Hello everyone,
I would like to ask this great community for some advice.
I have been playing synths at home for a couple of years now and have created a small home studio for my personal recordings.
For economic reasons I started to use MIDI controllers and Vst.
I mainly use the plugins arturia V collection X and Korg M1.
I accepted a proposal to play in a band as a tribute to REM.
When I was thinking about how to approach a live show with my instrumentation I discovered GiG performer!
I prepared all the sounds at home (mainly piano/electric piano/organ).
In my home studio I was satisfied, but when I did the first performance with the band these sounds did not render as well as at home.
I know the topic can be complicated, and experience is key, but I wanted to know if you could give me some guidelines on how to create sounds for the live band.
For example, should I avoid using effects, compressors, limiters?
Should I set an equalizer so that I can correct the output of certain frequencies.
What levels (db) should I set the output sounds for the sound card to.
Thank you for any advice you would like to suggest.
This probably won’t help much, but I went through this when I first got back in to playing keyboards. I got a MODX and spent a month or so at home getting all the sounds right, and then was hugely disappointed at the first rehearsal. Pianos sounded honky with too much low end, Brass was thin and shrill, Organs cut through too much etc.
The way I sorted this was to play around with EQ at rehearsals until it sounded better. I know thats not much help, but over the course of 5-6 rehearsals I got used to hearing what was happening and it became easier. The good bit was they still sounded great at home.
I think the biggest hurdle might be getting used to the difference. I also tested the sounds through a PA speaker at home. Not ideal and it was at low level, but it was enough to help get away from the speakers and headphone i had originally been using.
When I got my next synth (Fantom 06) about a year later it was much less of a surprise, and now ive switched to GP and plugins I find I can get close to what I need with a bit of EQ in some of the plugins if needed, and a GEQ in the Global RS to tame the low end, mid honk and top end sizzle.
Every experience is a great help!
It will definitely take time to understand the problems there are in the sounds, it is part of the experience that I don’t have now.
I understand that it is appropriate to put at least an equalizer in my rackspaces so that I can modulate frequencies directly during rehearsals.
And as for output levels to the mixer is there a guideline?
It is a good idea to rehearse at home with other speakers . I think it can be a good practice
Thank you
Im not sure there is a fool proof method for getting levels right. It’s always going to depend on so many variables.
Again, what I do is record all our rehearsals, as this gives me an idea how where each sound is sitting in relation to others, then tweak ready for the next one. Obviously you can also do this at the rehearsal as well. Always keep tweaking until you are happy with it.
I recently got back into playing keyboards after decades of playing only in my personal studio. One thing I have learned… You get everything sounding the way you want it in your studio, then it sounds funny in practice. You get it sounding decent in practice, then go to a gig and it’s all wrong. In the end, most listeners can’t tell the difference anyway. I don’t pay nearly as much attention to quality details as I started out.
Balancing with the rest of the band and standing out when you should and blending in when you should are more important. I have just about settled in with using personal in ear monitors to hear what I want from myself and everyone else, taking a mix from the sound system. I try to make sure I have a steady undistorted signal going to the mixer. And I just have to expect that someone sitting at the mixer is keeping my in balance with the rest of the band. I leave a little head room so I can raise the volume slightly for solos or stand out parts.
Running the analog portion of your signal to near peak might result in a soft clip. But never run a digital part of your signal to peak. Digital doesn’t know how to soften a clip and it gets really harsh really quick. I try to keep the digital portion of my signal peaking around -10 all the way through the chain. Keep a good clean, steady signal and let the sound guy worry about the rest. Hopefully, you are not also the sound guy.
I also had the feeling that the sound of the PA system in our rehearsal studio was quite poor. So I used a calibration plugin at the output of my audio system. It confirmed the poor audio response of the PA system of the rehearsal studio and corrected my sound which is now OK for me.
I used the following calibration plugin, which comes with a calibrated measurement mic:
Before and after calibration is like night and day.
I use it also, perfect for calibrating your speaker environments and also good for headphone calibration.
I bought my Headphone with calibration profile from them.
But I also use VSX from Slate.
This emulates different environments, not cheap but very good.
The very first thing to consider when eqing would be high-pass filtering. It’s very likely that if you play live and there’s a sound engineer on the house, they will do that almost by default on keyboard tracks (not all of them, but many). But when performing without a FOH engineer, which most beginner and even professional bands occasionally have to do, you may need to do that by yourself.
I myself play in a band where I also do ambient transition bits and intros between songs and occasionally have short synth bass passages, so we usually ask FOH to avoid using any high-pass filtering since I do it myself in gig performer. On some sounds I might cut pretty steeply below 100 Hz, occasionally even 120-140 Hz or higher. And then on the bass parts and intro/soundscaping parts I only cut at 30 or 40 Hz since we want that low-end impact and I’m the only one playing so there’s plenty of room. Depens on the sound and the arrangement really.
But overall, cutting the lows will bring loads of clarity on many sounds and it’ll also leave more overall headroom for boosting your sounds when needed. It might at first feel painful when working at home with headphones/studio monitors, but you will find in the next rehearsal that your sounds will fit in much better.
Also, whenever using any bigger reverbs, make sure to filter the lows! Especially low-frequency buildup on reverbs will make your sounds muddy very quickly. Most contemporary reverb and delay plugins will include a low-cut dial. And you can cut quite a bit more drastically on reverbs than on the dry signal.
One basic mixing tip I’ve heard from many mentors is “don’t trust your ears”. Well, at least don’t trust JUST your ears, when balancing your sounds also take a glance at the meters occasionally. I’ve gotten into the habit of sometimes using a LUFS metering plugin to double check that there aren’t too big jumps between sounds.
When I was starting out I would book a practise room at my school just to reference my sounds on an average medium-sized PA system. Throughout the years I have learned to recognize what kinds of sounds will propably sound good live even when preparing them on headphones, but yeah, it surely took some time, trial and error.
Thank you for your recommendations and tips.
I had also considered to try the sounds in the rehearsal room witha PA system , I think that is the only way to take confidence with the sounds
The big difference is that I notice that for example increasing the volume in some sounds brings out frequencies or harmonics that I had not noticed when listening at home.
In general for my band I play Piano/Organ/Piano + Strings and some synth pad.
At the moment, I decided to include an analog equalizer (channel strip FrankCS) in each workspace to adjust the LOW/MID/HIGH frequency with the slider of my midi controller.
In the Global rackspace there is an EQ with a high pass filter, a limiter and a TG Mastering (waves).
I don’t use compression, the limiter is just in case I need help.
I was trying all the sounds to listen that there were no jumps too high , but I only look at the level meter of the sound card , LUFS metering is a good tips
Yes, the meters can’t really tell you how well something will sit in the mix. Only our ears can really do this, and even at different distances it can change. The meters should get you in the right area though. I find with strings ill sometimes just EQ out the higher end and that sits them better in the mix, without needing to lower the volume.
I guess for those with FOH sound guys it’s not. big issue, but for others we have to get it right before as we can’t tell how well it sounds in the room.