280. Tips & Tricks For A Speedy Mix

In Episode 280, Sean and Andy take it back to basics, and offer some advice for folks early in their live sound journey to help speed through sound check and get a band dialed in more quickly. From setting gains to EQ and compressors, the hosts share a bunch of tips and tricks they’ve learned along the way from all sorts of smart folks in both the live audio and recording worlds. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Episode Links:
ProSoundWeb Study Hall: Mixing & Consoles
Episode 280 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 280 - Tips and Tricks for a Speedy Mix

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green


Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me as always, the max to my grinch, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: What's up, bud? 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I, I, you too, I debated like 20 times which of us was Max and which of us was Grinch to the point it was just whatever came out of my mouth. 

Sean Walker: You know, man, it really depends on how long of a day I've had, depending on whether I'm back to the Grinch, you know what I mean? Most of the time, max waggy tail. By the time I've had two 18 hour days in a row and no sleep and, you know what I mean, you're Grinch. Like, everybody's a Grinch at that point. 

You're 

Andy Leviss: well, whereas I have resting, resting cranky pants face, but like at a certain point I get so overtired and punchy that I flip the other way, so it works out well, this is, this apparently is why we get along. 

Sean Walker: totally. 

Andy Leviss: It was either that or I came in with the Cindy Lou to my who. 

Sean Walker: Who? 

Andy Leviss: What? 

Sean Walker: Huh? 

Andy Leviss: No, he's on second. 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. I don't know. 

Andy Leviss: yeah. 

Um, no, but yeah, it's, I hope everybody out there's had a, had a good Christmas. I had a pretty great one that you did as well. 

Sean Walker: I did, man. I had a great Christmas. I headed off with the family and we just made some great food like you do. And it was awesome. 

Andy Leviss: Oh my God. All the, all the cook and the food. 

Sean Walker: uh, bro. Okay, so, if I'm being really candid here, and I'm gonna, I mean, don't tell anybody, okay, but I'm a pretty mediocre cook. If I'm, if I'm being really honest, 

Andy Leviss: I feel like you've copped to this 

Sean Walker: it's not, it's not one of my, not one of my strongest suits, but a, a good friend of mine sent us a Snake River Farms Wagyu prime rib for Christmas. 

And, uh, so being the, being the next, you know, chef show that I, that I am. I was like, I'm going to get all crazy. This is going to be awesome. I'm going to like, I'm going to nail this dude. Me, I'm going to get my inner fricking chef on. It's going to be great. And I was like, you know what? Maybe don't, maybe don't fuck this up. 

So I followed the directions like us men don't do very often, you know? And after following the directions, it was like, you know, 15 or 20 minutes per pound at 350 and then season with salt and pepper generously. And I was like, generously, I can do, I got salt and pepper. It was the best I've ever had in my life, dude. 

It was literally the best primary I've ever had in my life by simply following the directions. It was no, like, that's not tooting my own horn. It was literally like take out a package, follow these directions, stick in meat thermometer when it says this, pull out. You know what I mean? Like, you know how that goes. 

It was incredible. I was like, man, I should follow the directions more often. Maybe I should listen to my wife. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: And hang on. I gotta go text Ashley and. 

Sean Walker: Right. Totally. Oh my 

Andy Leviss: yeah, no, we did a roast, too. Uh, we split the kitchen duties fairly well. The roast was not my purview this year, but, uh, and we did the, like, rub it in salt and garlic and herbs for, like, a day and a half or two days in the fridge. Just in, like, open air, so it got really, like, dry brined, and it was, it was the tits. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome, dude. I'm glad. I love it when a plan comes together. Ooh, that reminds me. 

Andy Leviss: as Sean Connery on Jeopardy said, it was le tits now. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, 

there you go. That reminds me, Ashley did sneak some garlic in there too. That was, it was a team effort, but yeah, usually she does the cooking. She's a way better, she's an awesome cook. You know, those people in your life that like, just with no formal training, just understand how food works, you know what I mean? 

I I'm not blessed with that, but, but my wife is. So the, the cooking is usually good around the house, usually great around the house and, uh, you know, since you, since you've seen me in person, it looks, it shows, you know what I mean? It was dad bods, pretty dadden, you know what I mean? And, uh, so every once in a while when I can like, You know, knock something out of the park. 

