Show day and Soundcheck: A Day in the Life of a Freelance Audio Tech
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ต.ค. 2023
- Set up, sound check, and show. Integrating with a provided audio system as a freelance audio tech working for a touring rock band. How it all comes together with tips, tricks, and explanations along the way.
When working for a band as the audio mixer, you can find yourself mixing on many different rigs and stages. Pre-show preparation, soundcheck, mixing live, and getting it all ready to do it again on a different day.
For this show, I mixed on a Midas M32 (Midas M32R). No matter the musical genre, or venue... festival, club, ballroom, arena, church, etc... the overall concepts, the basics- gain structure and signal flow - are still the fundamental building blocks of a good mix. It's hard to get to the art of audio mixing if you bypass the science of it along the way.
🎚️✨ Support via Patreon:
/ alanhamiltonaudio
🎶🔊
🎤Sweetwater Affiliate Links:
Midas M32R digital mixer on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/bavBkm
Midas DL32 Stage box on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/y2EKZB
Digital Mixers (Midas/Behringer/etc) on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/g16Eng
Shure Beta 91A (Kick) Mic on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/EKbkVX
Audix Mics (I5 Snare mic) on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/anYoNq
AKG C214 Mic (Overheads) on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/xkXKnx
AKG C1000s Mic (Hi-hat) on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/Gmoynn
EV Mics on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/zNXKjx
PA Systems on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/q4mXZ5
📦Amazon Affiliate Links:
Elite Core Supercat Shielded Cat5e cable with Ethercon style connectors-
amzn.to/46G8Kkt
Audix I5 Mic (snare) on Amazon-
amzn.to/3ZMM0gs
Items Used to Make This Video-
FDUCE SL40 Vocal Dynamic Podcast Microphone on Amazon:
amzn.to/408xlf3
Sony ZV1 Camera on Amazon:
amzn.to/3z9MHny
Canon M50 MkII Camera on Amazon:
amzn.to/3z6c8X5
“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
"I earn from affiliate link purchases"
~~~~~~~~
Channel Facebook Page:
/ livesoundproduction
Band:
/ crushbonjoviexperience
Other Channel Videos-
A Soundcheck in Action:
• A Fly's-Eye View of a ...
5 Tips for Mixing Live Vocals:
• 5 Tips For Better Live...
Building an IEM Rig With the Behringer XR18 or Midas MR18:
• How to Build an IEM Ri...
Direct Boxes - What are they? How to use them? Direct Box 101:
• DI Box - What is it an...
3 Tips For Aspiring Live Audio Engineers:
• Live Audio Mixing: The...
Building a Concert - Production for Trace Adkins:
• Ever Wonder What Goes ...
My 5 Most Used Adapters for Live Sound:
• What Are My 5 Most Use...
Guitar Amp Micing Tips:
• Micing A Guitar Amp? T...
Behringer XR18 Channel Walkthrough:
• Understanding the Behr...
Drum Mixing Tutorial Playlist:
• Drum Mixing Videos
Items purchased thru affiliate links come at no additional cost to viewers, but these purchases can earn the channel commissions.
#audiogear
#soundmixing
#livesound
![เก่งแต่ลับหลัง (FINSTA) - ส้ม มารี (Zom Marie) Ft. Punch 4EVE [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OOolBU2aC70/mqdefault.jpg)
This video shows the behind the scenes bits that go into working directly with the band and mixing on another company's rig at a venue. Pre-show, soundcheck, and show. I also recently purchased a Midas M32R so this was a perfect gig to use for its first time out of the box. LMK if you're interested in seeing a first look/comparison about the differences in the M32R vs a regular M32 (or X32) (plus a bit of comparison with an XR18/MR18 too I suppose).
