If you mix on Yamaha consoles, here is tip number I’ve lost count…Delay LCR.  It will be your friend.  I promise.

A few weeks ago I spent an evening mixing on a Meyer rig with a Yamaha PM5D at FOH.  After having spent 2 years on a PM1D at Kensington, it was like coming home to an old friend.  No plug-ins, parallel compression, or other tricks – just focusing on the fundamentals that make a mix great.  It’s a great reminder that the engineer and musicians are what make a mix.  The tools are only that – tools.

One of the most appealing parts of my transition to New Life Church last summer was inheriting a blank canvas of sorts when it comes to values and execution.  The talent here, both on and off the stage, is first class.  However, we’d never spent any time defining our “sound” and some strategies to be more consistent in arriving at it.  So a few months ago I committed these ideas to paper and we’ve been living inside of them ever since.  The inspiration for this discussion on the blog came from a common question I heard at Gurus a few weeks ago regarding getting a group of volunteer engineers to think alike and begin to move the same direction in crafting a mix.

Last time we discussed overall team mission and values.  I think this has to be defined first before going any further. Transitioning to more specific mix values, here’s what we’ve been living with…first some general concepts…

Accurate Tones:  We value getting it right on stage.  Great input makes great output, so it ALWAYS must start on stage.  This includes drum tuning, keys patch selection, mic placement on guitar amps, etc.

Classic:  There is a timeless quality to some records and overall music approaches that have stood the test of time.  Classic, good tones that don’t stray too far one direction or the other, trying to avoid super dated verbs/choruses/delays.  It is our goal to make timeless mixes that translate well both inside and outside our rooms.

Dynamic:  A worship set should be a journey.  Again, starting on stage and then translating through the engineer, it’s important that we take our audience on the most incredible journey.

Active:  Mixes should be active, always looking for the most interesting thing and highlighting it.  Many engineers have a tendency to be level managers and always mix a measure behind – one measure behind on pushing the solo, one measure behind on the transition, and on and on.

Now to specifics of our “sound”…

Drums/Bass and Vocals are both foundational.  Of course in worship music there is nothing more important than the lyric.  However, there’s a fine line we balance here between the vocal sitting just right in the mix or being too far out front (what I call a “churchy” mix).  Drum sounds that are dynamic, engaging, natural, and just sound great are the foundation the rest of the mix is built on.

Electric Driven.  The reality of the most common style of music we play is that it is electric guitar driven.  The hook of most songs is somehow connected to electrics, so it is important to mix like they are important to us.  This is one of those other ways to avoid a “churchy” mix…keep them out front.  As an extreme generalization, the only times the electric shouldn’t be driving the mix is when he’s not playing.  Ha!  Seriously, when the band drops out its important to find something else to fill the space such as acoustic or piano, but most of the stuff we do is driven by electric.

Keys and Acoustics provide texture and interest.  A mix that is 100% drums/bass/electric can certainly become boring, so keys and acoustics provide the flavor to add musical interest.  Mix them that way.  It is RARE that the acoustic should be further out front than the electric if both are playing.  Sometimes keys or acoustics share focus with electric, such as in the intro hook to “Greatness of our God”.

Lead Vocal relationship to BGV, Male to Female vocals.  We have a lot of people on stage on a given weekend.  A lot.  There is a coolness and hipness to this that just works at New Life Church.  I was really skeptical of it coming in but it’s really engaging in the room and works really well for us.  However, there are few songs we do that should be mixed as a huge group vocal.  There are several, but most have a clear lead vocal/BGV thing going on and its important to honor that in order to maintain relevance musically.  The same goes for the relationship of male to female singers.  More often not there are 2:1 more women on stage than men, but there’s no faster way to make a mix “churchy” than too much female vocal sitting on top of the whole thing.  We accomplish this a couple ways – first in the arrangement and making use of lower harmonies so the ladies will naturally sit in the middle of the mix rather than on top, second through actively managing the level relationship in the group and keeping lead vocal out front with the BGV group tucked nicely behind it.

I’d welcome discussion about this topic either here in the comments or via Twitter.

One of the most surprising revelations I received during Gurus from so many people I talked to was how few teams have clearly defined mission and values, as well as value statements to define the target for mixing success.  I thought it might be cool to outline our team’s mission and values with some thoughts…

The mission of our audio team is to create moments for people to engage with God.  We try to do this with excellence since I believe that excellence honors God and reflects His perfect character, and through Christ-driven ideals.  Our serving should come out of the overflow of our personal relationship with Jesus.  Our team values include many areas I’ve written about over the years…

• The Table is Set:  it is extremely important for us to be prepared for the artists’ arrival with everything tested and ready to go so the people on stage can focus on creating music and moments with as little distraction from us as possible.
• Accountable:  doing what we say we will do, not making problems mysterious, taking accountability when we make a mistake and learning from it so it doesn’t happen again
• It’s All in the Details:  audio is a game of a million itty bitty steps.  There is no single smoking gun that will equal a great mix.  It’s all in the incremental tiny moves that equal audio amazingness.
• Change Happens:  it is so important to stay flexible and prepared to adjust to requested changes.  Most times strong preparation makes it possible to adjust to change more easily.
• Are You Being Served? It is our privilege to serve the musicians, vocalists, pastors, and ultimately our church in engaging with God.  Everything we say and do should come from the perspective of doing whatever possible to facilitate an unforgettable experience for the people on stage.  The result will most often translate directly to the people in the seats.
• Push the Envelope:  It is important to keep looking for ways to improve what we do and never become satisfied with the status quo.  There is always a way to be better in our craft.  Mixing is a skill and requires constant refinement.
• Rest in the Call:  it is the call of God on our lives that allows us to be successful mixing audio.  Mixing can be especially stressful and a high pressure position.  It’s important to keep perspective regardless of how good or bad things go that we are honoring God by serving Him with our talents and resting in that call.

I started out putting this whole thing in one post but it’s too much, so I’m splitting into two.  Next time we’ll dive into specific mix values.  If you haven’t defined your mission or values – both in general or directly related to the mix – I challenge you to do so.  I think you will find the exercise beneficial for your team.  Only time will tell how impactful these thoughts really become to our team.  But ever since committing to them, I make it a practice to use them in conversation or in coaching, all the while looking to make them part of who we are.

