Reverb & Effects

When available, I tend to dedicate individual reverbs to vocals and lead instruments, as well as drums. At the minimum, I give the lead vocal a dedicated effect unit/patch.

Returning a small amount of a true stereo reverb, a touch of delay, as well as a tiny amount of a pitch shift patch, seems to help singers feel more comfortable. Adding a natural room or plate patch to drums seems to help solidify the sound.

Often, I experiment with sending the drum reverb return to artists who don’t like so much drums in their mix and sneak in very small amounts of the direct kick, snare and high hat channels for definition and time. I use a similar technique with background vocals – sending just the return to the lead vocal mix.

Always Prepared

I have a soft spot for the (in)famous “punt” – a.k.a., a back-up plan, another option, what-if, and the like. This is where really creative solutions are born and, some days, what audio engineers are paid for.

Aside from the obvious staples, such as a spare mic up and ready to go for the lead vocal and a mic cable always at the ready, console workflow can also provide safety nets.

Check out the photo of the mixer: it’s from a unique, albeit challenging, tour in Alaska.

Advancing gear for several gigs in unorthodox, remote locations was quite an adventure. For most of them, the gear was delivered by an open pickup truck or four-wheeler (seriously). A daily supply of small analog mixers and less-familiar gear of many stripes set the stage for some unique punts. I used every adapter available to earn a fighting chance at success.

The challenges usually revolved around finding ways to split and provide input strips for both monitors and front of house (I was handling both), which would give me with the ability to use the strip EQ (no graphs to be found most days) for wedges, IEM mixes and return reverb to one of the ear mixes.

A “punt” workflow I use on most digital desks that have the mix bus capacity is to having a “spare” mix with transmitter and body pack assigned to a matrix. In the event of transmitter failure or pack failure, this matrix can then be fed whatever mix bus I need – either by spinning up the appropriate mix or simply feeding all mixes, in mute state, to that matrix and un-muting the one needed. I also create a guest mix with corresponding transmitter and pack for special guests who seem to always pop up last second, as well as other crew and tech packs/mixes.

My cue pack always operates in “engineer mode” or similar. This allows me, when issues arise, to “tune-in” and hear what the artist hears. In addition, I make this mode active on my spare pack as well as guest packs, providing the ability to feed them any mix I desire, including my own cue.

Talk Back To Me!

Talkback mics with corresponding “push to talk” foot switches like the Radial HotShot line output selector, when strategically placed on the stage, allow the performers to talk to one another, as well as to me, other crew members and even the tour manager or lighting director if they have packs. When available, I assign a pack and mix for each crew member, also in engineer mode. This allows me to create a mix for each of them and also to talk directly to them if needed.

Since their packs are in engineer mode, they can switch back to their respective principals when necessary. Often the guitar tech or drum tech, while listening to their artists’ mixes, will point out something that doesn’t sound right and I’ll revisit the mix and work out a fix.

Always An Adventure

What I enjoy most about living in monitor world is finding innovative solutions to challenges, learning how to keep my eyes on several people at once, and sharing the energy of the show – yet always being ready to duck if a ‘58 comes flying in my direction.

Next time I’ll address my workflow for mixing wedges, patching and some other goodies that happen post console.