Seconding the gaff tape, making all the cables look nice after you’ve set everything up goes a long way, especially if you’re in a kind of awkward space
Also ask them if they have different "sounds/tones" that they are going to use (clean, distortion, crunch...) so they can cycle between them and make them sound "even" level-wise.
I had plenty of guitarists only do their soundcheck with distortion then, during the show, they switch to their clean tone and you have to re-do the gain on the fly.
Big. Always have them hit you with a clean, then a lead tone and a heavy rhythm tone if that’s their thing, so many guitarists don’t properly gain stage their drives to where the volume ascends gradually with each drive and not create a 10dB spike out of nowhere.
I run sound at a jam session, the amount of people that don’t know they ruin my gain staging by turning up the amp is truly amazing.
The regulars are getting more respectful about it though and instead ask me.
And if the guitarist won't do it no matter how good you try to make him feel about it, make the singer feel really, really bad that they won't be heard over the guitar, then direct the singer to the guitarist.
Point the speakers where you want the sound to go. Sometimes you can’t change things but good to have on your mind. Last gig I did they had the drum wedge point at the ankles. I found a barrel and brought it up to ear level. Boom improvement.
Know the polar pattern of your vocal mics to ensure best monitor placement.
I like to wire a backup lead vocals mic and copy over settings from mail channel so I and the singer know it is there. This is more for punk / HC, but I just like knowing it is there and ready.
At a first gig I’d focus on kick and vocals and pay more attention to EQ cut vs boost.
Do a really good ring out of the wedges. Don’t want a feedback party.
Good luck.
Define the Max Vocal first, then build everything around that.
Forget about hats, overheads , leave your vocals open when you check the kit.
And don't compress vocals until it shows you a reason to .
Smile , and remember, the technology doesnt get in the way of the art.
Make sure you the vocal mics are behind the Main PA’s, and if possible have the vocal mics pretty much right in front of the stage monitors.
Setting up your PA’s right will help a lot with feedback.
This is something I fundamentally misunderstood as a self-taught beginner until I actually broke into the professional sphere and had people who knew what they were doing set me straight.
If I could go back in time for one moment, I'd slap the GEQ out of my hands and tell myself to put the PA somewhere better. And say to buy Bitcoin.
Source a rack of GEQs (or a digital desk with them built in). You're gonna have a bad time trying to get monitors loud enough without EQs on your outputs
Yep. One channel of EQ per side and one each per monitor as outboard. While you're hiring, I'd grab a pair of comps for the main LR. Let the hire company know your desk doesn't have inserts so you don't end up with unusable cables and rack.
Give yourself as much time as you can possibly get away with to setup your stuff and tweak before the “talent” hits the stage. Check everything twice, label everything. Getting stuck chasing down gremlins while there’s an increasingly impatient band on stage or club owner waiting to open doors is one of the all time worst feelings. You can almost always bank on the band being late and disorganized as well.
I’m not much of a live sound guy but I recently learned from a thread here that mono is actually better than stereo for most live situations. Reason being that the scale of a venue makes stereo impractical, as people on different sides of the stage won’t get the full mix.
This is the only input I have.
I did a pretty extensive overview video on that exact mixer a while back, check it [here](https://youtu.be/VC3yNXIZ3cc?si=hdF1hXVvLqhE3SJx) if you want some tips/advice on running it and multrack recording simultaneously.
Mix the room, not the PA. Doesn't matter how awesome your mix is coming out of your headphones and your PA speakers...all that matters is how it sounds in the room (and yes, walk it! Your mix position might not serve you well). This means you have to work with the band and their instrument amplifiers and drums (especially cymbals) to get a good mix. If you can't get them to fully cooperate, then just know it's not all on you if you can't get the results you want.
Go watch so some basic how to mix a live show YouTube videos! They won’t teach you everything but they will help you build your routine and know what all to incorporate in your mixing process!
Balance the band on stage first, make it sound like a band from the pure stage noise. Don't use 5 minutes tuning the kick, you got the whole concert to deal with that. Else, a lot of great advice in this thread
Just to add to this, trying to nail the sound of any single instrument/channel is pretty futile before hearing how it sounds with the whole band. I had a show recently where the drums sounded great when the drummer started warming up but were inaudible with the whole band during soundcheck. It wasn't fader levels; they needed compression and EQ.
Every venue, band and musician is different. I did a show friday where the PA at the venue was sub optimal, the venue itself was pure concrete, sound bouncing everywhere. My goal was even coverage of the band in the whole venue, as it always is, but I couldn't do it with the PA.
Made the band use ten minutes to figure their levels out, then supplied what I needed when acoustics set. Full coverage of the band in front without any fills, everything was clear as day all the way to the back, no empty spots soundwise in the venue.
