Getting in to live sound

[Machinated]

I know there are quite a few guys here who do a lot of live sound, and recently I have been getting some requests from bands I have recorded to tour with them and do their sound. Obviously there is a lot of crossover with studio work, and I have been to a fair amount of soundcheck's so I wouldn't be completely lost, but I'm more curious as to what the venue will be expecting of you and other workflow related things.

How have you guys started doing it?

 

[ahjteam]

How have you guys started doing it?

I started rolling cables as a roadie in 2001, then I went as one of the house techs on few venues. Now I have ~750 gigs under my belt as FOH/Monitor engineer (I stopped counting after 200), and I have 54 gigs marked from Jan-May on my calendar. Next one is in 12 hours and next one after that is on Sunday.

I'm more curious as to what the venue will be expecting of you and other workflow related things.

Get you shit together fast and make the band sound good sound at low volumes are usually the factors that most house techs like about band techies; Efficiency accomppanied with professionalism. If you just take 10 minutes of the bands soundcheck time to get just the snare reverb right, they will most likely watch down on you.

My personal best from empty stage to a fully completed band soundcheck time was 12 minutes (15 channels used), but usually it shouldn't take longer than takes 30-60 minutes per band. But some drummers, that have like a huge heavy metal kit with racks, it might take them almost an hour to setup their kit, thats why I usually use that time to check the other instruments.

 

[egan.]

Learn how to ring out your monitors. If you have to mix FOH and monitors--which you almost certainly will when you start out-- you will never really get to FOH if you are fighting your monitors the whole way. This and a thick skin are the most important things when you start out w/ live sound IMO.

 

[Ermz]

Thick skin definitely. Ability to work fast, sort out technical faults quickly, and also please a multitude of people at the same time. The most important thing however is to protect your ears. Live sound, more than any other area of this profession has the unmatched ability to entirely decimate a person's sensitivity threshold and top end. The only real suggestion I can give is, if your studio work is going well and you enjoy doing it, don't do the live thing. It's just not worth it in my opinion. Whilst I was regularly doing it, I could feel myself becoming more of a jaded asshole every day just due to all the shit you have to put up with constantly. Up to you in the end however. A lot of people seem to enjoy doing live sound.

 

[everybody's x]

here's a hint: When the Phil Anselmo wannabe throws your 58 into the stage and blows your horns DO NOT KICK THE SHIT OUT OF HIM, the cops will NOT understand

 

[MortenDK]

Proper gain staging is very helpfull too!. Have your gain staging at around 0 on all channels!, that willl insure that the preamps are working at there optimun capacity and will sound best/cleanest!. when you do this DONT throw the faders to unity it will get insanely loud!!, keep the faders at around -10/15 this will give more headroom to mix at a reassonable level too without blowing you ears every time!!.

Happy FOH mixing

 

[fistula]

stupid question - what does FOH means?

 

[Metaltastic]

Haha, don't worry, it took me awhile to figure it out too (though I figured it out with a simple google search ), but it stands for "Front of House."

 

[Pot]

stupid question - what does FOH means?

Front of House

 

[KeithRT99]

Learn how to ring out your monitors. If you have to mix FOH and monitors--which you almost certainly will when you start out-- you will never really get to FOH if you are fighting your monitors the whole way. This and a thick skin are the most important things when you start out w/ live sound IMO.

if you're tallking about the technique where you put your hand on the mic ot ring out the monitors, then that technique is awesome. The first time i saw it, i was suprised you could do that.

 

[Machinated]

if you're tallking about the technique where you put your hand on the mic ot ring out the monitors, then that technique is awesome. The first time i saw it, i was suprised you could do that.

Can anyone elaborate further? I think I know whats coming, but I'll spare my embarrassment. Also, thick skin?

 

[fistula]

why does it called Front of House? sorry for such a stupid question)

coz engineer looks at the front side of the stage?

 

[Where She Wept]

Can anyone elaborate further? I think I know
whats coming, but I'll spare my embarrassment. Also, thick skin?

Thick skin is needed because soundguys get no real respect. I've been doing sound at small to medium venues for yrs now and the amount of BS you have to deal with is huge. Guitarist's who play too loud and kill the room. Drummers that hit mics, singers who try to be Roger Daltry and smash your mics around. God aweful bass tones. Rappers that drop the mic whenever they switch, Bad Cables, asshole singers, assholes i general. Friends and Girlfriends of bands bitchin at you when they cant hear the vocals because they're standing in front of a full stack on ten, then you have to keep kicking bands arses to get their gear setup in a reasonable amount of time, and then listen as they whine and cry after you cut their set short becasue they took too long to setup in the first place. And then you can have fun re-patching large format mixers and watch the headlining national's soundguy spend 2 hrs ringing out the system to perfection only to have another tech re-patch everthing and proceede to fuck up all the EQ settings to his own bad taste.

i can go on, and on ,and on...