🎤Sweetwater Affiliate Links:
Midas M32R digital mixer on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/bavBkm
Midas DL32 Stage box on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/y2EKZB
Digital Mixers (Midas/Behringer/etc) on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/g16Eng
Shure Beta 91A (Kick) Mic on Sweetwater-
sweetwater.sjv.io/EKbkVX
🎚✨ Support via Patreon:
www.patreon.com/AlanHamiltonAudio
~~~~~~~~
Channel Facebook Page:
facebook.com/groups/livesoundproduction
This is great! I just got an X32 Compact and about to use it for the first time. Been a longtime XR-18 user.
@@scottbakernc Cool. I think you'll like it.
Fantastic video once again.
You can tell within seconds of drum soundcheck that the drummer is pro af.
The B91 sounds amazing right away btw. Thought it was the trigger at first haha.
Also loving all the detailed explanation you gave in the comments' section.
NB : people who watch these videos and don't read comments are missing out a lot IMO
Even though I do this on the daily, I still love watching other engineer's methods. Cheers!
Cool, thanks
Great episode! Thanks for the thoughtful explanations of what you're thinking and doing. Pre-show prep is underrated - it looks like that simplified your day so much. That M32R is sweet.
Much appreciated! Yes, the pre-show prep definitely paid off.
Excellent video. I'd like to see some content on the M32R. It would be interesting to see what usability improvements and features it has over the X32 compact, besides the preamps obviously.
Great suggestion!
Nice and very nice to have a walk-on with monitors already sorted, as that can consume a lot of time and effort. In-ears also solve a lot of the stage noise and volume issues that can muddy up a mix badly. The band seemed very professional and ready to go, which is not always the case either. But I think this shows that it can all come together nicely and that modern digital mixers sound great and are versatile - I've had good gigs generally with bands, and mixed gigs with theater performances.
Definitely true. Digital consoles with their presets and baseline scenes can really speed things along. And once you have it right internally as far as patching and routing, there's no mispatching of outboard gear and bad patch cables to troubleshoot either... It just works immediately.
Consistent monitor mixes too with IEMs and a dedicated monitor package where backline and mics don't change as well.
Great structured way of working Alan. Very alike how I prefer it. Professional! 👌
Thanks!
Hey Al! Another awesome video!
Thanks Hunter!! :)
Good video. Those are good gigs to get.
Loved this video
Thanks!
awesome man!
Thanks!
Nice video! Thank you
Thanks!
I like the sound. Though it's just a video, I can feel that the system is powerfull, balanced, and behave correct. And you know want to do.
E-drums simplify our band set up so much.......I would nut punch myself if I ever had to mic all those drums etc in the future.Our set up and sound check , all told, is usually well under an hour. All digital, amp sims, IEM's, Behringer Power Plays, easy peasy....
It's not really too bad. I probably only edited out about 10-12 mins of the soundcheck once things were initially pinned. And not all of that time was actually things going on directly with the soundcheck itself. Like they had to swap a mic line out at one point on one of the vocals.
But it helps to have that starting show-file done offsite so the console is already named on each channel, HPF engaged and roughed in, routing already set up, gates and comps ready with roughed in settings where I think I'll want them so I can tweak them from there (like the kick gate I know I'm going to be triggering when it opens with a 60-80Hz signal, so might as well already have that kind of stuff dialed in). Vox already assigned to a vocal subgroup where I already have a comp inserted (Leisure comp (LA2))... etc...
That stuff would be more time consuming and rushed onsite. And especially on a new console where I don't already have presets and library stuff saved.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio Great post
E-drums have also a lot of disadvantages over acoustic drums. The main one for me being that E-drums need to be dialed a lot in advance to sound decent through a PA. Seen plenty of shows where drummers used e-drums with stock kits and default settings and it sounded horrible though the PA and nothing in mixing from the FOH would fix that.
I wouldn't say one is better than the other, they both have their pros and cons, and for live i prefer acoustic drums by default.
