From the Booth: Episode 5 – This is Christmas 2018

Welcome to a new year of Studio.Stage.Live! To start the year I wanted to start with a video since many of you have asked for more of these. Probably one of the biggest changes from the last video to this one is the addition of a new verb we are using almost every show. My supervisor developed a long tailed wash verb that is a great addition to the verbs we already have dialed up. Our standard verbs don’t have naturally long tails and don’t hold on to long by design (they are setup to just give the mix some space because our room is quite dead acoustically somehow). A lot of times we found ourselves creating this anyway so it was time to get it going and add it to our template. All it is a de-esser (to take out the harshness) right into an H-reverb running with about a 5 second verb. I’ll have to get into that at some point. Anyway, enjoy the video and please let me know what you think either here in the comments, on facebook, or by dropping me an email (daniel@studiostagelive.com).

Here are the particulars for this recording:

  1. This is the last of our four Christmas shows this year. There were a few mistakes in there and some fun situations that I needed to work through as I was receiving mix input from people I didn’t expect mid-service but I thought it was important to show imperfections because nobody is perfect. Things happen. It’s how you respond and work through it that matters. If you have any questions about this, feel free to comment below or email me and I can walk through what happened if you’d like. Just one last quick note, I did edit out the speaking during the performance to help shorten the video, if you have any questions about how we mic up speakers, be sure to check back next week as I start a new series on that exact topic. See you then!
  2. The audio you hear is from the broadcast mix of the FOH console. This mix is built from my master bus with the FX turned down just a bit to help them sit better in a studio environment and that’s it. It’s not a perfect mix for broadcast but it does a good job at translating a mix designed for an auditorium down to a mix suitable for personal viewing.
  3. You will see 4 videos in a matrix.  The top left video is my Smaart machine. WIthing that video, the green is real-time, the orange is a 10 sec average of the real time, the red (if you even see it) is what is coming out of the console (you’ll typically only see if there is an issue with our gear which I don’t believe there was). The SPL number is 1 minute average of the instantaneous readings, which is how we measure the services. The top right is the broadcast video feed. Bottom left is a camera showing what I’m doing, I hope this camera angle is helpful. If a different idea about where that camera could be, just let me know, I’m always open to trying new things. The bottom right  is basically what I see, that camera is looking over my right shoulder. Because the lighting was quite a bit more dynamic the gopro was struggling a bit, I hope you get the idea. This spot is also open for ideas, I toyed with capturing my waves screen but I wasn’t sure how helpful that would actually be. Let me know what you think!
  4. This is a special service for Christmas but because this is one of our largest outreaches of the year, I do try to not blow the roof off. Because of the many extra inputs it won’t sound just like a regular service but my intent is to have it feel as close to the other as possible. I probably only really struggled with 12 Days of Christmas the most because of the style of the song but I feel like after a few adjustments we landed in a great spot.
  5. Here is the general layout of the SSL L500+ that I’m operating.  Top left bank of faders generally sits on my drum inputs and drum FX feeds and can access my mixed outputs if need be.  The Left bank at my waist (left hand) is used for instruments and tracks and access my main outputs and groups if I need to check on something or make an adjustment.  The bank in front of me (right hand) is almost always on the VOX page of the console which also has my VCAs which allows me to quickly make larger mix changes. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions in the comments if you’d like to know more.
  6. There is a Waves SoundGrid running and I recently wrapped up a 9 week series outlining my basic template for that system. You can find that here.
  7. Song names are listed on the youtube page and all credit goes to the band for the performance, the song authors, and to God for allowing me to work with such a great team.

If you like what you see and would like to receive an email when new content is released please feel free to subscribe at this link! Also, if you have any questions about what you see, please feel free to reach out to me in an email at daniel@studiostagelive.com and I’ll do my best to answer your question.

2 Replies to “From the Booth: Episode 5 – This is Christmas 2018”

  1. This is why they have a surface computer and a DSP computer. LV1 has this and other then ssl, I don’t know if any console that does it this way.

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