I'm like, Oh, I'm not proud of myself, you know, for the next five minutes until I cook something horrible. And all the kids look at me like, dad, can mom just do it next time? You know? 

Andy Leviss: It's like, dad, it's a grilled cheese. What the 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Totally. How did you burn the quesadilla dad? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we have 

Sean Walker: have to have flames coming off the side? 

Andy Leviss: yeah, there's crossover both generally. I'm the cook in the house and she's the baker, although it varies a little bit. And I did, we've, we've, I am, Very not religious, but very secular Jewish, which we had a conversation about like kind of mixing the holidays together a little bit. And, you know, I was asked like, Oh, are there any traditions you want to bring into it? 

And I was like, well, Jewish traditions, there's, they tend to be either somber prayer, or delicious food. 

Sean Walker: Oh, I like delicious 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, not so interested in the first one. Second one, I can get behind. 

Sean Walker: A hundred 

Andy Leviss: So we started a couple of Christmases ago. I half jokingly said, we should do matzo ball soup for Christmas, which got immediately the, great, make matzo ball soup. 

And I was like, 

Sean Walker: Oh shit. How do I do that now? 

Andy Leviss: So I will tell you if anybody wants matzo ball soup, Joan Nathan is like the, the like famous goddess of like all these like Jewish meals. Uh, New York Times Recipes has a version of her matzo ball recipe that's. Completely on point. It's fantastic. Absolutely do with chicken fat as the oil. 

Don't do veggie oil unless you have to. 

Sean Walker: All right. 

Andy Leviss: Delicious. But this, this year I made the poor choice perhaps of the two dishes I contributed to the meal were both the very Jewish traditional mush with your hands foods because I did the, the matzo balls and the soup. And I did potato latkes, both of which are lots of like, mush the stuff together and form it into balls or form it into patties with your hand. 

And by the end of it, I'm like, I've washed my hands going between cooking utensils and mashing things and more cooking utensils so many times. 

Sean Walker: 7 trillion, you've already gone through the entire bottle of liquid soap by the counter there. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's like, and to be clear, it's not like a neurotic, like, oh my God, my hands are so 

Sean Walker: No, no, it's just that many times back and forth. You got to 

Andy Leviss: forming potato pancakes. I'm putting them in the oil. Now I've got to touch the utensil, but I'm going to use that utensil to take them back out. So I don't want to get the raw egg. Okay. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, but came out delicious. I now know how to make latkes. I'm turning into a good little Jewish housewife. 

Sean Walker: Atta girl. Atta girl. Get you some. Yeah, totally. Well done. 

Andy Leviss: so, 

Sean Walker: wait, but okay. Since I'm I mean, I don't, I don't know if since we don't do the video, I don't know if any of us can see, but I'm obviously not Jewish. And I'm also not really that hip to it. But you told me one thing before we started recording that made me, I mean, basically I'm converting at this point. 

If you're being honest, 

Andy Leviss: uh oh. 

Sean Walker: tell me about Christmas Eve, dude. Tell me about the Jewish Christmas Eve tradition that I totally missed out. And now I'm 

Andy Leviss: yeah, yeah, see I forgot what we talked about before we hit record and what we talked about after. I'm taking Sean's word that he's right and that we're not going through this for y'all a second time. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right. Totally. So what's up with Christmas Eve, dog? 

Andy Leviss: It's, it is a longstanding Jewish tradition. Nobody knows where it came from, how many thousands of years it's been going, but you do Chinese takeout on Christmas Eve, or you go out to a Chinese place if, if that's the way you roll. 

Sean Walker: sold. I'm in. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so, yeah, so that's, that is now a tradition in our family as well, is we do, we do, uh, Chinese food for Christmas Eve, so like the general shows and the pile of egg rolls and all that. 

Sean Walker: Love it. Now, are you, you getting into like the traditional methods or can you like get dim sum in there and get some like 

Andy Leviss: Oh, whatever, yeah, no, I mean, there are people who will go out for dinsa. I mean, like, I've solidly always been the like, it's takeout and it's like the general shows and the fried rice and the lo mein and being the terrible secular Jew that I am, roast pork lo mein, cause you gotta. offense to those who keep kosher, sorry, not my thing. 

Sean Walker: Fair enough, dude. Fair enough. Well, you had me at Chinese foods and now I'm in, you know what I mean? Like, okay, got it. 

