Stage list for live Engineers - Lets make lives easier!!!

[ahjteam]

But in all seriousness, metal is by far the hardest genre of music to mix, and if you walk into a room and hear a bad mix, it is usually the fault of the band (guitarists with no mids, super quiet vocalists, etc) but it can be the fault of the engineer too if he doesn't know what the hell he's doing

There is one that is a lot harder to mix... avantgarde noise. I was mixing this band called Älymystö (the date was 2006-01-27) and distortion and feedback was essential part of their sound, and they didn't bother to tell me, so the whole PA got muted more than once during the set btw, the band setup was quite weird too... Theremin, TV that emmited white noise, Cello, an electric guitar, distorted vocals, a DJ that played some loops from a computer or something, and bass. And they all came thru a small mixer with the master lights at red and to a two DI-boxes to me. FML

And it was one of the first nights where I was mixing alone at Gloria, and the subwoofers died during the night.

 

[kylesoundman]

There is one that is a lot harder to mix... avantgarde noise. I was mixing this band called Älymystö (the date was 2006-01-27) and distortion and feedback was essential part of their sound, and they didn't bother to tell me, so the whole PA got muted more than once during the set btw, the band setup was quite weird too... Theremin, TV that emmited white noise, Cello, an electric guitar, distorted vocals, a DJ that played some loops from a computer or something, and bass. And they all came thru a small mixer with the master lights at red and to a two DI-boxes to me. FML

And it was one of the first nights where I was mixing alone at Gloria, and the subwoofers died during the night.

Haha that was the gig from hell for you for sure! ....nothing worse than mixing on an unfamiliar system and the in house tech leaves and something goes to poop! Been there done that! Im sure it will happen again ha....another thing I absolutely can not stand is having to mix a terribly set up Line6 POD ran direct...especially if the band uses a lot of different tones and hasnt spend the time to even get the gain levels the same between presets!

 

[arv_foh]

There is one that is a lot harder to mix... avantgarde noise. I was mixing this band called Älymystö (the date was 2006-01-27) and distortion and feedback was essential part of their sound, and they didn't bother to tell me, so the whole PA got muted more than once during the set btw, the band setup was quite weird too... Theremin, TV that emmited white noise, Cello, an electric guitar, distorted vocals, a DJ that played some loops from a computer or something, and bass. And they all came thru a small mixer with the master lights at red and to a two DI-boxes to me. FML

And it was one of the first nights where I was mixing alone at Gloria, and the subwoofers died during the night.

Man, that sounds like a painful gig, people actually come to see a band create a bunch of noise on stage? That isn't music to me. I hate it when people send you a clipped signal and there is nothing you can do about it because it's clipped before it even gets to you. I have that problem a lot with cheap wireless units

 

[-Noodles-]

in live sound I go by the rule of thumb (when advising bands) that cheap = fail.

Wireless anything until you spend REAL money will suck compared to cables.
Also, the reasons given above is why it's hard to mix metal - it's a lot of frequencies a lot of the time.
There's very little "breathing space" for a mix.. which is stylized, but can be pretty difficult to get right.

 

[arv_foh]

in live sound I go by the rule of thumb (when advising bands) that cheap = fail.

Wireless anything until you spend REAL money will suck compared to cables.
Also, the reasons given above is why it's hard to mix metal - it's a lot of frequencies a lot of the time.
There's very little "breathing space" for a mix.. which is stylized, but can be pretty difficult to get right.

it also depends a lot on the guitarists' tone and technique, since there are a lot of intricacies in metal, if the tone is muddy or the technique is poor, it's very easy to lose the guitars in a mix and there's not much that can be done about that unfortunately

 

[-Noodles-]

yeah totally!..
Tone is the hardest thing to get "right" for a guitar player, and then when you add in massive PAs it just never seems to add up!

But whatever,.. I still get paid at the end of the day, and i can only recommend what i do.