Masking tape on the mixing board....

  • Thread starter Thread starter mattkw80
  • Start date Start date
Light has a good point about having the "important" tracks located where you can get your hands on them easy.

In my case since I use a 32 channel board - I try to keep the stuff I have to manually fade in the middle and the stuff I don't have to work with on the ends.

I have the bass guitar on the far left (channel 1) followed by kick, snare, hats, toms and cymbals. Once I get those dialed in I normally don't need to work the faders much.

As I get closer to the middle (say channels 10 though 20) of the mixer I group the vocals together (since these often need some manual tweaks on the faders) followed by the guitars (which may need to be manually faded). Lastly I have keyboards to the far right (since many keyboard sounds are not overly dynamic and require little fader action).

There is no right way or wrong way - it's really a matter of what works best for the person at the board.
 
There are definately good reasons for setting things up in different ways as mentioned above. After doing things for years in nearly the same fashion, I have found that I like the traditional setup the best because regardless of what channels may or may not need adjusting, I have found that I get to them faster if they are set up in the standard fashion I mentioned above because I can get to them without much thought at all. In the studio I do not worry as much about that because nothing needs to be done that quickly. Live however, there is a good reason why 90% or more of engineers use an almost duplicate method of setting things up. Familiarity equals speed. Especially if you have a lot of changeovers.
 
well this is how i do it (strictly live speaker):

working from left to right (ch1-ch24 or wtv)

kick
snare bot
snare top
hats
RT1
RT2
Floor tom
OHL
OHR
percussion
bass
electric guitars as the appear on the stage (left to right)
acoustic guitars
Keys
lead vox
BVs

i'll also immediatly set up some VCA groups:

Drums
Guitars
Vocals



of course, it will vary depending on the band and the console, but by and large thats what i do.

why?

cause it just makes sense to me to do it that way, it's the way i'm used to working and the way i work the fastest!
 
It seems logical to do live as explained from Left to Right stage.

For Recording I go from Ground up by drum size and its easy to remember.

Kick or Trigger Module
Snare (Not in order by size but seems logical to keep it after the kick)
Largest Floor Tom
Smallest Floor Tom (If applicable)
Right rack or mounted Toms
Center Rack or Mounted Toms (If applicable)
Left Rack or Mounted Toms
High Hats
Any other Rides or Ambient Mics
Overhead Left
Overhead Right
 
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