Re: Why is mixing considered...
I have noticed an relationship between the quality of the rig provide and the openness of the owner to guest engineers. It seems the better the rig, the more likely they are to be used to visitors. On the other hand the pieced together RPS owner seems to think they are the only one who can run it.
The backwards thing in my world is that the great rig was probably put up by someone who is perfectly capable of getting a perfectly adequate mix on the first hearing of the band, so the better the equipment, the better paying the gig is, the less reason there is for me to actually be there. On the other hand, it is the lowest paying gigs, with the most marginal equipment, that the band most needs my experience to get a consistantly good show.
I do have a tech rider, but most of it is actually safety related stuff. Other than that it breaks down to please have a PA for FOH, no monitors needed, I bring the complete stage setup including mics, let me know if I need to bring compressors and effects, and have at least 14 channels to FOH. The tech rider is included with every contract and I advance every show by both e-mail and telephone about 2 weeks prior to the show. This year I am running about 2 out of 4 advances actually reaching the person who needs the information, and about 1 in 4 returning any useful information. Want to guess which of those venues are the ones prepared for a guest engineer and which ones are agast that the band would want to pay for and bring their own mix person?
