Sound Engineering - How tough is it?

Kristoph

Kristoph

Kristoph

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Been offered the chance to do the sound for a band in my spare time - but other than helping set up speakers/mics/lines/monitors etc and then making sure it all sounds okay, what else is there to it?

I'm going along to a practice to see if I fancy it. I have no experience whatsoever so I'm going in at the deep end. It's a 7 person band, keyboard/sax/trumpet/lead guitar/bass, drums and vocals. They tend to do local pubs and small functions/village festival type things.

Is it something you can pick up easily? I'd like to think I'm a quick learner!
 
Depends how good your ear is to be honest. You'll either pick it up quickly and do a great job, or spend ages getting it right and annoying a lot of people!
 
Ricochet J said:
Ot: did you get the EDF apprenticeship? I worked at Sizewell. Drop me an e-mail in trust if you have any questions. :) (Sorry to hijack the thread).
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I didn't unfortunately, the interview felt almost as if they were trying to put me off or they'd made their mind up already, telling me it would feel like I was going backwards and that it was aimed more at the younger type. Still keeping my eyes open for anything with EDF though.
My second work placement with Oldbury fell through too - I'd take a cleaners job right now to be honest. I've just taken on the role of Radiation Protection Supervisor for my college though so the CV is still growing.

I'll email you if you can get me a placement ;) :p


Maccy said:
Depends how good your ear is to be honest. You'll either pick it up quickly and do a great job, or spend ages getting it right and annoying a lot of people!
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I guess there's getting it sounding good, and then it becomes almost personal taste/preference? I think I just need to jump into it and see what happens.
 
it's just balancing sound really so they sound alright. easy enough if you get to grips with the hardware and have a decent ear for it, nightmare if you suck with mixers and are tone deaf :p
 
Depends how stuck in you want to get.

You'd need to learn how to use a desk, be it digital or analog. Learn how to avoid feedback with a graphic EQ. Learn Mic setup techniques especially on drums but as it's live probably won't need drum mics. Learn about what mics are good for what and their polar patterns but it being live sound just whack a Shure SM58 on everything and be done with it! :p

I did a C&G and then a HND in Sound Engineering at College but I still feel like a total novice...acoustics and studio recording was more what i was into.
 
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It heavily depends on the quality of the equipment. Find out what kind of PA they have, how many speakers, subs, monitors, mics, etc. What kind of multicore do they have? How many inputs?

Mixing a seven piece band will not be easy, you'd probably need to have someone show you how to set everything up, get a good sound and setup the monitor mixes once. But once you've learned the basics, you can gradually improve. You just need to know what it 'should' sound like, and how to get the mix from sounding muddy and bad (as it will in the beginning of any soundcheck), to sounding balanced and sexy.
 
Yeah I'm going along Tuesday for a practice so I'll take a notepad with me ;) I'll report back.

It is a little daunting, but should be fun once I get a feel for it.
 
I teach live sound. To do it properly and have the band ask you back again you'll need to do more than just mix levels. There's monitors to consider as well so the band can hear themselves which is a slightly different approach to the front of house FoH sound. It's a skill that can be picked up on the job but only if you're being guided by someone experienced. Many local venues have in house engineers and frankly 90% or more are useless and don't have a real understanding of what's needed.

Kit is really important - the approach you take is driven by your resources and he venue you're playing in. Find out what you've got and we'll go from there. :)
 
From being a live sound engineer studying and working i'd say the two main things after you make sure that everything is mic'd up correctly and sounds ok is your levels.
Which will be changed by the "gain" pot, which is first knob on the mixer on that channel, then it will be your panning of each instrument, this is the act of putting each instrument in a different place on the stereo field (putting each instrument from left to right so that it isn't all fighting to come out of one place).

It's a learning curve and if you're a quick learner it's great and the more you do it, the more you find out and keep finding out new things which make it sound great.
Ask advice of people if you're unsure and once you have the basics you'll find your ears and hands doing all the work.
Good luck, any questions i'd be willing to help out.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Dimple might have a bit of advice since he's been gigging for a number of years.
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A total of 42 years man & boy in loads of bands, PA companies and recording studios.
I currently have 3 PA systems with the largest being a 24 channel desk into 3000 watt of speakers.

At its most basic it will look like this:
Mic > mixer/amp > speakers

Are you capable of adjusting pots to make that one mic sound OK?
If not then forget it.

From there it's a simple task to get two mics mixed together and so on.
I always start with the 7 mics around the drum kit and nothing else gets mic'd until they are right.
The drums use a special Samson drum set of mic's which are superb for the price
Next up are the 3 guitar cabs that are mic'd with SM57s (actually the bass is DI'd).
The last to get mic'd are the vocals with 3 SM58s.

