K
Kasey
New member
RAMI said:
i suppose it could be.
i suppose it could be.
ROblows
New member
corban said:
That depends solely on what the artist wants. Often an artist will want more of a collaborative process in the studio. That's very rarely the case with live sound. Even in the studio, it can lead to a lot of conflict and awkward situations if you simply assume that the artist wants you, as the engineer, to be deeply involved in helping them create. Many simply want you to get the sounds to tape. Best to set those ground rules in advance.
R
RAMI
Guest
Also, a producer and an engineer are 2 different things.
K
Kasey
New member
RAMI said:
true, but whats that got to do with what we're talking about?
R
RAMI
Guest
Kasey said:
I was reffering to this and trying to illustrate that an engineer's job is usually more technical and less "artistic" that a producer's:
So it has eveything to do with what we're talking about. But the fact that you don't see that explains a lot.
D
demosthenes
New member
Mixing is both art and craft, live or studio.
No matter the amount of creative input, or whatever, it still takes art to mix well. If you mix for a country band, and they want it to sound like a country band, you better be able to do that, and it takes artistic sensitivity beyond the technical aspects of running a system.
A good mixer takes the audience somewhere, a place the band wants them to go. A bad one makes sonic oatmeal.
No matter the amount of creative input, or whatever, it still takes art to mix well. If you mix for a country band, and they want it to sound like a country band, you better be able to do that, and it takes artistic sensitivity beyond the technical aspects of running a system.
A good mixer takes the audience somewhere, a place the band wants them to go. A bad one makes sonic oatmeal.
D
Dani Pace
New member
Wow this has gotten hashed around more than I expected. One aspect worthy of consideration is to ask the individual musicians what they think, what they want their sound to convey, how they want to come across. Listen to them, individually and collectively and do your best to make them sound the way they want to be heard. If you present them as they want to be heard, then you have done your job. Bring out those sounds that the musicians want the audience (congregation in your case) to hear, it dosen't matter if you like it or not, your job as a soundman is to faithfully reproduce the music, just at a volume level and balance that the listeners can appreciate.
mixmkr
we don't need rest!!
A couple of random thoughts....
It sounds too bad that the guys didn't come up and realize being (Christian?) brothers, that they would have offered to help, rather than sound condescending. I am sure they would not themselves like to be treated that way.
However, I would take that as THEIR faults, and not yours, and take the opportunity to learn from them, as apparently they do know more about mixing than you guys did.
And lastly... you ought to be thankful they are part of your church. MOST churches are notorious for just about the worst sound crews that you can imagine. And with most of these "choice" sound crews...Hey...all they did was volunteer.... and as a player, you sometimes wish they were "hired"...so you could fire them!!
It sounds too bad that the guys didn't come up and realize being (Christian?) brothers, that they would have offered to help, rather than sound condescending. I am sure they would not themselves like to be treated that way.
However, I would take that as THEIR faults, and not yours, and take the opportunity to learn from them, as apparently they do know more about mixing than you guys did.
And lastly... you ought to be thankful they are part of your church. MOST churches are notorious for just about the worst sound crews that you can imagine. And with most of these "choice" sound crews...Hey...all they did was volunteer.... and as a player, you sometimes wish they were "hired"...so you could fire them!!
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
I'll bet you that for every five band members you ask individually you will get at least seven answers, eight of which will not coincide with the band leader's idea if how it should sound.Dani Pace said:
The live sound guy has three main jobs (any physical roadie work aside):
- Make sure all band members are happy with the stage monitor mix and levels.
- Make sure you understand what the band leader is looking for in the PA sound.
- Make sure that regardless of what is said in 1 & 2 that the band sounds as good as possible to the audience.
Live sound engineering is indeed an art. Maybe not in the way of hanging streamers around the Mona Lisa, but definitely in the way that the Mona Lisa is hanged, lighted, framed, etc.
It is an art to get the band to sound good when the guitarists refuse to move their amplifiers out from behind the drums.
