrary, be polite to that person – and then ignore them as much as is feasible.)

As much as we can, let’s try to find a way to be pleased that the musicians have arrived, and try to show it. People like to be welcomed and treated with importance. We are the Maitre D’s, and the musicians are hungry for what we can serve.

Let’s also try to have a sense of humor. The hangups and misadventures are going to happen, so we may as well laugh it off. It can take quite a while to be able to do this consistently, but it’s worth it. When the day comes where you realize that the rough spots of show production are actually just hilarious war-stories in the making, you begin to see how every moment is really just a grand adventure. Putting a gig together is serious business, but even the most serious business has a joke buried somewhere. It may not be appropriate to voice that joke at a particular time, but we can be mindful of it.

Next, let’s try to be helpful instead of just sitting around. Musicians get so little help with their gear that you can often ascend to superhero status by simply picking up a combo amp and moving it indoors. The practical side to this is that a rested band plays better than a tired one.

Let us banish the idea from our minds that it is our job to “fix” the band. That is not our job. Our job is to translate what the band is doing. We may take the opportunity to sweeten. We may be able to correct some problems. These are good things, but they are always done by working with the band’s momentum instead of against it. The players are not wrecking OUR mix or making it hard to get OUR favorite sound. They are making THEIR sound, and we are here to help them sound as much like themselves as possible. Some bands don’t yet sound like themselves, or don’t know how to sound like themselves. Patience and gentle assistance are required in these instances. Insults, complaining, exasperated lecturing, and other rudeness are inappropriate. (The band will not remember that you fixed their lead guitar sound. They will definitely remember that you were unpleasant.)

Let’s “stay on station.” If we don’t see as unacceptable the phenomenon of an engineer getting a mix basically dialed up…and then disappearing for an hours-long smoke-n-beer break, let’s start seeing it. It will not kill us to stick around and listen to what’s going on. We will not suffer permanent harm from being available to respond to a band’s requests of us. Being present is actually very easy, and highly noticeable.

Last, let us not view requests for changes in monitor world as some sort of imposition, diva-hood, or pickiness. Instead, let’s view it for what it is: An expressed desire for a change that will help the show along. The show on deck IS the show out front – we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s somehow vice-versa. If the musicians have what they need, they will create a show that feels better to themselves and the audience. We can be honest if a desired change is being opposed by the laws of physics, but let’s at least try to get there first. Denying a change-request for monitor world because we don’t think it’s reasonable or are afraid of what it might do to the FOH mix is…well…cheap. When the monitors are as correct as they can possibly get, we can (again) ride that momentum out front.

There is no shortcut to doing a bad audio job that is any shorter than forgetting that this is a service job that involves sound. The inverse is also true. I’ve been in situations where I had done the service part, but felt pretty poorly about how the show sounded, only to have people tell me how great the show was.

So, let’s remember to do our real job.


Don’t Worry About How It Sounds, Worry About What It Does

Any mixer you buy will sound fine. Pick based on the features and how they work.

Please Remember:

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 a console sounds bad – I mean, legitimately and unmistakably – it’s either broken or you’re using it poorly.

(If this post doesn’t kick the hornet’s nest, I will be very surprised.)

My point in this really isn’t to offend. It really isn’t to pick a fight. It really is to be very direct about what to spend your time and worry on when picking out a device to route and combine inputs.

I am by no means the most “well traveled” console operator on Earth. There are guys and girls who have had their paws on many, many more desks than I have, in several thousand more rooms than I’ve been in. At the same time, I have been around long enough to have gotten a pretty good sampling of what’s out there.

I’ve run signals through five-input mini-mixers.

I’ve done “coffeehouse” gigs on ancient monstrosities that I could barely lift. Hugely overgrown beasties which consisted of something like 12 channels, a heavy-as-a-bowel-movement class-AB poweramp (that probably managed a peak output of 400 watts/ side into 8 ohms), knobs and faders that someone with giant hands would have found comfortable, and which had “Peavey” silk-screened on the top surface.

I’ve pushed live audio through consoles that people would be embarrassed to own, and consoles that people would happily show off to some folks, and also through contraptions that nobody could possess but me – because I assembled the thing.

I’ve been on what Avid/ Digidesign would consider a flagship live-mix platform.

I’ve had the opportunity to do real, serious, hands-on, studio-environment stuff with large-frame analog units that would run you about $1,000,000 (in late 1990s dollars) when new.

Let me tell ya, folks,

They all sound basically the same.

Really.

Much like preamps, I have never been in a situation where I thought, “If I just had this one particular console, this would all sound better.” Never.

The Subjective Factor

Some of this has to do with how I work. There are sound craftspersons out there who are into the idea of “special mojo.” The magic of a certain preamp circuit. The plug-and-sweeten behavior of a very specific EQ design. The way the summing bus in a certain piece of signal-combining gear does this beautiful “something” when you hit it just right.