Until next time…

Yesterday we covered the thought process in tuning the main speakers in our PA.  Today we’re going to discuss delay fills.

After starting with the main speakers, I work outward from there until we get to the speakers in the back of the room.  Often the first step after mains is downfills.  I like to work my way out from the mains because as I add more speakers to what I’m listening to, they all start to work together and I have to follow that energy rather than fight it.  Every change you make to one set effects everything else so you have to think holistically and experiment.

The key to making fill speakers work is two things – delay time and EQ.  If the main speakers are our starting point and benchmark that everything else must align to, fill speakers such as downfill or delays will normally arrive at either slightly different or perhaps greatly different times to your ear depending on where you are standing in the room.  The trick is to use delay so that speakers that are separated by 5 feet or 75 feet sound like they are all arriving at your ear at the same time and thus working together.  I use my software program to help calculate the necessary delay times, often times with a bit of trial and error in real world to nudge things forward or backward just a bit so it feels right.

After the delay time is right, I like to first turn off the speaker I’m getting ready to work with and just measure how everything else we’ve already optimized sounds in the location of the fill speaker.  This tells us what is missing sonically in this location from what we’ve already done and that is what we will focus on with EQ’ing the fill speaker.  I will high-pass the speaker so the low frequencies that are already hitting the area from the main speakers are not competing with additional stuff trying to come from the fill.  Now balance the sonic EQ of the fill so the response curve sounds as close to standing in front of the main speaker as possible.  Continue this process with each set of fills and eventually all parts of the system are operating at the same time.

As I said, this is a very high level discussion because the reality is that the process of tuning a PA is as much art as it is science.  For me, depending on the complexity of the system and the acoustics of the room it is installed in, there can also be a fair amount of experimentation & trial/error.  One of our largest rooms at newlifechurch.tv has a distributed audio system design – 4 main arrays in the front of the room with downfills below them and then a ring of delay speakers 2/3′s of the way back.  It took me three attempts at tuning this room before I arrived at a product that I’m reasonably happy with as a long-term starting point.  Each time I did it, I learned more about how all of the speakers interacted with each other, the acoustics of the room, and the result was less and less needed EQ each time.

In my experience with trying to get a great board mix for broadcast from the same console mixing FOH, a well-tuned PA is absolutely required to have any chance of success.

When I first visited newlifechurch.tv last winter, I knew immediately that one of my first tasks when we got here would be to start from scratch with PA tunings and system optimization across the board.  The tell-tale sign this would be necessary came from looking at channel EQ on the consoles.  Channel after channel showed LOTS of EQ and I heard complaints that the board mix that fed the internet campus never sounded as good as it did in the room.

I have a basic process that I follow when tuning a PA.  Everyone probably approaches something like this differently so your mileage may vary, but here’s a sampling of my thoughts.

First and foundational for me is to not take anything for granted pre-existing in the system from past engineers, the installation company, or “helpful” volunteers. Crossover points in bi or tri-amped speakers, the manufacturer recommended EQ points on a box, amplifier processing either bypassed or enabled, every speaker functioning, balanced levels between boxes, and on and on.  I like to begin by ensuring that every box is actually functioning, the array is balanced so that the level remains consistent as you walk the room, and that all DSP in the system is either flattened, bypassed, or disabled.

There is nothing worse then spending hours working on a set of speakers to then find that a circuit was engaged somewhere, thus coloring what you’re doing, and you didn’t know about it.  In one of the newlifechurch.tv rooms, just this step alone brought huge improvements to the system because I found that one of the three boxes in each of 4 arrays was operating at 50% of the volume of the other two boxes due to amplifier trim.  The result was unbalanced coverage front to back that had likely existed for a long long time.  Don’t take anything for granted!

Next, I’ll always begin a tuning process with the main speakers.  In some rigs, like one of our main rooms, this is all I need to deal with because there are no delays or fills to add into the mix.  The main speakers will always carry the biggest load of the work in a system and put the most energy into the room.  Because of this, I like to start here and then fit the other boxes around the mains.  I’ll talk about the software I use in another post.  For now we’re keeping it to a 10,000 ft level and just talking process.

The ear doesn’t hear things “flat”, especially as the volume level increases to concert levels.  As such, I’m not looking to create a flat PA.  Some guys named Fletcher & Munson did lots of research years ago on this hearing phenomenon, resulting in the Fletcher – Munson curves.  (Google it if this is completely new to you – fascinating stuff.)  In working with the main speakers, I’m looking to smooth them out sonically and ideally emulate a Fletcher-Munson curve (smooth cut in the PA that starts around 1k and has its deepest point at 4 or 5k before returning to normal by 10k).

I go back and forth between measuring a 2 second sine sweep in order to graph frequency response and listening to a playlist of room tuning songs from my iPod that I’ve been using for this purpose for years and KNOW how they should sound.  Often times you can over-tune a set of speakers by going crazy with every little dip and peak on a frequency response curve, but the real test is how it actually sounds with music.  The magic is in a healthy balance between the two – science and art.  In the end, the ears always win.

Tomorrow we’ll cover delay speakers…

One of the first tasks that I’ve undertaken as I dive headfirst into audio at New Life Church is the tuning of our PA systems in our main rooms.  However, before addressing the journey of each room from where it began to where it has ended up, I thought it would be good to outline as concisely as I can a philosophy for how I think a PA should be configured and what equalizers in the chain should be used for what purpose.  Eventually, over the course of multiple posts, I hope to come around full circle to not only show what I’m trying to accomplish in the room, but how that translates to an audio for video capture process as well.

In my mind there are three places in a system where equalizers normally reside.  CHANNEL EQ –> SYSTEM EQ –> SYSTEM PROCESSOR. We’re going to talk about them out of this order in order to get my point across so here we go…

First is the channel EQ that exists on the mixing console.  I view the responsibility of this part of the chain to provide correction or artistic shaping of the interaction between a microphone and an instrument or vocal.  If a mic is too woofy on a vocal or a guitar amp is too harsh (and you’ve already tried to improve the situation at the source by working with the artist), the channel EQ is the place to make the necessary adjustments.  Carrying this out, once you’ve made all of the corrections to the various inputs, you should then be able to listen to the results of this mix through headphones or record the left/right mix and play it back on another speaker system and have a good representation of what you intended the mix to sound like.  It shouldn’t be too bright or too dull because you’ve fixed all of those individual combinations on the channel strips.

