Category Archives for "Live Sound"
For an artist, musician or band, not all gigs are created equally, mostly because of the stature of the artist and the purpose of the gig dictates the type of venue he or she plays. As a result, gigs can be divided into six general categories; local shows, one-offs, fly dates, mini-tours, full tours and corporate […]
Continue readingIf you’re recording a live performance, then you want to pick up some of the audience to make it sound realistic. Here are some techniques and considerations culled from the latest edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook. “Audience recording is both the key and the problem with live recording. It’s sometimes difficult to record the audience […]
Continue readingRegardless of whether you dig the Grammy broadcast or not, what goes on behind the scenes is truly a massive feat of audio strength. How big? Take the largest audio setup you ever heard of and multiply it by at least another order of magnitude, as you’ll soon see. Dani Deahl wrote a great piece […]
Continue readingFor the longest time musicians, artists, engineers and producers were used to slaving over songs for long periods of time in the studio. Creation took time, and it went from the more or less 3 hour sessions of the 50s and 60s to the months and even years of the 1990s and 2000s. Thankfully, the […]
Continue readingConcert sound systems have grown in scope over the years and are truly marvels in analog and digital electronics and acoustics. They’ve never been more powerful and more controllable, and our understanding of their use has never been better. That said, even the most sophisticated sound system of today still has a ways to go […]
Continue readingIf you’re recording a live performance, then you want to pick up some of the audience to make it sound realistic. Here are some techniques and considerations culled from the latest edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook. “Audience recording is both the key and the problem with live recording. It’s sometimes difficult to record the audience […]
Continue readingIt’s time to mix a live show and you find that you have the thankless job of mixing stage monitors from your front of house mixing position. If you’ve done this before, you know that this could take some time (which you may not have a lot of) before everyone is happy with their monitor […]
Continue readingMost musicians love to play in front of people. Getting an audience involved with your music is such an addictive exhilarating rush that once we get a taste for it we never want to stop. As a result, bands will usually take just about any gig offered to them. When you’re first starting out, that […]
Continue readingIt’s time for something different. Here’s an excerpt from How To Make Your Band Sound Great that talks about how understanding some basic gigging language can be the secret to getting your band booked. This is a repost from about 3 years ago from my old blog, but I’m sure many of you haven’t seen it yet. […]
Continue readingLet me make a bold statement. Guitar amp emulators are now so good that long-time tube amp users are switching over, at least for live playing on-stage. If you think that statement is blasphemy (and I can’t believe I’m making it myself), then you should watch this behind-the-scenes video of the live guitar rig setups […]
Continue readingFor an artist, musician or band, not all gigs are created equally, mostly because the stature of an artist and the purpose of the gig dictates the type of venue he or she plays. As a result, gigs can be divided into six general categories of duration; local shows, one-offs, fly dates, mini-tours, full tours and […]
Continue readingThe Major League Baseball All Star Game will have something new this year as Fox plans to expand the field audio coming from the players. This is made possible by a new type of microphone that can actually be buried on the field. The company plans on burying 13 of them on the infield, outfield […]
Continue readingIf you were to place one electric guitar sound up on a pedestal as the one to copy, it would probably be the one from AC/DC’s Angus Young. “Back In Black” is still looked upon as an iconic record and sound, and guitar players, engineers and producers have been using a variety of methods to […]
Continue readingIt looks like the days of the floor monitor are numbered as the live gig world quickly adapts to in-ear monitoring, something that the concert industry embraced many ears ago. Today IEMs are priced within reach of just about any gigging musician, but what really holds back many players from jumping in is the complicated […]
Continue readingThe road case is essential to anyone on tour with gear that needs to be protected, so I thought this would be a good time to bring back something that I posted about few years ago. It’s an excerpt from The Touring Musician’s Handbook that provides a good look at the differences between popular road case styles. […]
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