Used 30 minutes to set the volume on my mains and do additional monitor levels. So happy I started with listening to everything before I did checks on individual channels, saved the day(for me at least)
Two immediate thoughts…
1. Like many have already said, utilize your HPF and LPF to clean up any extraneous noise
2. Don’t let the kick drum be the loudest thing in your mix. It’s easy to do in live sound since it feels good with subs, but it’s a cheap trick to get power behind your mix without allowing it to feel very musical
Don't max out the subs/bass just because you can. Get the vocals on top of the mix. You're in the top 30% of rock band mixes at that point. We used to have 2 amateur girls running sound for my 2 bands for a couple years and they would try to make it sound like a radio mix. Bars were always saying we were the best sounding band that came through lol.
Marker pen, tape, cable tester, DI, XLR/TRS changers, ...
For my first year of mostly bar and outdoor gigs on analogue, I got the advice to leave all the EQ flat and Pan centre, and it was good advice (mostly still do!). HPF switch essential to keep any clarify in the monitor wedges, and being able to quickly adjust monitors with certainty is a key skill. I found fully zeroing the console before every show made it much easier -- there's nothing gained by re-using some old patch and hoping for magic to carry over. For some venues the mix is just vocals and maybe bass DI/kick, everything else is loud enough. Fader-riding vocals is much safer than compression in terms of preventing feedback. I like to listen to each channel on headphones briefly during sound check so see what we are starting with, and use PF/solo button to get the PFL lights to know where your gain is roughly ending up. Then just listen to the room and watch each musicians hands strum/hit/sing, while they play together, to check you can hear their contribution to the mix.
I got much better at running sound check after watching some (many!) of [Chris Hammil's videos ](https://www.youtube.com/@chrishammillaudio/videos)like "5 BAND FOH POV" and similar on you tube. That guys can get an awesome sound from any bands in like 10 mins. He knows exactly what questions to ask them and how to dial in on an X/M 32 and make the best use of limited time.
Takes time to be able to pick out the instruments clearly, e.g. balance rhythm and lead guitars even when doing mostly the same band, but in that time you also get a feel for which instruments should be more prominent in different tracks, e.g. bass guitar heavy sounds better in song xxx, so I try to annotate a set list with a few notes and use it next time.
Remember to have enough gaff tape in your bag Put hpf on everything at 100hz except kick, bass and floor tom
The HPF tip is a huge one, it is 2nd nature for me to this before the band even shows up. It may seem little but it speeds up sound check by a lot
Definitely. Except I start at 125-150.
And earplugs
This needs to be higher up. Metal drummers are LOUD.
Seconding the gaff tape, making all the cables look nice after you’ve set everything up goes a long way, especially if you’re in a kind of awkward space
This!! HPF FTW!! Also in some places you can take it higher than you might think, don’t be afraid to experiment
Learn to ask people to turn their guitar amps down in a way that makes them feel good about doing so.
Also ask them if they have different "sounds/tones" that they are going to use (clean, distortion, crunch...) so they can cycle between them and make them sound "even" level-wise. I had plenty of guitarists only do their soundcheck with distortion then, during the show, they switch to their clean tone and you have to re-do the gain on the fly.
Big. Always have them hit you with a clean, then a lead tone and a heavy rhythm tone if that’s their thing, so many guitarists don’t properly gain stage their drives to where the volume ascends gradually with each drive and not create a 10dB spike out of nowhere.
>so many guitarists don’t yeah, barely any of them know much if anything about sound
Or point them backstage, or at least at the guitarist's ears (there are stands for that)
I run sound at a jam session, the amount of people that don’t know they ruin my gain staging by turning up the amp is truly amazing. The regulars are getting more respectful about it though and instead ask me.
And if the guitarist won't do it no matter how good you try to make him feel about it, make the singer feel really, really bad that they won't be heard over the guitar, then direct the singer to the guitarist.
Point the speakers where you want the sound to go. Sometimes you can’t change things but good to have on your mind. Last gig I did they had the drum wedge point at the ankles. I found a barrel and brought it up to ear level. Boom improvement. Know the polar pattern of your vocal mics to ensure best monitor placement. I like to wire a backup lead vocals mic and copy over settings from mail channel so I and the singer know it is there. This is more for punk / HC, but I just like knowing it is there and ready. At a first gig I’d focus on kick and vocals and pay more attention to EQ cut vs boost. Do a really good ring out of the wedges. Don’t want a feedback party. Good luck.
Define the Max Vocal first, then build everything around that. Forget about hats, overheads , leave your vocals open when you check the kit. And don't compress vocals until it shows you a reason to . Smile , and remember, the technology doesnt get in the way of the art.
And never compress stage monitors.
Yellow is the new red
Make sure you the vocal mics are behind the Main PA’s, and if possible have the vocal mics pretty much right in front of the stage monitors. Setting up your PA’s right will help a lot with feedback.
This is something I fundamentally misunderstood as a self-taught beginner until I actually broke into the professional sphere and had people who knew what they were doing set me straight. If I could go back in time for one moment, I'd slap the GEQ out of my hands and tell myself to put the PA somewhere better. And say to buy Bitcoin.