This is all neat stuff. When you’re sitting there, and you’re sure it’s happening, and it’s making your day, that’s great.

It doesn’t generally fit my reality, though. In my world, the time required to find the spot where the snare drum smooshes seductively into the harmonic distortion characteristics of a mic pre is time that would be better spent getting the vocals loud in monitor land. By my methodology, finding a console that gives you some extra forgiveness – or even sounds super-special – when you’re just tickling the overload lights is not a problem to solve. The problem to solve is why your gain structure is messed-up enough to have you bumping into the electrical limits of the desk.

On the flipside, you might be really into this kind of thing, which is fine if it’s working for you and the people around you.

The reason, though, that I point out that I don’t personally find it helpful is for the new folks. The guys and girls who are trying to buy things, and agonizing over spec sheets, scared to death that they’re not going to get enough bang for their buck. The bang is not in those tiny numbers.

What You’re Looking For

What my experience has overwhelmingly shown me over the past years is this: Any console which is basically capable of filling the needs of a given sound-reinforcement scenario will, at a fundamental level, have very comparable “audio circuit” performance to anything else capable of handling that scenario. Modern manufacturing of gear is such that pretty much anything, when run sanely and not engaging in transduction, will have low noise, imperceptible distortion, and transfer response that’s linear from direct-current to dog-whistles.

In other words, there’s no point in looking at SNR, distortion, and frequency response numbers on a mixer’s spec sheet, because it’s all going to be great.

It might not be magic, but it will pass signal in a straight line as long as a component hasn’t failed, and you aren’t hard-clipping the poor thing.

So forget about finding the unit with the best numbers.

Instead, get your mitts on the control surface (whether real or virtual), and figure out if you like how the thing behaves as a tool for intense, realtime munging of loud noises. Does the soft-patching make sense to a rational human? How about to an irrational human on the verge of panic, because something went wrong and the show is 30 seconds from downbeat? Can you make your common routing needs happen without getting lost? If you have preferred EQ setups that you like to use, can you dial them up without struggling? Is it easy to make any built-in compressors and gates act in a way that makes sense? If there are onboard FX engines, can you get the basic delay and reverb sounds you prefer?

These functional considerations are orders of magnitude more important than any subjective sound-quality difference you encounter, especially because they directly affect the “macro-level,” subtle-as-a-kick-in-the-face sound-quality that comes from really messing with an input. At least consider believing me when I say that you don’t actually care about whether or not one console seems to have “slightly deeper and more 3D” bass than another. First, it probably doesn’t – you’re probably just running the “better” console a little louder, or you moved a bit after patching your reference material into the different unit. Second, the tiny little worries evaporate in an instant when the real problem is a musician who “can’t hear the other guitar at all, dude.”

A miniscule difference in distortion characteristics won’t mean squat when the band is 110 dBC continuous in the back of the room without any help from the PA. A 2 dB better noisefloor isn’t worth arguing about when the space is filled with 100 people who are all shouting over each other.

Now…if you’ve got all the basics down, and you’ve found a few different desks that you enjoy using, you’re now ready to nitpick tiny, sonic details. If you’re into that, and you’ve got the time, and the money is all figured out, have at it! If you get a kick out of finding the special mojo, don’t let anyone stop you.

All I’m saying is that the “big mojo” of how comfortable you are with the console as an “audio wrench” matters a lot more. That’s what’s really and immediately going to precipitate what musicians and audio members are going to notice. As is so often true in this business, the ordering of your priorities list is critical.


A Long, Strange Trip

The story of an adventure with Mokie, our local Grateful Dead tribute.

Please Remember:

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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I was finally having a bit of relaxation after the show. We had pulled it off. By the grace of God, and with a lot of help and hospitality, we had made the show work. Everybody had seemed to be very pleased in the end.

Even so, I was not enjoying my turkey sandwich and Sun Chips. Not really, anyway. It’s not that they were bad, just overpriced. It was about the same story for the…well…I guess I’ll call it “Gatorade” that I was having. I was enjoying that even less, because it was tasteless.

Positively unflavored.

Well, I guess it was unflavored. I’m assuming it wasn’t. I didn’t actually taste my drink as it went in, due to its point of entry being an artfully administered puncture wound in my left arm.

As places to have an unplanned afterparty go, the Emergency Department at St. Mark’s is not on the short-list. The staff are great, and the place is REALLY clean, but it’s just not a place you want to be, you know?

More on this later.

The Safety Factor: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Webb A/V is a show-production force in this town because they are GOOD at what they do. Obviously, they have the technical chops and the gear to pull off their contracted events, but there’s more to it than that: They seem to instinctively get that this business is about being a service industry with an excellent safety record. If you are the client, you will be taken care of, and everybody will leave with all the body parts that they brought with them.

