Live sound veteran Greg Price has seen a lot of changes in his 30 years on the road. An early adopter of Avid VENUE, Price integrated the Avid VENUE D-Show system into his front-of-house work, including on tours with longtime client, metal legend Ozzy Osbourne. And he’s particularly passionate about the system’s tight integration with Pro Tools, which he points to as a paradigm shift in the way music is recorded and performed.
Price recently recorded a six-song live EP for Osbourne during the iTunes Festival in London, tracking with his D-Show System and integrated Pro Tools|HD rig. The tracks were remixed overnight in Los Angeles by Ozzy’s producer, Kevin Churko, and available for paid download the following morning. “VENUE has truly blurred the divide between recording and live performance,” Price observes. “The ability to record actual performances into Pro Tools and play that audio back has enabled us to completely rethink the way we look at production.”
Price expands his use of Virtual Soundcheck, a VENUE feature typically used to save time during sound check, as a tool to help artists evolve their material from album to the stage. “Ever since people began making records, artists have always struggled to achieve the energy of a live performance within the rather sterile, isolated environment of the studio,” he says. “They can spend a month or more in the studio working out arrangements, and then laying down the tracks in piecemeal overdubs.
“But just because it was played one way on the record doesn’t mean that’s the best arrangement for live performance. Once you get the songs out there in front of an audience, it can evolve into a whole new arrangement. That’s where VENUE comes in, enabling us to examine that live arrangement with the same detail as [arranging songs] in the studio.”
This benefit has also dramatically enhanced his relationship with the artist. “They’ve spent a month or so in the studio with a producer, but they might spend upwards of a year on the road with me,” he says. “With the VENUE system, I become an intrinsic part of the production process, working with them to evolve the songs and the arrangements.”
The line between studio and live is further blurred by the VENUE system’s direct support of Pro Tools plug-ins, making it easy to achieve the same sonic performance on stage that went into making the album. “The artists are blown away when they see me pull up the same Fairchild or Pultec [plug-in] they used on the recording,” Price says. “We’ve got all the same tools at our fingertips that they used in the studio, but we can pack it all up and move it to another town the next day.”
For the current Ozzy tour, Price pushed to have a VENUE Profile System on monitors. “Monitor engineers never really get what they need to work with until the band is up on stage, and then it’s a mad dash under pressure to get the sound right,” he says. “How are you going to test the literally thousands of plug-ins available to see how they fit your style of mixing? Sure, you can get a backline guy to play for them, but he’s never going to come close to the real player in terms of style. With Virtual Soundcheck, we record tracks [of the real players] and [then use the tracks as temporary substitute mic sources, so they sound] just the way they play it [to refine the monitor mixes]. Now we’ve done away with the need for high-anxiety sound checks. We’ve done away with the need for the band to even show up for sound check—we’re ready to go when they get there.”
And, he says, those improved monitor mixes makes his job at FOH easier as well. “If it’s not sounding good on stage, there’s nothing I can do at FOH to make it better. It doesn’t matter how many powerful tools I have at my disposal—if the band’s not happy on stage, the performance simply won’t be there.”
Price advocates using Pro Tools at both FOH and monitor positions. “With an artist like Ozzy, I’m hitting record every time anyone steps on stage—I don’t want to miss a moment of the performance. Using VENUE [with Pro Tools] on monitors too gives me a redundant recording device. If something were to happen to my system, the monitor engineer has the exact same recording as FOH.”