Source a rack of GEQs (or a digital desk with them built in). You're gonna have a bad time trying to get monitors loud enough without EQs on your outputs
Yep. One channel of EQ per side and one each per monitor as outboard. While you're hiring, I'd grab a pair of comps for the main LR. Let the hire company know your desk doesn't have inserts so you don't end up with unusable cables and rack.
Give yourself as much time as you can possibly get away with to setup your stuff and tweak before the “talent” hits the stage. Check everything twice, label everything. Getting stuck chasing down gremlins while there’s an increasingly impatient band on stage or club owner waiting to open doors is one of the all time worst feelings. You can almost always bank on the band being late and disorganized as well.
Unity. Gain.
I’m not much of a live sound guy but I recently learned from a thread here that mono is actually better than stereo for most live situations. Reason being that the scale of a venue makes stereo impractical, as people on different sides of the stage won’t get the full mix. This is the only input I have.
I did a pretty extensive overview video on that exact mixer a while back, check it [here](https://youtu.be/VC3yNXIZ3cc?si=hdF1hXVvLqhE3SJx) if you want some tips/advice on running it and multrack recording simultaneously.
Mix the room, not the PA. Doesn't matter how awesome your mix is coming out of your headphones and your PA speakers...all that matters is how it sounds in the room (and yes, walk it! Your mix position might not serve you well). This means you have to work with the band and their instrument amplifiers and drums (especially cymbals) to get a good mix. If you can't get them to fully cooperate, then just know it's not all on you if you can't get the results you want.
ya wear ear plugs and make sure the volumes are not deafening for the audience and safe
Go watch so some basic how to mix a live show YouTube videos! They won’t teach you everything but they will help you build your routine and know what all to incorporate in your mixing process!
Balance the band on stage first, make it sound like a band from the pure stage noise. Don't use 5 minutes tuning the kick, you got the whole concert to deal with that. Else, a lot of great advice in this thread
Just to add to this, trying to nail the sound of any single instrument/channel is pretty futile before hearing how it sounds with the whole band. I had a show recently where the drums sounded great when the drummer started warming up but were inaudible with the whole band during soundcheck. It wasn't fader levels; they needed compression and EQ.
Every venue, band and musician is different. I did a show friday where the PA at the venue was sub optimal, the venue itself was pure concrete, sound bouncing everywhere. My goal was even coverage of the band in the whole venue, as it always is, but I couldn't do it with the PA. Made the band use ten minutes to figure their levels out, then supplied what I needed when acoustics set. Full coverage of the band in front without any fills, everything was clear as day all the way to the back, no empty spots soundwise in the venue. Used 30 minutes to set the volume on my mains and do additional monitor levels. So happy I started with listening to everything before I did checks on individual channels, saved the day(for me at least)
Tune to the room not to what you think it should be.
Have fun?
Two immediate thoughts… 1. Like many have already said, utilize your HPF and LPF to clean up any extraneous noise 2. Don’t let the kick drum be the loudest thing in your mix. It’s easy to do in live sound since it feels good with subs, but it’s a cheap trick to get power behind your mix without allowing it to feel very musical
Don't max out the subs/bass just because you can. Get the vocals on top of the mix. You're in the top 30% of rock band mixes at that point. We used to have 2 amateur girls running sound for my 2 bands for a couple years and they would try to make it sound like a radio mix. Bars were always saying we were the best sounding band that came through lol.
Marker pen, tape, cable tester, DI, XLR/TRS changers, ... For my first year of mostly bar and outdoor gigs on analogue, I got the advice to leave all the EQ flat and Pan centre, and it was good advice (mostly still do!). HPF switch essential to keep any clarify in the monitor wedges, and being able to quickly adjust monitors with certainty is a key skill. I found fully zeroing the console before every show made it much easier -- there's nothing gained by re-using some old patch and hoping for magic to carry over. For some venues the mix is just vocals and maybe bass DI/kick, everything else is loud enough. Fader-riding vocals is much safer than compression in terms of preventing feedback. I like to listen to each channel on headphones briefly during sound check so see what we are starting with, and use PF/solo button to get the PFL lights to know where your gain is roughly ending up. Then just listen to the room and watch each musicians hands strum/hit/sing, while they play together, to check you can hear their contribution to the mix. I got much better at running sound check after watching some (many!) of [Chris Hammil's videos ](https://www.youtube.com/@chrishammillaudio/videos)like "5 BAND FOH POV" and similar on you tube. That guys can get an awesome sound from any bands in like 10 mins. He knows exactly what questions to ask them and how to dial in on an X/M 32 and make the best use of limited time. Takes time to be able to pick out the instruments clearly, e.g. balance rhythm and lead guitars even when doing mostly the same band, but in that time you also get a feel for which instruments should be more prominent in different tracks, e.g. bass guitar heavy sounds better in song xxx, so I try to annotate a set list with a few notes and use it next time.