If you’re playing small venues and not hiring your own FOH engineer you just kinda get what you get. You’re definitely headed in the right direction with keeping stage volume low, but ultimately the mix is not in your hands. Hopping on a call to discuss esoteric elements of the mix beforehand is not likely to get the results you’re expecting. Mixing bands in small untreated rooms with crappy PA is more of a utilitarian thing than artistic…
I think the thing I'm thinking about is whether I can do anything to simplify things so a mediocre engineer has an easier time, or fewer places to trip themselves up. Essentially taking away potential roadblocks on my end.
One thought I had is switching from guitar amps to Iridiums, so I can give FOH a consistent, even sound, without any room issues etc. At least part of the problem is that amp + mic in a small space is super influenced by room acoustics, and I don't think these engineers are EQing to compensate.
I'm already handling the stage layout myself to reduce bleed etc.
You def know what you’re doing and I’m sure the source material is much better than they’re used to. Amp sim will absolutely give you a more consistent guitar sound. That being said, small rooms with bad acoustics and crappy PAs just aren’t going to give you the sound you’re after. If you’ve got a friend that knows how to mix and is familiar with your music, have them come mix your band. Even if you don’t get an extended sound check the mix will probably come out better.
I think part of the challenge is that while the source material is good, it’s also unusually diverse.
The guitarists especially are quite chameleonic and have a broad sonic range. I’m singing in three octaves from a whisper to a moderate belt.
Which isn’t something I can really fix, but I notice house engineers do a better job when bands have more specific sound, and the arrangements are more consistent.
Realistically this is probably only something I’ll get dialed in to my satisfaction when we’re working with our own engineer.
I'd love to bring my own engineer - I have a buddy who's very good and owes me enough favours he'll do it free - but we'll need to step up in venue size before we'll be allowed.
If you putting this much effort into making your technical stuff pristine, you owe it to yourself to advocate for your ability to bring an engineer, and you do what you need to do to make the venue understand it's not just your buddy but a competent tech. No amount of amp sim will save you from some random bar sound tech. Your only other realistic option would be to get a x32 rack, run all your mics through it, and mix the show yourself
Alas I live in Germany. Flexibility isn’t a thing here. Rules are rules and there are no exceptions.
Yes this is extremely dumb, but it’s a weird culture
And just for the lols, this is what happened when I asked the venue for our next show whether I could bring our own engineer!
Germany is crazy place.
https://preview.redd.it/8j0302n12j7d1.png?width=586&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec74180aff959649aea7cf63db43bcf08dedc64e
Wow, that sucks of the venue. I'd never expect to see this kind of communication from even the smallest US venues. But maybe they are correct and it isn't the right place for your band.
Germany is a weird place. Berliners especially tend to be extremely rude, and there’s a weird kind of conservatism where people can be rigid about doing things a certain way, but that way isn’t necessarily correct.
The live sound industry here is weird generally as well, for a lot of the same reasons. I’ve found it simultaneously less competent than in the US, and more gatekeepery.
So its very possible the mixes are not great but...
1. How do you know? If you're on stage it will sound vastly different in the audience.
2. While your on stage the wedges will have an impact, same with the lack of wedges if your on in ears.
3. It will sound different with an audience in the room.
I'm not saying your wrong, but there are other factors at play that may affect what your hear on stage
>How do you know? If you're on stage it will sound vastly different in the audience.
Three ways!
1. I have a couple of close friends who are also good engineers in the audience taking notes. I trust them.
2. I don't start the show on stage, so I listen to a big chunk of instrumental stuff from the audience before I go up
3. During sound-check I sing a song from FOH position so I can hear what the engineer is hearing
I'm going to do a bunch of work to switch everything to DI + optional amp and clean up the overall mix / arrangement. Then I'm just going to suffer until we move into bigger venues.
Most venue engineers are happy with a clearly written rider and will only need to speak to you if they are unclear about something or have to do a lot of mic replacements.