It is an art getting the band to sound good when the stage is stuck in a corner with glass windows on the two backing sides, a tile floor and a molded tinplate ceiling.
It is an art getting the band to sound good when the keyboard player keeps turning his keyboard volume all over the map because he insists on being a backseat mixer.
It is an art to keep a band sounding good from 9pm when there are maybe twenty intent listeners sitting in a cool air-conditioned venue until 1am when you have ten times as many drunks standing and dancing in front of the PA stands in a muggy smoke-filled room, all while the band plays continuously louder as the sets roll by.
G.
Last edited:
ROblows
New member
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Sure, there's an art to live sound mixing in the same way that there is an art to hanging, lighting and framing a picture (or to picking out a ripe watermelon or to running a successful icecream stand). Used in that sense, "art" simply means "skill". That is a very different sense than the original poster was using the term.
To suggest that a live sound mixer should be engaging in acts of creative imagination in manipulating the performer's work is ascribing a far greater role to the mixer than he should have. To say that a gallery owner is an artist because he did a good job of hanging and framing a painting is nonsense. We sound engineers often like to ascribe a much greater importance to what we do than is deserved. To equate one's self with the songwriters and performers whom you are working for is pure hubris.
7string
Well-known member
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Wow G. I see we've played a lot of the same clubs...
K
Kasey
New member
I'm not saying that these guys are bad engineers, they know far more than i do about mixing and have been doing it far longer. I can, and plan to, learn a lot from them. It is completely necessary for any decent sound guy to know all of the technical aspects of mixing. I'm just saying dont forget the point of learning those things. Don't get caught up in the habit of doing everything the same way every time you sit down to mix - how boring is that??
These two guys knew every knob ever created in audio, but they dont always know when to use what in order to achieve the artistic goal of the song.
Tonight i was at my church again in the same situation - me and my friend mixing, and the two audio guys were there as well. The song we were mixing was a rock song with a lot of dynamics and buildups. We mixed accordingly, turning up the bass more than normal in order to get more thump (the churches subwoofers are amazing) so you literally feel the music shaking your entire body at times. We tried to use as little compression as possible in order to keep the dynamics of it, etc. etc. In the end the mix was perfect. The emotional impact of the song was remarkable, and we had done our part to maximize it to its full potential.
then the two sound guys come over and started going, "why do you have so little compression? what are you thinking??" and "This mix is so uneven! if i had a spectral analyzer right now the bass would be off the charts!" One of them went so far as to call my friend stupid. We didnt let him 'fix' the mix, but i'd imagine that if we did let him it would loose that impact that it had.
I don't care how much knowledge you have of all the tools, just dont forget that your most important tool is your ear. And i'm pretty sure that a lot of live sound guys will agree with me that mixing, whether in the studio or live, is most certainly an art.
These two guys knew every knob ever created in audio, but they dont always know when to use what in order to achieve the artistic goal of the song.
Tonight i was at my church again in the same situation - me and my friend mixing, and the two audio guys were there as well. The song we were mixing was a rock song with a lot of dynamics and buildups. We mixed accordingly, turning up the bass more than normal in order to get more thump (the churches subwoofers are amazing) so you literally feel the music shaking your entire body at times. We tried to use as little compression as possible in order to keep the dynamics of it, etc. etc. In the end the mix was perfect. The emotional impact of the song was remarkable, and we had done our part to maximize it to its full potential.
then the two sound guys come over and started going, "why do you have so little compression? what are you thinking??" and "This mix is so uneven! if i had a spectral analyzer right now the bass would be off the charts!" One of them went so far as to call my friend stupid. We didnt let him 'fix' the mix, but i'd imagine that if we did let him it would loose that impact that it had.
I don't care how much knowledge you have of all the tools, just dont forget that your most important tool is your ear. And i'm pretty sure that a lot of live sound guys will agree with me that mixing, whether in the studio or live, is most certainly an art.
