Category: Tips and Tricks

Welcome to a new tips and tricks series. This time around, as the title suggests, we will be discussing using automation to enhance live mixing. Since the advent of motorized faders and eventually digital mixers, engineers have been automating settings for years. Some analog consoles even allow you to setup scenes and mutes for channels or VCAs that can be controlled automatically based on what scene you are on. But there are some drawbacks and challenges to be overcome if you start automating even in its simplest form. In the coming weeks we will be talking about all of that. This week will just be a broad overview of automation, in the weeks after that we will be talking about the pros and cons, getting automation setup and process to step through that, and lastly some tips and tricks to think about as you walk through your first few weeks automating your audio console. My goal in this series is to expose you to automation if you’ve never heard of it or to perhaps help you better understand and use automation if you are familiar with it already.

For some of us older guys (in terms of sound I’m in this group) automation used to be a guy standing next to you, with a script or plan, reminding you what is coming up and you frantically getting ready for that event. I can remember Christmas shows at school or church, running what seemed like a million wireless channels (likely just 16 or so), with people swapping packs, running several monitor mixes for the bands and speakers, and just realizing as we plan for those shows that I’d need some help keeping it all straight. Those were the days when an A2 was a really important position to have at every show. Many times, because there were so many shows happening, you’d find that A2 mixing and the A1 running the notebook helping hit all the cues. The idea of automation was limited to studios with really high end consoles with those cool motorized faders. But these days the landscape looks quite a bit different. The tools of the studio have made their way to the FOH consoles in use today in many, if not most, of the active venues around the world. We can makes scenes to change just about every function your console can control. Depending on your console, you can automate patch changes, bus mixing assignments, compression settings, gates, and even manage outboard gear through the use of transport protocols like midi.

Sure, you can go on without automation and mix the way men and women have been mixing for decades. There is nothing wrong with that, but what if using that new tool, though it might be hard to learn and you may make a few mistakes, helps your mix get to the next level. I’ve just mentioned the biggest hurdle to automation is learning curve of starting to use it and the inherent risk of using it, but, I would argue that if you truly use your automation to its’ fullest potential you can bring a new level of consistency and truly begin to mix smarter and more proficiently. Transitions between music and speech with be smoother and PA noise from things like electric guitar amps and open microphones will be reduced. That crazy transition during the Christmas show just needs to be programmed and with the hit of one button, it all can happen, instantly. That A2 could be a trainee that you’ll actually have time to train during the rehearsals/shows instead of handing them a run down sheet and asking them to help you through the transitions.

Most importantly, your mix will improve. How do I know? Because of the universal principle I’ve come to understand about mixing audio. If you take away my sound check, I can get to a good mix before the song is done. If I get a soundcheck and a run-through before the show starts I can get there much faster. If you give me multiple runs, I can guarantee it will sound great from the first note. That applies to automation because by the time the process is done, you have scene created for each song that you’ve been refining since it was made. For me, even for our first service on Saturday evening, I’ve heard that song 3-4 times after the cue was made so I have arrived at a great mix. I know that for each service, I have a great starting point to mix from, every single time. On top of that during the final rehearsal I usually have time to walk around the room real quick and make sure things sound good everywhere in the room, not just at the soundboard. Without a scene created I would have to recreate that scene from memory which is a lot of information to have to remember and implement each time. If I remember all those little things I had planned I’m often through a good portion if not all of that first verse. Before I automated I often found myself sitting on my laurels mixing and just going with what I had instead of pushing my mix to new levels each time I stand behind the console. If I’d automated, I’d hit go, and it would all happen instantly. and I can build on each mix before the one I’m currently mixing.

Most consoles can automate all the main settings like bussing assignments and fader levels and there are few that automate everything you can think of under the sun (patching, matrixes, FX settings, inserts, etc). If the console has a midi output it can likely send signals to an outboard rig like waves multirack or a slate rig. Automation can make what would be a difficult transition to make, instantaneous and pain free. The key is to spend some time behind your console and experiment. If you have some multi-track recordings you can load up this is a great tool to use as you figure out how best to automate with your console. One of the best ways to learn is just to dig in and see how things work. However, if you are a manual reader, I hear those work pretty well too. Lastly, one of the benefits I love about automation is the built in reminder of what is coming next in the show. Personally, I create a scene for just about every change in the show and try to include in the name of the scene who/what needs to be emphasized so that anyone can step up and mix just in case something happens. Once again the key is to figure out what works best for you, whether that means complex automation or a simple system. Over the next few weeks we will talk more about how we do things here at CCC and hopefully you can pick out a few principles to make your own.

