Managing Stage Volume without a Sound Engineer

guitarjim

guitarjim

Experienced
I'm in a weekend dance / wedding band and we do not use a sound engineer. Group consists of guitar, bass, drums, keys, and two lead vocals. Not having a sound engineer has always caused a struggle with stage volume control and having to rely on faith that one of the other musicians hasn't turned their FOH volume up for a song and didn't turn it back down, throwing the FOH mix out of whack. Since I am in the process of researching new mixers, I figured I would check in with others who might have found a good way to manage the FOH mix without an engineer.

Currently, we all have our backline cabs (Atomic wedge for me) and we run a line to the board, which we sound check before the gig and pray that it doesn't get too far out of whack by the end of the night. For a lot of gigs, as the crowd gets spun up and the set list turns more rock-oriented toward the end of the night, volumes get turned up a bit and we are often out of balance.

With the new digital mixers, I was wondering if a better way for us to go would be to eliminate the back line and mirror the FOH mix in the monitors, allowing either one or more band member(s) to control their stage/monitor volume through an iPad or phone mounted on a mic stand. That would make it harder for some to hear themselves on songs where their instrument is not prominent, but it might be a big improvement for FOH.

If any of you have any experience or thoughts on this, I sure would appreciate it. I'd hate to buy a new board and then find out that I could have solved our problem with a different piece of gear.

Thanks.
 
For small clubs and private events, a nice quick-and-dirty solution is to have an active monitor for each band member (requires a mixer with enough aux sends though). This way, everyone can level their own monitor individually without affecting FOH mix. Only put the instrument that person plays on it. On small stages, the bleed-over from the other monitors usually handles the rest of the monitor mix already.

For the FOH mix, just have a long replacement cable and walk to the front of the stage with the guitar in your hand and have the whole band play a song. Then give instructions to one of the other bandmates on the mixer what needs to changed.


I wouldn't rely too much on advanced technique when playing small gigs. Especially if you don't have any backups. Remember that every device in your signal chain is a potential cause of failure. Mixing yourself efficiently in an unknown live situation is a skill to develope. But as with any skill, you can do some training on that.

Setting your band up on a small gig without a sound engineer requires your band to work together. It's not just you, as the guitarist (and in 99% of cases the band technician), to make the evening. Develope a routine on how to set up!
 
Zwiebelchen said:
For small clubs and private events, a nice quick-and-dirty solution is to have an active monitor for each band member (requires a mixer with enough aux sends though). This way, everyone can level their own monitor individually without affecting FOH mix. Only put the instrument that person plays on it. On small stages, the bleed-over from the other monitors usually handles the rest of the monitor mix already.

For the FOH mix, just have a long replacement cable and walk to the front of the stage with the guitar in your hand and have the whole band play a song. Then give instructions to one of the other bandmates on the mixer what needs to changed.


I wouldn't rely too much on advanced technique when playing small gigs. Especially if you don't have any backups. Remember that every device in your signal chain is a potential cause of failure. Mixing yourself efficiently in an unknown live situation is a skill to develope. But as with any skill, you can do some training on that.

Setting your band up on a small gig without a sound engineer requires your band to work together. It's not just you, as the guitarist (and in 99% of cases the band technician), to make the evening. Develope a routine on how to set up!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Just to make sure I understand what you are suggesting.... Your solution would have no backline, correct? Just monitors for each band member and each monitor would be isolated to that instrument? The one concern I have about that is that it makes it difficult for some to ascertain where they are sitting in the mix and I think they might lose perspective. For me, it's easy, because everything is programmed in the Axe. I know that when I hit my boost, I'm going up 3db and when I turn it off, I'm EXACTLY where I was. But, for instance, the keyboard player raises his volume for a solo or an individual song using a slider and then quickly adjusts it back but doesn't quite get it to the exact same position. All of a sudden, he's louder in the mix for every song after that and doesn't know it because he's not hearing a mix. Maybe I'm overthinking this?
 
My band does all IEM for onstage performers. All of us are completely in the box, so no monitors onstage and no live cabs. Our drummer uses acoustic drums, but that is it. We use the Presonus StudioLive 24 channel board which gives us enough mixes for everyone to have their own.

