Working on technique off the gig?

Rafi Singer

Rafi Singer

Freshman
May 17, 2011
62
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6
Waltham, MA
www.singerproduction.com
I was thinking of a talk Bob Scoville did a while back on virtual soundcheck, and he brought up that up until then, a lot of people's practice mixing came during the gig it's self. Virtual soundcheck allowed him to continue trying things without the time pressure of having a band on stage. That got me thinking, what do you do to work on becoming a better mixer when not on the gig?
 
When I started building my rig (in the 90's) I would use my church hall to play with my gear.

In recent years as I switched over to my digital mixer I produced (booked a local VFW hall, printed tickets, etc.) several multi-band (high school aged groups)non-competitive battle of the band events in my town.
The kids love to perform and, more importantly, I got to experiment on my new mixer with live groups.
a win-win

In Waltham MA I am sure that there are many bands (think bigband) in your area that would welcome having someone mix their rehearsals.

When I first got my digi mixer I got used to the desk's layout mixing in my living room, then graduated to the BOTB events, and eventually to sound-for-hire gigs.
 
I record everything including rehearsals. I use waves plugins for both live and studio. A lot of times, I'll take the recorded rehearsals home and work on my plugin settings. When I'm done, I just copy them into Multirack and head to the gig.
 
Virtual soundcheck has extreme limitations, especially in smaller venues, as the sound from the stage is contributing a large portion of your mix. However, if you are able to mic everything, you can practice creating a mix that sounds great. Just know that when the band comes back on stage, it WILL sound different than the virtual mix did.
 
Rafi Singer said:
I was thinking of a talk Bob Scoville did a while back on virtual soundcheck, and he brought up that up until then, a lot of people's practice mixing came during the gig it's self. Virtual soundcheck allowed him to continue trying things without the time pressure of having a band on stage. That got me thinking, what do you do to work on becoming a better mixer when not on the gig?
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I agree with Brian regarding virtual soundcheck. It works best when your artist is "all IEM's" with an extremely low stage volume. However, you are still mixing in an empty room and that has it's own challenges, i.e. the temptation to over eq etc. I think that the best thing to do is set up a "studio" mixing room in a spare bedroom or such to mix live multi-tracks. Soloing tracks will give you great insight into what's actually happening during a show. If you are strictly a live engineer, you really don't even have to worry about "translation" in the studio sense of the word. Just get the mix sounding great in the monitors. Translation through a PA is of great concern for just about anything outside of learning "Key" frequencies for gates, comps, and sidechaining etc.
 
Absolutely essential IMO. If you want to get better you have to practice. I have been doing studio and live for 30 years, and my observation is that most live sound mixers have severely limited skills because they don't practice MIXING. When the band is playing, you become a MIXER, the guy who drove to the gig, setup all the gear, made it all work...etc...needs to let the mixer take over. I went to a festival a few weeks ago with national acts and without a doubt could have had better mixes than any of the BE's....walking in cold!
Its like cooking, or fixing cars, or playing an instrument. The more you do it the better you get. How good would musicians be if they only played their instruments on stage? It's a no brainier. You can get well recorded multi tracks on line. Get them and practice. Mixing is mixing. Frequency layering needs to be practiced so you can learn how instruments interact with each other AND with different kinds of processing...especially main buss processing. Master level mixes are possible but it's not magic and it doesn't just happen. The environment might change but being able to quickly rifle through the channels and 'fix' the stuff that ALWAYS needs fixing puts you way ahead. Scoville mixes in the studio. You should too!
 
I mix on an X32 at my church and record into Reaper on my laptop. Since we record fewer than 18 channels, I can take that home and plug into my XR18 to practice mixing, or let my daughter practice mixing. What a great learning/teaching tool. All points above about live vs. studio mixdown environment are very valid and need to be taken into consideration when transferring back to live, but that ability too is a valuable skill.
 
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