Archive for January, 2010
We Believe
If you follow my Twitter or Facebook accounts, you’ll remember lots of posts this past summer & fall about studio time. After a year or so away from the studio, I took a project this past summer to engineer & mix a worship project for the church I was last involved with before going to Kensington. I’ve been good friends with Chris Lindsey, who produced the project & sang lead vocals, for almost 10 years now but we’d never done something like this together. It was a lot of fun.
Because of my heritage in the Church of Christ, I have lots of experience with acappella vocals. I’ve always found this background served me well as an engineer. If you can mix/blend 4 or 5 part contemporary vocal stuff, it seems like mixing a band is often times MUCH simpler. My background made a big difference in mixing bands with money vocals like Avalon or Huey Lewis.
Below are some samples of what we did. Everything you’ll hear, including the percussion, is all vocal. Each song is comprised of 6-10 bed vocals – all doubled. Add lead vocal, bass, and percussion and all told, most tunes come in with anywhere from 24-40 tracks. I work exclusively in ProTools and this was my first project to do completely in new Version 8. I have about 90 hours in the project – 35 tracking and 55 editing, tuning, & mixing. My friend Michael Forehand, a great engineer himself, mastered everything for me and I’m very pleased with the finished result. Check it out and if you’re interested in more about Chris or picking this up for yourself, head over to his website at chrislindseymusic.com
Let God Arise
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Oh The Deep Deep Love
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Mighty To Save
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The IEM missing piece
This one goes in the category of why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Last time I wrote about the improvements to our IEM system that have come from implementing a new transmitter/receiver combo and some additional ear piece options. The problem with adding more wireless into an already congested environment is a higher probability of failure. I’ve personally managed to avoid Murphy’s Law when it comes to IEM for a long time but I realize it was only a matter of time before someone’s system failed during a service and we’d be in big trouble.
Enter Sidefills. A friend spent a couple services with me post-Christmas and suggested that what we were missing was a good holistic stereo mix that will fill in the missing pieces when someone pulls an ear out and also provide some added energy to the first couple rows that might be a tad light from the PA over their heads. It seemed like a good idea.
In my past life as a monitor engineer, sidefills were an important part of getting a great onstage sound since I worked with lots of vocal groups who would often times only wear 1 ear anyway. For some reason, I never even considered it at KCC since our old PA already put energy everywhere except where I really wanted it – the prospect of adding an additional full-range sound source was unappealing. However, in the new reality of a controlled PA without a ton of stage spill, it seemed possible this might just work.
Work it does. I have a set of EAW KF300s that have been unused for a while. I put them on top of the subs, about 5 feet off the ground, pointed in towards center stage. Stereo mix gives more clarity & separation than mono, add some EQ to smooth out the rough edges of the boxes themselves, and add a few milliseconds of delay to the PA so the clusters in the air are in relative time alignment with the sidefills and the result is really good. I’m feeding these boxes from FOH subgroups so they essentially get a rebalanced FOH post fader mix. The mix is split up to rhythm, band, and vocals. Using this approach keeps them specifically music-focused – playback and speech mics stay out of them.
We still keep a set of wedges on the front row for lead vocal monitors. The addition of the sidefills allows the vocal to literally be surrounded by themselves – just a touch of vocal in those front wedges pulls the singer’s image forward. Needing less band in those front wedges reduces mud heard at FOH since the sidefills are actually working with and as a part of the PA rather than against it. I find myself putting 100% vocal in them, 80 or 90% band, and 60% rhythm (since the acoustic kit on stage adds its own ambient sound).
If you mix on a primarily IEM stage as I am and haven’t revisited sidefills in a while, this experience enthusiastically suggests they’re worth a try.
IEM Update
We’ve had a few updates & upgrades that have significantly benefited IEMs and figured this would be a good place to start getting back into this post the past few crazy months. So here we go…
First, a few weeks before Christmas we were finally able to upgrade from wired IEMs driven from a headphone amp to Sennheiser EW300G3‘s. The difference has been awesome in a few ways. First, the sonic quality of the 300s is nothing short of amazing. The low end is tight, the top end natural. When paired up with a good set of ear pieces, I’ve been blown away by the mixes some of our guys are dialing in. Second, not being tied to the IEM wired cable has made a big difference in the comfort level of our artists. Often times we had to be very careful in how the service was programmed to make sure artists had ample time to get on stage, plug in their ears, put on guitars, tune, etc. If something went wrong plugging in their ears or they accidentally pulled the cable out, we were in trouble. Along with using more wireless instruments (I’ll write about this soon), the result has been a much smoother & more polished presentation.
We purchased 4 transmitters & 6 receiver beltpacks. For the majority of things we do, we will use the 4 transmitters/beltpacks, along with our existing PSM600 and 2 wired mixes for keys & drums. With some extra beltpacks for the 300s and our PSM600, we can easily expand by adding a few more mono mixes the few times a year they are needed. It is so hard to justify extra transmitters in a rack if they aren’t going to be used very often so this seems like a reasonable compromise.
A big surprise is how much some of our female artists enjoy the bundled Sennheiser ear bud – the IE4. The sound quality of the buds is probably on par with a Shure SCL3 or good set of iPod buds. What is appealing about them, though, is how well they seem to fit smaller ears. Our vocal director, who’s been wearing our generic Shure pieces for a year and a half or so, felt like these were the most comfortable thing and for the first time she can actually forget she’s wearing them. Definitely a good problem solver.
Another important piece of the puzzle is the addition of some Westone UM2′s to our inventory. After someone recommended trying them out, I’ve finally found something to make me give up my Future Sonics that I’ve had forever. These are the most comfortable universal fit I’ve ever worn and they are the first universal bud that I’ve heard with really natural midrange, which is really important for vocals & guitars. The Shures, Future Sonics, and Ultimate Ears I’ve heard all can sound really nice in the low and high ranges, but often times feel a little scooped, honky, or just otherwise unnatural in the midrange. The Westones seem to bring a lot of that presence back. Best of all, the Shure foamie’s I can purchase in bulk fit on these as well so its a win on all fronts. Adding Westone’s into the mix have brought 2 of our hold-out musicians into the IEM fold. Finally they feel like the guitar sound they hear in the ears feels like what it should actually sound like.
I’ve been really disappointed with the build quality of the Shure SCL3′s and 4′s so time will tell if the Westone’s can withstand heavy use.
So from a music team standpoint, we now have 100% of our band members transitioned to IEM. Next time I’m going to outline another addition to our monitoring system that feels like its filled in the missing link in the chain.