That’s all for this week. If you have a few minutes, follow this link and answer a few questions for me about how you see automation. My hope is to do these every now and again to help guide a series that I’m not exactly sure what to do with. This way, with your input, I can make sure these posts end up being useful to those who read it. As always if you have any questions or just want to talk about automation with your system please feel free to hit me up on facebook, leave a comment here, or email me at daniel@studiostagelive.com. If you’d like to get email reminders when new posts are posted just head over to this link and sign up! See you next week!

So far in this Tips and Tricks series we have discussed getting the perfect keyboard sounds, using drum triggers to get the perfect gate settings, properly setting up wireless guitars or extending drum cables, and last week we talked about getting the most out of your tracks channels. This week we are going to discuss using online services to expand and enhance your support and documentation. We all have heard of these website and services but throughout my career and conversations it seems like so few of us utilize them very well. I’m sure there are many more options but these are the ones that I use at this moment.

The first online resource that many of us use but more should probably be using is Planning Center Online. PCO is also the only one of these services that is a paid service. I will be the first to say that it is worth whatever you pay for it let me be clear. Every church in America, including my own, could probably improve how we schedule volunteers. PCO is the best tool for this. Volunteers can put in blockout dates (this is key on my team) so that when I go and schedule I can know right then and there if they are available. You can also have them fill in contact information with at least an email so they can schedule through email and not even have to log into the app or the website. At a glance I can look at the schedules for the next 90 days (yes that’s how far out I schedule my sound team) and start the game of musical chairs so that by the time we get down to 30 days out, I’ve got a team locked and loaded and tuned for the obstacles that are coming down the pipe. This also allows me to schedule with the lighting and video teams because many of our volunteers serve on more than one team so I can be sure not to always be using everyone only on audio, we can plan the big weekends so that every team is staffed to meet the challenge. If you’ve never used PCO you can reach out and get a demo which I would highly encourage you to do. You’ll be hooked, I promise!

The next resource is free, it’s soundcloud.com. For a long time we were looking for ways we could improve the potential for our worship teams to practice between our rehearsals and the weekend. The biggest hurdle was just that we don’t have recordings of how we sing each song each weekend. There are some up there that can be used but even then, sometimes we sing songs differently or change the number of a given element so it’s difficult to practice too. Since we were already multi-tracking our rehearsals for playback/prep and archiving, we decided to set it up to record our broadcast mix (could just use your Main Mix as well) and then upload that to soundcloud. The free service has only one limit and that is just the number of minutes of audio you have up at one time there is plenty of room for the entire run-though to be recorded and uploaded. Than when rehearsal is over, we normalize and upload to same soundcloud account every week named for our church. Beyond that, then we go into PCO and email the entire team with a hyperlink to the page where the recording can be heard and practiced with. Than, our worship bands have recording, with transitions, with exactly how we are going to sing and play the songs each week. It’s also good for guitars and vocals to hear themselves and be able to make changes before the weekend comes.

The last resource that I don’t see enough people use is google drive (as a part of gmail). Not only are gmail accounts free but they also come with 15 gb of storage. If you need more it’s incredibly reasonably priced. But for us, 15 gb is more than enough.  We have a few gmail accounts setup for the different tech areas that are in place. With Google Drive sync setup we can automatically backup critical templates and show files with ease so that no matter what happens to our production computers, everything is backed up. The other great thing about google drive is the live documents. We use this to keep a log of passwords for our various services and software downloads, patch lists for our larger venues, and even IP address tables for our tech subnets so we can keep track of what is where on our network. Because they are live at all times, the instant I make a change, it’s instantly propagated to all other windows. Because documents can be easily shared amongst gmail accounts, we shared all of those documents to the entire team so that we can all have access to all the documentation that our team needs on a day to day basis. Personally I use google sheets to generate organized quotes with purchase links for each project I manage and than archive them when completed so when a similar project comes along (perhaps the same thing but for a different regional campus) I already have the majority of the work completed. I just have to bring it up, be sure prices and links are up to date and I’m done. I find this incredibly helpful when I’m building our production PCs so I can be sure they all have compatible parts (if you want to read more about what I do with my production PCs check out this link!).

