That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

S

Scott Helmke

Junior
Jan 11, 2011
454
1
0
Chicago, IL
www.scotthelmke.com
Since it's come up a couple times recently I've been thinking about it... that whole minimal soundcheck thing, don't bother tweaking anything by itself, etc.

When I was first learning sound there would have been no way for me to pull that off. I do it nowadays because I have experience, but here on these forums we're all about education and helping people gain experience. So where do you actually start with enlightened live mixing?

Let's go straight to the classic, the "lead kick drum" issue. It's always where the band sound check starts, "kick!" and hopefully not too many minutes of "thump... thump... thump..." while the sound geek figures out how to cope with what they're given in the way of drummer, drum, mic, and system. It's easy for me to say "don't worry about it until the band starts playing" because I'm generally in the happy position of working with professional musicians with good drums, my choice of kick mic, and a sufficiently-powerful and reasonably well tuned system (something else I had to learn how to do). So I don't have to worry about the kick (or most of the other sources) because I have my time-tested gear and methods.

But I don't think I would have gotten here without that boot camp of dealing with crappy-sounding drums in bad acoustic environments, and the experience of actually spending a few minutes trying stuff out. There are some good tricks that I picked up early on, such as "if you can't fix it in 30 seconds with EQ then go move the mic".

And there are other useful tips such as "get the vocals loud in the wedges before the band even gets there" that I was able to take advantage of.

But what else is there for the newbie? Does anybody have a Virtual Bar Band Sound Mixing application that provides a multitrack of a live band to mix, simulated feedback, simulated bad acoustics, etc?
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Many of us grew up learning how to do this "sound thing" with little to no real "tools", extremely limited exposure to others doing it etc.

We learned how to do it right, rather than rely on "plug ins" and other modern tools.

The "kids" today don't have that "seat of the pants" learning. To often they want to "play with the toys" rather than get a good solid mix-because that makes them feel "special".

Figuring out and understanding what is really happening is fundamental.

That "old school" learning has a lot to do with making us who we are-good and bad!
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

The most important thing to remember (IMO) is that it's possible to get an acceptable mix with nothing more than mic placement and setting levels in the mix. Yes, this assumes that the band knows how to play as an ensemble, and that the rig du jour has a reasonably linear response (most modern rigs do, even the cheap stuff), but that's not a huge set of assumptions. Yes, various processing (EQ, dynamics, reverb, etc.) can work to polish a mix, but they can also ruin a mix, and certainly won't fix an unacceptable mix.

The reason to not worry about the mix until the whole band starts is that interactions between instruments matter a whole lot in the context of the mix. The perfect guitar sound in isolation and the perfect vocal sound in isolation may yield unintelligible noise when combined.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Ivan Beaver said:
The "kids" today don't have that "seat of the pants" learning. To often they want to "play with the toys" rather than get a good solid mix-because that makes them feel "special".

Get off my lawn!
Click to expand...

Slightly edited for emphasis and humor... ;)

I don't really agree, Ivan. There have always been plenty of lazy dumbass wannabes through my whole career, and I expect there will continue to be such annoyances in the future. The one really big change for the worse is the loss of the local club "farm system" where young bands could hone their craft and there was money for decent (for the times) production.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Scott Helmke said:
Slightly edited for emphasis and humor... ;)

I don't really agree, Ivan. There have always been plenty of lazy dumbass wannabes through my whole career, and I expect there will continue to be such annoyances in the future. The one really big change for the worse is the loss of the local club "farm system" where young bands could hone their craft and there was money for decent (for the times) production.
Click to expand...
I do agree.

There are people who work at what they want-and then those that want it given to them.

Maybe I am just a bit "pissed" at the tools that are available these days (as compared to what we grew up with).

But I often hear people talking about different plug ins or various ways to do things on digital consoles-yet I can't understand a thing that is being sung and it basically sounds like crap-but they go off on the differences between things that don't matter-simply regurgitating something they have read-while ignoring the basics-like a decent MIX/BALANCE!
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Ivan Beaver said:
But I often hear people talking about different plug ins or various ways to do things on digital consoles-yet I can't understand a thing that is being sung and it basically sounds like crap-but they go off on the differences between things that don't matter-simply regurgitating something they have read-while ignoring the basics-like a decent MIX/BALANCE!
Click to expand...

Those people existed back then, they just blathered on about something else like slew rate or whatever. Remember when slew rate used to be a big deal? Or damping factor?
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Actually, Scott, I considered buying a 24 track recorder/playback on here so that I could run it to the board to teach newbies using tracks available from a few different web sources (most are meant for studio but work well enough). I eventually decided that I couldn't justify the cost.

The direction of the thread has reminded me of an experience from this week:

Some people like me started with a rather standard analog board (GL2400), a handful of mics of varying levels of crappiness in an okay at best sounding room through an installed two-way system deployed incorrectly with no outboard and whatever I could borrow from whoever had gear they didn't care about.

Other people, like the person who will be replacing me after I graduate this year won't take advice or use my knowledge while telling me that they "know what they are doing." Ten minutes later their eyes glaze over when I ask them for a 20 foot XLR so that I can check the distance from the installed patch panel to the temporary mix position.