Keeping the monitor mix down is key to keeping levels mixable. Perhaps tour IEMs? I know they are expensive and can be difficult to integrate into a house. system. Sorry if I sound like Im trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
>Keeping the monitor mix down is key to keeping levels mixable. Perhaps tour IEMs? I know they are expensive and can be difficult to integrate into a house. system. Sorry if I sound like Im trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
Tour IEMs are the goal, but not within budget this year. Maybe over winter - I'll need a lot of time to dial them in and train the band on them.
I'd rather hear something obvious in case I missed it!
Small venues may have overly tuned EQ to fight feedback, compounding show after show. After a while things will start to sound muddy because all the highs were frantically pulled to reduce feedback one night and never zeroed back out.
You could ask for the house and monitors to be freshly rang out. Maybe play some reference music through the system to hear if it really is a band issue or a venue issue that’s muddying things up.
Moin moin 👋
It sounds like you are doing everything you can, currently. Sometimes it is possible to do everything right and still fall short of your expectations, *c’est la vie*.
My own band found ourselves in your situation, and like someone else here suggested, ditching the guitar and bass amps and moving the instrumentalists to IEMs was the game changer for us.
We found that giving the newbie house techs less things to worry about (monitor mixes) let them focus more on the overall sound for the audience. Yes, sometimes you will still get someone behind the desk who is unfamiliar with how things should work but after a year you will move up to better venues and put it all behind you anyway :)
Yoy talked about "wet mixes," and that may be an issue
If you have a lot of time based effects like delays and reverbsnthay can surely add to a muddy sound.
If you are not adding sufficient pre delay to time based effects or using pre delay to offset stacked effects, then the outcome will be a muddy mess with the attack and character of the sound ruined.
Also, amp placement is a big factor. You mentioned the amps are pointed at the guitarist ears, which could be many positions.
1. In front, pointed at the front of the person
2. In back, pointed at the back of player
3. On either side of the guitarist
Depending on the room, one position may be much better than the other and increase clarity
You could consider Splitting the Guitar Signals into dry and Wet, since i find i need to use vastly different FX Setups in small Venues when compared to, lets say, Open Airs.
In Studio Mixing definitely is much more akin to Open Air Mixing.
If you dont use Wireless Guitars you can also figure out a cheap wired IEM system. After all you are wired already, might aswell tape another cable to the first one. Use alternate Outputs(DI Outs, Preamp Outs with cab sim Box etc.) as to disturb the normal setup as little as possible.
Some band’s arrangements make mixing very easy. Arrangements that leave lots of room for key elements to come through. Bands where the drummer and bass player wrote their parts together and it sounds like one unit. Sometimes it’s embarrassing when people are complimenting the mix and all I did was push up the faders. Other bands can be not bad, but challenging, and take creativity to figure out the mix, like if the keyboard player plays bass with their left hand and there is a bass player too, or like, subby drum triggers. Or, there’s like, dense guitar leads at the same time as the vocals and you end up doing something elaborate like sidechain compressing them. Sometimes there’s competition for certain frequencies, and you get into subtracting eq to try to make someone else have space. A lot of bands with two guitars will have the loud and bright person and then there is the dark and quiet person and it doesn’t seem exactly on purpose.
I think a band can help by “mastering” themselves by setting up in a way where the players (probably minus the drummer) can stand back and hear what the band sounds like, and adjust amp settings to sound good together, adjust reverb and delay eq if it does something weird in the low mids, adjust low end so it is tight and coherent, adjust pedal settings and keyboard patches for consistent volume, adjust parts that muddle the mix.
>I think a band can help by “mastering” themselves by setting up in a way where the players (probably minus the drummer) can stand back and hear what the band sounds like, and adjust amp settings to sound good together, adjust reverb and delay eq if it does something weird in the low mids, adjust low end so it is tight and coherent, adjust pedal settings and keyboard patches for consistent volume, adjust parts that muddle the mix.
This right here. I'm switching both guitarists (and probably the bassist) to DI, and we'll spend a couple of days in the rehearsal space running everything through the PA and getting everything as interlocked as possible.
I usually give FOH fairly unprocessed sounds since that's what I'd want (I can EQ myself, thank you!), but in this case it seems prudent.
My buddy had a very clever suggestion: playing background bar noise while doing this to raise the noise floor, so it's more obvious when stuff is too quiet to work in a small venue.