Well that about wraps it up for this post and series. I hope you have learned something. There are always things that as technicians we can do better so even if you haven’t been able to identify with these, find the area in your work that you can improve upon, figure out what you can do, and just do it. Commit to improving yourself professionally so that as you work, artists want to have you around. If you do have any questions about what we did talk about please don’t hesitate to use the contact form below or email us at engineers@studiostagelive.com.

Thus far in this short series we have dicussed the keys to great piano and keys sounds, properly gating drums, and last week we talked about appropriately extending guitar cables to avoid interference. We continue this week talking about using backing tracks while considering both ease of use in setup and soundboard layout. Musicians in just about all genres of music have used and will likely continue to use backing tracks for many years to come. Now, with the advent of DAWs that run on any computer and vast libraries of samples many artists develop tracks to go along with their music. Where it gets interesting as audio technicians is how we integrate those tracks into our studio recordings and live mixes. Some mix the tracks down to a stereo two-track, others split them up and keep them as individual inputs. This week I want to discuss some of the different ways you can integrate the tracks into your workflows in both the studio and live environment and then offer up some suggestions on things you can do to help make your life easier.

Since tracks started in the studio, so will I. Using tracks for recording purposes has been going on for quite some time. Especially when you are starting to record a new song it isn’t at all uncommon to create a sampled band to lay down the vocals and start recording the other parts so musicians have something to play too. Than, when the song is all recorded you go back to the drawing board and develop some new sounds to help fill it in musically. Dealing with those extra tracks can be pretty simple. Personally, in the past I’ve provided a both and solution to provide as much flexibility as possible when recording. I’ll take all the tracks they have and mix them down to groups than eventually down to a stereo track. Than, I have a great mix of their tracks in a stereo format for them to hear, with the ability to adjust those mixes easily when it comes down to the nitty-gritty. I tend to make these mixes quickly paying attention to the big picture and worry about the finer details of each track after everything has been recorded. The key here is having something in decent shape before the recording starts to make getting monitors set faster so you can get straight to the good stuff. As always, be sure to include the artist in edits that you do to the tracks that they created if something needs to change. Communication is always the key. Many times tracks are created or laid down with a concept but rather an idea so in reality they might need to be tweaked a bit before being finalized.

For live, it gets a might dicier. In the studio you can have just about as many tracks as your computer can handle but in the live mixing world, you are limited to what your console can do. Some of us mix on analog desks, some of us on small digital consoles, and others on full size consoles with all different forms of inputs. One way or another you need to figure a good way to get the tracks into your mixes. For me it started with two inputs coming out of the headphone output of the laptop and in and through a DI, one (the left side) was tracks and one clicks (the right side). Those days were both good and bad but they illustrate well the issues at hand. How do you balance getting a good mix with simplicity. Because the click track is so important you are only left with one mono track to fit everything into. It was always a software based mix-down of what all was going to be played. But the FOH engineers never got to mix it, we had to rely on the musicians to get something good put together or ask them for all kinds of changes through rehearsal. But more often then not the musicians just threw it together last second and leave the tech guys to just figure it out, which is fine, because we always do.

Today however, things have changed quite a bit. There are quite a few pieces of software specifically designed to help with the playback of tracks in a live setting with various amounts of outputs and options to assist integration into the soundboard. The most common interface I’ve seen and used is the Motu USB interface (this is the updated version with a few different connectivity options). With up to 8 outputs you can get pretty flexible when it comes to choosing how the sounds get to the board. I typically created one stereo track for any keys or pad sounds, a click track, and the rest were open to whatever needed to be used. Soon after a track was dedicated to having band guide stuff but that is sometimes mixed in with the clicks. After I got used to mixing that many extra tracks, I started asking that we split up the mixed tracks to open or unused tracks for the song. Generally what I found is that you want the percussive tracks split up from melodic tracks; things like tambourines and drum tracks needed to be EQ’d and treated differently than others so having them separate can really help to get the tracks mixed in well. Since then, I have been able to step it up a bit. We finally bit the bullet and picked up a dante interface (focusrite D4R, picture below) which can handle 32 bi-directional channels over coaxial madi which is our L500s primary mode of connection. Because we also take mainstage inputs with dante, I decided to limit our setup to 16 tracks (seemed like a big enough number to allow for lots of flexibility given our current track usage but not so big it’s unmanageable by our staff or volunteers). Beyond that, I decided to start pairing them down to stereo tracks so all of the Ableton inputs land on the same fader page so our techs don’t have anything crazy to deal with on the consoles. We have 12 faders on each page so that meant 4 stereo inputs and 8 mono inputs. The last two are automatically click and guide which is a nice feature to add as many of our band members don’t need the guide as loud as others. What we are left with however is what could be a mess of tracks to have to deal with (if you click on the picture you should be able to read the scribble strips, I’ll also explain later) but when organized correctly having individual control over a wider selection of the the tracks can turn into a very powerful tool to enhance your mix and the monitor mixes of the band as well as different musicians will want to hear different things differently!