When we get to the gig we setup and do a silent soundcheck (no PA, drummer is playing though) and use the capture software presonus makes to capture all of our playing at soundcheck. Then once we finish playing a song, we switch the board inputs from the live feed to the firewire feed and play back through the PA. The drummer plays with this (so we leave his mics live) and I EQ and mix either with the computer or the board (all changes apply to the board). Once we get everything sounding right we switch back to regular mics and make sure nothing is feeding back, and maybe play a verse chorus of something.

During the show our other guitarist and I take turns pulling one or both in ears out, or even walking into the audience (I'll play while dancing with the girls to make it seem less like I'm checking sound and more like I'm there to party). We also spent a good deal of time making sure our tones are right during rehersal with PA, and we each have "solo" buttons to turn us up 2-3 DB for guitar solos. Everyone being in the box and having their own mix on IEMs mean they just turn up their stuff in their ears and don't touch faders.

The whole soundcheck process takes us about 10 minutes. The band definitely plays harder as the night goes on and we exchange dance tunes for rock tunes, but we have comps on the channels we need them on, and on some of the subgroups so it never gets out of control (very minimal comping though).

We constantly get complements from other musicians on tones, and from bars and crowd goers on how things sound, so we must be doing something right. We also almost never have any feedback, despite at times really hitting the PA hard in big venues - not having floor monitors helps that a ton. When it does happen it is probably because I took my vocal mic too far out into the crowd while dancing with girls on the dance floor :)

Last, but certainly not least; I can get feedback on my guitar through the PA bounceback (when desired) which makes up for a lot of the reason people don't like playing in the box. If you want more info on our gear I'm happy to give it.
 
I"ve had good luck using the Presonus Studio Live board and iphone/ipad. Each member has an iDevice to control their individual monitor mix. This translates into the FOH mix not being touched once it's dialed in. Since the board has memory slots for mix scenes, it's locked in. If someone changes it by upping their FOH volume either from the stage or the board, it's a simple scene recall to put it back. We've agreed to not mess with the FOH mixes and only adjust our individual monitor mixes/volumes via ipad/iphone. Its worked well for us with either stage monitors or IEMs.
 
Kevin,

Thanks very much for taking the time to write up your situation. It's extremely intriguing. The Presonus board is one of those that I've been reading a lot about because a) you can sound check with a past performance recording, b) lots of configuration options, c) we like to record live and I already use StuidoLive, and d) integrated effects (mainly for vocalists).

I would definitely like to hear more about your gear and configuration, since you offered. I'm trying to understand as much as I can before we decide on our equipment.

And, one other question, since none of you are using backline or monitors, what is your backup solution? What do you do if you get to the gig and the board isn't working?

Thanks again.
 
muudrock said:
I"ve had good luck using the Presonus Studio Live board and iphone/ipad. Each member has an iDevice to control their individual monitor mix. This translates into the FOH mix not being touched once it's dialed in. Since the board has memory slots for mix scenes, it's locked in. If someone changes it by upping their FOH volume either from the stage or the board, it's a simple scene recall to put it back. We've agreed to not mess with the FOH mixes and only adjust our individual monitor mixes/volumes via ipad/iphone. Its worked well for us with either stage monitors or IEMs.
Click to expand...

The mix scenes is a great feature. So, in this scenario, the only way someone can screw things up is by messing with their individual volume control (which would increase their volume in both the FOH and monitor mix), correct? There's nothing that can be done for that, I know, it's just a discipline thing. When using mix scenes, do you have templates for various places you play or do you start fresh each gig?
 
A band I play in uses a yamaha o1v. Has 4 aux sends for personal monitoring, IEM in our case and then has faders for FOH.

In my case I'm the "engineer" of the band. But I also play guitar. My mix mirrors the Foh mix so I can get a general idea of the FOH mix. As the night goes on I periodically run out into the crowd on my wireless (it's an 80s show band) and check how the mix sounds. We build our setlist off this idea that I will run out there. Singer also has a wireless and periodically checks. Especially on tunes where he takes a break and someone else in the band sings lead.

For stages that are smaller I keep a mackie wedge next to me that I can periodically check what the FoH mix is. Not always the best reference but it does help keep things consistent.
 
guitarjim said:
The mix scenes is a great feature. So, in this scenario, the only way someone can screw things up is by messing with their individual volume control (which would increase their volume in both the FOH and monitor mix), correct? There's nothing that can be done for that, I know, it's just a discipline thing. When using mix scenes, do you have templates for various places you play or do you start fresh each gig?
Click to expand...