The second equalizer/processing location in a large sound system is the system processor which addresses the PA speakers themselves – the crossover points of a bi or tri-amped system, signal delay necessary to get all of the speakers arriving in a common time domain, and equalization that addresses the natural interactions between all of the speakers in an overall system.  Normally this degree of processing occurs inside a system processor – a Dolby Lake, BSS London, proprietary amplifier, or in my case, Shure P4800′s.  It is located in the chain directly before the signal coming from the sound mixer hits the amplifiers that drive the various speakers.

The final equalizer/processing location is the overall system equalizer.  This point in the chain falls between the output of the mixer and the input to the system processor/amplifier/speakers.  Sometimes this processing point might be combined into the system processor, in the old days it used to be simply a trusty 31 band stereo graphic equalizer.  The purpose of this equalization step is to optimize and correct the speaker system as a whole to the acoustics of the room where it is located.  If the room is boomy or harsh, live or dead, etc. the system EQ allows the engineer to craft the overall sound of the speakers so that what comes out of the mixer sounds transparent (meaning what came out of the mixer is what comes out of the speakers) in the room.

I outlined the three parts in the order I did because I kind of look at them in that order of mental processing as well.  The channel EQ corrects for individual inputs and builds the mix itself, the system processor corrects for all of the individual speakers and amplifiers and builds them into a cohesive system, and then the system EQ is the glue that brings those first two pieces together into what is heard in the room.  If any of those three places in the chain is not properly optimized, the overall product will suffer.

The primary goal I’m trying to achieve as I think about these three parts of the sound system is transparency.  I want what sound came out of the console to come out of the speakers with the same sonic characteristics (transparency).  The simplest way to test this is to play a known recorded track (I have a playlist of songs that I use to test how a PA sounds) through the speakers and see if what comes out sounds like how I know that track should sound because I’ve listened to it thousands of times through hundreds of different PA’s – the balance of low end to top end, the harshness or lack thereoff, the warmth of the system, etc.  Why does this matter?  Because if the PA is not transparent, if what comes in is NOT what goes out on the other end, I’m going to have to make corrections somewhere else in the chain (normally at the same places on every channel’s EQ) to make the mix work and this will likely compromise that board mix.  It also makes it far more difficult for a more novice engineer to achieve a great mix unless they are more comfortable with channel EQs or for me to get something great happening quickly because I’m going to have to apply more corrective EQ which will take more time to dial in.

In my experience, the biggest weakness I find in installed PA systems is in the optimization of the system EQ.  More often than not (and exactly what I’ve dealt with at NLC.tv), the system EQ does not make the PA system transparent.  Playing an iPod track through the console without any channel EQ will sound far different coming out of the speakers than it would listening through good headphones on the console or a different speaker system.  The core sonic characteristics of the song do not translate through the room.  As a result, the engineer needs to apply channel EQ to correct for these room problems in order to start mixing with a blank canvas.  In our iPod example this can be easily done because we’re only talking about a single stereo input.  However, explode this out to a 6 or 7 piece band, 5-8 vocals, and 30 or more channels and the task can be far more daunting.  The byproduct is that the L/R board mix, which often feeds video recording or internet feeds, suffers greatly.  All of the board mix changes that are made to make inputs work in the poorly tuned room are more drastic than what was really needed so the L/R mix isolated by itself is nothing to be excited about.

Next time we’ll start getting specific about a tuning philosophy to correct these problems.

This is a video version of a workshop from the October 2009 AES show in New York City called Audio Myths workshop by Ethan Winer. In this video you will hear what phase shift sounds like, compare high- and low-end converters, learn about proper test methods, understand why hearing is not as reliable as test gear, and much more. So set aside an hour when you won’t be disturbed, and enjoy.

The original high quality example Wave files mentioned can be downloaded from Ethan’s web site: http://www.ethanwiner.com/aes

I recently ran across the work of another audio engineering legend that is worth checking out.  The names of the people he has worked with are too many to list, but when one mentions musicians like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Eddie Harris, Quincy Jones, Jennifer Lopez, and even Michael Jackson, a great deal is immediately understood.

Mr Swedien wrote a book in 2004 called Make Mine Music that gives away detailed information from his lifetime in the studio-from a musical, technical, and very personal perspective. This book has something for everyone who is interested in music, especially those curious about the stories behind the scenes of some of the best music to ever come out of the recording studio.  I came across the book in 2005 but had forgotten I even owned it.  Upon rediscovery, there are too many pearls of audio wisdom in this book to list.

Being such a fan of Bruce, it was with great interest that I found this snippet a few weeks ago on ProSoundWeb from the book that is solid content for anyone who practices this artform of mixing modern music.  Here Bruce writes about developing your own “audio personality” for how you evaluate what you hear and translate it into an actual mix “product”.

Do yourself a favor and check this out. If you’re like me and the article resounds with you, pick up the book.  I think you’ll be glad you did!

In the past few days I’ve come across a resource for church audio that I think everyone associated with house of worship markets should know about called OwnTheMix.com. I’ve never seen anything like this so please consider this a must investigate for your team!

From their website…OwnTheMix.com is a comprehensive audio training solution for the modern church. Created by Buckhead Church’s Audio Director, Dustin Whitt, and Music Director, Chris Green, you will learn secrets to creating irresistible worship environments. Whether novice or professional, there is plenty for everyone inside. Subscribers have an all-access pass to every video, and are connected to all of OwnTheMix.com’s users through a state-of-the-art social network that includes forums, blogs, and groups based on like interests or topics.  What makes this content unique is that there is an important balance between tech & music – they get the necessity of this unique partnership that is so critical to audio success in churches.

