“Live Audio”
If there’s anything I can ramble on about, it’d be live audio. In terms of my own background this is where I started and continue to progess. Being comfortable with live audio, the biggest challenge I face is how do I improve my abilites. The idea of a live perfomance, it is a performance after all, and usually a one-off event. It wouldn’t be ideal to get the band on stage to play for hours on end until I’m happy. There’s also so many factors involved in a live event. If you compare this to a studio, they have time and can have the finest detail shine.
I know this band and I do audio for them, either Front of House or In-ears, pretty much on a weekly basis. I should know the band well, or at least I thought I did. Week in, and week out, I just did my thing, and pleased everyone with what they wanted to hear.
This is the board I use and got to know very well. However at the end of the day, it still says Yamaha on it…. A bit about the band, its a six-piece- drum, bass, two guitars, and two keys. There’s also atmost six vocalist. So that there is tweleve in-ear mixes - stereo mixes, so twenty four channels of information for everyone on stage. Plus two more channels for the wedges.
The way this venue is setup, the stage racks sit on stage, and each console is connected over an ethernet cable. Utilizing Audinate’s Dante for our digital audio network. It never really occurred to me that I could simply connect an ethernet cable to my computer and record all the different inputs. So there I had all the stems. The music director was also wondering if I can record each performance so the whole team and listen to what they did and improve on it.
So I had all the stems and I brought it into the studio, and one by one I mixed them in post, taking my time. Having done so, I actually got to know each band memember and the parts to play even better. I recall saying to myself, “Was he really playing that?” So I probably missed it in the live performance. The same for vocals, I can find vey precisely what frequency is that vocalist really sibliant at. I picked up a lot of minor details, but they can make a big difference in the big picture.
By bring the live perfomance into a post enviroment, I really got to know each individual and now I can present them even better when they perform.
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