@@djabthrash One problem (sometimes) with E-drums is you'll run into someone who just gives you a left and right feed, or a pretty limited feed, and you're stuck with cymbals, toms, snare, kick all coming at you in a mix you can't really control. Nothing is separate. Which would not necessarily be terrible if it was actually well-mixed and genre appropriate... but that's rarely the case. Instead, it's been balanced by a player using cheap headphones, or a practice amp, or any number of things that are nothing like what a professional PA sounds like. And it could have canned reverb/FX also coming at you down those same lines and nothing you can do, other that hopefully ask the drummer to change something and improve things in the limited time there usually is for a soundcheck.
With real drums, or separate lines for everything in the E-kit (or at least sep kick, sep snare, toms together, cymbals together) you can rough things in quickly and fine tune during the first song when the room is full and things are coming together onstage. But, not that "everything all together" mix of Edrums coming down a couple of stereo lines at you. You cannot fine tune anything because you can't isolate anything. Doing things to improve one part of the mix hurts another part of the drum mix.
But then sometimes you run into the people that have that all sorted out and send you several lines of E-drums that already sound good and make it an easy day.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio Couldn't have said it better :)
Great video, as always. Question - on the input list there are no mic models, just info on phantom power or no phantom power. Is that because the band travels with their own mic package and thus doesn't need to specify which mic is being used?
Yip, that's it. They have everything they need in the mic package as part of the monitor rig and keeping things consistent so they just need to provide what needs 48V (although I didn't ask why they don't just provide it from their mon console). I did provide the Beta 91A whereas they usually use a Beta52. But it's laying in the kick when they do, and the drummer doesn't use the kick mic in the mons, just the triggered sample. So we were both just experimenting. If the mic is going to lay in there anyway, might as well try the B91. And of course the mic I used on the bottom snare was mine. I wasn't sure about room for a stand on the riser so I opted for that EV 468 and a rim clip that has a small flexible gooseneck built into it. That gave me a ton of flexibility to make sure it could stay out of the way and still aim where I wanted it. That was an addition to the mic list so wouldn't be changing anything in their mon presets (in fact it homerunned straight to the DL32 and didn't hit the splitter or their mon console at all.
Both of those mic additions I decided on way before gig day because I was just going to bring them specifically and not my entire mic trunk to the site. Not when I know the band already has their own mic package anyway and I didn't want to mess up their monitor presets with changes they weren't comfortable with anyway. I've worked with the drummer and we talked about my plans beforehand anyway. He's cool trying stuff that might make the drums sound better in the house or said better to help me make the drums sound good in the house.
It sounded nice. That band is good too.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio
@@gregmcveigh9966 Thanks. Good band. I just needed not to mess anything up! :)
@@AlanHamiltonAudio Thank you for all this extra info !
Hi 👋🏼 Al! 😊
Hey Cindy!
Hey man, thanks for the videos. I like your process! Question, are you using the M/C bus for your subs? I noticed in the video you didn't have the M/C send engaged on the kick channel, yet I was hearing subs in the house. Also....if limited to one kick drum channel, which is your preferred mic, Beta 91A or Beta 52A? Lastly, do you ever use any of the FX slots for compressors or transient designers, or are you just using the channel strip comps?
I didn’t notice the part you’re describing but I moved away from using the M/C channel and instead route everything to Matrix mixes. So main L/R fader controls volume of EVERYTHING then matrix mixes would be MAIN L, MAIN R, SUBS, and FILLS. This gives individual control over processing and volumes of each of those. Drew Brashler has an excellent video detailing this. This can be evidenced by the fact that he’s using 4 outputs as described in the video for main LR, subs, and fills. Hope this helps.
I sent my subs down the 12th bus. I don't do the M/C bus method but no particular reason. It would've worked too. But I always have an open aux on the FOH console that can be used for subs... and one for fills too for that matter. At least with the DL32 deployed or the full M32/X32. And those will take up a physical output no matter what. So, there are L-R feeds plus subs and fills.
I've also used Matrixes.