Andy Leviss: so, yeah, so it's been a week of that, a week of family, it's been a week of With like spare time, I've been starting to dip my toes back into practicing magic tricks again, 

Sean Walker: All right. Sounds like a much needed week off, which, which is great, dude. I've only had two days cause we're still in show with a, you know, big show, but it was, it was awesome, dude. It was great to have some time and. I feel rested. I'm glad you're, you know, feeling the same with some time. Should 

Andy Leviss: about to go, I'm working New Year's Eve day and New Year's day, so 

Sean Walker: There you go. Giddy up. 

Andy Leviss: up for it next week. 

Sean Walker: There, right? Totally. Well, what are we, uh, what are we yapping about today, dude? They didn't come to hear us listen. I'm talking about food, I don't think. 

Andy Leviss: no, I mean, I'm sure we could, but 

Sean Walker: I mean, if you want to keep going on food, I'm, I'm down, 

Andy Leviss: uh, 

Sean Walker: they probably want to talk about audio, right? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we were going to talk about audio and you actually had an idea of an episode you wanted to do, 

Sean Walker: God, who let that slip past 

Andy Leviss: Sean, what was your idea? 

Sean Walker: who let that slip past QC? Jesus. Well, okay, so here's what I was thinking. I get a lot of people talking or asking or whatevering about, and we ask the question too, like, What's one thing you wish you knew then that, you know, that you know now that you wish you knew then, if we're told then? 

I have collected, and I'm sure you have and everybody else has, A whole series of tips and tricks and, and as I'm thinking through my workflow every day when I go to mix a show, the things that I've collected from other people, the things that I then modified to work for myself and in conjunction with the other things I learned from other people, and I thought maybe a lot of the You know, beginning to middle kind of people in our community would want just kind of a list of things that like, if this, then that, rather than it depends or it's situational or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

But there's a few things that I have found, you know, take it with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila if you're old enough, that work great for me to turn out consistently. Just frickin fine shows that have not gotten me fired yet. You know what I mean? And I won't claim to be 

Andy Leviss: Sean owns the company, so he's the one who'd have to fire himself. 

Sean Walker: sure if it hasn't gotten me fired or my company fired, right? 

Andy Leviss: fair. 

Sean Walker: And at no time, I'm gonna put a disclaimer on this, at no time am I saying, Oh man, I got all the answers and I know everything because that sure as fuck ain't true, but What I can do is help a lot of people that have imposter syndrome happening. 

They're like, I don't know if, uh, what to do or who do, what are the big dogs doing? What are we this? Andy and I are pretty blessed that we get to chat with all the big dogs and ask them questions and they still look at us like we're stupid, but it's okay, but they'll give us all the answers. So let me just funnel those answers down to everybody else who doesn't want to ask those questions. 

It looks stupid on a podcast. Like I do, you know, what do you 

Andy Leviss: we get paid 

Sean Walker: we do it? Challenge accepted, bro. I mean, it's too late, right? The cat's out of the bag. I am not fricking, you know, Number one mixer guy. Like that's it. Not, I'm not, but I have stolen a lot of tricks and I'll, I'll even give somebody credit for them once in a while. 

But what do you think? You want to do that? 

Andy Leviss: I'm down. Let's do it. I, uh, yeah, why don't, why don't you get us rolling? 

Sean Walker: So the first thing that I think is, and I didn't make any notes and I should have, but the first thing I think 

that 

Andy Leviss: well that, that's the first tip right there then is, is grab a notepad and make notes. 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. Okay. Y'all grab a notepad and start taking notes. Cause I'm just going to blather for the next however many minutes you're gonna be like, get off. Who gave this guy a podcast? Gain structure. I'm gonna go with gain structure is the first thing I want to talk about. Okay. And we hear about it a lot, people talk about it a lot, nobody seems to be able to agree upon what it is, or what it looks like, or how it, how it is, and I see a lot of questions on the Discord, which is the only place I'm following around on here, although I probably should jump into the other one too, but, about like, why is this feeding back, or how come this doesn't work, or what is this, or why, you know what I mean, what, what compressor setting do I want to use? 

And you're like, yo man, if your gain structure was straight, it would sort itself out, you know? So 

Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm catching up because when you said you wanted to talk about Max Gains today I thought we were diving into protein powders so my whole list of notes is out the window too. 