Training topics include basic EQ, compression, and gating for bass, electrics, keys, drums, & vocals, miking instruments, combat mixing, console gain structure, basic drum tuning for engineers, mixing musically, EQ and mic placement for speech, transitions, working with musicians, working with drummers, and much more.  There’s also training content that currently focuses on the Digidesign Venue platform, although videos are coming soon that will also train on Aviom & the Yamaha M7CL.  Finally there are several multi-part interviews with other members of the Northpoint audio team such as Dave Stagl and Chris Briley, and notable FOH engineers such as Jeff Sandstrom (Chris Tomlin).

A 1-year subscription starts at $200 for a single seat and the price per seat goes down as you add more users from your organization to the site.  The really cool thing is that if they were to put an accurate price tag on what is taught in this site, it wouldn’t be affordable for many churches.  The value is extremely high!  If you paid a contract soundguy $50 an hour to run your Sunday services just for one morning, you’ve paid for an entire year of training for a committed volunteer. The site really is one-of-a-kind and content is still being added weekly.

I’m proud to say Kensington Church has secured a license for our entire audio team and I will be leading our team through this content over the coming year.  It has been on my heart for months to find a way to focus on basic audio concepts and develop more of a culture of organized continuing education for the team but had yet to find a means that would be the right fit.

I showcased a new book I picked up this past winter called “Mixing Audio” on this blog that is the best resource I’ve ever read for the art of mixing music.  The problem is that a large percentage of our audio team are also campus tech directors or work full time jobs in other industries entirely, so I expected a tough sell to get everyone to read such a large, focused book and get together for discussions.

OwnTheMix is perfect for us because we can “assign” a handful of videos for guys to watch on their own time that are reasonably short for those with ADD attention spans (it seems most average 3-6 minutes) and pack lots of solid concepts in each one.  Then we’ll meet together every other week for an hour to unpack what we’re learning and discuss questions or applications.  I’m excited to see what God will do in our team over the coming months!

I can’t recommend this resource enough.  If you are involved in church audio in any way, RUN to this site and sign up for you and your team.  I’m certain you won’t be disappointed!

Ok here we go…

The first sample is the snare and overheads.  I’m flipping the delay in and out on the snare channel every 4 beats.  The biggest place you’ll hear the difference is in the body of the drum.  The non aligned signal sounds really thin compared to the time aligned one.

The second sample is the entire kit with delay and without delay.  In order to make it easier to compare as you’d like, I included these as separate files.  First, the delayed and time aligned kit.

Second, the non aligned kit.

As you can see, maybe its subtle – I’m not sure how its translating across the web, MP3 compression, etc.  In my room, the difference is pretty huge when you’re trying to get great individual tones and make everything play nice together.

If you mix on a digital console, this post is REALLY important.  Unless you’ve been mixing under a rock, I’m sure you’ve heard about time aligning your drum mics.  I’ve been reading about others’ results with this for a long time but have never been faithful to time align every time I mix because most of the samples I’ve heard of before and after have been less than convincing.  My prejudice, and maybe yours as well if you’ve heard similar samples, is that time alignment on the console using channel delays is a 2% mix improvement step, not a 15% or larger mix thing.  Because of our intense pace at Kensington, it has been hard to have the discipline to time align every time.

When I was mixing on a PM1D every week, I made an effort each time to time align by ear and just slide back the snare, hat, and tom mics back to the overheads by anywhere from 2-6 milliseconds.  The difference was noticeable but still what I would consider a minor “glue” thing – certainly not earth-shattering.  When I moved to the Venue, I kind of set the time alignment stuff aside for a few months in order to focus on more core tasks and efficiencies.  A few months ago, I began to revisit time alignment and this time, for some reason, the results really were a game changer.  I’m not sure exactly what to attribute that to, but I can share some tips on the overall approach I’ve settled on that seems to give the best results.  If you haven’t tried this, I would suggest you should and see if it makes as big a difference for you as it did for me.

My goal in time aligning is so that the tone of a drum (let’s use the snare as an example) will sound nearly the same when listening to the close mic as when the overheads are added in.  What I found a few months ago in the run up to Easter was that it was bothering me to get a snare sound I liked with the close mic and by the time the overheads were where I wanted them that tone was destroyed.  Pull the overheads out and the snare tone would go back to where I wanted it.  What I found was that I was hearing a combination of overheads with too low of a high-pass filter setting and comb filtering between the close mic and overheads.

I should preface that there are two different philosophies for overheads on a drum kit.  The first is to place them strictly as cymbal mics.  For some music styles or drummers, this is necessary in order to get the expected mix results.  The other option is to use them as an overall kit mic that just so happens to have cymbals as a focus point.  In this scenario, the high-pass filter will likely be set lower than it would for cymbal micing applications – probably 100-200 hz instead of 500 hz plus for cymbals.  Another important part of the kit mic approach is using mics in a X-Y pattern over the kit.  I go back and forth between a Rode NT4 and Shure KSM141s on the Shure stereo adaptor bar.

The first step to the results I want is to use the overheads as kit mics and still set the high-pass around 250 hz.  This allows the overheads to still be the glue for the kit but the close mics to provide the “in your face” body of the sound.

Next, each mic is delayed back to the overheads.  I’ve found the easiest way for me to do this is to have the drummer give me a quarter notes on each drum and record that into PT.  (If you don’t have PT, instead of this technique, just go drum by drum and have the player give quarter notes while you dial each mic in)  Once in PT, I zoom in closely on those hits and measure the difference in time between each of the close mics and the overhead.  The results are usually somewhere between 40-160 samples.  (You could also do this with milliseconds but because PT & Venue can go to samples resolution, that’s what I use)  When you have it right, its the first time in my life that there is a negligible difference between the tone of the close mic and once you put the overheads in.

Next time I’ll post some samples that will hopefully convince you.  This topic has been written about all over the web so if I’ve piqued your interest, start digging into it and feel free to ask questions here.

The food you eat is mostly factory farmed – grown in chemicals manufactured in a chemical works. But is your music ‘factory farmed’ too, and does it sound like it?

I’m processing through the implications of this thought as it applies to our church.  In this age of digital consoles, large mic inventories, protools, vintage “plug-ins”, and virtual soundcheck, the raw number of tools available to “do” audio is mind-bending.  But how do you make sure that you don’t process and process to the point where the music itself looses something that makes it real and emotional?