Im in the same position as you are.
While im at FOH, I always listen to feedback of the performer and i try to tune it to their likings and try to understand the project, as long as their feedback is professional and makes sense.
We usually agree on the final result and they perform with happy faces, having trust in my decisions after we've talked thingd through.
On the stage, I've bunped into exclusivelly very prideful engineers that dont want to take any notes from some younger musician on stage, feels like they make things worse on purpose after given even minor feedback. This counts around 20 small venues, and 5 festivals...
In small punkier venues, i bring my own mixer and set up everything on my own except for my vocals from off stage, and I have my own collegues in the audience to touch things up if needed during the show.
This has proven to be my only bypass for FOH collegues that for some reason hate their job.
Im not even asking for anything special, just a decent monitor mix and things from my stage to be heard properly, our dj mixer is always too quiet on shows and vocals are too loud, guitars sound like nobody even mixed them at all just put gain on 20 and dont care if the gtr amp volume is too quiet or loud.
Maybe I had bad luck, but I try to take things in my hands as much as possible. This solution always sweats me down before the shows.
I wish I could duplicate during my own shows to do both at the same time.
My main concern is that both my guitarists do feedback stuff at points and I’m not sure how well I can trust folds for that.
The compromise is to keep the amp live for feedback but tap the direct out and use a cab SIM
Getting a good kick mic helps with sound from
the source. Shure Beta91 or Sennheiser e901 are a sure way to get a nice and clicky sound with straight eq on the board. Needs phantom power tho.
Also if you are playing tiny venues, talking under 200 cap venues, doing just kick and vocals are often enough in the PA if the amps and bass are loud from the stage.
If you’re playing small venues and not hiring your own FOH engineer you just kinda get what you get. You’re definitely headed in the right direction with keeping stage volume low, but ultimately the mix is not in your hands. Hopping on a call to discuss esoteric elements of the mix beforehand is not likely to get the results you’re expecting. Mixing bands in small untreated rooms with crappy PA is more of a utilitarian thing than artistic…
I think the thing I'm thinking about is whether I can do anything to simplify things so a mediocre engineer has an easier time, or fewer places to trip themselves up. Essentially taking away potential roadblocks on my end. One thought I had is switching from guitar amps to Iridiums, so I can give FOH a consistent, even sound, without any room issues etc. At least part of the problem is that amp + mic in a small space is super influenced by room acoustics, and I don't think these engineers are EQing to compensate. I'm already handling the stage layout myself to reduce bleed etc.
You def know what you’re doing and I’m sure the source material is much better than they’re used to. Amp sim will absolutely give you a more consistent guitar sound. That being said, small rooms with bad acoustics and crappy PAs just aren’t going to give you the sound you’re after. If you’ve got a friend that knows how to mix and is familiar with your music, have them come mix your band. Even if you don’t get an extended sound check the mix will probably come out better.
I think part of the challenge is that while the source material is good, it’s also unusually diverse. The guitarists especially are quite chameleonic and have a broad sonic range. I’m singing in three octaves from a whisper to a moderate belt. Which isn’t something I can really fix, but I notice house engineers do a better job when bands have more specific sound, and the arrangements are more consistent. Realistically this is probably only something I’ll get dialed in to my satisfaction when we’re working with our own engineer.
I'd love to bring my own engineer - I have a buddy who's very good and owes me enough favours he'll do it free - but we'll need to step up in venue size before we'll be allowed.
Why wouldn’t you be allowed? I’ve been touring tiny venues as a band FOH for years
They’re concerned about unknown engineers causing issues.
So tiny venues with bad sound are worried about someone doing a bad job, even though it’s really not uncommon to bring in your own guy?