Last edited:
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
That part is 100% true. A live engineer is dealing in the art...sorry, skill...of sound reenforcement, and should not be involved in tryingto make the "sound" of the performance something it's not, only in making sound as pleasing as possible.ROblows said:
That, however, I feel is at best overstating the position. That may be far more true in a FOH situation, but in the studio it can at times rightly be something else altogether.ROblows said:
In the studio it all depends on how much, if any, of the production role is assigned to the engineer. As was discussed in another thread a while back, to call what impact Alan Parsons had as lead engineer on the Abbey Road or The Dark Side of the Moon albums was as important to the sound as what the musicians did hubris is just plain naiive.
There are many engineers on this forum, myself included, who get projects from artists where they send a bunch of raw tracking to us and, with only the smallest of general guidance from the client, are asked to "do our thing" with it. The current project I'm working on is exactly that. I have a CDs worth of songs from a clieent who laid down anywhere from 7 to 32 tracks per song and sent them to me raw; no stems, no guiding vision other than my familiarity with his work elsewhere. He has basically given me complete responsibility for the mixing and poor-man's mastering of his stuff; which tracks to use and not to use, how to edit the arrangements, if need be, what order to lat them out on the CD, etc. This is a common situation. I have done this for this particular client once before a couple of years back and he came back again this time and just asked me to "do just what you did the last time." I also have another client coming up later this year who is just handing me a bunch of his old demo tapes and asking me to re-master them into a coherant historical "best of" compilation with no further "rules" or guidance than that.
In those kinds of situations the difference between the original trackings and the resulting pre-master CD is night and day; what I am contributing to the CD is every bit as much as any of the other players in the production. I'm not patting myself on the back; any other compitent engineer in my position would rightly be able to make the same claims.
G.
Last edited:
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
Yikes, you've had to deal with The Pump Room too?7string said:Wow G. I see we've played a lot of the same clubs...
G.
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
Kasey, for the most part I actually agree with you. The technical stuff is incredibly important, you gotta know that stuff inside and out. But so many I know in this racket get so caught up the the technical issues and all the toys and all those right brain issues that they forget to use the other side of their brain when they work.Kasey said:
And as far as I'm concerned, anybody in that situation that brings up the term "spectral analyzer" is either blowing a lot of hot air or just trying to throw expensive words around to try and intimidate you. I have yet to meet an engineer worth his chops that gives a rat's ass about a spectral analyzer for anything other than designing room acoustics...especially in a live situation.
G.
sweetnubs
New member
I have a strong feeling you have committed flangacide.
C
chessrock
Banned
Kasey said:
It kinda' sounds to me like you were probably jacking the bass up way too much, because it's what you like, and because you were trying to "enhance" what was coming out of the monitors and make the subs shake, etc.
These guys were probably right, and your friend probably is a little thick-headed.
Alright, perhaps inexperienced would be more appropriate. Honestly, it just sounds to me like there's a situation where there are a couple of monkey boys with no experience trying to run the sound board, and it's painful for the guys with experience and ears to listen as the sound is unmercifully mangled.I realize I'm being harsh, but I've been where these guys are, and I feel for them. I've heard some of the music and production value you consider to be good from this thread: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=165109
Anyone who considers this to be good production has no business being near a sound board for a church group. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is.
.
ROblows
New member
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Apples & oranges. I was talking live sound. If a band wants their recording engineer to essentially become a producer and work with the band on arrangements and whatnot, then obviously the engineer's role will be of a much more "creative" nature.
Even then, though, Dark Side of the Moon would still have been a great album without Alan Parson's involvement. Pink Floyd made plenty of great albums without him. And, God knows, the stuff Parsons has done as a musician is horrific. If you think Parsons' contribution to DSOTM is just as important as David Gilmour's or Roger Waters', I wholeheartedly disagree.
"I am the eye in the sky, looking at youuuuu. I can read you're mind."
C
corban
New member
ouch from chessrock...
that's gonna leave a mark
that's gonna leave a mark
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
On that we're in agreement.ROblows said:
On that we're not.ROblows said:
But that's for a whole 'nother thread. There is plenty of room for disagreement on that question, though; I understand and respect your opinion on it.G.