Recording - August 2013 - 18

Splitters, snakes and redundancy
Of course you may end up in a situation
where you need to use your own setup, be
it a physical mixer or a virtual one in your
DAW, independently of the live PA system.
Maybe you want to use better, studio-grade
mics. Maybe you need separate control of
the mix for broadcast or streaming purposes. Or, frankly, maybe you just don’t trust
how the front-of-house guy mixes...!
In this case you may need to add mics
alongside and in addition to those on
stage. Or another option is to bring your
own collection of splitter boxes like the
Radial JS2, where one mic input splits to
two outputs without loss of signal or, worse
yet, grounding issues.

When using multiple mics alongside the
live venue’s collection, be aware that often
the venue’s placement will take precedence
due to the sound of the room, feedback and
bleed issues. In other words, you may have
to make do without getting the sweet spot.
Board tape brainwork
Mixing a board tape during a gig
doesn’t have to be painful guesswork if
you follow a few basic tips. First, if you
can, be somewhere else. In other words,
if you have the cabling to have your
mixer/interface in another room away
from the band, you’ll be better off.... even
if you have to mix using headphones.
This will help you get a more accurate
mix, as mixing in a live venue, even with
headphones, often leads to false impressions of low-end bass response as well as
high-end sources like cymbals, both of
which you may over- or under-mix. Also,
in my experience, vocals always sound
louder on tape than they do in the room.
18

RECORDING August 2013

If you must mix next to the front-of-house
desk, try and use good professional-quality in-ear monitors; I am partial to the Shure
SE series. The isolation will help you deal
somewhat with the sonic issues mentioned
above. Be careful, however, that you do
not confuse the bass you are feeling with
the bass you are hearing!
Occasionally you may be the front-ofhouse live engineer and the 2-track
recording engineer at the same time, and
using the same mix for both. As you try to
capture the best sound for both, it will be
a tightrope walk and you will compromise
elements for each from time to time; just
do it and don’t worry overmuch about it
while you’re doing it. Timidity is worse
than fast decisiveness in such cases!
Lastly, always mix in a pair of room
mics for ambience and audience noise,
as this keeps your recording from sounding too sterile, and makes it sound like the
live concert it actually is.
Mixing a multitrack
Perhaps the nicest thing about a board
mix is that when the gig is over, you are
done. But if you have captured multitrack

audio, the real fun and creativity can happen after the show is over. Here are a few
things to consider when mixing down a
live concert from multitrack audio files.
First and foremost: Bleed happens. Get
over it and use it to your advantage! You
will hear reflections of the PA in the room,
you will hear the cymbals in the vocal mic,
the guitar amps in the floor-tom mic and so
on. I find it’s best to let that bleed help dictate your panning and instrument placement. If you have your floor tom panned
left, and the guitar cabinet that was next to
it and bleeding is now panned right, it
won’t sound natural at all. I actually find it
handy to take photos of the gig as it is happening, so I can be reminded of where
everyone was.
Second: Avoid excessive gating or
chopping out audio in your DAW.
Remember that a live mix is a blend of
everything, and if the ride cymbals were
bleeding into other mics and you make
those mics cut in and out, it will be more

unnatural and noticeable than the bleed
was in the first place. Similarly, when
eq’ing an instrument, don’t overdo it! If you
make it sound too different from the way it
sounded while bleeding into other mics,
you could have created a problem.
Third: Be careful of heavy-handedly “fixing it in the mix”. While I am fine with studio trickery to save a flawed note or bad
drum fill, again remember that when overdubbing new parts in the studio, you need
to be aware of ghost notes or leakage of
the original performance on other mics still
may exist.
For this reason, when bands are recording a proper live album, I recommend
recording at least three performances of the
same set over a few nights in the same
venue if possible, with the same setup.
Hope that they’ll keep the tempos from night
to night... They should even wear the same
shirts every night, due to fabric-based reflections. (OK, I am joking with that last part.)
But really, try and get the band to think
of it as actors would while filming a movie
where the same scene might be shot over
multiple days. This consistency will allow
you to mix and match takes between

nights, which is much more natural-sounding and believable than a studio punch-in.
Avoid sample replacement, abusive autotuning and grid quantization, as they can
often become apparent for what are hopefully obvious reasons. Hey—it’s supposed
to be live, remember?
My main rule when crafting a live mix is
not to strive for a perfect studio-like representation of a song, but to craft an exciting snapshot of a performer’s live experience. Save the spark and soul and energy, and you won’t go far wrong.
Conclusion
There is a lot to think about when recording a band live, from gear to setups and
more—it’s a complex beast. The good
news is that it has become infinitely easier,
thanks to gear quality going up and gear
size and complexity going down. All of
this allows you, the engineer, to focus on
your creativity and craft and not the tools!
Good luck out there!

Recording - August 2013

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