A week has come and gone and with it the current project comes nearly to a close. My part in the project has become smaller and now I’m just giving final revisions to the mixing. In fact, Reuben and I spent a session in the C24 writing revisions to the piece with relevant timestamps. Reuben and Zak did have a session together on Friday however, due to an appointment that couldn’t be moved I was unavailable.
I have instead spent this week preparing preproduction documentation for my next project and doing IEMs. I have also been working with a graphic designer Ariel Moor for album cover work for the next project with the brief of a combination of ‘Alice: Madness Returns’ and the original ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ artwork. This will make sense when I go into detail next week with details.
I am instead going to talk about working as an IEM engineer. I first got into audio when I was 14 doing production and I learnt how everything got set up and packed down. This got me obsessed with audio engineering and I eventually moved to pursue audio when I was 18. I have since then continued doing live sound at Lifeplace Church Brisbane. I have put a large amount of work into the stage, organisation, and monitor console. This includes rewiring the stage, organising all of the audio gear, and setting up default scenes.
I am going to give a quick overview of the stage and the instruments. On stage there is an acoustic drumkit behind Perspex, two Nord Stage 2’s, one of which plays synth through Ableton Live, a Bass on DI only, three electric guitars, two of which get sent to amps in isolation boxes and one that runs stereo, two acoustic guitars, a spare DI which is usually used for a Korg Bass Synth. There is then tracks, MD which are wired and then anywhere from four to seven vocalists, all wireless AUDIX microphones. These all get sent to the Stage Racks that connect to Dante and gets sent to Yamaha CL5 consoles. I have taken photos of the set up however they are dark due to lighting which are available at this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1o7bRqbsYmsLMoadQBGy7l4xj2hh664Lg?usp=sharing
Now almost everyone is on wireless IEMs except for the drummer. The drummer is instead on a wired pack and they have an iPad which is logged into the monitor console and they mix their own ears. The other notable things are that all the instruments (except acoustic guitar) and the two lead vocalists run stereo, meanwhile the backing vocalists run mono. This was the chosen setup due to it allowing us to have enough radio channels on our ‘A’ rig and having a ‘B’ rig as a backup instead. I always prefer to have a backup that is there extra signals that can be used in case of emergencies or events that require more instruments. This setup is meant to be flexible enough that I can neatly run an entirely new instrument from one side of the stage to the other in less than five minutes if given minimal notice. I instead have a cue pack that when a pack is chosen to mix I can listen to the mix as well.
The rundown for the setup for the musicians this week is still more simplified due to COVID-19. We start with drums, then there is bass, the electric guitarist is the stereo input (will now be referenced as guitar 3), acoustic guitar who also sings second backup, MD who is also tracks and second keys, first keys who is also a lead vocalist, a second lead vocalist and first backup vocalist. Now the bassist was not present for the sound check so I will negate all changes that may need to happen to their mix.
I always start a sound check by bringing up my default scene. This makes my job easier as it has mixes that certain musicians like that don’t change packs already set. This is the case for the two easiest mixes acoustic guitar and second keys. The only change I needed to make is to bring up VOX2 in the acoustic guitar as due to COVID-19 he has changed microphone from his usual. The next musicians mix is guitar 3 which was more complicated as our electric guitars’ patching has changed since setting the original default. The mix was incredibly muddy and so I used panning of the vocalists to initially give more clarity. I then spent time slowly panning the other instruments to give it more space allowing him to hear everything more clearly. However, we are going to spend more time on his mix as he has his own pack and we want to get it even better sounding.
The vocalists are where everything gets moved the most. This tends to be because they never sing to their full volume in checks so complain about the levels but also where I have issues with the FOH person who was on at the time as he will gain the channel down instead of lowering the fader mid show. Now my second lead vocalist has one of the more exact mixes of everyone. She dislikes stereo mixes so the first thing I always do is centre all the panning. I then cut all drums and bass, make sure the electric guitar is low and make first keys and acoustic guitar the most prominent with click. She always wants herself about a third higher than any other vocalist. This mix then only needs to change slightly with small tweaks to volumes of all the louder elements until she is happy with the final result. The first lead vocalist is another interesting mix as it is almost the complete opposite. He prefers a full mix with panning. The drums need to be prominent with kick and snare, and if he is playing first keys, they also need to be more prominent then if he isn’t. He also prefers for all the vocals to be equal on the console with himself about 3dB lower so he can get his harmonies right. The first backing vocalist was the biggest victim to the gaining issues. She has a wide range and so the FOH tends to gain her down, which then makes it harder for her to hear making her sing louder. The main issues she had was that the other vocals where getting drowned out by everything. I went about changing this by slowly changing the gains on the vocals, so they were around -18dB to -12dB. This made them easier to mix as they now had a healthy level to build up in the IEMs.
This type of work is something I enjoy doing on the side. It can be stressful when things go wrong however, every time it does it allows me to learn how the gear works better. As it is jokingly known I’m the only one who’s read the manuals (I haven’t read them all just the parts that I needed to which is still more than others there).
Comments