T30/Otop 12: Live band setting

[sine143]

alright guys... I know, I know, the T39 is the choice for live sound.

Doesnt stop me from be AMAZED at how well the T30s performed in a live setting.

Band was a trio, Drums (backup vocals), Bassist (lead vocalist), Guitarist. Venue probably had about 100-130 at peak time (lol... peak time here in my hometown is like 11.......).

The Tubas were Cornerloaded stage left, One Otop was over the top of that pair, the other was stage right. Drums were miced up (kick, snare, hat, overhead), Miced the guitarists marshal, and passed through the bass amp into the mixer. I was using their mixer, running into my amp (Reason I was running sound is because they blew their tops out a couple days before hand). Their normal setup is a pair of JBL SRX718s, and some 15" peavey tops (dont know the model #).

Unfortunately we were late, so we had to set up really quickly. Their mixer was configured for their system, as was their 12 band eq.

We set everything up very quickly, and started running soundchecks. This is the first time I have EVER run live sound (other than coffeeshop gigs).... I was a little nervous.

Initially, it was pretty easy to tell that the vocals were getting completely lost in the mix. Unfortunately, at this point they hadnt told me that they had the graphic EQ BEHIND the rack.... I started adjusting EQ on the xti, to try to bring them out, but I was having no luck. I eventually found the EQ (500, 250, and 80 were all boosted like 10 dB) and brought everything back to unity, at which point things tarted to sound a lot better (after I bosted 250 a tad, 500, and 1khz a bit), and feedback wasnt an issue.

I started to get everything dialed in reallll nice about 30 minutes in. Vocals were clear, bass was present and you could feel it in your chest. I was running at pretty low levels at this point, about 50-60% up on the XTI 2000. After the first break, the band went into a 5 song cover set of Sublime. They specifically asked me to raise the bass levels, so I obliged. NOW things were really shining. The bass was present, and musical. not muddy in the slightest, and it wasnt covering up the vocals. I had some difficulty adjusting the guitarist to match, but after some trial and error, we had a nice lead guitar that wasnt overpowering. Things progressed from here, I eventually reached about 85% output level, and we had the place bumping reall well.

The Tubas LOVED dropped bass tunings, and you reallly could feel the notes in your chest (didnt hit you, just kind of a warm rumbling sensation). Crowd seemed to enjoy it, and I now appreciate the significance of a bobbin head a lot more than I did when running electronic events.

THe one problem I had was with the drums. the drummer liked to play LOUD. real Loud. i pretty much had to kill his snare mic channel, as well as the overheads for the cymbals (melded arrays were eating that crash up and spitting it back out soooo loud). I failed to get a truly satisfactory Kick sound. you could kind of feel it, but the dynamics just were not there. I feel like the Titan would have done a bit better with this.... and if I had troubleshooted the kick mic a bit, things would have been better (he was clipping the mixer despite my best efforts).

Overall I was very pleased, and I believe I may have convinced them to Craigslist their JBLS off, and join the BFM family!

Thanks to bill for the great designs, and thanks to all of you here on the forums for helpin me learn the basics of running sound!

[SeisTres]

THe one problem I had was with the drums. the drummer liked to play LOUD. real Loud. i pretty much had to kill his snare mic channel, as well as the overheads for the cymbals (melded arrays were eating that crash up and spitting it back out soooo loud).

Welcome to the rock scene




Doing recorded stuff is fine as long as you get your gain structure adn your eq right, but once you start mixing the live stuff, you have to get creative all of a sudden ON TOP of first deploying everything correctly in the first place. And glad it worked out for you

[sine143]

Yeah, it went surprisingly well. It was definitly a very different experience from running recorded music. The nice thing about being a dj is that all of your stuff is already set up perfectly basically. Having control over 8 different channels of seperate feeds was a little daunting, but I seemed to figure it out after a couple songs. I was walking out in the crowd asking random people "does this sound alright to you?" hahaha.

[Dave Non-Zero]

Congratulations on mixing your first gig. I see you have already started wondering about getting great kick sound etc. The main problem is that no matter how much top gear you have in live sound, you can't fix the source. Maybe his kick just didn't have any definition to start with. I'm glad it went well for you and here's to many more!