This was brought to mind recently when I was watching a interview on TV with one of the producers of the new film from the James Bond series, Casino Royale.

One of the points the producer was very keen to make was that the stunts, which of course are expected in a James Bond movie, were ‘organic’ compared to most current films. ‘Organic’ was exactly the word he used, and he meant that the stunts were done for real rather than being achieved by digital fakery, and that the only manipulation done was to remove the wires that support and protect the stunt artists.

In film, it is certainly true that since the impossible can now be achieved quite easily, that even the most spectacular scenes lose their value because the audience knows that they have been created by digital artists rather than having been performed for real.  We’ve all experienced this.

And the same applies to music performance. Music is a form of emotional communication, and when an instrument is played by a skilled performer, it can conduct that emotion from composer, through performer to listener. But when machines are allowed to have too much influence, then that emotional connection is broken. Yes, the notes, rhythms and timbres remain, but the subtleties that make music truly involving are lost.

Non-organic food is grown using chemicals made in factories (and farmed animals eat food grown from chemicals). Organic food is grown in, er, poop (odd that the promoters of organic farming usually fail to make that clear).  Non-organic music does often start with good DNA (to continue the analogy), but then it goes through the machine process and is liberally treated with pesticides (quantization) before being packaged and sold to the public.

Organic music may have a few rough edges (like spotty organic apples), but the flavor and nutritional value is retained, and is simply more satisfying to consume. And in organic farming, there is no rule that says machines can’t be used, so machines can be used in music too. Just as long as they long as they add goodness to the music, not take it away.

I don’t know how to apply this to what I do, but I realize how important it is.

This one has been in the queue for weeks now. I found a really well done article by the ubiquitous Fletcher on ProSoundWeb a few weeks ago that should be required reading by the upcoming engineers that are a part of our team at Kensington. I’m going to reprint it below…you can find it for yourself here. While his perspective directly references recorded music, the same applies to the art we create as live audio engineers.

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When I was coming up as an engineer one of my mentors said something that I carry to every session: “There are two parallel universes in recorded music – greatness and perfection. At times they can touch, but they never intersect. And if you have to pick one, pick greatness”.

This was an absolutely life changing moment, and these are words I’ve tried to live by ever since.

There are times when a wrong note is very much the right note. There are times when a small timing error makes a song come to life. There are cases when an instrument or vocal being slightly out of tune makes the whole presentation seem so real, and well… great!

And then there are other times when these flaws are indeed flaws (in fact, it’s the majority of times), but still, there are those “magic moments” that pop up from time to time that are “wrong” but in the grand scheme of things they’re unrepeatable and exceptionally right.

I was hanging at a local brew pub with my girlfriend a few weeks ago and this topic came up. She loves music, but blissfully knows nothing about the process employed for the creation of recorded music product.

In an attempt to illustrate my point I referenced a project with which I’m involved that had one of these magic moments occur. To the protest of the guitar player who came in a half step off but recovered in an amazing manner, his “clam” is not only still on the recording, but prominently featured in the final mix.

My girlfriend never knew it’s a clam, and frankly, if you weren’t in the room when it was being recorded, you’d never know it’s a clam either. But to the guitar player, it was a clam, and that clam needed to be fixed.

Her point: how could it be wrong when it sounds so right? My point to the guitar player: it wasn’t wrong because it absolutely drove home the point and intention of the song.

Technically it was a clam because the guitar player had never intended to play the note, and he broke my cookies about wanting to fix it for a couple of days until the tracking session concluded.

It wasn’t until then, when the sound was broken down, that I won the battle. The clam stayed. It made the song, and most importantly, the artist (who is not the guitar player) loved it as much as I did.

Another example: a couple of years ago, I was working on a project in Nashville with a friend, and after the session one night he broke out two copies of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.

One copy was the 5.1 mix, the other the original Alan Parsons “quad” mix, and my friend both on his hard disk recorder and could toggle between the two presentations with the press of a single button.

This was an amazingly eye-opening experience. Pretty much everyone has heard this album at some point, and there are countless discussions on the internet ‘engineering forums’ about the sounds on that album.

The audio presentation is often touted as being pretty close to the pinnacle of audio/sonic production. As my friend and I listened to the two mixes, the difference between the 5.1 remix and the original “quad” mix was absolutely amazing. The 5.1 sounded wonderful. All of the sounds gelled and flowed into the other, and the audio was beyond superb. I could easily see myself slipping into the old leather Lazy-Boy to be enveloped by the aural perfection that is the 5.1 presentation of “Dark Side”.

Not so fast!

The quad mix of this album has none of the politeness and aural soothing elements of the 5.1 presentation. In fact, it’s very possibly one of the most pissed off albums I’ve ever heard (including NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” or the Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks”). It’s raw, it’s edgy, it’s gripping, it’s poignant, it’s frustrated, and it’s, in a word… GREAT!

The Alan Parsons quad mix is angry, the 5.1 mix isn’t. The 5.1 mix is about as perfect a mix as can be achieved, while the quad mix is just sheer raw emotion.

Now, without the point of reference of the original quad mix from the original production team, the 5.1 presentation is still a whole lot of fun. But when referenced to the original presentation from the original production team, we find a place where “perfection” definitely did not triumph over greatness.

And maybe that’s what’s missing from a lot of today’s music… a little slice of greatness and emotion.

Although I’ve never met him, I’ve learned so much from reading Dave Rat’s thoughts over the past few years on his blog (there’s a link in my blogroll if you have never read his stuff) and on various forums that I consider him an audio mentor. He released an article for ProSoundWeb last week on when hearing starts to drift and how to avoid being “EQ Oblivious”. It’s really great stuff to think about. All of us in audio or music in general have to be concerned with the longevity of our hearing. Good thoughts here.

