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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with FOH mixer Scott Adamson who has toured with some of my favorite bands including Passion Pit, Haim, Matt Kim, St. Vincent, and Sleater-Kinney. I ask:
- How do I become the next Scott Adamson and pursue a career touring as a FOH concert sound mixer? What would be your first steps if you had to start all over again?
- What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to FOH mixing?
- What’s one thing that you wish everyone understood better that would make show set up so much easier?
- What’s in your work bag?
If it doesn’t sound good, EQ it till it does.
Notes
- All music in this episode by Daniel Mintseris.
- Scott’s free courses: The Top 5 Live Sound Tips for Stage, How to Use a Mixer – the Master Control for Live Sound
- The biggest mistakes by people who are new to FOH mixing:
- Volume: There’s a big difference between making it sound big, and it being loud.
- EQ, especially on outputs (tuning a PA). Tip: Look at your system EQ in the high-mids.
- Pushing the outputs of the console super super hot.
- Quotes
- A lot of sound engineers want to share their information with people that are interested.
- The hardest thing to do was to stick with it.
- More than anything, what I feel has helped me is to just focus on being nice to people.
- If you are on top of your patching, everything goes fine from there.
- You always have to use your ear and do what sounds good and not what looks good on the screen.
- EQ it till it sounds good.
You can’t control whether someone has a good time or a bad time with a venue. You can control whether someone has a good or bad time with you and your sound system.