However if you can’t split them all up as much as I can, what you can do is take in as many as you can, whether its 2, 16, or even 32 track inputs, there are a  few things you can do to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. The first is to just be sure to collaborate and communicate. For me that meant setting up a way that the worship leader this weekend fills in a patch list of sorts to tell me what is being used on each track. We use a google document that is shared to all the appropriate folks that tells whoever is on FOH which tracks are being used and what is in each track. As I said before, we have 16 inputs from Ableton (our software of choice, there are many to use) that get fed to each of our boards so the monitor mixes can do things differently as needed. To help that not be so overwhelming, we have preset categories for each input already decided (see picture above). When I expanded the number of inputs I sat down with our campuses worship pastor and developed what these would be. The first four stereo tracks are for any keys or pad tracks (labelled pad, organ, synth, aux keys) than the remaining 6 mono tracks (labelled perc, electric, acoustic, misc 1, misc 2, and BGV) plus the last two which are always guide (voice announcing sections of the song that are coming up) and click. While these aren’t rigid naming schemes, they provide a consistent structure so that both the monitor engineer and the FOH engineer know where to start looking when something needs to be changed. Because I sat down with the artist when I expanded the previous setup to this one, just about everything he does fits into these categories so we haven’t really ever needed to change the labels except for special occasions. Having two misc channels also helps to cover most things as well. Secondarily, having a track patch (see picture) list makes this all too simple to follow any complex setup that we need to do each week.

Secondly, to make it easy for everyone to stay within the bounds of the setup, we use a template for Ableton that’s all ready to have tracks dropped in and be programmed. I’ve even setup a folder sync between our leader’s laptop and the Ableton machine so he can just drop in the folder and a few minutes later just open it up on our production laptop and finish setup. We use Owncloud to do this for us but you can use google drive, dropbox, box, or whatever you like to help this happen. We used to use google drive but we needed more space than google drive could offer so we coordinated with our IT team to get something setup (I’m happy to help you set one up, just email me at daniel@studiostagelive.com). No matter what you do, try to figure out a fast and easy process for the artist so they have motivation to be a team player.

The biggest suggestion I have is to just remain flexible. Even in the most organized environment sometimes things just need to be different than planned. Maybe it just doesn’t sound right or something is missing but the key is to be flexible and willing to fix as many things as possible. Remember you are there to support your artist, not the other way around. As frustrating as it can be, sometimes you just need to buckle up and get at it so you help each artist find what they are looking for. Especially in the studio world, take after take can be frustrating but in the end you’ll find that it’s worth it. This is also a reason to get as many inputs from the tracks rig as possible. Whether it’s 4 or 40, the more you have available, the more flexible you can be. Even on channel limited consoles like the x32, everything you can spare is helpful. This often means extra prep-work, but the more you can flex with each artist, the more likely you are to get a call-back to mix a show or record again for them in the future. If it’s a job for you, that’s extra money in the bank you just stored up for that time when you won’t be able to help them because they will believe that you really can’t fix a problem because in the past you’ve gone out of your way to pull something off….ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now, sorry about that.

While this isn’t an exhaustive explanation I do hope that it’s covered at least some of the bases you needed to learn about. Our setup is a bit larger than most but I love being prepared for whatever could happen so that in the moment, there are always options. If you share that want but don’t know how to pull that off in your situation please don’t hesitate to reach out through the website contact form, subscribe to learn more each week, comment below, or email us at engineers@studiostagelive.com. See you next week for the last entry in this series where we will talk more about leveraging cloud services to improve not only your documentation but also your support of the bands that you mix for!