Live stage mixing, A thax to HRC post...

Well my worst (or best depends on how you look at it) nightmare happened last night. I turn up for a local concert of a Hungarian band 'Trottel' who I know and find the organiser, a good friend of mine, had hired a reasonable sound system, Powered Yamaha desk, speakers, monitors, eq rack -one only, lighting the works.

The only problem he had was he forgot to organise someone to do the ****** sound. God knows how he forgot such a small minor detail.

So I suddenly feel this arm on my shoulder and get the request. "Can you step in and do the sound coz I ain't got anyone else who as any idea.

Now I must explain, that I have never done any real live sound work on this scale, I have previously done our bands sound and other small rock formations but this was a whole new experience.

Drums 4 piece, Bass, Guitar, 2 sax, Electric violin, a piece of PVC pipe (yes that’s right) 4 singer mics, 2 drum machines and 2 keys

We had to cable, install, check each instrument and play around with effects levels as the sax was very specific (as well as she being very beautiful) all in 40minutes. We didn’t have time for a complete sound check.

I also had to do the sound for the first act a singer songwriter in the traditional old French style (breil, bransans etc if you know who they are) who didn’t have a clue what his set was going to be. I had to do without any real checks before, easy enough 1 guitar straight to the desk and one mic. He told me what sound he was looking for, told me how to do it AND THEN I proceeded to completely ignore it.

What prevailed was at the end he said he had never had such a good sound (monitors) and did it sound the same out front – the answer according to a couple of musicians in the crowd was even better.

Then the main act. Now remember no sound check as a group. The real saving grace I had was that the first song was a gradual introduction with each instrument. Thus allowing me to bring in each and increase the overall volume then reduce it as required.

I had never mixed with violin & sax before and what a whole new experience. The violin had its own effects so relatively easy, where as the sax had to have a certain amount of delay for one with a certain amount of reverb then completely different for the other sax she played. The levels of the violin changed between finger plucking and bow playing and with the different effects so I had to constantly watch what was happening and ride the faders to suit.

I had 3 incidents when mixing this group, 1 the bass amp mic went down ½ way through a song, 2 the violin suddenly didn’t send signal to the desk and 3 on the last song of the last encore some idiot touched something and aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrr massive feedback from the montitors. The only solution at this time was to take the faders right down, and virtually all the band members turned and looked at me. But hey what can you do.

I can only say that I had one of my best nights out last night in a long time and what a buzz it gives when people come up and say what a great sound. The band were all grateful for the help and I apologised for all the balls ups.

I know this has dragged on a fair bit but I just wanted to share a great moment with you all, who have really helped me in understanding more about this wonderful side of music and without all of your answers to my sometimes rather stupid questions what I did last night just wouldn’t have been possible.

Thanks HRC