Battle of the FOH's

Re: Battle of the FOH's

Ivan, I don't know Evan and Tom personally, but something tells me that they communicate and share thoughts much better than most people who'd try and mix together. It's been great to hear all about this - personally it's the coolest thing I've read so far this year. Not to mention - I'd rent that... just as long as you guys come with it. :D~:-D~:grin:

Alright, now that I feel all fuzzy inside it's time to my cute little school book.
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Max Warasila said:
Ivan, I don't know Evan and Tom personally, but something tells me that they communicate and share thoughts much better than most people who'd try and mix together. It's been great to hear all about this - personally it's the coolest thing I've read so far this year. Not to mention - I'd rent that... just as long as you guys come with it. :D~:-D~:grin:

Alright, now that I feel all fuzzy inside it's time to my cute little school book.
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The combined mix actually worked better than I had thought. I always wondered if two people attempted to mix a band would they just compete for level in the mix with their respective sources? It didn't really end up that way at all in fact. You just sort of focus on making what you are mixing sound good and it balances out on it's own.


I'm really smitten with that old srv-2000 reverb though. I wish it was available as a (software) plugin.

The dbx 166xl ain't half bad as a main bus comp on the whole mix if you know what you're doing. It was always standard that we would have 1 channel of our most premium compressor on the main mix after the 31 band EQ as a system limiter. Back in the day we always managed to run it like 15db into gain reduction with a 10:1 ratio, with about the results you would expect. Lo and behold now that we know how to use such things properly, the 166 flickering along with a few db and a light ratio sounds kind of pleasing!
 
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Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
The combined mix actually worked better than I had thought. I always wondered if two people attempted to mix a band would they just compete for level in the mix with their respective sources? It didn't really end up that way at all in fact. You just sort of focus on making what you are mixing sound good and it balances out on it's own. ....
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i did a fancy TV shoot thing with The Miami Sound Machine as the main backing band and a bunch of different singers and other acts fronting it along with some talking heads and stuff. Can't remember what the show was, but i can't remember much these days.

Anyway, i submixed the 'backing band' on a PM4000 [maxed out BTW] and the head FOH guy [wish i could remember his name 'cause he was cool] kept track of all the singers and talking head stuff on a PM3500-40. We were both plenty busy, but it actually worked out quite well.

i noticed at the Prince show at the Essence Festival this year that his FOH was a pair of Heritage 3000s manned by THREE guys. Looked like two were hands-on and one was kinda 'supervising'. interesting to watch....
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Back in a previous century I used to favor a particular club that had either jazz or art rock bands. One of the artsy acts had 2 soundpersons, one who did most of the mixing and another who did EFX changes, blending and panning, and set return levels. The first time I heard them it was a night off for me and I didn't really pay much attention until it occurred to me that I was hearing the band, not intermission playback... And that made me walk over and observe the guys mixing. I asked some questions at break and they were very gracious to explain things to a relative n00b (I was one, really!). The FX guy in particular was a big help to me in understanding what was important in cover songs versus what was important to the band with their originals. Over 30 years later I still use his advice.

In one of the archived AVID Venue webinars Robert Scovill talks about using snapshot automation to replicate the index cards and occasional use of an assistant to deal with mix and EFX changes. A helper or co-mixer isn't without history. In the pre-automation era, motion picture mixing was done by many hands on very large consoles... often 80 - 100 inputs or more, even after reducing the orchestra tracks to stem mixes.

I do find Tom and Evan's bit of fun to be an amusing take on "nostalgia" at such tender ages.... ;)

And for a related topic swerve - we've seen a few comments over the years about what one of our "back in the day" rigs would sound like with modern processing. I have some old stuff stored in my mom's shed that I'll need to move soon. If I can make space in my garage I might have to begin some restoration. Unfortunately I sold my Ashly analog crossovers so I won't be able to make measured comparisons, but it might be fun to see what I can get out of what I didn't sell when I got out of the PA owning biz.
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tim McCulloch said:
Back in a previous century I used to favor a particular club that had either jazz or art rock bands. One of the artsy acts had 2 soundpersons, one who did most of the mixing and another who did EFX changes, blending and panning, and set return levels. The first time I heard them it was a night off for me and I didn't really pay much attention until it occurred to me that I was hearing the band, not intermission playback... And that made me walk over and observe the guys mixing. I asked some questions at break and they were very gracious to explain things to a relative n00b (I was one, really!). The FX guy in particular was a big help to me in understanding what was important in cover songs versus what was important to the band with their originals. Over 30 years later I still use his advice.

In one of the archived AVID Venue webinars Robert Scovill talks about using snapshot automation to replicate the index cards and occasional use of an assistant to deal with mix and EFX changes. A helper or co-mixer isn't without history. In the pre-automation era, motion picture mixing was done by many hands on very large consoles... often 80 - 100 inputs or more, even after reducing the orchestra tracks to stem mixes.

I do find Tom and Evan's bit of fun to be an amusing take on "nostalgia" at such tender ages.... ;)

And for a related topic swerve - we've seen a few comments over the years about what one of our "back in the day" rigs would sound like with modern processing. I have some old stuff stored in my mom's shed that I'll need to move soon. If I can make space in my garage I might have to begin some restoration. Unfortunately I sold my Ashly analog crossovers so I won't be able to make measured comparisons, but it might be fun to see what I can get out of what I didn't sell when I got out of the PA owning biz.
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In a careful what you wish for, there is one school of thought that live performance should closely resemble studio tracks. As digital console technology converges some of the exact same efx are available. All that is lacking(?) is per song mix automation to connect all the dots..

One promise of MIDI program changes was punching in and out effects based on these MIDI cues. SMPTE to midi was done decades ago. While live performance prefers the flexibility to play without a hard click track. It is not difficult to imagine a smart program change efx controller that could follow the actual performance as played and execute EFX/mix cues in real time.

This is part of my console organization of "mixing to results" rather than just cranking in first order changes (i.e. specifying a final frequency response instead of the dB amount of boost/cut).

The future will continue to get more interesting.

JR
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tim McCulloch said:
One of the artsy acts had 2 soundpersons, one who did most of the mixing and another who did EFX changes, blending and panning, and set return levels.
Click to expand...

I once did a gig in the mid 90's where the band brought a person, who I dubbed "Echo Boy", to run the fader on the echo return.
They thought I did not use enough echo. I am a stickler for the lead vocal being on top of everything.
It was so skewed that I re routed the lead vocal and echo into separate submasters so I could see on VUs the difference.
The echo was running between 6 and 12 dB louder than the dry. It was very echoey.
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

John Roberts said:
One promise of MIDI program changes was punching in and out effects based on these MIDI cues. SMPTE to midi was done decades ago. While live performance prefers the flexibility to play without a hard click track. It is not difficult to imagine a smart program change efx controller that could follow the actual performance as played and execute EFX/mix cues in real time.

JR
Click to expand...

I was in a band in the early 90's playing keyboards and doing all the sequencing. I thought as long as I was sequencing, why not throw the effects changes in with the song? It worked out well for the most part and every song ended with a normal "talking" patch. As I got better at it and got better effects units with MIDI controllable parameters, I could change them in real time with the sequence. It was actually pretty impressive for a bar band. It been years since that band fell apart and anything I'm in now, we don't sequence. About six years ago, I picked up a MIDI pedal board and a long MIDI cable thinking I was going to at least automate some of my favorite combination of effects for ease of recall, but realized I was making a bunch more work for myself that no one else would even notice or care about and dumped the idea. Besides, I'm not sure I could find a "MIDI Panic" button anymore!
 
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