Sean Walker: Is that because I got my shirt off and I'm like flexing the gun show over here 

Andy Leviss: Max Gains! Can you tell we've spent the last few days just like with, locked up with family? 

Sean Walker: Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. You're just like, oh my god, what were we doing? So, so for me, let's just, let's just go for mixing a standard, a kind of a standard ish band, right? Because if, you know, there's gain structure for everything, but like a standard ish band. So for me, I'm looking for like, kicks, like kick in, kick out, to be on the channel meters, when I'm putting my gain structure, like minus 12 on the channel meters, ish, whatever that number is on your console, approximately about ish, that minus 12 place, I'm on Yamaha's a lot, so it's exactly minus 12, but like kicks and snares, Just banging away there, right? 

I find with a Beta 91 on the in, that's like 10 to 15 dB a gain on the mic pre. It's not cranked up that much, you know what I mean? With a like Beta 52 on the out, something, something like maybe 20 ish dB a gain, maybe 22, 25. Those are gonna get you kind of there. Work your polarity of those two against each other so that they're both hopefully in a positive polarity. 

But you may or may not need to flip one depending on what your situation looks like. I find that as a problem solver, not a normal. I'm having to flip one of those. Like usually they're in the same polarity and I'm just double checking to make sure 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's always worth popping that button, see if it sounds better or worse. 

Sean Walker: on everything. That's like, that's, that's everything. Same kind of thing with the snare. Although oftentimes I don't, depending on the mic, don't need as much gain because it's pretty freaking loud already. One of the things and I'll, I'll, one of the things that I learned and then stole from Ryan, John, was. Yeah, I know, dude, we're, somebody's gonna be in a world of hurt, I'm gonna get my sparkly water on. Was that everything should be in a positive polarity when the drums are hitting. And I was like, I don't know, so I made him explain it to me over dinner one night. 

And it makes a lot, it makes a lot of sense in my little mind, which is, on the kick, if the mic is in the kick drum and you hit it. It already creates a positive polarity on 

Andy Leviss: So should we take a step back and just like quickly talk about polarity from microphone to speaker for the folks who may not even know what we're talking about? 

Sean Walker: Go ahead if you want to, bro. 

Andy Leviss: So basically you make a sound, sound makes air wiggle, air makes the microphone wiggle, that turns into electricity, eventually turns into bigger electricity, the amp makes the speaker wiggle. 

So if everything's in polarity mic to speaker, drum goes, drum head pushes out, microphone pushes in, speaker pushes out the same way. So the speaker and the drum are moving together, and flipping the polarity changes that like basically microphone diaphragm goes in, speaker moves backwards in towards, sorta towards the microphone. 

A lot of people are gonna be yelling at me like, that's not how it works, I'm oversimplifying 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah. This 

Andy Leviss: but 

Sean Walker: this, this episode is for the, for the, you know, answering a lot of the, the newer questions. This is not for the pros that are like, bro, that is the most oversimplified version of whatever I just said ever. Right. But getting that game structure sorted means I don't have my freaking mic pre cranked up to everything on a, Kick drum and then the fader at freaking minus everything right like I'm trying to keep my my it's a balance for me I'm trying to keep my faders at between You know at zero if I can but between like minus five minus ten and plus five If I can help it in that little window, right if they're way low I've messed something up in this process. 

I then particularly go to hi hat and You know, kick, snares, hat, right? In my order. And I just get enough gain on that. It's got the level that I want when the fader's at kind of zero or minus five or something. I also then check that polarity before I put my high pass in against my snare. So I'll go like, while I'm listening to the snare and they're doing quarter notes on the snare, I'll also then solo the snare top and the hat, flip the polarity on the high hat until it sounds beefy, cause you're not. 

Going to get the snare out of the hat, no matter what you do, no matter what mic you use, no matter where you point it, it's the loudest frickin thing on the stage, and it's inches from your hi hat, it's in your hi hat, use it as a free snare mic. It's free level on your snare, if you get your polarity right, and who doesn't need more level on their snare? 

Andy Leviss: everybody, 

Sean Walker: And don't! Don't, for goodness sake, take all the low end off of this hi hat. So, once I get the polarity straight in the hi hat, I'm then listening to the kick, snare, hat, you know, and all this is happening in frickin seconds. It's not frickin hours like I'm trying to explain it now, but rinse and repeat this process. 

