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Are you a great mix engineer?

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A question that has rolled around my head lately, What really makes a great mix engineer?

Recently I have worked with a few other engineers and bands. I used to believe a great mix engineer was one who knew all the tricks of the trade and could build complex mixes with multiple groups and things like parallel compression, while managing 200 inputs. That is not what makes a great mix engineer. The fact is, a hugely complicated mix with many channels has nothing to do with how good a mix engineer is. While all of that knowledge and ability is crucially important, a great mix engineer has two qualities, attitude, and an unbiased mixing approach.

I have gotten more jobs by having a good attitude even when it is very difficult and by working really hard to give the band and leadership what they need. If you can make the band happy, you will be called again. The mix is almost secondary. Making the band feel good will allow them to be comfortable, allowing them play much better, which make the mixing guys job MUCH easier. Make the band happy, and you will likely have a successful night. Make the band frustrated and angry, you will likely have a bad day.

Make sound disappear:
This will probably be an entirely different post at some point. The concept is simple. Make the details of audio disappear. Show up early. Wire everything before the band gets there. Have the wireless gear ready with fresh batteries. If you have virtual sound check, do as much pre-work as you can. The goal is for the band to step on stage and not really know you are there. That is an art and it takes time to learn. I’ve always said, if people know we are here, we are doing something wrong. Be invisible as much as you can, even to the band.

Unbiased Mixing:
When the guitar player comes to talk to you about sound, what do they ask? When the vocalist come to talk to you, what do they want to talk about? The band’s job is to focus on their part of the band and work with each other to build and arrange parts. Your job is to put all the instruments together to make them sound like one instrument. The mix engineer is the band, the entire band. This is a problem largely in churches with volunteer engineers whose wife or sister is on stage playing drums or singing. Biased mixing. Who is going to be the loudest in the mix? The wife. Once a church grows to a certain size, it will become evident that the volunteer mixing guy will no longer suffice. The piccolo is just as important at the lead vocalist as the lead vocalist is just as important as the kick drum. Sidebar: Oh and by the way, the kick drum is not the most important thing in the mix. Don’t be a noob…but I digress.

The most important and easiest way to learn about mixing is to listen to a lot of music. Different kinds of music. There you will learn different techniques that are used and how to mix different styles of music.

All that to say, a great mixer doesn’t necessarily have to know all the complicated mixing techniques, a good attitude and an unbiased mixing approach will take you a long way.
Twitt

Why I am a Church Tech

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I got started in the tech world because technology made sense to me, it was a challenge, and it was a blast be a part of. For a long time, it was all about the gear, and figuring out how audio works. That ended once I became head FOH Engineer tasked with raising up volunteers. Or I should say, the gear became secondary. Although I didn’t realize it at the time.

Being a leader in the church tech world is about people. It first starts with the congregation. The first goal for the church tech is to accurately create an atmosphere that will allow the congregation to understand and enter in to what the executive leadership team’s message is. This includes all forms of media, audio, lights video, etc. This is a very unique responsibility and an honor that not many are blessed with. It is our job to help present an atmosphere where the congregation can connect with God during worship and connect to the Pastor’s message during the sermon time. We get to help present the environment that helps people connect with God and more importantly become members of the Kingdom. How cool is that!?!?

The second piece to this puzzle is raising up other techs rather they be volunteers or paid staff. Allowing members of the congregation to pour out their heart in tech is a form of worship for them and a hugely fulfilling experience. Many of the volunteers are college age down to high school and in some cases younger. A majority come from broken homes and are in need of good influence and need a feeling of belonging. In the church, everything comes down to caring for people and the tech ministry is no exception.

Seeing peoples lives changed is what the ministry is about, and the tech ministry is no exception. Techs are often miss understood by the church, it is crucial to be in community with each other! If you have no one to reach out to, I’m here….Email me! Contact@justinloving.com

Happy Teching!!!
Twitt

SoundCraft Vi1 Review

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I need to set the stage for this review. When I started at the current church, they had just bought a brand new SoundCraft Si1 digital mixing console with an Aviom and MADI option card. To keep it short, we had a host of issues with the Aviom/MADI cards. SoundCraft was very good about providing us support, they swapped out the back plane board and ended up swapping out the Si1 with the Si1+ to no avail. Our issues were two fold, 1. The church was in a position where they never really had a fully functioning console that they purchased, 2. the console was not reliable for a volunteer staff. SoundCraft acknowledged the issues and explained that we were not the only ones having issues with the Aviom card option. It was a known issue.  Again, SoundCraft provided really good support through the issues.