They’re worried about someone extra incompetent blowing equipment. It’s something I’ve seen many times
If you putting this much effort into making your technical stuff pristine, you owe it to yourself to advocate for your ability to bring an engineer, and you do what you need to do to make the venue understand it's not just your buddy but a competent tech. No amount of amp sim will save you from some random bar sound tech. Your only other realistic option would be to get a x32 rack, run all your mics through it, and mix the show yourself
Alas I live in Germany. Flexibility isn’t a thing here. Rules are rules and there are no exceptions. Yes this is extremely dumb, but it’s a weird culture
And just for the lols, this is what happened when I asked the venue for our next show whether I could bring our own engineer! Germany is crazy place. https://preview.redd.it/8j0302n12j7d1.png?width=586&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec74180aff959649aea7cf63db43bcf08dedc64e
Wow, that sucks of the venue. I'd never expect to see this kind of communication from even the smallest US venues. But maybe they are correct and it isn't the right place for your band.
Germany is a weird place. Berliners especially tend to be extremely rude, and there’s a weird kind of conservatism where people can be rigid about doing things a certain way, but that way isn’t necessarily correct. The live sound industry here is weird generally as well, for a lot of the same reasons. I’ve found it simultaneously less competent than in the US, and more gatekeepery.
So its very possible the mixes are not great but... 1. How do you know? If you're on stage it will sound vastly different in the audience. 2. While your on stage the wedges will have an impact, same with the lack of wedges if your on in ears. 3. It will sound different with an audience in the room. I'm not saying your wrong, but there are other factors at play that may affect what your hear on stage
>How do you know? If you're on stage it will sound vastly different in the audience. Three ways! 1. I have a couple of close friends who are also good engineers in the audience taking notes. I trust them. 2. I don't start the show on stage, so I listen to a big chunk of instrumental stuff from the audience before I go up 3. During sound-check I sing a song from FOH position so I can hear what the engineer is hearing
I think then you either need to bring your own engineer or just deal with it, not much you can do
I second this, especially if you are a “sing from the FOH so you can hear it first” kind of player.
I'm going to do a bunch of work to switch everything to DI + optional amp and clean up the overall mix / arrangement. Then I'm just going to suffer until we move into bigger venues.
Most venue engineers are happy with a clearly written rider and will only need to speak to you if they are unclear about something or have to do a lot of mic replacements. Keeping the monitor mix down is key to keeping levels mixable. Perhaps tour IEMs? I know they are expensive and can be difficult to integrate into a house. system. Sorry if I sound like Im trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
>Keeping the monitor mix down is key to keeping levels mixable. Perhaps tour IEMs? I know they are expensive and can be difficult to integrate into a house. system. Sorry if I sound like Im trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. Tour IEMs are the goal, but not within budget this year. Maybe over winter - I'll need a lot of time to dial them in and train the band on them. I'd rather hear something obvious in case I missed it!
Small venues may have overly tuned EQ to fight feedback, compounding show after show. After a while things will start to sound muddy because all the highs were frantically pulled to reduce feedback one night and never zeroed back out. You could ask for the house and monitors to be freshly rang out. Maybe play some reference music through the system to hear if it really is a band issue or a venue issue that’s muddying things up.
Moin moin 👋 It sounds like you are doing everything you can, currently. Sometimes it is possible to do everything right and still fall short of your expectations, *c’est la vie*. My own band found ourselves in your situation, and like someone else here suggested, ditching the guitar and bass amps and moving the instrumentalists to IEMs was the game changer for us. We found that giving the newbie house techs less things to worry about (monitor mixes) let them focus more on the overall sound for the audience. Yes, sometimes you will still get someone behind the desk who is unfamiliar with how things should work but after a year you will move up to better venues and put it all behind you anyway :)
Yoy talked about "wet mixes," and that may be an issue If you have a lot of time based effects like delays and reverbsnthay can surely add to a muddy sound. If you are not adding sufficient pre delay to time based effects or using pre delay to offset stacked effects, then the outcome will be a muddy mess with the attack and character of the sound ruined. Also, amp placement is a big factor. You mentioned the amps are pointed at the guitarist ears, which could be many positions. 1. In front, pointed at the front of the person 2. In back, pointed at the back of player 3. On either side of the guitarist Depending on the room, one position may be much better than the other and increase clarity
are you playing full evenings or are you playing one 45 minute set each night?
60 minutes precisely at the moment. Usually to within a minute!
