OK. It’s actually cooler than that. I am enjoying our miniature jam sessions and teaching him riffs. It’s becoming less entertaining, though, as he is rapidly making me look like the beginner.
In a recent conversation, I caught myself trying to explain gain staging to him when he was working on his tone.
2 comments:
This article was very interesting. I used to work as a sound technician for a company called In Phase Audio. Normally, I was the sound board operator for different musical productions that would hire In Phase Audio. I was always told my the professionals and audience members that my mixing was on point. Whether it was 10 microphones or 30 microphones I always felt comfortable with mixing that voices of the actors. I have always felt I had a good ear when it came to this sort of thing. However, the next gig my boss called me on, was not mixing microphones for performers. It was a small private band concert. Just the load in was confusing for me, I never had to wire a stage with so many amplifiers and wired microphones. Then when it came to mixing the instruments together I was lost. My boss was supportive and guided me as much as possible, but I was no where near as comfortable as I usually was. This article really helped me understand from the musicians point of view on audio mixing. It bridged the gap a bit between the world of mixing voices and mixing instruments. It really does come down to the same thing, using your ears and finding the right balance in everything.
Working with musicians is a very unique experience. As artists they may have expectations and habits that they’ll want or need you to work with. It then becomes the sound engineer’s job to mix the band in a way that both meets their own standards, while still catering to the desires of the band. An interesting aspect of mixing bands is the use of monitoring. It’s no question that musicians’ monitor mixes usually differ from the main mix. Sometimes musicians want to hear a LOT of one thing, and very little or none of another. These are then basic parameters that the engineer can implement easily (e.g. the drummer needs to hear the bassist). In other cases, however, they may want the mix to sound a certain way, but how they perceive the mix onstage is very different from how it sounds in the house. For example, a musician may be asking for more and more reverb, even though the mix sounds fine. The engineer can then elect to send more reverb through the monitor mix than compared to the main mix. As a result, all parties are happy: the musician gets their reverb, and the audience can actually make out one instrument from the next in the mix. In this way, the engineer uses their own reasoning and listening abilities to acquire the right balance, while working with the desires of the musicians to achieve the right mix on and off stage.
Post a Comment