Once we came to the conclusion that these problems were not going to be resolved quickly, we began talking to SoundCraft about next steps. They offered us the Vi1 with a Compact Stage Box. We graciously accepted. We got word that the console had landed at our rep and we had it delivered. I installed it that same day. To preface this review… We have paid staff and volunteers running FOH. Therefore, I have setup the console so that it lends itself to volunteers and therefore, my review will be largely based on its user friendliness.
 
The Console:
The console runs at 48Khz. It has, with the Compact Stagebox, 64 physical inputs, and 32 physical outputs. 16 input faders on 4 layers and 8 VCA/Aux faders on 5 layers. It has 24 Aux or Group sends with 8 Matrix mixes. This was plenty of busing for us. All good in this section
The install:
SoundCraft has many videos which are located on their website which really helped prepare me for the install. I read through the manual the night before. That being said I only had to go to the manual a few times during the install. We unpackaged the Vi1 and made room for it by sliding over the Si1+. Plugged everything in and flipped the switch. Because the Si and Vi show files aren’t compatible, I had to setup the console from scratch. Although it would have been nice to be able to use the same show files for channel names and other labeling, I wanted to start from scratch with all processing. I setup all the input patching channel names, Aviom systems, Aux sends and effect. All was fairly simple with little to no fuss.
First Use:
I was a bit brave in setting the console up the day we received it as we had a youth service that night. We had the band show up 30 minutes early. They stepped on stage and started playing the first song. Immediately the upgraded studer preamps shined. The console sounded noticeably better, cleaner and tighter than the Si1+. As you would expect going from an $18K console to a $25 – $30K console. I was able to get all the parameters (EQ, Compression, De-essers, Etc.) pretty much dialed in, in the 30 minute span we had before the start of service. The first night went off with out a hitch, and sounded great. We had many people state that it sounded so much better than the other console. A successful show always makes it easy to sleep at night.
Interface:
The interface going from the Si1+ to the Vi1 was, well, dreamy. You can actually see pretty much everything you need to see right on the Vistonics touch screen. The physical gain reduction meters are awesome. Coming from that angle, the upgrade was great. Now, if I look at all the other console options available, in what I would consider the same league, although maybe more expensive, I would say the Vi1 is a little bit cumbersome. Many console manufacturers are still in the mindset that the digital console they produce should be exactly like an analog console, that just isn’t true anymore. The interface is easy to use for an experienced engineer. I am finding it easier to train on than the Si1+ by a large margin, however, if I look at Digico or Yamaha, the interface just does not seem as simple for the novice. The user pages are hugely useful for me, but there are only 5 of them and volunteers are not really grasping the concept easily at first. Menus are in weird places, the hi and low cut filters are in the input section (which makes sense from a signal flow perspective, but a novice is going to look for these in the EQ section). This is all my opinion and based on the outcome of the training sessions I have given. Again, I have to think about the volunteer first. All that to simply say, the interface is easy to use once you find everything, but maybe this is not the console for the church that is mostly volunteer-based.
The Sound:
The console sounds great. No Doubt. I’m not going to give the typical, “it sounds just like an analog console”, it does not. The fact is, we are in a digital world. If you want an analog sound, buy an analog console. I’d like to hear it on a system with more resolution. It is clean and tight. There is not much more I can say.
Issues:
We have had a few issues. The Aviom card was not recognized at a youth service. A volunteer was running the console at the time. There was no error reported. We are using direct outputs to the Aviom card, according to the direct output patch, everything looked perfect. When you went into change a direct output patch, the stagebox was listed with all the analog/AES inputs and outputs, but the Aviom patch options were missing. Just as if the card wasn’t installed. The only audio that was interrupted was the Aviom sends, which happened to be all of the vocalists on stage, including the worship leader. We power cycled the stagebox and the card was recognized again. The vocalists went without monitors that night, as we didn’t find the issue until I was able to get to the church to investigate.
On a separate occasion, the input patches from the stagebox disappeared. I was able to re-patch them and recover, however, we have been able to reproduce the issue and we are currently working with SoundCraft, there is no resolution at this time….I will post an update should we find a solution.
Summary:
The Vi1 is a great sounding console, with an interface that is a little awkward but for the average paid experienced engineer, it is a great console. It does not belong amongst the (arguably) top brands, Avid, Digico or Midas. SoundCraft produced a nice console. Reliability score is suffering for me at the moment.
Twitt

Creatives VS. Techs

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For most of my career as a Sound Tech, I have been really close with the worship leaders I’ve worked with. Most of which I knew before I got the job to mix for. I never realized until recently how important relationship is with those people. On the most recent gig, I came in only knowing some of the congregates who suggested to leadership that they hire me.

