Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Eric Cagle said:
Most things are EXACTLY the same but there are some techniques that absolutely would not work in a live situation. The classic Led Zeppelin drum sound achieved naturally without effects by backing up the overhead mics a large distance (10-20 feet or so) in an ambient room and compressing them into oblivion comes to mind.
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Thing is, if you have clear reference As to how that effect is achieved, you have a much better chance of emulating it through other methods! Again, learning more about something does not hurt your knowledge about something else, and a new connection or method might even be realized.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

John Chiara said:
What should never be used live?. "
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Let me rephrase that. "Some things that you get used to in the studio, you dont have the option to use live" example would be that random engineer that loves spending 15 minutes you don't have of your 20 minute set change trying to get the 2nd rack Tom to sound perfect. Or the people who love thinking you have unlimited headroom when they're mixing live. I agree. Most mixing techniques can be applied live. And if you don't understand how a mix is constructed, then you probably shouldn't be mixing. When I say some things shouldn't be used live, I kinda worded that a little wrong for what I meant. This is all a controversial topic. Every engineer has a different "ideal"mix (though some, that isnt an excuse), and way to achieve it, every engineer is in a different environment with access to different equipment and different ideas and training on how to use it. Knowing your basics, and everything behind a mix, is never a bad thing though. An improvement to your knowledge can only benefit you.
 
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Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

John Chiara said:
Thing is, if you have clear reference As to how that effect is achieved, you have a much better chance of emulating it through other methods! .
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It wasn't until I started learning about RT60 impulse responses-how they are read-what the different "parts" are etc, that I fully understood how to program a digital reverb to get the sound I want.

People often think that a long reverb time is what makes people think they are in a large room. But you can have long reverb times is kinda small rooms as well. It is the ITG (initial time gap) that gives the impression of a larger space-along with the overall tone of the reverb. You simply won't have a lot of highs in the reverb in a large space. A smaller space will have a lot more highs for example.

So while not learned while doing studio time-it was a real eye opener as to how to achieve the different sounds coming from a purely acoustic perspective.

So yes-you can learn from other areas things that will help understand.

I wonder how many "live guys" have actually taken something like a gate and played with it in a controlled situation-not studio-but just in the shop with a normal speaker at a normal level and see how it really performs?

"playing" with gear can teach you a lot. Somethings the manufacturers don't want you to know--------------------------------------
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

I concur, the two feed into each other. Neatest thing I took from my studio dabblings back out into live mixing - volume automation (not that I wouldn't have figured this out doing live mixing alone eventually but squeezing everything into a studio mix definitely fast tracked the process). Now it's habitual to duck competing instruments when the vocalist sings, and boost them when they are not. And boost the kick drum up when the whole band drops away to just the kit (I've been mixing a lot of world/funk lately).
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

The main major differences with live sound in my opinion are:

1)We have to deal with stage slosh.
2)We have to deal with feedback.
3)We have a very limited set up time.
4)We only get one shot.
5)We are in many different acoustic environments.
6)The acoustic environments are dynamic. (changes in crowd size, temperature, humidity, etc.)

I am sure there are a few more things I am forgetting but these are the ones that come to mind.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Eric Cagle said:
The main major differences with live sound in my opinion are:

1)We have to deal with stage slosh.
2)We have to deal with feedback.
3)We have a very limited set up time.
4)We only get one shot.
5)We are in many different acoustic environments.
6)The acoustic environments are dynamic. (changes in crowd size, temperature, humidity, etc.)

I am sure there are a few more things I am forgetting but these are the ones that come to mind.
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1-6!!
All good reasons to have as solid as possible reference of your target mix in your mind. My new saying for quick gigs especially is now..."Make space...and then make space."
Space 1 - assuming the system is reasonable balanced, actively begin frequency layering of the mix and dynamic processing.
Space 2 - create spaces (time domain) for various elements of the mix. This part may need to seem exaggerated at times and 'larger than Life' stuff can be VERY effective but needs the hand of human automation riding things constantly.

The is more work than I see anyone doing at shows I endure. The good part is it gives us creative and dynamic tools which we can you to be truly artistic with our live mixes. When this coincides with right performance, people react!
All these things support the basic premise that...knowing more is the only position from which you can properly decide to do less!
That is different than someone knowing AND therefore doing less.
If you know how the drum mixes or vocal mixes from different styles of music are created in the studio, you are gonna be better than someone who doesn't. Regarding Space 2 from above...I don't know one single Sound person who describes creating space by using real spaces in the description! I once mixed a solo trumpet playing taps at a memorial benefit and the player asked me afterward why the sound was so effective? I told him I visualized the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial and the surrounding space.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Eric Cagle said:
The main major differences with live sound in my opinion are:

1)We have to deal with stage slosh.
2)We have to deal with feedback.
3)We have a very limited set up time.
4)We only get one shot.
5)We are in many different acoustic environments.
6)The acoustic environments are dynamic. (changes in crowd size, temperature, humidity, etc.)