As far as the mic question... I suppose in practice it's the B52. But I don't know if that is more habit and always having the B52 in the mic kit versus actually which I truly prefer. I can definitely make either work. I also have an SM91 and it rides in the secondary mic case. The B91A now rides in the main mic case. So, technically I DO always have that option these days but I always grab the B52. In this case the band has their own B52, but they lay it inside the kick. That is one of the things I gleaned from talking with the band when we were planning this. The drummer takes his monitor feed from the trigger, so I was kind of free to do whatever I wanted on the mic side of things for the kick. I'm not sure if their regular guy relies on the B52 for the meat or the trigger.
And if we moved the B52 to the normal port location, they don't have a stand for it. I could've brought one or used a house stand, but that riser kind of limits some options. So it hit me... if I'm going to be laying a mic inside the kick I should just take my B91A. So that is what I did.
If I was using two mics, it would've been easy to sort out how I wanted to do the two channels since that's pretty normal. I always use the B52 for the meat, but dial it in to sound good by itself, then bring in the B91 for the click/definition/attack.
In this case, I 'attacked' it the same as way as far as dialing in the channel 1 mic to sound good by itself. And I thought that 91 did sound good by itself. Then I brought up the trigger, and I thought, as it was, it didn't sound a full as the 91 that I'd set up. So I ultimately used the trigger for some additional attack.
If there would've been more time, I probably would've worked with the trigger some by itself because technically I'd expect it to have more oomph. But I kind of had to make a decision and roll with it. So I ended up with an aggressive HPF on it.
If I was working with one mic and KNOW I want a lot of attack, I'd definitely say the 91 because it makes getting attack pretty easy. But, you don't always know if the drummer even has something to lay the mic on (if you're working with different bands/drummers all the time). So I guess the generic answer is the B52. Even with no hole in the kick drum head, you can stick that B52 on there. The 52 is always going to get you some woof, and if the drum has any attack at all, you can accentuate it with the 52 and proper EQ.
@@chuckcostello5167 I wouldn’t send subs via matrix as that would take all the main LR info and send it to the subs. I prefer an aux to send only the low end info to the subs. The M/C bus acts as a post fader aux via the LR bus in terms of overall volume, but you can choose which channels to send to it. I was just curious why Alan wasn’t using that method. A traditional aux bus would work the same way. Only difference is, the M/C follows the main LR fader (if you check the box under setup).
@@AlanHamiltonAudio yeah the main reason I do subs via M/C is that it follows the Main LR fader volume.
I used to use the Beta52a exclusively but these days have switched to the Beta91a inside. However I’m thinking of reconfiguring my channels to allow for both in/out mics.
@@Brody-DolyniukI get that. But the matrix mix allows separate processing (I use high and low pass filters on top channels and subs to avoid sending full signal to either one). You can also set up matrix to follow Main L/R fader. My 2 cents.
With stereo in, keys for example, do you run stereo to the mains? What about fill?
Yes, as far as stereo keys running to the mains in stereo. But it's not like things are missing in the left or right. The keys just have a 'depth' or 'width' to them that is a benefit for (in stereo) for people in the audience in the general seating area. But the people far left or right won't really know anything is missing from their perspective.
As for fill... it depends...
If the crowd is up really close, and/or the band on ears, then I'll probably put keys in the fills. Especially if the music is key heavy. If the band is on wedges, the crowd back a few feet... then there's probably enough keys in either of those scenarios reaching the front row or first few rows that I wouldn't put keys in the fills. They'll be heard. And in that case, it might only be vocals in the fills. Or vocals and acoustic guitar.
This is all a case by case basis and different situations will call for different approaches.
Mono is what the fills will get.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio thank you! And I see your prior explanation now too. Follow-up question. How do I send a mono signal of the Main L/R to one Aux Out? I know in the IN/OUT setup, I can assign MAIN L/R to two Aux Outs but I want to bundle in mono and just use one Aux Out. Maybe already explained in one of your videos.
The keyboards are stereo, did you run FOH in stereo? If so, did you pan anything else?
Yes. Rig was in stereo. OHs were in stereo (though I probably only panned them to 9 and 3).
I normally pan the toms a bit... don't recall if I did here or not. Probably did.