Along the way reading this article, I ran across a few others that he’s written over the past year for PSW that are all must-reads as well. Check them out:

When Hearing Starts to Drift, How to Avoid Becoming “EQ Oblivious”

Dynamics Versus Compressed

Sometimes Sound is About Time

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that one of my mixing heros is Robert Scovill. A few days ago I ran across one of his writings regarding using subgroups and VCAs when mixing and the place for both. I’ve heard this talk live but its well articulated here and worth a read. Continue on…

“While there are many new and exciting styles of groups coming online with the outbreak of digital live sound consoles, for the purposes of this article, I’m only going to concentrate on two styles: “audio sub groups” and “VCA groups.”

Given that the vast majority of consoles, analog or digital, offer these two styles of groups, I strongly encourage you to thoroughly understand the differences between them and work toward using them.  While many mix engineers tend to use one or the other, they are certainly not mutually exclusive of one another, and when used correctly and together, are a very powerful tool.

Let’s start with audio sub groups. Audio sub groups are generally either mono or stereo and, by definition, provide a summing point for a given number of inputs before they then head off to the left/right master output.  This means that any number of audio inputs can be directed through the audio sub group and the group as a whole can then be moved up or down in volume. By soloing an audio sub group, and listening in headphones, you can then monitor the fader balances of all inputs that are feeding the group, including their pan position.

For example, with the push of the group solo button on a drums group you could listen to the relative blend of all the drum mics and, in turn, affect the overall level of the drum kit in the PA system by moving the group fader without having to change the input fader positions. The input faders would still be feeding any post-fader aux busses even though the audio sub group fader would be at zero.  Additionally, because audio is actually passing through the group, it will usually offer an insert point where you can patch in equalizers or compressors and limiters which, of course, would affect the drum mix as a whole in the PA system.

This is where the difference between audio sub groups and VCA groups comes to light. A Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA) does not offer an actual audio path for the inputs assigned to it. Instead, once a number of inputs are assigned to the VCA fader, it essentially works as remote control of the assigned faders.  For example, if you had a blend of eight input faders and you assigned them all to a VCA group, once you move the VCA group fader down, it is exactly as if you simply reached over and pulled the actual input faders down.  The relative levels between the faders would remain the same, but the levels to any post-fader aux buses would now change by how far down in level you moved the VCA master.  VCAs, generally speaking, do not allow you to solo the group unless it is a destructive style “solo in place” because of the lack of audio passing through the group.  Likewise, it does not offer you the ability to insert external processing on the group as a whole.

So, with these concepts now in mind-I’m recommending the following to those of you who have both audio sub groups and VCA groups on your console. Use them both. But use them for different tasks.

Start by using your audio sub groups to assemble the components of your event mix into groups. For example, 1-drums-loops & percussion, 2-bass, 3-keys, 4-guitars, 5-backing vocals, 6-lead vocals, 7-pastor, 8-media.  Once done, then assign these groups to the left/right master output. Try to stay disciplined and keep like inputs in their respective groups.

Say you have a reverb unit dedicated to the drums – assign the reverb return faders to the drums group. This allows you to listen to the actual blend of the drum inputs against the reverb return while soloing the drums audio group.  Likewise, if you mute the drums audio group, you’ll no longer hear the reverb return, even though the drum inputs are still feeding it.

Now all of your VCAs are available for doing what I like to think of as “focused” mixing. Now you can assign VCAs to inputs that you need access to for any given segment of your event. They’re located in one position and available for immediate level manipulation.  Maybe you have a VCA that is simply assigned to only the kick and snare or just the cymbals, maybe even just the toms. Any of these allows you to accentuate a given fill or breakdown in a song with the movement of one single fader.

Or maybe you have the percussion assigned to its own VCA, with those inputs living as a part of the drums audio sub group. It all just depends on what you need to get to at any given time.

This is a wonderful workflow for digital consoles and even some analog consoles, in that you can program the VCA assignments dependent upon what you need to get to at any given time.  It’s all up to your imagination and, if done properly, there is rarely an excuse for missing cues because you were late finding the fader.”

From Robert Scovill’s live audio master class at Willow, a paraphrased pearl of wisdom:  great mixers enhance what’s happening…experience the music as you listen, let it talk to you musically, and enhance it as a MIX.

Live mixing is about well placed exaggeration.  Because it is an audio/visual experience, what you hear needs to match what you’re seeing.  On a recording, the audio doesn’t have to keep up with the visual at all – the visual is in your imagination.  But in live world, huge visual activity needs to match what you’re doing and seem like you’re working together with it.  For example, the spotlight hits somebody or a featured camera shot – your mix needs to change in level for whatever is featured.  When music comes back in, pull it back where it belongs.

In tandem with coherence, can we finally put to rest the idea that our goal when tuning a rig is to have a “flat” PA?

Below is a graphic Chris Gille found on Wikipedia that shows the equal loudness contour graph.

If you flip it upside down as pictured, it shows the relative frequency response of our ears.

As you can tell, that response changes as the level of sound is increased and do you notice something?  Our ears don’t perceive sound “flat”!  Because of this, a flat EQ curve on a PA sounds awful because all you’re doing when going for flat is getting equal energy at all frequencies.

Rather than working for flat, Scovi suggests the more important “holy grail” is linear transfer.  The goal is to have linear transfer of audio from the desk through the sound system with as little coloration to the signal as possible.  What goes in is what comes out.

In order to achieve this, the RTA is NOT the right tool to use – all it does is measure energy.  The correct meter is FFT which generates a difference curve of the PA output as measured in the room to the output straight of out the console.  When you subtract 5 dB at 400 hz on a channel, you should hear 5 less dB of 400hz actually in the house.

(WARNING: Major sound geek talk here.  Proceed at your own risk!!!!)

Robert Scovill spent much more time in the master class at Willow this year discussing his concept of coherence then he was able to in the Thriving class last year and it really resonated with me. This one seems to get progressively more difficult to wrap your brain around the more you think about it and try to implement into your room.

The core question is can two like signals be in polarity yet out of phase? We’ll stop here for a second so you can re-read that question a few times.

The answer is obviously yes! The answer to this question is found in signal to noise ratio. I’ve always thought of this in terms of evaluating gear – low noise floor, quiet, etc. But in the world of coherence, signal represents the sound you want to hear, noise is the sound you don’t.  Two signals in polarity that are also in phase will be arriving at the listener’s ear at the same time, although they come from two different sources.  What is this called?  Time alignment.