And in the end some cluless idiot will blame you for their favorite shitty no talent band sounding like shit...

who made the comment about being jaded!?

 

[KeithRT99]

Can anyone elaborate further? I think I know whats coming, but I'll spare my embarrassment. Also, thick skin?

if you place your hand the right way on a mic, and kinda cup it - the monitor it's feeding through will start to feedback. Once you hear it feedback, take your hand off and dip out the frequency that sounded like it was feeding back: usually upper mids. While you're doing this, you incrementally turn up the pre and cut the ringing frequencies. Once you get it to the pointwhere the pre is at like 3 o clock (if i remember correctly, it's usually where the mic feeds back really easily on it's own) back the mic pre off a bit, so that you will have some headroom if you need it in a dire case.

you should also know the proper way of wrapping cables, if you didn't know already.

also, a note about "thick skin": Most live sound engineers tend to be for lack of a better term, caustic? that's not to say they're bad people, it's just i think it takes a certain kind of person to do live sound, at least the one's i've met.

 

[Ermz]

Thick skin is needed because soundguys get no real respect. I've been doing sound at small to medium venues for yrs now and the amount of BS you have to deal with is huge. Guitarist's who play too loud and kill the room. Drummers that hit mics, singers who try to be Roger Daltry and smash your mics around. God aweful bass tones. Rappers that drop the mic whenever they switch, Bad Cables, asshole singers, assholes i general. Friends and Girlfriends of bands bitchin at you when they cant hear the vocals because they're standing in front of a full stack on ten, then you have to keep kicking bands arses to get their gear setup in a reasonable amount of time, and then listen as they whine and cry after you cut their set short becasue they took too long to setup in the first place. And then you can have fun re-patching large format mixers and watch the headlining national's soundguy spend 2 hrs ringing out the system to perfection only to have another tech re-patch everthing and proceede to fuck up all the EQ settings to his own bad taste.

i can go on, and on ,and on...

And in the end some cluless idiot will blame you for their favorite shitty no talent band sounding like shit...

who made the comment about being jaded!?

+1 to everything. Spot on man... spot on...

About ringing out the monitors. It can be done by just setting up the 3 vocal mics (that's the default number usually spread across the stage), and turning up their level until the monitors start ringing. Then just proceed to suck out the offending frequency on the graphic EQs. So get to know your pure tones really well. A program called SFT (Simple Feedback Trainer) is invaluable for this and will aid you with tuning systems and ringing the foldbacks out.

As far as tuning the FOH systems go, I usually use a reference CD for the basic balance curve (Arch Enemy Doomsday Machine or Nickelback's The Long Road work fantastic). Then to get all the rings and shit due to the bad room/speaker positioning you can just get the singer to talk through the mic and see how much level you can get out of the system before it starts to feed, and if it isn't enough, start taking out the feeding frequencies (SLIGHTLY! Don't ring it out drastically, as this is what leads to those christ-raping FOH sounds you hear... well, fucking everywhere). Once you can get reasonable level from the vocal it should all be good. Remember, at the most basic level, the aim of the system is to get the vocal above stage level... this is at the most basic small venue, with no power behind everything else. If you can get the vocal up there without feedback then everything else should fall into place around it.

 

[jesterroot4]

As far as tuning the FOH systems go, I usually use a reference CD for the basic balance curve (Arch Enemy Doomsday Machine or Nickelback's The Long Road work fantastic). Then to get all the rings and shit due to the bad room/speaker positioning you can just get the singer to talk through the mic and see how much level you can get out of the system before it starts to feed, and if it isn't enough, start taking out the feeding frequencies (SLIGHTLY! Don't ring it out drastically, as this is what leads to those christ-raping FOH sounds you hear... well, fucking everywhere). Once you can get reasonable level from the vocal it should all be good. Remember, at the most basic level, the aim of the system is to get the vocal above stage level... this is at the most basic small venue, with no power behind everything else. If you can get the vocal up there without feedback then everything else should fall into place around it.

+10 lol i find myself ducking the guitars quite abit around 3k as they can realy make it hard to to get those vocals at the right level, but once you'v nailed it, the rest gells easier.

also, what i started doing last night was realy scooping the kick, snare and all the toms quite heavily in the lower mids and a few higher mids. it realy brings out the kit in the extreme ends of the frequency range leaving sooo much space in the middle for you to get your guitars and bass tight. but you must be carefull to not make it sound too harsh or clicky. i also like to use a large wooden hall reverb on the whole kit, with the smallest amount on the kick.