Gtr was in stereo. Full left/right. But his signal was built that way. He didn't have clean on one side and dirty on the other or anything like that.
FX were in stereo, but just for the width. I didn't do any crazy ping pong/left right bouncing delays or anything.
I most always mix in stereo, and always set my own rigs up to be stereo. But as far as how much panning I do, that's more down to the source material and the audience positioning. Even if the rig is mono, I might have some stereo things going on before it funnels down to mono. That way any recording feed directly off the house can get a stereo mix and sound a little better.
Of course if it's being fully tracked to a DAW, that part doesn't matter. That'll be handled in post.
I was wondering this too.
Ive been to shows where they put one guitar one the left and one on the right. Made for a terrible listening experience if you were anywhere other than by the console.
That's definitely not the right way to do it. You really only want to hard pan things that might be slightly different on each side for width reasons, but are essentially not 'missing' from either side. Ex: You don't want to hard pan a guitar to one side leaving it missing from the other side and creating a weird audience experience.
Obviously, you always have to keep your audience position in mind.
That said, many times you can get away with panning a pair of guitarists 11-1 or 10-2 (clock positions) without truly hurting either side, while opening up the mix a bit for the majority of the audience in a pretty wide area. The reason being that the guitar isn't just gone from the side you're only slightly panning away from. And you're also typically using that panning because it relates to their position on the stage. So it's naturally spatial to what you're seeing. But you would never do it to the point the right side can't hear the left guitar or vice versa.
You can also get away with things like panning the toms, sometimes even more than that, because it opens up, or even exaggerates, the natural stage positioning of the drums. So even a person on the far left or right can experience the toms naturally coming toward them or away from them on fills, while it still works perfectly for the majority of the audience. IOW, it's natural to what you're seeing by way of your spacing. But yet, nothing can be gone entirely or it's just going to hurt the experience, not enhance it in any subjective way.
Things like reverbs and delays can follow these same principles and work panned hard left and right. It's not like they are 'gone' from the mix on the left or right, they're just 'different' on either side, but opening things up so that even mono things like vocals don't seem so narrow.
Other considerations when deciding on panning is the depth of the audience, how much of the rig is the mix versus the amount of stage volume spilling into the room, etc..
If the audience area isn't very deep or is not only not deep but wide, then stereo on anything besides things like reverbs or keyboards that have left and right outputs for just depth can be problematic.
Another consideration for panning goes back to loud stages and small rooms/venues. If the guitar amp on the right is very loud coming off the stage then the audio tech might want to pan it more to the left to balance it for the audience. That could even be true of larger venues IF the guitar onstage is THAT loud.
There's nothing wrong with stereo in a live setting, but a tech has to remember and consider the audience perspective and the source instruments. You can't just hard pan everything and expect that to work like it might for your stereo. It's still 'live sound reinforcement' and there are certain checkboxes that have to be hit coverage-wise before moving into more subjective areas and where science starts turning more towards the art of it all.
Nice explanation
That reminds me of a gig that i got into. Typical rockband setup. Drums, Bass, Keys, 2 Guitars, 3 Vocals. The whole show was on timecode (+click obv.) and all the switching (Keys, Guitarpatches etc.) was done via midi. Both guitarists gave me a stereo-line out of their axe-fx with a clever twist. Whenever they both played the rhythm part they were panned hard left / hard right (directly from the axe-fx). When there was a solo, the guitar's patch jumped to mono with stereo delay and the rhythm guitar used a doubler-effect, so i wouldn't loose the huge stereo-sound of that. It was a great pleasure working with that band. Two of the members also do some FOH-gigs and knew exactly how to prepare their patches and came up with clever ideas to make the show sound great.
Plus: They also did their own in-ear-monitoring on stage, no wedges.
I loved that gig :D @@AlanHamiltonAudio
Any tips on avoiding tons of bleed on an sm57 guitar mic?
Are you talking about an SM57 on a guitar amp or on an acoustic guitar?
