Guerrilla Mixing
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In this episode of Sound Design Live I have curated some of the best highlights from Aleš Štefančič’s presentation from Live Sound Summit. Aleš shares his best tips for getting great results under the worst circumstances. Plus, a lively Q&A section at the end where he is asked:
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- Can everyone learn to mix well or is there an inherent base line of talent necessary?
- What advice do you have for working with a band that is being difficult, especially in a one-off situation where you won’t be able to build a lasting relationship?
- Is there an appropriate way of telling another engineer that their mix just isn’t right?
- More and more bands are showing up with IEMs without prior notice. What is the guerrilla mixing response?
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If someone is being insulting on personal level, my support doesn’t go diminished. I am here to do a job.
Notes
- If you can’t prevent guerrilla mixing:
- Verification & console prep
- Focus on the stage first
- Keep it simple
- Quotes
- Guerrilla mixing is mixing against all odds. You have no time for advanced preparation. You are lacking all relevant information. It’s the ultimate test for your speed, focus, and mixing ability.
- If you have a chance, try to prevent it from happening.
- I might use faders at zero mixing if I am mixing FOH only.
- You cannot influence the way other people treat you. You can influence the way you treat other people.
- If someone is being insulting on personal level, my support doesn’t go diminished. I am here to do a job. Do your job and let Karma do its.
- IEMs in mono are crap.
- You can train this with virtual soundcheck.
Everything I Feared about Digico Consoles Is Wrong
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Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.
In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with the Technical Director and Monitor Mixer for Siddharta and educator at Gain Media Lab, Aleš Štefančič. We get deep into why Digico consoles have always scared me and why I was wrong all along. I ask:
- How did you get your first job in audio?
- How did you get the gig mixing monitors for Siddharta?
- How did outdoor pyro make you think your sound system had died?
- How do you set up a Digico console for DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith?
- How do you set up a Digico console for a band you’ve never worked with before?
- What were the things that really improved your speed when working on Digico?
- What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to Digico consoles?
Digico is built to mimic an analog board with one added feature: you get to build the board.
Notes
- All music in this episode by Alee, except for B Mashina by Siddharta.
- Most common mistakes made by people who are new to Digico consoles:
- Forgetting to save sessions and snapshots
- Connecting the redundant power supply to the same power source as the primary power supply
- Forgetting that there is no built in delay compensation – each processing channel path has 14 samples of latency. Same channel path = same latency.
- Hardware: Behringer X32 and ECM8000, Ultimate Ears UE7 pro
- Digico setup shortcuts
- Ripple routing – routing channels in succession with one move
- Turn on EQ for all channels at once
- Set all auxes to 0
- Partial load – import specific parts of your session file without overwriting what is already there.
- Macros – User defined keys for functions and combinations of functions.
- Quotes
- Seeing music as equally technique and artistic helped me create really good relationships in the industry.
- Studio sound and live sound are merging into one thing.
- It’s all about the music and the song and the artist. Once you have that mentality, that’s the key to maintaining a sustainable career in this industry.
- I really beleive that doing favors for someone get’s great returns.
- Being a human being in the business is an approach that I want to explore further.
- There’s a lot of things that need to be done for a gig.
- I always employ this strategy when I approach a band: I’ll do one gig for free.
- When I set up a console for the first time I don’t use a template.
- In the event of a power failure you can get audio through the console in 3-4 seconds.
- Once you have knowledge of these few bits and bops here and there, you’re all set to go.
- Layers of clothing are as important as anything technical in your bag.