[Ron K]

and if I had troubleshooted the kick mic a bit, things would have been better (he was clipping the mixer despite my best efforts).

1st. thing to do in that situation is either engage a pad on the channel strip if it has one or move the kick mic further away from either the batter head inside the drum or further from the drum itself if you are micing the hole.

Kick requires good EQ, gating and compression for an in your face sound.Gating will keep the ungodly levels from ringing too much and compression will tighten up the kick and make it slam.EQ establishes the tones like peddle click etc. It is however pretty important to start with a well tuned kick. Look at it this way. If you play recorded media and the kick or bottom sounds tight and impactive then there's no reason a live kit cant sound the same way.

Loud or hard hitters will test you and your gear but again nothing that hasn't ever been dealt with before. I've seen them gobble up 26db of headroom without even playing as hard as they can and even after begging them to use lighter tree trunks! Clipping channels often dont sound very nice at all. All drummers are not created equal that's for sure!

Welcome to "LIVE"!

Here's a clip of 8 16" Tuba 24s run from 2 old Crown PB2s. Tops are O-top 12s 4 of them. The boxes in between the subs and the tops are old Keeles being used as spacers with shorting leads placed across the driver terminals. You can hear the impact of the kick. At points the Camera mic loads up from the vocal levels and we had some early wedge feedback from TJs vocal mic because he really isn't the lead singer. My bro was working monitor land and getting him situated.Dont let anyone tell you impact cant be had from bass horns or Tubas.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... ID=2391100

Throw some headphones on and you'll get the idea.

[Sydney]

... a very different experience from running recorded music...

Is there an echo in here?

Sometimes it's like "letting the monkeys loose" especially if there are ego issues involved.
Ideally the band develops an earned trust and respect for the sound tech and delegates the job to the tech; Instead of trying to manage the sound, they focus on their performance.
Be aware that while it's nice to gauge the audience reaction...Often asking the average person will get a polite answer or a one based upon a limited frame of reference.
I have been asked for opinion on sound because I tend to be the minority voice, that points out issues and area of improvement.
Calling it as you hear it, has consequences: Egos get in the way, I've heard musicians blame problems on the sound system, when it was a performance/personal problems.

Syd

[dheafey]

It is however pretty important to start with a well tuned kick.

+1

Kick, IMHO, is one of the most important things to get right. It drives the band and the song. We spent hours with the kick alone (not at a gig, of course), checking for resonance and ringing and assorted odd noises. Some strategic foam and duct tape got things right. In our case, the kick sounds "thuddy" or a little lifeless acoustically, but like a damn howitzer when mic'd up. Of course, we do our own sound so we have the luxury of messing with it forever.

I think a previous poster mentioned moving the mic around to get a more "controlled" sound. It might not be perfect, but at least it won't get away from you. Of course, a little more than a half hour to setup the band would help, too.

[Sydney]

At the risk of stepping on someone else's philosophy...
I prefer to use only the mics necessary.
Ideally a 5:1 rule or at least 3:1 as far as spacing.

Syd

[Ron K]

I've done kits with 3 mics. 1 Overhead , 1 in the kick and 1 on the snare and it worked just peachy. especially in smaller venues. When micing up a large kit with many mics it's very important to use proper gating and setting not only the threshold level but the decay level as well. Gates that lack the ability to control the hold/decay are not good candidates for drums because close micing and using many mics on the kit will cause comb filtering after the initial hit or during the decay time.

If I get a really nice sounding kit I like to keep the mics up off the heads a bit so they capture even more of the shell sounds. In that case I almost always use 1 mic between the 2 tops toms and the same between two floors if 2 are being used. When 1 floor is being used I will often place that mic at very near the back of the kit keeping as much physical separation between that and the nearest mic which is usually the top toms.The overhead I keep gated and most everything below 500HZ filtered out and positioned so as to capture Hat and cymbals higher end of the toms ambiance generally placed above and between the ride and crash but pointed at the hat.

Drums that are deadened pretty good I'll close mic for hit impact as I see no point in capturing a dead shell sound.

Lots of different ways to get "r" done but paying attention to some basic rules of physics can make life a bit easier.