@AlanHamiltonAudio sorry Sm57 on a electric guitar cab. The drums are about three feet to the side of the cab.( Stage style set up) I was almost thinking of getting a chunk of foam and sticking the mic through it to see if that would help.
@@SkylerMills I don't know if foam would really help if used like that. I guess it all depends on how you do it. If it's thick enough to block sound (obviously you don't want stuff that's more like a mic windscreen), then if it's too tight around the mic it would change the frequency response of the mic. But that might not be what you mean. If you leave it fairly open around the mic, like a big cube, then that probably mitigates any issues with mic frequency response, but the same principle keeping the drums out of the mic would be keeping the sound of the amp blocked up inside that foam cube.
But that said... Maybe you just need one side to the foam, or foam on a plywood baffle (or just the plywood baffle (or plexiglass)) turned 90deg to the amp and just creating a barrier between the drums and the SM57?
That would leave the amp mostly still firing forward so the guitar player still gets it and it sounds normal.
Also, if it's an open back cab, you might TRY putting the mic in the back of the cab aimed at the open area of the speaker and see if the cab itself works as a natural baffle to keep the drums out. You might experiment with the polarity on that channel to see if micing the speaker from the back sounds better one way or the other. I suspect it won't make a real difference since there's just the one mic'ed cab...
OTOH...
If the band is on IEMs, you can pretty much make a baffle box to set in front of the amp. 2 sides and a top. Stuff a packing blanket into or staple it inside and even build a permanent gooseneck mic holder in it too. If everyone is on IEMs then you don't need to worry about baffles wrecking stage volume that musicians are using as part of the onstage monitoring. The IEMs will be handling the monitor mixes.
I'm just kind of rattling off ideas off the top of my head here. YMMV ;)
@@SkylerMills Couple of things :
- generally the drum bleed into SM57s miking cabs is not that bad
- you can also place cabs on the side of the stage as opposed to facing the audience
- you can use something like a Two Notes Torpedo thing (or an equivalent) to do virtual miking (instead of or in addition to your real SM57) and get a clean signal with no bleed.
@AlanHamiltonAudio thanks for the response! What we ended up realizing ( and this is dead simple) although it didn't eliminate the issue. It helped a little bit... since we were all on IEMs our cab volumes were pretty low, so we had the gain up on the 57s. So we turned up our guitar amp volunes and was able to bring the gain down on the mic, now the cab volume matches drum volume... Not idea but it helped a little bit with the bleed situation. It honestly depends on drummers. The drummer with this particular band plays super hard so it comes through the 57s pretty heavy. Vrs another drummer who playes at a more normal volume and it's fine.
I wonder why people who make this type of content never show balancing and panning process? New sound guys trying to understand how the process goes from A to Z and everyone shows only sound check of every individual instrument…. Btw, I’m not a sound guy, I’m musician who wants to understand how this all works to play live gig, how do you guys balancing and making whole thing sound good? Not an individual instrument
There are a couple of issues at play... One part of it is that it's a real soundcheck and real gig. It sort of just needs to happen in real time, dealing with all the realities of a time crunch and the schedule for the stage. That makes it hard to have time to really explain the 'why' during a real soundcheck, other than more showing the workflow aspects of it.
Then when it comes to full songs and explaining that, it's not only what I mentioned above but also... It's very likely that would trip a YT content flag and get the video a copyright claim or copyright strike. It takes so much time to put one of these videos together, going thru footage, analyzing what is there, orgainizing and ordering over clips from 2-3 cameras, narrating it, adding graphics and other things to give it educational value, etc... that nobody really wants to risk a copyright claim or strike.
Then the other side of the coin is that it really IS a lot of it about the individual instruments. You have to get the gain structure correct first and foremost. That might be the most important thing. There is no perfect gain setting, but there's a window of acceptability and a consistency that from gig to gig that an operator should strive for. This creates the baseline that the mix is built upon. Basics like applying a proper HPF. System EQ. Channel EQ. Reverb/delay. Comps... Gates... You do a lot of these during these instrument and vocal checks. And while they are individual in that moment, there's still thought about how what you're doing is going to work in the complete mix when everything is brought up into the house.