Now what sounds good on its own doesn't always sound good in a mix so this is where the tone controls become used a bit more because just turning up a volume fader will just make the horrible sound worse.
I won't get into effects right now but less is more in my opinion but a bit of reverb on the vocal mics are mandatory.

Basically all you need to do is stand back and say to yourself 'Can I hear every instrument at the same level' and if you can you are 95% there.
Also move around the room to hear from different angles and try and make a judgement call on where most people are sitting.
For instance those people smack in front of the stage are not going to hear the vocals as good as those standing further back so tough.

And remember members of the audience will also usually tell you if something is not quite right so listen to them.
For my own bands we don't have anybody on the mixer so I just ask the audience to tell me if something is not right and make adjustments.
 
^^ Pretty much it, I was going to type out a lengthy post last night but my good man has covered it all. One thing I will add - watch out for rogue guitarists who keep turning their amps up!
 
Hope I don’t cause offense OP, but do you have any experience with live sound at all? I ask because jumping straight into engineering a seven piece band is not going to be easy.

A couple of points that jump out in my mind:

What equipment do they have? Is their existing kit a small powered desk with a couple of cabs or a fully featured 24 channel desk with power amps, bass bins, monitors etc. You need to know how to set all this up and to learn how to position it all based on the size and shape of the venue.

What do they expect to put through the rig? Smaller venues are likely to only require vox, brass, keyboards with perhaps a little kick too. Otherwise as Dimple as already described you’ll be mic’ing up the drums, guitar cabs and DI’ing the bass. Getting a decent sound out of a mic’d drum kit is something that takes care and experience, which many "experienced sound engineers" struggle with.

Do they know that you’re a novice? Are they going to have the patience to explain to you how to set up their rig and how to operate the desk? Do you understand phantom power, low pass filters, crossovers, eq, floor coupling, auxiliary channels?

Feedback. The bane of any live performance; you will need to know how to adjust gain, eq, mic positions, monitor positions in an effort to prevent feedback.

Listen to the band. They know what they should sound like but you don’t. You need to learn when something is not sounding right in the middle of a set and what to change to improve it. Pay attention to their performance. If the bass player is wincing because he’s getting an earful of feedback through his vocal monitor you need to recognise and address it.

Live sound engineering is very enjoyable; after all you get to go see a few bands play a couple of nights every week! It’s easy enough to connect everything up and get some sort of noise coming through the PA, but getting to the point where you have a full, smooth, musical sound takes patience, practice, a good ear and experience. Just listen carefully, take the band members comments on board and have fun!
 
Dimple has covered everything I was going to say.
In my band days our drummer did this all for us, but he was rather good at it (now does it for the Birmingham hippodrome). If you've got a good ear, give it a bash, but a 7 piece band may be a steep learning curve
 
Maccy said:
[...] One thing I will add - watch out for rogue guitarists who keep turning their amps up!
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Heh - yeah, this :D

Another element you're going to have fun with: an empty room will sound different to a crowded one; the mass [hopefully!] of people will alter the acoustics of the room.

So when soundchecking, leave some headroom. During the actual performance, you're going to be tweaking EQ and levels during the early part of the set to compensate [on top of all the other things you'll need to be doing at this stage, like ensuring satisfactory monitor mixes, nixing feedback etc].

Make notes of these changes, and eventually you'll see patterns emerging that you can use as forward-thinking guesstimates for future performances.

Oh, and I can't remember if it's been mentioned already: during a soundcheck, once you've set all the mic/direct input gains, dial them all down a bit, because musicians always give it more during the actual performance when the adrenaline's pumping than they do at soundchecks.
 
I've experienced this from both sides, the PA and guitarist.

Poor communication on either side is a huge reason why a band can sound poor/mediocre as from my experience only the band can give an accurate assessment of monitor mixing and just have to trust the engineer with FoH.

The amount of engineers I've come across that can't even ring a mike out is unbelievable.

To the OP - as long as the band are willing to give you time to learn would be my only concern. If you have lots of gigs coming up then maybe not.

Also, with FoH, it's one thing dialing down the musicians but give yourself some head room to turn the sound up as it's amazing how much bodies absorb sound. (Just realised this has been covered already).

Everyone has to start somewhere but if you can learn from someone then it's really only going to help than hinder.
 
From reading the op it looks like the band have a working sound anyway so it sounds like a babysitting job for the initial few gigs.
This will make the learning curve very easy because it isn't a new band every week.
It would be interesting to write all their gear down and list it here and that way we can give better advice.
 
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