I can confirm that there are still annoyances today who can't mix but claim the name "sound engineer" with overzealous pride. I just hope I'm not one of them too often.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Scott Helmke said:
Those people existed back then, they just blathered on about something else like slew rate or whatever. Remember when slew rate used to be a big deal? Or damping factor?
Click to expand...
Yeah. What I always thought was funny was that back in the later 80s and 90s the most widely accepted tour amps were the Crown MAs.

Yet the slew rate on those was the worse of any amp BY FAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damping factor was the other big deal. I have done some testing and some of the amps that had the highest damping factor had the "loosest" bass-in terms of tightness/punch etc.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Rob Timmerman said:
Haven't yet learned about pacing off distances?
Click to expand...

More a case of it going around and through a couple of things to get where it needed to be. Patch panel is in the booth, so stuff gets run out the booth and into the audience; the shortest path is through the window over a countertop, and then under an audience row. Not quite as simple as pacing stuff off, I'm afraid.

EDIT: I should clarify that their problem was with the word "XLR"

ADDENDUM: I suppose that "XLR" is actually an abbreviation rather than a word.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Ah yes. Experience......there is no substitute and no short cut.

Several years ago (in ye olde analog days) I figured out I didn't need no stinkin sound check when using my board, mic kit, and rig. A quick line check to make sure I was getting everything I was supposed to have and I was 90% ready to roll, and this was for the first band only. Only if an additional input was added did I need an additional channel check. I mixed literally 100's of bands and in many situations and I often had only 15 minutes or less to clear the stage, get the next act on, and roll.

You can complicate things and make noise and waste time as much as you want to but here is the real skinny on what NEEDS to happen for a typical band:
1) All the channels are gained in and have a rough EQ from the last band, even if that was a few weeks ago. They are the same mics and they only go so loud.
2) Vocals ONLY in the front monitors. Each mic gets itself in its monitor only. Some lead vocal in all. Drum monitor gets a little of everything but drums. Preset from the last band.
3) Gain in any keyboards or acoustic guitars and put them in the monitors as needed.
4) Gain in the bass guitar

Throw the drum, acoustic instrument, keyboard, vocal faders and anything else that is not amplified on stage strait across a few dB below unity or wherever you mix from. Roll it!

If you have the luxury of a sound check you are ready. If you don't, a little tweaking here and there on the main and monitor mixes and everybody is smiling.

It sounds simple. It is. What is not simple is all the many hours and years it takes to get to this point.
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Eric Cagle said:
Ah yes. Experience......there is no substitute and no short cut.

Several years ago (in ye olde analog days) I figured out I didn't need no stinkin sound check when using my board, mic kit, and rig.....

...If you have the luxury of a sound check you are ready. If you don't, a little tweaking here and there on the main and monitor mixes and everybody is smiling.

It sounds simple. It is. What is not simple is all the many hours and years it takes to get to this point.
Click to expand...

Testify!!!!
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Eric Cagle said:
Ah yes. Experience......there is no substitute and no short cut.

Several years ago (in ye olde analog days) I figured out I didn't need no stinkin sound check when using my board, mic kit, and rig. A quick line check to make sure I was getting everything I was supposed to have and I was 90% ready to roll, and this was for the first band only. Only if an additional input was added did I need an additional channel check. I mixed literally 100's of bands and in many situations and I often had only 15 minutes or less to clear the stage, get the next act on, and roll.

You can complicate things and make noise and waste time as much as you want to but here is the real skinny on what NEEDS to happen for a typical band:
1) All the channels are gained in and have a rough EQ from the last band, even if that was a few weeks ago. They are the same mics and they only go so loud.
2) Vocals ONLY in the front monitors. Each mic gets itself in its monitor only. Some lead vocal in all. Drum monitor gets a little of everything but drums. Preset from the last band.
3) Gain in any keyboards or acoustic guitars and put them in the monitors as needed.
4) Gain in the bass guitar

Throw the drum, acoustic instrument, keyboard, vocal faders and anything else that is not amplified on stage strait across a few dB below unity or wherever you mix from. Roll it!

If you have the luxury of a sound check you are ready. If you don't, a little tweaking here and there on the main and monitor mixes and everybody is smiling.

It sounds simple. It is. What is not simple is all the many hours and years it takes to get to this point.
Click to expand...
Back in the 80's there was a local band that made it big and started touring and opening for some major metal bands.

I did them after they had gotten "famous" and the soundguy brought out his old Peavey markIII 24 channel console.

I asked him why? He said that most of the gigs they were opening and they never got sound for a soundcheck. He had "grownup" with this band and that console. The bands levels were always the same, so he could quickly dial in a mix without having to do a sound check.

Then when they started he just tweaked a little bit.

Basically it made his life easier-rather than "learning" a new console.

If you try to get every instrument to sound great by itself-then generally when the whole band jumps in it will be wrong.

My attitude is to get each instrument kinda close and then have the whole band play. Then you can adjust/balance one instrument against another. Especially important when the drummer is playing the whole kit vs one drum slowly at a time.

Unless of course the song is a snare solo-------------------------
 
Re: That "enlightened soundcheck" thing...

Rob Timmerman said:
OTOH, digital consoles can make it that much easier to accidentally wipe your entire mix (even if it isn't a return to zero)
Click to expand...

One of my Magical SystemDude Powers is rescuing mixerpersons who don't subscribe to the "save early, save often, save again before walking away" method of mix preservation.
 
Top Bottom