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.
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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.
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.
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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.
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Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
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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.
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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.
Never got any complaints.