Rock band live performance

[John Murphy]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

If it's that loud, you might also discover lots of tuning problems too. Rock music, with amplification is never balanced from a straight stereo board feed.

Is the desk digital? Many are nowadays so you might be able to hang a laptop on it and record direct stems which you can then balance yourself afterwards.

I have not looked specifically at the board yet but I believe it is digital. You used a term I'm not familiar with, STEMS. I assume that means the board will send out each individual channel over USB. Is that correct?
Do I need a specific program on my laptop to do so?

I used the M3's to record the soloists at a symphony performance several nights ago. Placed about 5 feet from the performers. Worked very well. I used NT1's for the main pair.

j

[Garrett Low]

John Murphy, yes, stems could be each individual track. Each stem could be however the board is set up to send either a single track or group of tracks to each stem. Some boards have the ability to plug in a USB thumb drive to record each stem to. If they have that it would be the easiest way to capture it if the sound engineer is willing to do that. If not you will need a laptop with audio software like Pro Tools, Adobe Audition, etc. to record it onto your laptop.

[Rick Reineke]

A "stems" are 'usually a pre-mixed group of tracks, for instance the 'Drums' stem, would include all or some of the drum kit, or 'Keys', (piano, organ, synths), or 'Horns' would include (sax, trumpet, trombone, ect), and so on. In audio post for picture, it's typically, Dialog, Music and S/FX stems.

[Jim Feeley]

Good reccos from everyone.

And this might be too basic, but I think in general, Sound on Sound articles a fairly decent. Probably worth a quick read:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniq...ding-live-show

Originally Posted by John Murphy

It's going to be fun that's for sure. The venue uses 3 different FOH guys. Two thirds of them are very good. Luck of the draw as to who will be mixing.

Hope you don't end up with this guy:

Soundman: The Art of The Grumpy - YouTube

[Steven Digges]

That video is hysterical because it is so true of the stereotype. The best sound guys I have ever worked with are almost like "that guy". They are also all completely deaf in their left ear. That is from the bass monitor when they were a rock star wannabe. Even when they are young they know they don't have enough personality to front a band so they were all the bass player ;-)

Kind Regards,

Steve

[John Murphy]

Thanks everyone.

the grumpy sound guy vid is pretty funny.

[Paul R Johnson]

If it's something like a behringer X32, just a USB cable to a decent laptop running even something like audacity will do the trick - just needs them to send a one-one patch to it, which is easy to set up.

Re: the stems - yes, as the others have mentioned - just a common usage word now to kind of replace 'tracks' in many cases. Usually 'clusters' of individual tracks, but a vocal stem could be just one mic, while the drum stem could be a mix of loads. One to one is usually simplest to arrange.

[John Murphy]

Thanks Paul, stems = sub-masters, tracks.

I wonder why the change in terminology …

[Gary Nattrass]

I think the phrase stems comes from the film and TV dubbing world as we would do Dialogue, Effects and Music stems (pre-mixes) and it is also used a lot when mixing surround in 5.1 and 7.1 stems.

[John Murphy]

Well its over. And it was a long day. Started at noon and wrapped at 11 PM.

Sound check consisted of "Test one two, test one two."

Ambient mics worked as expected, gave me good crowd noise and helpful band sounds.
I made some new mic mounts out of locking welding clamps by welding a 3/8 inch stud to the handle. Closed the clamps over railing and it worked fine. I was worried about vibration noise but the volume level at the location is very high. Vibrations didn't have a chance.

The board mix was clean but it came with a catch. One that I hadn't thought about. FOH mix (at this venue anyway) is mono. I don't know if that’s standard practice but I ended up with two identical feeds.

I can make it all work, but it's going to take some creative post work.

j

[Rick Reineke]

Being a FOH band mixer, off and on for most of my adult life (I'm in my 60s now), I usually feed the PA mono in nightclubs such, if I'm also feeding a stereo recorder, I'll pan the guitars, keys, toms and such (10 & 2). Most consoles these days have enough outputs for both mono / stereo outputs and/or separate mixes... using sub masters, aux sends, matrix, ect. Of course when your at the mercy of a third-party house or band mixer, all bets are off.

[John Murphy]

It was a little disappointing, the venue has a very nice Allen and Heath mixer. My FOH guy was unsure of how to record separate outputs through the USB. I found the instructions online, but I would have been overstepping my position to push the issue any farther. Next time.

j

[Paul R Johnson]

The problem with stereo is that not everyone is in the middle, so pan the guitar right, because he's standing on that side, and the people on the left can't hear it. We tend to reserve 'stereo' for effects - maybe that big drum fill in a certain song - that kind of thing. Left and right 15m apart also starts to lose time alignment - which does strange comb filtering things and you get odd phasey sounds - so maybe a little offset from centre, but it works best in mono.

[John Murphy]

Interesting, thanks guys.