So you're thinking ahead somewhat as you're setting things. Plus, consistent baseline gains means your faders probably WON'T be all over the map to get a decent mix in the first place (unless you're mixing around stage volume in a small venue... then all bets are off).
Panning has a couple of uses... First and foremost, look at the position of the crowd and make sure panning can help more than hurt. You're usually NOT going to be hard-panning things in most live scenarios except for things that are naturally voiced left and right (like FX returns, guitar amp sims, keyboards, etc). What you might be doing though is skewing instruments to their relative position on the stage to open up the mix a bit and present an aural representation of what the audience is seeing onstage. Not hard-panned, but the SR guitar panned a bit SR and the SL guitar panned a bit SL. And maybe the toms are panned to match their position onstage. Even exaggerated a bit to give a feeling of motion to the rolls.
But nothing to the point a person on house left can't at all hear an instrument on house right.
Sometimes, if you have something like a loud guitar onstage, you might actually pan away from it to try and balance the sound for the audience. That loud guitar will be directional. So he might be screaming loud to house right, but distant sounding to house left. So you pan to the left with that guitar to balance that as best as you can for the audience. That's more damage control and small venue stuff, but it is a tool in the toolkit.
There's a science side and there's an art side. Things like gain structure and concepts like remembering it's sound 'reinforcement' first and foremost are more on the science side of things. That helps you get your baseline... and then that's where the art part of it comes in. But you really can't get to the art piece of the puzzle (AKA the really subjective stuff) until you tick off the boxes on the more objective things that come with mixing live sound. Plus live sound has certain constraints that don't really happen in the studio. So even some of the subjective stuff has some objective truths you have to be aware of. You only have one shot live. In the studio you can do radical experiments and if you don't like it, just rewind, reset, and try again.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio Thank you for this informative explanation.
@@AlanHamiltonAudio thanks for the explanation, I hope you’ll be able to put something like GoPro on your head one day and show us balancing, when we can see how you add presence of each instrument in the mix, maybe with your friends or local band that does not have copyrighted material yet. Thank you for the hard work
@@josealfonso5260 same
@@InvisionLabsAdam_Kobyshev Pretty sure there are other YT videos out there showing this though !
You should look for "virtual soundcheck" type of videos, or people mixing prerecorded live tracks, because in this case they're likely not in a time crunch (as opposed to when they soundcheck for a live show) and you can see the whole balancing and panning process.
I also encourage you to practice on your own, by mixing live multitracks in your DAW or console (virtual soundcheck) and imitating the live mixing workflow.
EDIT : bonus point if you have a live video footage of the recorded show, so that you can use that as a visual reference
Let’s normalize calling this position “sound tech”.
Just as soon as the difference in a podium and lectern gets squared away ;)
@@AlanHamiltonAudiotimes a human does sound (so far) 99.99%. Times either a podium or lectern are being used during an event of any kind 5% (being generous).
@@guilledezoq Well, the joke is sound and audio mean the same thing.... podium and lectern are different but people call lecterns as "podiums" all the time.
@@AlanHamiltonAudiommmm, I think you are confused. I wasn’t making a joke or referring to the difference between sound or audio. But the “man” attached to it. Instead of saying soundman, you can say soundtech. Why not help make a better environment for female identified techs in an already pretty retrogressive industry?
@@guilledezoq I usually say (or write) sound person, unless I'm referring to directly myself... or I just use sound tech or audio tech. More times than not, in this video and the description I am using the term 'tech', usually as audio tech. It's right there in the title even. I thought you were just saying you think it should be 'sound' tech versus 'audio' tech. If you're making a wider cultural thing, I certainly get that, and even agree with you. So I'm not sure if you're singling me out for using the term soundman generically or not versus appreciating the fact I avoided it. I don't think I even did use it generically in this video.