Video Blog test

Here we go. Let’s see if this works. If so, the video blog test is complete and I can start doing some tutorials on various topics that will be MUCH faster to shoot then they would be to type. I’m pretty pumped about this!  The chain is a Flip Video camera, copy the file to the MacbookPro, run it through a quicktime conversion and a flash video conversion, then throw it up on the site.  The entire processing time is less than 5 minutes.  Awesome!

Test #1 – Drum kit during rehearsal

Test #2 – “Digital” Piano visual tour

If its working or not working for you, would you do me a favor and let me know?  Thank you!

New mix tune

Here’s a sample from this past weekend of the Imogen Heap tune called “Headlock”.  The song is pretty outside the box for us but it was a lot of fun to stretch a bit.  As always, you’re listening to a board mix from the noon service through my little broadcast processing chain.

A few new things I’m trying that are reflected in this mix:

• Demo’ing a set of Heil PR30s on toms.  I am really impressed with the drum tone that came with them.  More meat & midrange to them then my normal Audix D2/D4 combo or even standard 421s.  Very musical & natural.  The only EQ I found I wanted/needed was a small drop centered around 300 to keep them from getting woofy & a small boost around 2k to make them cut just a bit more.
• I’ve tried swapping my kick drum philosophy from the Audix D6 being my primary full range mic with a Shure Beta91 used to provide a different character and more click when needed.  I really like the newfound low end of the Beta91 and have been having a much easier time getting the kick to sit nicely with the bass by using the Beta91 in full-range all the way down into the subs, rolling off a big chunk of 1k-3k out of it to keep the drum’s click under control, then hi-passing the D6 around 150 and putting it almost equal with the 91.  You can hear the result.
• Lead vocal is a Shure KSM9 wireless.  This song was all over the place for her dynamically – too much so for any major compression I tried to work well.  That meant “hand compression” was the only option so one hand was on her vocal channel for the entire song, riding all of the jumps between the higher power stuff and the quiet low register.  The vocal effects come from ReVibe & Echo Farm in the bridge.  ”Inverse Long” on the exposed part at the front end, Lex Warm Plate on the bridge with the delay (sorry I don’t remember the exact Echo Farm preset, 1/2 note, no repeats), then back to Inverse long.

Anyways, enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Photoblog: Weekend Audio

This is the first in what will hopefully become an ongoing installment of photo blogs.  I’m working on a quick & efficient way to implement video blogs but its not ready yet.  Hopefully soon!

Saturday, 9am.  Start of the day.  Time to wire the stage & prep for the band…  Tunes are rolling – today’s playlist is Peter Frampton I think.

Drum kit after its wired.  Rode NT4 for overheads, Shure Beta91 inside the kick (primary mic), Audix D6 on the short boom in the kick hole (some extra midrange & click for the kick), & Neumann TLM103 out in front of the kit for another artistic option for kick.  All of the cables for the kit are loomed and labeled so it is fast & clean to wire.  They terminate into a custom 16 channel fan snake that pulls to the drum deck for each service regardless of where it is located.  Channels 1-12 = audio, Channels 13-16 = PQ mixer, ears feed, & Dr Beat connect point.

Audio-Technica ATM-450 on snare top, Shure SM-57 on snare bottom (though hardly used), Neumann KM-184 on hat, Heil PR30s on rack & floor tom (auditioning them this weekend and quite impressed).  Although we have a house snare, most of our drummers bring their own.

Ready for the two electric guitar rigs.  Guitar 1 using a Shure SM57 and CAD E100, guitar 2 using a Sennheiser E609 and CAD E200.  Our electric amps are always faced directly upstage and this measure seems to be enough to provide reasonable control over stage volume.  I don’t anticipate us going the ISO cabinet route because our artistic folk like the “raw-ness” of amps on stage.

Ears & PQ mixer ready to go.  We provide Shure E3s or E5s to artists, although some are starting to bring their own.

12:30p.  Band rehearsal is underway.

PQ Assignments

Since I’ve recently covered my love affair with Digidesign’s PQ mixers, I thought it might be interesting to go through how our PQ monitor channels (which could be used for ears or a wedge mix) are setup. Each PQ mixer has a choice from the following sources:

• Kick (direct off channel)
• Wedge Drum Mix (Mono Aux – Snare & Hat with a little bit of toms if necessary)
• Stereo Drum Mix (Stereo Aux – for ears)
• Bass (direct off clean channel)
• Guitar 1 (direct off channel – mono)
• Guitar 2 (direct off channel – mono)
• Keys Submix (Mono Aux, includes verb for piano)
• VOX 1 (could be a mono Aux submix of lead vocal mics for the day or a direct of single channel)
• VOX 2 (could be a mono Aux submix of BGV mics for the day or a direct of single channel
• Click (submix of drummer’s Dr Beat and click channels from ProTools & VTR)
• Track/Loop
• Extras Stereo Mix (ambience, speaker mics, playback – basically everything else that artist would want to hear when they aren’t playing so they’re still connected to what’s going on.

As you can see, I have to dedicate 12 auxes to monitor functions in addition to the PQ mixers in order to execute the above configuration. My auxes are setup like this…

• Aux 1 – VOX Verb
• Aux 2 – VOX Delay
• Aux 3 – Band FX (generic bus for specialty effects)
• Aux 4 – Talk (this is for various talkback stuff from comm to get to the wedges since it gets to ears down the extras aux mix. This means this aux is only used for wedge mix PQs)
• Aux 5/6 – Vocals Submix 1 & 2 (sometimes used, sometimes not. Depends on the vocal configuration for the day)
• Aux 7/8 – Band Submix 1 & 2 (used to submix multiple inputs for an artist to 1 PQ channel. Ex: acoustic & electric.)
• Aux 9/10 – Stereo Drum Submix
• Aux 11 – Wedge Drum Submix
• Aux 12 – Keys Submix
• Aux 13/14 – Stereo Extras Submix (ambience, playback, speaker mics, talkback from comm)
• Aux 15 – Click submix
• Aux 16 – Feed to Subwoofers

Looking at the assignments, one obvious question is how do I survive with only three aux dedicated to effects? Pretty easy actually. The trick is to make more use of direct outs or inserts to feed specific effects for any case where a single channel is the only thing feeding the effect. For example, the snare and piano verbs are fed direct off their channel. If I need an acoustic verb, also fed direct. Once you include this in the equation, I now have 8-10 discreet effects busses available, plus the 14 submix auxes and 8 PQ monitor mixers.

Again, if there’s questions, please ask away!

Microphone Selection

Here’s a sampling of my current mic selection each week. If you have questions or thoughts about any choices, let’s use the comments section for that.

Kick: Shure Beta91 inside, Audix D6 outside

Snare: Shure SM57, Audio-Technica ATM450, Sennheiser MD421

Toms: Audix D2 & D4, Shure Beta98, Sennheiser MD421

Hat: Audio-Technica ATM450, Neumann KM184

Overheads: Rode NT4, Shure KSM141 or KSM44, Audix IX5

Percussion: Countryman Isomax, Shure Beta56 & Beta57, CAD E-60

Bass: Demeter Tube DI, Radial JDI

Guitars: CAD E100 (original series), Shure SM57, Sennheiser E609, Sennheiser MD421, Shure KSM44

Keys: Radial PRO8 DI

Vocals: Shure SM58, Beta58, SM86, Beta87, KSM9, AKG C535, Sennheiser E935