[sine143]

This is the first time I've talked to these guys in about 2 years. I used to jam with them pretty often back in high school (they are all seniors in high school at the moment). Luckily for them I was in my hometown for the weekend, and I happened to bring the system home ('rents wanted to see what I was constantly talking about everytime they came to see me hahaha). They gave me a call and asked me if I would be interested in helping them out, since they had toasted one of their tops.

I think I might actually go purchase a drum kit/mics just so I have something to play around with. it was definitely the most challenging part about the gig (other than the vocal mud, which I fixed in about 3 songs ).

Throwing the pad on the kick mic was probably a good idea haha. Originally, he had the mic buried deeeeep in the kit... and for some reason they had reverb configured on that channel. I told him to pull it out a bit, and I cut that crop off. It definitely helped, but I could have used some compression (I wish that I could have sidechained the bass to the kick drum a tad, to make a little breathing room for it)

The funniest part about the gig was that I had to telll the guitarist to turn up, constantly. We were micing his amp, but the individual gain on it was through the roof because his amp (which was a marshal half stack btw) was turned down so much! A problem you never think you are going to have.

Thankfully, guitar isnt super important to their genre (kinda raggae/punk/surf. Think Sublime), and the extra lowend was great for it.

I'm kind of pumped, because they want me to build a pair of t48s for them (they have unlimited packspace).

[sine143]

It is however pretty important to start with a well tuned kick.

+1

Kick, IMHO, is one of the most important things to get right. It drives the band and the song. We spent hours with the kick alone (not at a gig, of course), checking for resonance and ringing and assorted odd noises. Some strategic foam and duct tape got things right. In our case, the kick sounds "thuddy" or a little lifeless acoustically, but like a damn howitzer when mic'd up. Of course, we do our own sound so we have the luxury of messing with it forever.

I think a previous poster mentioned moving the mic around to get a more "controlled" sound. It might not be perfect, but at least it won't get away from you. Of course, a little more than a half hour to setup the band would help, too.

more than 30 minuts would be a big help for sure. It may just be that his drum isnt tuned in well (I asked him what freq his kick drum was tuned to and he was like, wat?)... so that might have been the problem. I found myself boosting his kick channels mids and highs to get a bit more beater sound, so that it would at least be present (wouldnt have to compete with bass guitar out of the tubas). That kinda worked, but It could have been a lot better.

I know the T30s are not optimized for this kinda gig... but jeez, I dont know if I'll be able to handle the volume from the Titans!

[Sydney]

I asked him what freq his kick drum was tuned to and he was like, wat?)...

That's kind of a trick question because of the wide spectral content of a drum;
to synthesize drum sounds transients are added to white noise

( What started as a review became a discussion specifically on drum miking. )
Using Drum platforms ( when possible ) helps.

I believe a lot of live band issues could be lessened careful consideration of the placement of stage instrument cabs with respect to other cabs and surrounding boundaries.
Performers in small bars/clubs are often boxed-in, shoved back against a wall under low ceilings; a lot of potential for resonance, reflections and combing, which microphones are also subject to.
Many small clubs/bars could benefit by taking measures to suppress reflections from behind the band

Syd

[sine143]

hahaha, the whole point of a review is to stimulate the very discussions we are having right now!

The drums were on a drum platform, unfortunatly they were also placed in a terrible location hahahaha. The way it worked is there was a like... cave like thing... maybe 15 feet wide, 25feet deep, with 9 foot ceilings. The drums were raised up maybe 2-3 feet. Floor was directly in front of that, and I corner loaded the tubas off to the left of them.

[Sydney]

Ideally I had more room in mind not a...

cave like thing... maybe 15 feet wide, 25feet deep, with 9 foot ceilings. The drums were raised up maybe 2-3 feet.

I have had problems with these sort of cavities as they can be a reflective resonant nightmare.

Syd

[sine143]

yeah, it wasnt my ideal place to set up drums either... I had to go back there to adjust mics a couple times and I swear the snare was going to make me go deaf. i sent a buddy home to my house to grab my musicians ear plugs for the drummer, cause I was genuinely concerned about his hearing.

Unfortunately the venue manager was deadset on setting them up in the little cave, cause thats where the platform was, and thats where these guys have put drum the other 4 times they have played here.