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Thursday, January 05, 2012

Church Sound: “Cheating” In The Mix To Dial In Unfamiliar Performers?

Preparing for the best possible result - on the fly

In the eyes of some people, I “cheat” when mixing. 

This cheating usually takes place when I’m working with a band and/or singers that I don’t know that well.

One of the common things that we face in church production today is “the worship team” - usually four to five singers that vocally lead the service or presentation.

Too many times to count, I’ve found myself mixing and not knowing a single person on the team. It’s also common not to have an opportunity to rehearse with them beforehand.

It’s a less than ideal situation, but it happens.

And this is when I turn to cheating, or, as I prefer to call it, prepare for the best possible result:

1) I make sure that all the vocalist have matched mics, and ideally a mic I’m very familiar with (like a Shure SM58);

2) I preset the gain on the channel to all match at the anticipated level needed;

3) I preset the channel EQ of those mics to the anticipated EQ based upon what I know about the performance characteristics of the mics;

4) I set all of channel faders to the same level;

5) And, this is the one where I get called the most on cheating: I use meters to initially set the mix, not my ears.

The how of this is a bit more complex than the why. The minute the singers start singing, I “solo” (or pre-fade listen, PFL) each of them, one at a time.

This is done without headphones on because I need to be very quick to get the mix under control.

During the PFL process, I look at the meters, and work to match the level of all of the singers. If I know who the leader of the group is (if there is one), I set his/her gain 3 dB hotter than the others.  The logic behind this: when I look at my faders while mixing, I have an accurate visual representation of the mix. By the way, I do the same for the band.

My personal goal is to have a live able mix with in the first 30 seconds.

Once I get a “livable’ mix, I go back to PFL, but with headphones this time. With Sharpie in hand, I listen to each vocalist separately, mark his/her channel with either arrows pointing to that person’s respective location on stage, or better yet, if I have four-part vocals I will label them S (for soprano) A (for alto) T (for tenor) and B (for bass). 

With the vocals now properly identified and level matched, I start to use my ears to fine-tune the mix.

Maybe you call this mixing by meters, rather than cheating, but it’s served me very well and I plan to keep on doing it, no matter what it’s called.

Gary Zandstra is a professional AV systems integrator with Parkway Electric and has been involved with sound at his church for more than 25 years.

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