You can hire the best Sound Engineer in the world, but if the relationship between the engineer and the people on the stage is not solid and well built, you will likely not be satisfied with the results. On the other hand, if you have a moderately well versed volunteer in the sound booth, but that person has a fantastic relationship with the people on stage, you will likely be hugely successful.
There has to be a unity and a synergy between the booth and the stage. This applies equally to lighting, projection and other tech teams. Building relationship requires time and patience. Many people would expect this to happen overnight, but it doesn’t work that way. Relationship is built outside of when the team is live. It happens in casual conversations before and after rehearsal, over meals and other planned events.
One thing that most leaders do not realize, is that techs are by in large introverted people who tend to be awkward socially. This is why techs are at the back of the room behind a console and not on stage. This is something that I struggle with and sometimes have to force myself to overcome. That being said, relationship building does not fall on the leader solely. Especially if the leader is not experienced. The tech has equal responsibility in building that relationship, no matter how hard and awkward it might be.
A little goes a long way. A compliment after service, or even, an invite to coffee is something that will take you very far. Those are invaluable times when you begin to understand the people you work with and they understand you. Try it! It will change your working life!
Twitt

Satisfying the Old People

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A common issue in church is the fact that you have the widest range of age groups possible, from infants to much more seasoned attendees (aka Old Folks). Now, hopefully responsible parents aren’t bringing their infant into environments that are upwards of 100dB. Everyone knows, as you age, your hearing begins to change dramatically and in many cases what might not sound harsh to most people, louder environments begin to easily become annoying or even painful.

Shortly after I started working at the current church, someone pulled me aside and mentioned there had been some complaints from the older generation that the mix was harsh. Typically when someone describes a mix as being harsh, there is more often than not an issue in the 1khz – 3khz range. This is a common frequency range that can be painful for vocals and electric guitar. Now, this depends on many factors, the vocalist, the mic, the console, the PA, the room and so on…for us reducing around 2.5k on the master bus (via graphic EQ) largely helped smooth out the upper mid range.

The second change I made was to put a compressor on the master bus. Reducing the dynamic range of the main output by only 1-3dB depending on the style of song. Setting the compressor on the master bus is a bit of an art. For us, I wanted to compress the peaks and allow the compression to last long enough to supress the entire peak. I change the attack depending on the song, from 3ms to 7 or 8ms depending on the song. If your attack is to fast, you can lose definition in the high end, but you can compensate somewhat with an EQ. The release is set from 60ms to 120ms just depends on the phrasing of the song. This is controversial, at the end of the day, for me, if it sounds good do it. Light compression on the master bus just helps to smooth out the mix and make the mix sound tighter so its more controlled and not so much in your face. This is probably not something I would do in a concert situation, but for my specific church it has worked really well.

Twitt

The Angry Soundman

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Cautiously optimistic seems like a good description of most of the sound engineers I’ve come across. “The Angry Sound Man” is something I’ve heard many times. I have been accused of this, and work very hard to not project that type of attitude. This requires some explanation for those who may not understand why sound techs are so particular about every detail.
Audio Engineering is truly an art. I know this because everyone has a different opinion on what “it should sound like”. Just like a good abstract painting, to one person it looks like someone took 10 buckets of paint and dumped them on a canvas and call it art, while others can connect to the emotion of what the artist was trying to convey by understanding how color can relate to emotion or more likely each viewer will react differently to the same painting.
Building a mix is similar to building an abstract collage painting. Some attendees will love it and some will criticize the hell out of it, and by the way there are many who are not afraid to be vocal about such opinions. Speaking from a church perspective, there are two main forms of communication I pay attention to, in order to know if my mix is working. 1. The guy who signs the checks, Its either working for him or it isn’t and that is the most important piece. If the Pastor isn’t happy it effects everything in the service, from worship to the message. Making sure the Pastor is happy is critical. 2. I pay very close attention to the audience/congregation/worshipers whatever you call them, responses to what the worship team and pastor are presenting. Are they engaged? Are they signing? Are they dancing? Are their hands raised? If not, Change the mix…..Thats another post…..moving on.
All of that is just a small part of why the sound tech is very particular. We are building a mix for every person in attendance. That is a huge number of people to make happy. That being said, in order to make everything sound good, the devil is in the details, it is so important how a speaker is placed on the stage or how the band is placed on the stage. Add to the the science of sound and phase, polarity, room acoustic and you have a potential problem behind every corner. So next time you come across an angry sound man, who may have just decapitated a drummer for touching a mic, realize he is probably having to flip over backwards to make something work! I’m not condoning this type of behavior. The most important thing for a sound engineer working in a church is relationship. Build a relationship with your musicians, it will make your life much much easier!
Twitt