Working primarily in the Midwestern U.S., mix engineer Matt Vice stays very busy, working with bands from the thriving Indianapolis music scene as well as artists hailing from such far-flung locales as New Orleans and the U.K., including New Mastersounds, Old Union, American English, Zoogma, and several others.
Like many in the regional scene, Vice finds himself catering to multiple markets.
Around a third of his time is spent on running corporate gigs – the world where “production crew” turns into “A/V staff,” where fly-in shows are the norm, and where the engineer is often at the mercy of the equipment provider.
Faced regularly with unfamiliar territory, Vice finds it helpful to have a small but worthy microphone collection on hand.
In a pinch, he overcomes holes in a rider with his Shure Beta 52, a pair of Oktava MK-012 condensers, an ART (Applied Research Technology) M-Five ribbon, a variety of CAD clamp-on drum dynamic drum mics, as well as pairs of Samson C05 condensers and Audio- Technica AT4050 stereo condensers.
When Vice isn’t traveling to “exotic hot spots” like Atlantic City and Tampa for corporate work, the kit he deploys for both house and live recording is expanded, centered around a Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 digital console.
He’s particularly fond of the StudioLive’s digital signal processing, and favors the consoles versatile channel strip for nearly every input and output, especially when recording.
Facing changing conditions from one gig to the next, Vice rarely relies on a “standard” setup. Rather, he generally makes the best use of the house kit, such as during a recent evening at The Mousetrap live club in Indy.
He dealt with two very different bands – Fresh Hops and IndigoSun – which presented some challenges, in addition to the fact that the venue records the board mixes and sells them to the crowd, with commensurate quality expected.
For IndigoSun, Vice took bass (fretless and otherwise) direct with Whirlwind IMP 2 DIs, with keyboards also taken direct. The drummer was mic’ed with Vice’s Beta 52 on kick, CAD clipons for snare, and his two A-T AT4050s as overheads.
The second band, Fresh Hops, required a more elaborate approach, with Vice using an expanded version of his original input list for the seven-piece ensemble.
Lead vocals were handled with the house Sennheiser evolution e 835 dynamics. Bass and keys were again, and Shure SM57s were applied for guitar mic’ing as well as saxophone.
The CAD clip-on mics came in handy for the percussionist, and rounding out the approach were the Beta 52 on kick, more CAD clip-ons for snare, and dual AT4050s as overheads.
Kyle P. Snyder is Associate Editor of ProSoundWeb and Live Sound International.