You know, often times I've, I, I have to flip the snare top and not the snare bottom because we were talking about That's where we're going. Talking about everything being in a positive polarity, right? Everything a push, as Ryan would say, so that because the snare microphone, when you hit the drum, the head is moving away from the microphone, it creates a negative polarity. 

If you flip the top, now it's creating a positive polarity, so now it's matching your kick, kick push, snare push, right? So your top is flipped, your bottom is not flipped, typically speaking, unless something is broken. That's also a good way to know if something's broken. Hat is often flipped. Toms, 1 2 3, off and flipped. 

Those have level gain structure just like kicks and snares do for me. Maybe a little less sometimes, but mostly they're getting like that, you know, minus 12 when you hit it pretty good with a quarter note. Because those are situa uh, not situational. Those are like accents. Those are moments in time, right? 

Kicks and snares are just goon ka goon all the time. The toms need to stick out. So they're also gonna be pretty loud. Overheads, It's gonna be next for me the again I'm doing the same as I did for the hat solo the snare top Flip the polarity of the overheads without the high pass filter on the overheads in and figure out whichever one makes it better Better being more low end more direct less what the fuck is wrong with my snare drum You know what I mean? 

The other trick that I don't remember specifically where I learned it was I measure out my overheads I don't care specifically The number for the, I don't care how many inches or, you know, centimeters or however, where we are in the world. I don't care how, how, what that number is as much as I care that they're the same. 

So I use a tape measure if I can 

Andy Leviss: from your snare mic, 

Sean Walker: from my snare center of the snare top to, you know, if I'm, I sit on the drum coat, I say, Hey dude, can I borrow your, you know, can I sit there and trade spots with you for a second? Every drummer so far has been like, yeah, I don't care. And I'll measure out, usually it ends up in the 44 inches range from snare center to what is sitting at the drum kit, the left overhead, over the hi hat, 

Andy Leviss: unless it's a little culled out, 

Sean Walker: and then it's like 34 inches, but don't tell anybody. 

Uh, but you know, someplace in the like high 30s, low 40s is a good place. And you can like, you know, look at it and go, that looks about kind of right. Pick a number. I don't care what the number is. Then wheel that bad boy in place, just swivel it around over, kind of over the ride or floor tom or wherever it kind of makes sense in your drum kit, how it's put together. 

And bring that one down to the same number as the other one. I don't care what the number is, I just care that it's the same. And what you'll find is, now that the snare is in the center image, so if you just bring up the overheads, you now have what we read online about people going like, if you just got a great pair of overheads, that's kind of all you need. 

You now have this banging snare drum with just overheads. And you'll bring that up and most other engineers on the show will go, dude, your drum kit sounds great. You're like, it's just the overheads. And they'll then start asking Andy what he's using for overheads, why these earthworks are great or why, you know what I mean? 

Like, holy shit, these are some of the few like ginormous leaps in holy shitness that I have figured out and learned and been taught over my career. So I'm just trying to pass them on, right? There is a zillion other things to do here, but overheads the same distance from the snare drum. And what it will look like if you're standing in front of the kit now, like on stage, is it will look like the hi hat overhead is higher than the ride overhead. 

They will not be the same height off of the kit because one's farther away, right? So then, once that's done, now you're flipping the polarity of that package of overheads against your snare top that's already flipped to whichever one is like, gonna take your head off snare drum. Because one of them is gonna go like, meh, one of them is just gonna be like, holy shitballs. Once that's done, you kind of feather those together and you're like. Dude, holy, holy crap. Like, you know, you're, you're trying to think to yourself, like, what else do I want to do here? You know, and we can dive into EQ later if you want, but if you get the level and the polarity correct on those, you're already like 85 fricking percent of the way to a banging ass drum sound. The other thing that I do that a lot of people don't is I am not afraid of the EQ and all my kicks and toms look like smiley faces, like carve out all the middle, add some bottom and top. And that bottom and top ad is dependent on what I'm doing, whether it's. Country, rock, metal, whatever, but I'm taking out all the like 350 to 500 ish. 