This concept effects everything we do as engineers and paying attention to it can add a whole new dimension to your mix. Scovi suggests there are three levels of coherence and success means experiencing the perfect storm of these:

1. Sound system. This one is largely scientific – minimal destructive interaction between PA boxes for any one listener, a high signal to noise ratio in the interaction of the designed array with the room, and high signal to noise ratio in the interaction of the PA and the stage. “All instruments are exiting the sound system at the same time.”

2. Performance. Scovi suggests this one is a combination of artistic discipline and scientific challenges/conclusions. This one is more band related – everyone playing in time, good inputs and execution.

3. Mix. Coherence in this area requires attention to detail – mic placement, inputs in polarity and phase with each other, and achieving the highest signal to noise ratio possible in the mix through successful use of gating, compression, and fader moves.

He gave an interesting example of the importance of phase and time alignment/interaction that I’ll never forget. He was mixing Tom Petty or Pink Floyd (I don’t remember which) in Europe as part of a large multi-day festival. The PA sounded awful throughout the whole event and he was dreading having to step up and deal with it in making his band the best they could be. The PA was configured with two rows, 6 or 8 speakers each stacked on top of each other per side, lined up side by side with no splay at all. Because of this, he made the assumption that the primary reason for sucky-ness was phase cancellation and comb filtering.

Just before the band hit the stage, he had the guitar techs go into secret ninja mode and unplug every other cabinet in the PA, alternating top to bottom as well, along with him bypassing the house EQs. The result was magnificent – easily the best mix of the festival. The PA crew was dumbfounded at the difference and in awe of Scovi’s skills when in reality the only thing he did different from all the other engineers was value the concept of coherence. (For the record, the techs plugged all of the PA cabinets back in when his set was done!)

“The difference between greatness and mediocrity is not measured by the quality of the tools at your disposal – rather in the quality of the approach.” – Robert Scovill

“Take what a man makes and use it, but do not worship it, for it shall pass” – unknown

“It’s not about the stuff, it’s about what they did with the stuff” – Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten

I’ve written on this before, but I think there’s some new pearls here from Scovi in one of his breakouts at Willow this year. Such an important part of the game that is live audio is making the artist comfortable with you regardless of what your actual skills are. So often audio guys keep the gig because of a high credibility score and it has absolutely nothing to do with audio skills. It’s important to show people we’re really together, organized, ready to go…they can trust us. Nothing will serve the team better then you being a trusted, professional engineer. God is in the details – why aren’t we detailed people? Develop into a detail oriented pro!

Poorly handled “tasks” can be the enemy of your credibility. Things in the wrong places on stage, no power, not on time, not ready to go.

“The difference between greatness and mediocrity is not measured by the quality of tools at your disposal – rather the quality of the approach.” Over rated, under paid dude with lots of TEC awards on his shelf

Here’s some ideas on how to improve your score that are really close to my heart right now…

Be accountable as the audio engineer. It’s really simple to say but can be much harder to do. This behavior is infectious and nothing will raise your credibility score more than saying its my fault, I did that, and then making sure it never happens again. That last part is most important because you’ll only be allowed to mess up so many times and it will be time to find a new seat on the bus or a new role to play. Learn from every mistake and only make the same ones once.

Do not make problems mysterious. Digital consoles don’t do things all by themselves – they must have human interaction. Computers seldom just hiccup. Wireless mics rarely just turn off during a service or aren’t ready for an artist on their own. Most times if something doesn’t happen the way we intended, its ultimately our fault and it requires courage, confidence, and humility to be accountable to the rest of your team.

My friend Dave shared more excellent insight a few weeks ago on his journey growing audio guys at Northpoint. It is an excellent read and a unique analogy I’ve never thought of before.

Here’s another gem, this time from Joel Paige, formerly the tech director at Kensington. This is from the “Excellence in audio through pre-production” breakout in 2005. Again, it’s so well stated that here’s an exact quote…

“Why is it important to be prepared technically? The value of “having the table set”. When you have guests over for dinner, your goal is to have the table set for them when they arrive. You don’t want to be vacuuming or still picking up…you’re prepared for them. Our goal in production is also to have the table set for our artists…when they walk in the door we want to be prepared to do whatever we need to do for them to create their art. Otherwise, not only could it be catastrophic in regards to missing cues and not being prepared technically, it’s also not going to be a great environment to create art. Our job is to be the facilitator and enabler for the creation of excellent art through the creation of the proper environment.”

I learned a long time ago the importance of having the table set before the artists arrive and now do it subconsciously, but I never stopped and thought about why. This is another quality that I think sets audio engineers apart.  My philosophy has always been to take care of my artists – whether making sure the stage is ready and tested for rehearsal, or helping our speakers put on their headset mics and packs.  It’s cool to hear a deliberate perspective on the why.

So I’m working my way through discs of Willow tech breakouts from this year and the past several and taking notes as I go of things worth remembering. Robert Scovill gave this “pearl” in passing during his class last year and I think it is worth a post all it’s own. It’s so masterfully stated that I’m going to quote it word for word. So much is made of gear skills and the ability to mix, but there’s more to it than that…

“There are better mix engineers on this planet no doubt about it. But they don’t have the people skills and they don’t keep the gig. The best thing going for me is that the artist believes in me and believes that it is never going to get out of hand when I step behind the console. That, for them, is way beyond my mixing skills. Don’t make yourself this mysterious entity at the back of the room…interact, be their ally.”

In my experience, that “it” factor really has earned me more gigs and helped me keep them than anything else. I don’t know how you teach that confidence/knowledge/peace…it seems through failures and growing, you just develop it. For me, one of the highest compliments I have been paid is that someone knows when I’m behind the console, everything will go well and that it is under control.  I think that “it” factor is something every audio engineer, and technical artist for that matter, should strive for.

I used to think that successful church mixing in a high-impact environment was a mixture of two aspects: technical & artistic. In the KCC environment on a weekend, for example, I treat the first couple hours of rehearsal as technical mixing, getting EQs, compressors, and other band stuff happening and the console programmed so everything feels good. Then the second half of rehearsal, transitions into musical mixing.