Correct. We've discussed this and have agreed to leave our FOH output levels alone. Once we got them set correctly and got our mix dialed in, it's been easy. Since we can each adjust our individual monitor mix and volume via iDevice, there is no need to change output level to FOH which allows us to have a consistent mix every gig. If there is a need for higher volume for say, a solo or something, I just have a volume boost programmed into the scene of the Axe preset...

We have a slew of mix scenes saved for different venues. Its a great feature. We also have an IEM mix scene saved for when the venue has FOH provided. Makes it easy to have our basic IEM mixes ready quickly.
Other boards like the Mackie DL1608 and Behringer X32 have similar features...
 
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Hi Jim, adding more info here but feel free to shift to email if you want more info (kevinmpeters @ gmail dot com). As far as sound checking with past performances, we don't do that as sometimes things change a little (mic positions on drums, different cable on a mic, etc). None of us use the iPad/iPhone option, it is definitely a nice to have, but we all have our mixes dialed in ahead of time and will only change a few minor things at most during shows. We bought a split snake too, so if we go somewhere with a PA, we just hand the FOH engineer our input list and a fan tail and ask him to turn off all of his monitors and strike them (the extra room is very nice!!)

The quick version of the gear:
Bassist - Multi Effects box to DI (can't remember the brand)
Guitar 1 - L6 PodHD 500X
Guitar 2 - Eleven Rack
Guitar 3 - Axe FW
Sequencer - Roland (click and occasional keyboard parts)
Seismic Audio 24 channel split snake
Presonus Studio Live 24
Drums- Beta 52 internal mount Kick, 57 snare and hats, Audix D1, D2 and D4 Toms, Shure PG81 over heads
IEMs - Carvin System (2 mixes per system) with IEMs, we have two guys that use Ultimate Ears UE7, 1 guy uses sensaphone, 1 westone UM2 and 1 the default carvin buds

L+R out of the Presonus go to the crossover and then to PA. Aux 1-6 feed IEM mixes (we only use 5 but have a mix available for people sitting in)

One of the guys has a spare Presonus at home (16 channel) so if something died we could go grab that and dial it in, but I don't know of anyone carrying a spare console. Even on national tours where I was FOH engineer we didn't have that.

Few pics of the rig. We have an 8 channel snake that lives with all of its connections bolted in place in the back of the IEM/PA rack, all the power is bolted in place, and just 3 cables come out of that rack (1 power to rack, 1 power to console, 1 TRS snake). The guitar rigs each have 3 cables as well, power, controller and mic output. The bassist and 3rd guitarist use floor based rigs so those aren't pictured but only require power and a mic cable. Everyone is completely wireless on ears and instruments (except the drummer) Takes us about 30 minutes to unload the trailer, drop backline, place PA and pin the stage to be ready for sound check, another 15 minutes and soundcheck is done and we are putting cases back in the trailer and ordering food. We do record live at most shows, and sometimes take video and mix the video from the camera with the board audio.

GuitarAndPARack.jpgGuitarRack.jpg
 
I should add, outside of the PA speakers (2 1x18" and a 2x18", and 2 high packs) we only have the 3 racks pictured there, and a rolling cable and snake case for all band equipment. Our drummer has a big drum boat that holds everything (broken down) and we have a case for mic stands (our mic stands all mount to our pedal boards though, so no heavy bases). None of us ride our guitars in the trailer since most gigs are local, and we have 4 pedal boards, all cased. So we're not talking about very much gear at all to roll in. We also did everything we could with labelling and using sub snakes to make it very easy to setup. We have an 8 channel sub snake that goes to the front of the stage for our vocal mics and the 2 floor based rigs, and a loom between the PA Rack and Mixer. Our mics, IEM receivers, and ears all ride in the 2 drawers in the PA rack. So it's very quick to roll in and start playing.

That is unless we bring in lights of course, one of our guitarists handles that and he has a pretty complex rig with back drops and truss....
 
We also use the presonus, IEMs and everyone in the box. Including drummer who plays an electronic set. Run sound from the stage. You really can't beat it for a band that gigs regularly. We can get set up in a half hour, 45 min tops. Have presets saved for the different venues we play. All devices are marked for input levels. We do a quick sound check to make sure everything's working, but it's not really needed for anything else. Our goal was to make our setup as efficient and streamlined as possible. Works great.
 
