How would you set up? Playing guitar AND doing the live sound

Supportact

My band have a gig coming up in January. Small venue, with its own PA system (powered speakers + small basic mixer). There's no house sound engineer and not much money (i. e. no money) to hire someone, so we'll have to do it ourselves, and it will probably be down to me as I've done it before for other people. But I'll also be playing electric guitar. 

I've played the venue before which is handy. I know the desk has not enough inputs and last time we couldn't use the monitors for some reason. So I will bring a small mixer, monitors, mics, leads etc. 

I'm wondering if I should set up the desk off stage out at the front and just set levels and leave it alone, or have it on stage just off to the side so I can reach it. Obviously having it out front would be convenient for sound check so I can hear what it sounds like at the front, but if there's feedback during the set then I won't be able to do anything. What would you do? 

Band is acoustic guitar, vocals, bass, percussion, sax, electric guitar. 

stickyfiddle

Desk on or next to stage and use a wireless or long cable (or looper pedal?) to let you go into the room during soundcheck. Then come back to make adjustments

Danny1969

I play in one band where we have an old Mackie analog mixer, 2 bin and 2 tops and that's it. It's not ideal trying to mix from the stage in this scenario but with experience it's possible to make a passable stab at it. 

I put the Mackie to the side of me where I can get to it easily then with the PA turned off wander out front and listen to the stage mix . Get that right first . 

Then turn the PA on, make sure your PFL's are set correctly before you raise the channel fader or turn the monitors on. When the PFL gains are set correctly you can then set the monitors up and the FOH level. If anything is close to ringing then sort it out first ... move the mics back / speaker forward / put monitors in mics dead zone etc. I appreciate the EQ on some simple analog desks is next to useless for fine corrections but sometimes knocking off a bit of top will dull the vocal but prevent a world of feedback and that's preferable in my book. 

Then once the gig is running I kill vocal effects between songs by pressing the effects mute button on the desk (some desks allow a footswitch to do this) and pre compensate for things I know will need changing. If a song with a big keyboard part is coming up I can push the keys up a bit and the guitar down. If it's a song where the singers in a low register (common people for example) then the vocal has to be pushed up to compensate for this and then back down once the singing gets into a higher register. I know this stuff after mixing so many gigs for bands out front on an iPad. If you're  an AC DC cover band then you probably can set and forget but if it's a wide range of covers then no static mix is going to work for every song. 

Just remember you can't just keep mixing up and up, if something needs to come up make sure it goes back down after. Don't fight volume of something with more volume.  It's a pain trying to mix from the stage and it would be nice to just be able to play guitar but if needs must then this might help. 

Musicwolf

Danny1969 said:

Just remember you can't just keep mixing up and up, if something needs to come up make sure it goes back down after. Don't fight volume of something with more volume.

Absolutely this.  I mix from the stage and, if one of my bandmates isn't happy with their monitor mix, the first thing that I ask is 'what needs to come down?'

Wireless for either yourself or a bandmate during soundcheck (if you get one) so that they can go out front.

Assuming that you are right handed then set up with yourself stage right (left from the audience perspective) with the mixer in the wings so that you can get to it easily.

Supportact

Thanks everyone these are really good tips. I've been mulling it over but it's good to get some actual experienced opinions. Sounds like having the mixer on/side stage is the preferred method. 

We're playing original songs so there aren't massive sound changes between each song (and if there are it's mostly the electric guitar sound anyway which I'll do with pedals). So hopefully I can just keep an eye on the levels and step in if there's feedback.

Fortunately I should have access to the venue from about 4pm onwards so hopefully I can get in and set things up early. We're the main band and the support band I think is just two acoustic guitars and vocals so shouldn't be too complicated to change over. Hopefully. 

ICBM

I used to do it years ago in a six-piece band where I was the only non-vocalist as well as the PA owner, so it made sense for me to do the mixing. I was actually the band's sound engineer before the previous guitarist left...

I had the mixing desk next to me where I could reach it, but had already got it pretty close at rehearsals and the soundcheck, with a long guitar lead and/or someone I trusted out front to report on the mix. Mostly, it didn't need a lot of adjustment during the gig, but if it did I got quite adept at quick fader moves - make sure the desk is on your right side (if you're a right-handed guitarist) so you don't have to take your left hand off the neck - ie you always want to be stage right.

Supportact

Thanks @ICBM - I think that's going to be the tricky part for me, switching between two 'modes', i.e. musician and technician. Probably takes some practice. 

Wazmeister

stickyfiddle said:

Desk on or next to stage and use a wireless or long cable (or looper pedal?) to let you go into the room during soundcheck. Then come back to make adjustments

This. Bingo.

slacker

In addition to the above advice stage volume is the key. 