I’m learning, however, that the importance of leadership, a “righteous confidence” of sorts, within the larger context often times gets lost in the audio engineer job description, especially in places like KCC where one engineer covers both the house mix and monitors. Over the years I’ve listened to lots of guys who, given good tools and enough rehearsal time, can make a good mix. But I’m learning it takes more than just being able to make a good mix to be successful in our church world.

In a normal band gig setting, a band leader or musical director runs the show and everyone looks to him – arrangements, tone, soundchecks, booking, morale, and on and on. In our culture at KCC, we are not set up to expect the same total leadership from band leaders – they are another piece in the larger puzzle and fall under the same direction as the audio engineer from the service director and technical director. It isn’t best or realistic to expect them to lead their own soundcheck or know what the audio guy needs in regard to getting the most from their rehearsal so the service is flawless.

I suggest it is the audio engineer’s job to be the band’s partner and advocate – the phantom band member – ESPECIALLY when one engineer is responsible for both stage and house. The engineer needs to provide consistency and leadership through setup, sound check, and rehearsal so the band has everything they need to feel confident and comfortable in their part of the service. Proper leadership naturally brings repore and trust between the band and engineer.

What does it look like to lead in this way? I think being vocal and present in the band member’s lives on stage during soundcheck, then knowing when to shut up as they transition into their rehearsal – when to give input, when to let them do their thing, when to ask questions over the talkback mic and when to go talk face to face. It is not enough to stay in the booth and make changes when requested with an amazing God mic voice! The band needs to see you on stage listening to them and their mixes, engaging with them personally both on the stage and in the green room, running back and forth between the stage and the booth, and SHOWING them you are busting your tail for their sake. No amount of pre-production and setup will negate the necessity of this role during the actual rehearsal.

The result of doing this right is that the band will play better because they can concentrate on the music and not have to worry about how they are being presented to the thousands of people who will listen to them in a given service. In fact, leading seems to take care of many potential troublespots all by itself because the attitudes of the band and tech are positive and filled with more grace. When the effective leadership elements are missing, band members naturally resort to the same negative forms of communication and leadership that they often experience in the outside band world since they likely feel abandoned and without an advocate.

It is important to note that what matters is what the band perceives as leadership. Someone can have excellent intentions and be doing all the correct technical steps to fix problems and take care of a band, but if the band doesn’t perceive the advocate, or they feel it takes too long to get an appropriate solution, if it’s even accomplished at all, the battle is lost regardless. The trick is to both fix problems, make things the best they can be, make everyone feel comfortable and also make sure the band can obviously see that when things go wrong you’re on top of it and working hard for them by being intentional in the process with them.

I used to think what was missing in so many sound engineers was mix/gear knowledge deficiencies, and of course this can be true in some cases. But I’m quickly realizing that the order of importance for responsibilities is leadership/personality, then technical mixing, then artistic/musical skills. Without leadership, someone who learns to have good mix chops will still be lost in the fast paced production environment at our church. The reality that there’s never enough rehearsal time, you must prioritize your mix, and a “good mix” is a moving target means the sound engineer must be the leader of the process.

The struggle for me as a leader with years more practical experience than many of the young sound guys I work with is how to teach and empower the leadership element in an effective way. I’m still wading through this and figure I will be for some time as the Lord teaches me and molds me. Teaching technical/mix knowledge is easy, quantifiable, and one-on-one. It can be done in pre-production work, by reading books and websites, and watching someone else run a rehearsal or service. Given enough time, someone gains what they need to be successful in this area. But it seems leading effectively can only be learned by doing – having successes and failures and learning and applying from both. There’s such a delicate balance of letting someone flounder and be uncomfortable when they don’t handle a situation in the best way, allowing them to learn in their discomfort, versus when to step in and solve the problem, teaching through that moment for the sake of the band and rehearsal as a whole.

I think there is great value in intentional mentoring to teach these leadership traits, but I also am learning that I believe they are spiritual gifts that must come out of our personal relationship with Jesus. It’s so easy to put the training obligation on myself and believe I must make them be what they need to be, but that is 100% the wrong direction for me to go. Just as my ability to perform at the level I do is an outpouring of the gifts God has given me and my continued strengthening relationship with Him, I need to be the head cheerleader for our young guys and encourage them to draw closer to the Lord and allow Him to grow them in the skills they need to be effective in their confidence and leadership.

Wow….

Conclusion: technically or artistically perfect mixing is important and necessary, but blending those skills with successful leadership and personality really is the element that sets engineers apart in the church culture and is what I think we need to be focusing on in our mentoring over the coming months. Thank you, Jesus, for this lightbulb moment today!!!

Here’s the first “pearl” from Dave Stagl’s blog…this is one of the best summations of an important element of life as an engineer inside a church like Kensington or North Point that I’ve ever read.

The word “loud” is a funny thing. It is a word that gets thrown around quite a bit, but doesn’t necessarily mean what the word really means. While “loud” complaints sometimes mean that “you’re hurting my ears with this volume”, I’ve found that a lot of times it really means “I don’t like this style of music.” As Travis mentioned in his comment, figuring out which complaints to really listen to and which ones to ignore can be an art form in and of itself.

While I’ve gotten to the point where I can hold my own on translating these comments/complaints, the beauty of my position/role is that I don’t typically have to make decisions in regards to them. I will push back when I need to, but I don’t typically need to. I was having lunch with Tom, one of our FOH volunteers, this afternoon, and he just completely nailed what our role is with something that one of his instructors drilled into him when he was at Full Sail sometime ago:

We are not producers. We are engineers.

At my present gig, I am fortunately blessed with the opportunity to work my own tastes into play and can play the role of audio producer/artist to an extent. However, I know that ultimately I am not the final decision maker. I am here to serve our producers and service programming leadership. If we are loud, it is because several people with more responsibility than me want it that way. If we are quiet, it’s the same deal. I put it where they want it. I have my own tastes and they do tend to run in line with my superiors, but when they don’t I’m here to serve my leadership. Sound reinforcement is a support service in AND out of the church. When you have a clear understanding and definition of who you’re serving, you are on the road to a win.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)