I walked up to the stage, with none of the onsite crew knowing me from a hole in the ground, and I was instantly treated with accommodation and courtesy. All I had to do was figure out my own plan of attack. The crew leader, Tom (I think it was Tom, the day kind of turned into a blur) was on top of everything necessary – the first thing being power.

“Hey man,” he said, holding up an electrical quad-box, “you guys are going to have your own, 30-amp circuit for stage. I’m going to give you the X-phase, and we’ll use Y and Z for the PA and lights.” (If you’ve never encountered it before, multi-phase power is common for shows with bigger electrical requirements.) Webb was ready to go, they were ready for us, and the deck wouldn’t have to share power with anyone. That’s a pretty good way to start things off. The provided FOH rig was a “4 over 2” QSC KLA, which sounded pretty darn nice as DJ, the Webb A1, started dialing it up. This left the band and me to do our own thing on deck, which kept things moving along nicely.

Life would have been perfect, except for the weather. The great outdoors has great acoustics, but it also has a great many ways to wreck your gig.

While this particular bout of “Utah overcast moodiness” was hardly a mid-Atlantic storm, it was still producing some noticeable forces. That is to say that, for our situation, the gustiness was tremendous – the problem being wind-related. The various light and sound trees were all firmly weighted down with sandbags, but even so, the crew leader was concerned enough to keep the masts in their lowered positions as much as possible. Air currents would die down, and then whip up with authority.

Did you know that cable-tub lids make excellent gliders? Did you know that ride cymbals are very effective as both kites and boat-sails? Did you know that plastic crowd-barriers LOVE to skitter across parking lots? These are things that we found out.

At some point, a wind advisory was issued. It was issued at roughly the same time the swirling air found some loose dirt, whipping it across my face and arms with an accompanying sensation of being stabbed with a hundred small needles.

On the upside, all the dry skin I had exposed was neatly removed. (Ladies, I don’t know what those fashion mags tell you about skincare, but I’m pretty sure that all the oils and spa-treatments in the world are NOTHING compared to good, old-fashioned sandblasting.) The downside was that things were clearly getting out of hand. About a minute later, the crew lead walked up.

“We’ve got to pull the plug and take all this down.”

…and that, right there, was the ultimate expression of professionalism. The expense and effort involved in putting up a show-rig is non-trivial. As such, there is tremendous pressure to “tough out” any situation. In the end, though, screwing up on the side of safety is always the correct choice. People in this business have died because the drive to keep the show on has overridden a healthy sense of danger. The chances of things not ending well were plenty high, so it was time for Webb to pack up and go.

What followed was a scramble for the band and me to yank down our more-than-halfway set deck, and run everything indoors. As we did so, there was one nagging problem: We really didn’t know what we were going to do once we got inside.

The Hospitality Factor: 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Especially when I’m in someone else’s house, I try to assume as little as possible. In this case, I was in The Rock Church’s house, as they were providing the indoors part of the whole equation. What we were met with when we walked in was a stage that was already set and ready to go – for someone else. The church band was that someone else.

To me, the answer was clear. We were going to set up around what was already there. We would use all our own boxes (which we had brought for monitor world) to handle both the stage and FOH. I would use my remotable console as a stagebox, and run things off a laptop with a network connection. We were going to have a show, and we weren’t going to muss up anyone’s hair in the process. The only problem was that I didn’t have any speaker stands with me.

Thinking quickly, I spied a couple of tall, cafe tables out in the audience. I could put a couple of speakers on those, and the result might not completely suck. I grabbed ahold of (who ended up being) Steele, the pastor, and asked if we could “appropriate” those bits of furniture.

“You can have anything you want!” Steele declared, emphatically.

He and another gentleman pulled the tables over to the stage.

“What do you want these for?” Steele asked.

I related my plan to get a couple of boxes up to ear level.

“Man, you should just use our system. Hold on, I’ll give Tim a call, and he’ll get you set up.”

In the space of about 30 seconds, we had gone from piling together a disaster-mitigation rig to being first-class citizens on a system every bit as good as what we were originally slated to use. On top of that, it was all hands on deck, on short notice. Tim came down at full-speed, patiently ran me through the system setup, and then yanked the existing patch entirely so that I would have a blank canvas to use. Everything was at our disposal, and the up-center drum riser was cheerfully removed to make room for Mokie’s two-kit percussion ensemble. They even lent us the church’s uber-rad, SVT bass rig.

On top of it all, Foster hurried down and – with patience as great as Tim’s – worked up an honest-to-goodness light show for both the band AND a hip-hop dance group. In record time. I would later go on record as saying that “Foster’s” is Australian for “beer,” whereas “Foster” is Australian for “killer light guy.”