I am sure there are a few more things I am forgetting but these are the ones that come to mind.
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The microphones and the loudspeakers are in the same room.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Eric Cagle said:
The main major differences with live sound in my opinion are:

1)We have to deal with stage slosh.
2)We have to deal with feedback.
3)We have a very limited set up time.
4)We only get one shot.
5)We are in many different acoustic environments.
6)The acoustic environments are dynamic. (changes in crowd size, temperature, humidity, etc.)

I am sure there are a few more things I am forgetting but these are the ones that come to mind.
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7)We have multiple 'experts' randomly sharing their unrequested opinions on how it should sound and what you should do.
8)We sometimes have to work around SPL limits, small stages, less than ideal house systems, crowd noise and so on.
9)We have to consider how it sounds over a large area and not just at one specific location.
10)We have to deal with artists moving around, interacting with others on stage and all of the live 'show' elements.

Both studio and live sound situations have their own challenges and I find that the main issue with people switching between them is that they recognize and appreciate that there are differences.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Love this thread, lots of great talk. I have lots of time in both worlds and couldn't be happier. When I'm not out mixing on the road I get back behind the glass and have some fun making records. The problem I have with the studio vibe these days is that very few people, and I mean VERY FEW, have the patience to take the time to work things through and prefer to have me spend hours in front of a monitor editing their shoddy performances. I no longer do that. DAWs have turned what started out as a mostly musical profession into an almost purely technical one. Yes Eric, I miss 2" tape BIG TIME. I miss the commitment, the sound, the musicality... even the smell. :) I'm glad I got into the biz when it was still done old school style with big, honkin' desks, cool old mics and musos who had to work at their craft to be good at it rather than rely on a computer whiz. The guys who mentored me will have my gratitude until my death.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Robert "VOiD" Caprio said:
Love this thread, lots of great talk. I have lots of time in both worlds and couldn't be happier. When I'm not out mixing on the road I get back behind the glass and have some fun making records. The problem I have with the studio vibe these days is that very few people, and I mean VERY FEW, have the patience to take the time to work things through and prefer to have me spend hours in front of a monitor editing their shoddy performances. I no longer do that. DAWs have turned what started out as a mostly musical profession into an almost purely technical one. Yes Eric, I miss 2" tape BIG TIME. I miss the commitment, the sound, the musicality... even the smell. :) I'm glad I got into the biz when it was still done old school style with big, honkin' desks, cool old mics and musos who had to work at their craft to be good at it rather than rely on a computer whiz. The guys who mentored me will have my gratitude until my death.
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Overheard at a load-in the other day: "before there was Pro Tools there were pro-fessionals."
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

I had forgotten about the smell of 2" tape. I always liked it as well. One of my good artist and producer friends in the business used to say, "I always feel like we are really making a record when the 2" machine is rolling." I had several formats available at the time but the high end projects were always cut on 2" tape at 30ips. Several hundred dollars a reel and good for about 17 minutes but man oh man what a sound! Everything always sounded better coming off the tape than it did going in.
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Chris Nixon said:
It's important to keep the mix as a whole in mind too. I once managed to miss the fact that a guitar sounded horrible because I was busy listening to the attack time on the vocal compressor. :blush:

If the specific thing you're attacking changes the perceived sound of something else you don't want to be too ​focused.

Chris
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This always happens during practice/sound check... Did a gig Saturday night and I was working on EQ'ing the "suck" out of the lead vocals(he's not a bad singer, quite the opposite, but I was having trouble getting it EQ'd right) his sister, bg vocals and lead on one song, was madly waving at me trying to get me to turn her monitor up and as soon as I touched the knob for her monitors they started squealing..:blush:... Ugh. Then when they started the actual gig the lead singer was enough louder to make my DFR11EQ clip :?~:-?~:???:; after I fixed that the rest of it went fine though. :D~:-D~:grin:
 
Re: Every live sound engineer should spend a little time in a recording studio.

Robert "VOiD" Caprio said:
... The problem I have with the studio vibe these days is that very few people, and I mean VERY FEW, have the patience to take the time to work things through and prefer to have me spend hours in front of a monitor editing their shoddy performances. I no longer do that. ...
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I occasionally double my hourly rate for this kind of work, particularly for tuning vocals.
 
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