Tom's maybe a little higher, like 550, 600 ish, whatever, whatever, whatever's kind of ringing. I am only doing small to medium music festivals. I am not on tour with an A plus artist. So I have to move fast and I cannot sit and run that around until I find the exact frequency I want every time. It's like, I know that between 350 and 550, let's call it. 

is where I want to get rid of. And on a kick, I'm going to do it at about, you know, four or five. And on a tom, I'm going to do it at like five, 50, 560, whatever. And then I can fuss later, but like get rid of all of it. I'll get rid of all of it. And then I'll add some like 5k on the toms and kick and some like 50 on the kick and some maybe 70 to a hundred on the toms, depending on if it's a high tom or low tom. 

And I'm talking like, you know, one, maybe zero on the low end of the toms, depending on the PA and To be plus three, plus six. I'm not talking about cranking any of these. Tom's like plus three, plus six, maybe on the top end. And you got a ripping fricking kit, dude. High pass on the snare at like between 70 and 125 and Tom's between 50 and 70 overheads between 60 and whatever you need, 125 ish, depending on what you got. 

And these are some good starting points to just go like from, I don't know where to start or what am I doing? And like, what's happening or how do I make this better? Cause I'm in a club or. On a small to medium music festival with an artist and I'm not sure which way is up, right? Or I got a bunch of imposter syndrome and I think I'm doing the right thing, but I got 90 plugins going and it's still not sounding good. 

Take all those plugins off and start here. Then, uh, next for me would be bass. And on the bass DI, I'm getting that same like, minus 12, like frickin hot. Like over, oh, back to overheads, I didn't talk about that. Those are going to be like, minus 18 on the, on the peak meters on the desk. They're not going to be super hot. 

They're going to be like. Okay. Minus 30, 20, 18. They're just going to be as loud as I need them to be to like live in that minus five to zero range. There's not really an exact science to it. Other than like once your kicks and snares are up and happening, you're like, yeah, that's banging. How much overhead do I need and I'm going to bring that up to like zero or minus five and get some, if I feel like I want to need to compress those, I'll make sure I've got enough compressor acts in it, like. 

Minus 18 or minus 20 on the threshold and it's not having to be down at minus 40 just to get any action. You know what I mean? But there's not a specific number to the overheads where I'm like, this is the number, right? Bass, because I typically am only using bass DI minus 12 cause I need the fucking level. 

And I'm going to hammer that like a rented gong with a compressor to keep it steady state there. And that will then blend in with your kick. Oftentimes you might need two basses, bass DI, bass mic. Again, you're going to use your polarity. Oftentimes you're going to end up having to flip one against the other to get enough level. 

If your bass fader is at like minus 30 and it's still too much bass, you have too much bass in your PA, right? Like we're, it's all about making little like breadcrumbs or, or corner blocks to, to figure out which way is up. Cause what happens is as we're, as we're newer, we walk into a venue, we got hired to do our gig. 

The PA sucks, the band is too loud, you can't hear a fucking thing anywhere and you're not entirely sure where to look for it or where to chase it or what to do. Right? It's kind of a brutal place to start whereas like on the bigger shows that some of us are blessed to be a part of in one way or another. 

There's already a lot better places to start. Like the stage volume is pretty quiet. Even, you know, I mean, there's some that aren't, but by and large at an arena scale, the stage volume is nothing compared to the PA available to you. Right. Whereas is it a bar where the snare drum is already too loud in the venue just by itself, you know? 

So there's a bunch of unique challenges. The rub is even at the You know, bar or small club or big club level, the artist still wants records. They still want a board mix that sounds good and they're still judging you on that. So you're, you know, you got to make a record matrix where your board mix still sounds good as close to a record as you can in a venue where you got fricking nothing, dude. 

You know, you got nothing to work with and you're like, cool, man. All I got fricking vocal because everything else is too loud, vocal and kick or something. You know what I mean? But like, it still has to sound like a record on the board mix, so you still gotta get your gain structure straight, you still gotta get your polarity straight, and all of these things will help as you start getting into more complicated shows where you have to then send those to a zillion places. 

You have to send them to a record truck, or broadcast, you gotta send them to the artist afterwards, you gotta send them to frickin somebody to tell them what kind of show you did, like, hey, I'm really good at this club thing and I wanna get on my first tour, cool man, send me a board tape. Well, but I was in clubs and so I didn't do this, or Radman. 