Now, in my mind, I don’t think that Mokie and I are tough to work with. At the same time, the show (and all our needs) were basically dumped, last minute, on all the folks at The Rock. For that reason alone, they get a massive “Thank You” from me for “putting up with our crap.” Everybody in that building embodied hospitality, and the show happened because of it.

I must not fail to mention another couple of elements: The supreme importance of having a sanely-tuned, sanely-patched system to work with, and the equally supreme importance of having a great band to work with. Mokie is an ensemble that knows how to actually be a band. They would still basically sound like themselves with no PA and no monitors. While it would not be the most fun gig for them, they could pull it off. Because of this, the audio system doesn’t have to work any magic to “fix things.” Rather, the PA is able to act in its best capacity, which is to translate the already cohesive band into the audience. When you add that to an FOH and monitor setup ready to do real sound reinforcement (by sounding nice while being “unhyped”) what you get is a show that can be run effectively in a crisis.

I normally use EQ and compression on my FOH channels in a manner reminiscent of a sledgehammer. I normally have a separate, virtual monitor world. There was no time for any of that on this gig. We had to throw-and-go…and we were fine. I didn’t have all the flexibility I could have used, but that’s just the final layer of varnish anyway. For what was going on, I was able to run my channels surprisingly flat – and get away with it pretty handily.

The Hospital Factor: 9:00 PM – 3:00 AM

As the gig hit set break, Mokie’s fearless leader, Chip, walked out to FOH.

“It sounds GREAT, man. Some of the folks are even saying it’s the best show we’ve ever done.”

“Well,” I said, “clearly this means that the way to do these shows is to set up halfway, tear down and reset in a blind panic, and then just go for it with no preparation.”

I was feeling pretty good about what Chip said, but I can’t say that I was really feeling good in general. I wasn’t incapacitated, but I was definitely wondering what was wrong with myself. I had this weird aching in my upper chest and the top of my back. Even with the show settling into a basically comfortable groove, my heart wouldn’t slow down to a normal pace. I hadn’t done a strenuous gig in a long time, and the sudden call to maximum performance was not treating me kindly.

“Don’t be anxious,” I thought to myself, “because being anxious just makes it worse.”

As the show wore on, the good news was that I didn’t feel worse. I was able to smile through my discomfort and get things done. The bad news was that I wasn’t getting much better. As we ended things and tore down the show, I figured that I just needed to go home and go to bed.

Three-quarters of the way back to the house, on the I80 – I215 collector, it happened. I was barreling along with a vehicle full of gear, when the unmistakable feeling of being about to pass out hit me like a ton of bricks. What seemed like a white-hot lump fell into the bottom of my butt. My stomach felt like it would readily wrench its entire contents out my backside, given half the chance. I pulled to the shoulder and slapped the button for my emergency flashers. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Instead of yanking my brake, I moved the gear-selector to “Park.” The transmission made a howling grind of protest as the parking pawl ratcheted against a still mostly-highway-speed transmission. My hands were tingling.

In a daze, I sat drenched in sweat. A few cars tore by me. I wondered if I was having a heart attack. I thought about what it would take to get my phone out and call 911. I didn’t know if I could get my phone. I figured that I had about two minutes to decide.

Slowly, I started to feel better. The pain in my upper body was mostly gone, actually.

Half of me just wanted to drive home and forget the whole thing. The other half of me knew that treating such an event lightly was not to be filed in the “Smart Ideas” drawer. My more cautious half won the argument, and I drove to St. Marks instead of the house.

At the ER, the various goings-on began to…go on. No, I hadn’t had dinner. Oh…yes, why I DID have a bit of a sunburn. I did feel better now that the episode had passed.

The various tests were ordered, and my aforementioned sandwich was ordered. The nurse obligingly stuck me with an IV so that I could have a big drink without actually drinking anything. I sat, craning my neck to watch my vitals monitor.

That heart rate looks a little high.

Is that ECG trace normal?

Don’t be nervous.

That doesn’t seem right.

Don’t be nervous.

The MD was ultimately satisfied that I was not about to die. She was also, somewhat surprisingly, just fine with the idea of putting me back in control of 3000+ lbs worth of metal, glass, fuel, and audio gear. She sent me out the door with a stack of papers talking about things like dehydration and near-syncope. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to take it easy the next day. I was happy to oblige, being tired from the whole thing.

The irony, of course, is that I was all set to be “100% for safety” when it came to things like wind and water, but I failed to take care of myself. A few bucks worth of actual Gatorade might just have kept me out of the ER. I have no idea how big my bill will turn out to be – I’m insured, thanks to my mom being very keen on that whole issue – but no matter how much money I end up owing, it still contributes to my final, self-administered diagnosis:

Don’t be an idiot next time.