JohnCordy

One of the things I do is have my monitor coming off the FOH speaker, so that I can hear what is going out front

Supportact

JohnCordy said:

One of the things I do is have my monitor coming off the FOH speaker, so that I can hear what is going out front

That's a thought! The desk I have has aux outputs and monitor output, so I could use the aux for the main monitors and the 'monitor' out for me. I've got two powered speakers to use as the main monitors, and I've got a little behringer personal monitor I could put near me.

It's only a small venue so I don't know if that would be overkill. I might try it at our rehearsal and see. 

ChrisCox1994

digital mixers are so cheap these days and solve all these problems coupled with a long lead to walk out and mix before the gig, then walk out periodically during the gig to check if you think it needs it  

robinbowes

@Supportact If you're thinking of investing in new gear to solve this problem for furture gigs, I'm selling my Yamaha TF-Rack mixer and TIO1608-D stage box. I used them to do exactly what you're talking about - mix our gigs from stage while playing guitar. The band is no more so I don't need the gear any more. DM me if interested.

Supportact

@ChrisCox1994 yes I'd definitely consider a digital mixer if I was doing it regularly but seems likely this might just be the odd gig here and there. 

And thanks for the offer @robinbowes that Yamaha system does look great but I'm going to stay with the analogue desk for now for reasons above. 

robinbowes

Supportact 

And thanks for the offer @robinbowes that Yamaha system does look great but I'm going to stay with the analogue desk for now for reasons above. 

Yeah, it’s very good. Perfect form factor to have on stage with you, great sound, and easy to use.

ICBM

This thread has actually reminded me of something that belongs in the "what's the oddest thing that has gone wrong at a gig" thread too...

While I was playing with this band, at one gig we got a constant feedback that just wouldn't go away, despite me quickly - and at first unnoticeably - moving each of the five vocal mic faders down slightly one at a time between chords strums . No luck - it continued even with much larger movements, until the mix was totally buggered and we just had to stop. I pulled down the guitar amp and drum mics too - still no luck. At this point the whole band were looking daggers at me, especially the keyboard player... until finally in desperation and not being able to think of anything else, I pulled the keyboard DI channel down too - silence. Followed by a round of applause from the audience . Carefully pushed it back up again - and the 'feedback' came back. It was a stuck key - not physically, so not obvious, but an electronic glitch so the note was just sounding continuously. Turning the keyboard off and on again fixed it.

Supportact

ICBM said:

This thread has actually reminded me of something that belongs in the "what's the oddest thing that has gone wrong at a gig" thread too...

While I was playing with this band, at one gig we got a constant feedback that just wouldn't go away, despite me quickly - and at first unnoticeably - moving each of the five vocal mic faders down slightly one at a time between chords strums . No luck - it continued even with much larger movements, until the mix was totally buggered and we just had to stop. I pulled down the guitar amp and drum mics too - still no luck. At this point the whole band were looking daggers at me, especially the keyboard player... until finally in desperation and not being able to think of anything else, I pulled the keyboard DI channel down too - silence. Followed by a round of applause from the audience . Carefully pushed it back up again - and the 'feedback' came back. It was a stuck key - not physically, so not obvious, but an electronic glitch so the note was just sounding continuously. Turning the keyboard off and on again fixed it.

Oh Jesus @ICBM that sounds just like one of my anxiety dreams. And I was feeling semi confident before reading this... 

uncledick

Our bass player broke a rib about 2 days before a gig so sat on our FOH sub to ease the pain.  Took ages to suss that our feedback issue was actually electro-magnetic coming from the sub through his active pickups.

Supportact

Just to follow up, we've now played the gig and it went fine! Thank you everyone for offering your opinions and suggestions.

Luckily the venue already had a table along the wall to the right of the stage so I set the mixer up there within easy reach. Fortunately there was time for a decent Soundcheck for us and the support, so in the end I only needed to make a couple of adjustments mid gig. The sound on stage was fine and out front. 

On the whole I enjoyed doing it, although given the choice I'd rather leave it up to a sound engineer and just concentrate on my own playing. It's good to know how to set it up in future though, if needs be. 

koneguitarist

I always mixed band on stage as Desk was on a trolley and my amp was on bottom shelf of trolley. 

Basically our sound check was everybody get ready I would quickly test level by being off stage and singer would sing Take it easy with just acoustic, then drums and bass would kick in on 2nd verse. I would tweak it slightly as we were pretty consistent and as solo came up singer would just say up or down a bit. End of solo end of sound check.
Never got any complaints.   

Supportact

@koneguitarist that sounds like a good method. Have to say, having played plenty of gigs where the on stage sound was awful (mainly where the house equipment was poor or the person doing the sound at the venue wasn't really able) I can really see the benefits of doing your own sound. Albeit there are some inevitable compromises.