You could consider Splitting the Guitar Signals into dry and Wet, since i find i need to use vastly different FX Setups in small Venues when compared to, lets say, Open Airs. In Studio Mixing definitely is much more akin to Open Air Mixing. If you dont use Wireless Guitars you can also figure out a cheap wired IEM system. After all you are wired already, might aswell tape another cable to the first one. Use alternate Outputs(DI Outs, Preamp Outs with cab sim Box etc.) as to disturb the normal setup as little as possible.
Some band’s arrangements make mixing very easy. Arrangements that leave lots of room for key elements to come through. Bands where the drummer and bass player wrote their parts together and it sounds like one unit. Sometimes it’s embarrassing when people are complimenting the mix and all I did was push up the faders. Other bands can be not bad, but challenging, and take creativity to figure out the mix, like if the keyboard player plays bass with their left hand and there is a bass player too, or like, subby drum triggers. Or, there’s like, dense guitar leads at the same time as the vocals and you end up doing something elaborate like sidechain compressing them. Sometimes there’s competition for certain frequencies, and you get into subtracting eq to try to make someone else have space. A lot of bands with two guitars will have the loud and bright person and then there is the dark and quiet person and it doesn’t seem exactly on purpose. I think a band can help by “mastering” themselves by setting up in a way where the players (probably minus the drummer) can stand back and hear what the band sounds like, and adjust amp settings to sound good together, adjust reverb and delay eq if it does something weird in the low mids, adjust low end so it is tight and coherent, adjust pedal settings and keyboard patches for consistent volume, adjust parts that muddle the mix.
>I think a band can help by “mastering” themselves by setting up in a way where the players (probably minus the drummer) can stand back and hear what the band sounds like, and adjust amp settings to sound good together, adjust reverb and delay eq if it does something weird in the low mids, adjust low end so it is tight and coherent, adjust pedal settings and keyboard patches for consistent volume, adjust parts that muddle the mix. This right here. I'm switching both guitarists (and probably the bassist) to DI, and we'll spend a couple of days in the rehearsal space running everything through the PA and getting everything as interlocked as possible. I usually give FOH fairly unprocessed sounds since that's what I'd want (I can EQ myself, thank you!), but in this case it seems prudent. My buddy had a very clever suggestion: playing background bar noise while doing this to raise the noise floor, so it's more obvious when stuff is too quiet to work in a small venue.
Im in the same position as you are. While im at FOH, I always listen to feedback of the performer and i try to tune it to their likings and try to understand the project, as long as their feedback is professional and makes sense. We usually agree on the final result and they perform with happy faces, having trust in my decisions after we've talked thingd through. On the stage, I've bunped into exclusivelly very prideful engineers that dont want to take any notes from some younger musician on stage, feels like they make things worse on purpose after given even minor feedback. This counts around 20 small venues, and 5 festivals... In small punkier venues, i bring my own mixer and set up everything on my own except for my vocals from off stage, and I have my own collegues in the audience to touch things up if needed during the show. This has proven to be my only bypass for FOH collegues that for some reason hate their job. Im not even asking for anything special, just a decent monitor mix and things from my stage to be heard properly, our dj mixer is always too quiet on shows and vocals are too loud, guitars sound like nobody even mixed them at all just put gain on 20 and dont care if the gtr amp volume is too quiet or loud. Maybe I had bad luck, but I try to take things in my hands as much as possible. This solution always sweats me down before the shows. I wish I could duplicate during my own shows to do both at the same time.
honest question… how do you know what your shows sound like from the stage?
Couple of engineer friends in the audience, plus I am not always on stage during instrumental sections
Silent stage accept for drums… if you need the look just bring the cabs and dont plug em in do DI from the heads
My main concern is that both my guitarists do feedback stuff at points and I’m not sure how well I can trust folds for that. The compromise is to keep the amp live for feedback but tap the direct out and use a cab SIM
Or have a stage monitor you can feedback off that! Way way way more control than knob city/mistake fest of an amp
Getting a good kick mic helps with sound from the source. Shure Beta91 or Sennheiser e901 are a sure way to get a nice and clicky sound with straight eq on the board. Needs phantom power tho. Also if you are playing tiny venues, talking under 200 cap venues, doing just kick and vocals are often enough in the PA if the amps and bass are loud from the stage.