If only our drummer would go electric..... He just bought a really nice new DW kit not too long ago. I guess that would be like asking me to play on a variax, he always glares and starts rubbing his drums when we even suggest it :)
 
I bought a Line 6 wireless unit for my guitar and really love it. One of the things that surprised me was the difference in how the "band" sounds depending on where I stand. Usually when I stand on stage next to the drummer, I am constantly thinking the drums are too loud and I am not loud enough. Then I got the wireless unit, started walking around the room during practice and was surprised how loud my rig was. On stage I could barely hear my backline rig, but out in the dance area it was great. Then I noted how different the volumes were with the PA, bass, and other guitar player. Now we often switch around with the wireless unit so we all get a chance to mingle with the crowd during setup time to get an idea of what our band sounds like from their stand point. I realize it will not solve all your challenges, but I think it will make a great start.
 
loopie said:
I bought a Line 6 wireless unit for my guitar and really love it. One of the things that surprised me was the difference in how the "band" sounds depending on where I stand. Usually when I stand on stage next to the drummer, I am constantly thinking the drums are too loud and I am not loud enough. Then I got the wireless unit, started walking around the room during practice and was surprised how loud my rig was. On stage I could barely hear my backline rig, but out in the dance area it was great. Then I noted how different the volumes were with the PA, bass, and other guitar player. Now we often switch around with the wireless unit so we all get a chance to mingle with the crowd during setup time to get an idea of what our band sounds like from their stand point. I realize it will not solve all your challenges, but I think it will make a great start.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I already am wireless and I know exactly what you mean. I try to get out into the crowd a few times during the night to assess things. As I'm thinking through all of this great info, I think one part of the solution for us is to ditch the back line and use monitor mixes instead. Especially in small venues, our "audience mix" is actually a blend of the FOH and the back line and I think that complicates things a ton. People are adjusting volumes that are affecting FOH without really having a sense of what that is doing to the mix. Even with me, if I can't hear myself well enough, I up the Axe output the runs to my Atomic wedge. Even though that doesn't directly affect the FOH mix, since that wedge is pointed toward the crowd it still affects the audience mix. In small dance clubs, I often don't have enough space to put my wedge in front of me because we need to allocate as much room as possible to the dance floor. IEMs might be the ticket there. Again, thanks for the great info.
 
KevinP said:
If only our drummer would go electric..... He just bought a really nice new DW kit not too long ago. I guess that would be like asking me to play on a variax, he always glares and starts rubbing his drums when we even suggest it :)
Click to expand...

V-Drums are great (almost essential) for churches but bar bands that I have seen that utilized them seemed to lack energy and excitement.
 
guitarjim said:
Thanks for the advice. Just to make sure I understand what you are suggesting.... Your solution would have no backline, correct? Just monitors for each band member and each monitor would be isolated to that instrument? The one concern I have about that is that it makes it difficult for some to ascertain where they are sitting in the mix and I think they might lose perspective. For me, it's easy, because everything is programmed in the Axe. I know that when I hit my boost, I'm going up 3db and when I turn it off, I'm EXACTLY where I was. But, for instance, the keyboard player raises his volume for a solo or an individual song using a slider and then quickly adjusts it back but doesn't quite get it to the exact same position. All of a sudden, he's louder in the mix for every song after that and doesn't know it because he's not hearing a mix. Maybe I'm overthinking this?
Click to expand...
Yes, it requires every band member to know how much they need to boost the volume when playing a solo. Then again, you guys probably do some rehearsing here and there, so they should have a general idea about how much to boost even with a "blind" monitor mix.
Also, fixed preset volumes help a lot for consistency of sound.
 
Mesaholic said:
V-Drums are great (almost essential) for churches but bar bands that I have seen that utilized them seemed to lack energy and excitement.
Click to expand...

Agreed, they don't really do well for bar bands/rock bands. Logistically it would be nice if it weren't a sacrifice, lighter, faster setup, even less stage volume, consistency in the mix. Maybe FAS can focus on an electronic kit that isn't a sacrifice to play (like the Axe).
 
Mesaholic said:
Another vote for the StudioLive and IEM. We use it for our church and it's a beautiful thing.
Click to expand...


and another; great technology as long as everyone agrees to leave their FOH levels alone once scenes are set and you've got your mix that you are happy with. anyone needs more 'me' crank it up on your on individual iphone, wifi capable ipod, or ipad. wireless and double checking things are never a bad idea either to hear the FOH just to ensure you're good.
 
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