Well, that's not how it's going to be like, I need to hear a board tape. Do you know what the fuck you're doing or not? You know what I mean? And well, you know, our industry is super relationship oriented. People are going to want to hear that. So you got to like get these fundamentals in place. And I haven't yet heard of a place where people are talking specifics. 

So I wanted to just like jump on a limb and ramble about as many specifics as I can to help people if they can, if they can, you know, gain up with 

Andy Leviss: And like, since you mentioned board tapes, like it's sort of jumping ahead to the other end of the signal chain 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. 

Andy Leviss: like, but like, we can talk like target curves and like what you're going to tune your system like to the, till the cows come home. But like back to basics, if you get the EQ so that what you hear in your headphones is what it sounds like coming out of the PA, you're making your life a thousand times easier, whatever that fucking curve is. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. Totally. And, uh, the, you know, the, the other thing is like, if we're talking about curves, you know, I've, I have been very blessed to been able to pick a lot of people's brains on this discord in live, you know, in person and over the last couple of years from like, man, I think, I think smart is a pretty cool tool. 

I'd like to learn how to use to be able to like rip through it pretty good already and decide which target curve I want to use for which situation or, you What works best for me or not. And not just like, Oh, well, here's the curve that's on the discord server. So that's what I'm using. Right. I use that for a while and it was awesome. 

But for my particular style, it's got too much tilt in it. Right. I like the top end. It's got way too much sub in it for me. So I went and I was blessed to go. See Michael Lawrence at the Gorge when he was out with Sturgill and he had a way less curve going for, for that. And it was like, you know, I don't remember off the top of my head, but instead of like plus 15 or whatever the other one was, it's more of a plus six or nine or something. 

It was way less low end boost. I'd have to relook. I don't remember, but being. able to try different target curves has really been able to like, help me figure out what I like. What is my mix like? How do I balance the two against each other? Cause it's not just one or the other. It's not just like, this is the curve and I'll figure it out. 

It's like, well, dude, how do I mix? Cause I came from the studio world, right? Making records. So. Like I didn't have a curve built in that I knew of. I didn't know, I didn't know to think about that, right? I just was like trying to make each thing sound as good as I could. And so what's, what has happened is I found that I like something with less tilt, right? 

Which is my own journey that I've been on for the last few years, right? Trying to figure out what works for me and less tilt is what works for me because I already have that low end baked into my Mix, right? And then, like you were just saying, what happened was that I would tune it to the big tilt, like we had, and then I'd listen to my board mixes, and it was like, it was super thin, and I'd be looking at my faders going, man, why are my kicks and basses down in the basement, and like, it's banging live, like it's, it sounds great, but like, it's just not happening, and then I'd Go to the board mix and until he who shall not be named again so that we don't have to drink again. 

Andy Leviss: think that still counts. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, damn it. 

Andy Leviss: Also if there's anybody at home, you just lost the game. 

Sean Walker: I know, right? Uh, I was just listening to my freaking, I was just listening to my freaking left, right. And then they were like, well, dude, why don't you make a bunch of groups, send all those groups to the fricking record matrix, and then you can balance it out so that it sounds great to the records, no matter what your PA sounds like. 

And I was like, God dang, you guys are so smart. Why am I so dumb? But I started doing that and that's way easier too. We can chat about that in a minute if you'd like, but, uh, It was, it was a balance, right? So don't be bummed out if you're starting out or in the middle or whatever, and you're still fighting with like, why doesn't this sound smoking? 

If you're in a small, God, dude, even if you're in like a thousand cap club, oftentimes the drums can still be louder than they need to be off the stage. So, you know, don't, don't get too wrapped up in that. You probably know, you probably know exactly what you're doing and just clean a few tips and tricks and. 

Solidify. I'm hoping to just solidify what people already know, not try to tell them what they don't know. You know what I mean? Uh, cause I, you know, I remember when I went to mix with the masters with Crystal and Algae a few years ago in France. And I sat through a bunch of that and I was like, Oh my goodness. 

I learned so much. And at the same time I was like, Oh my goodness. I also validated that I'm already doing a lot of things that are right. You know what I mean? That's what a lot of these moments are for. You're like, Oh man, I do know what time it is. I am, I do, I do deserve to be here. At the same time, this dude is so much better than me. 

Holy shit. You know what I mean? Like, like, it's okay that you could say like, Hey man, I'm good at what I do, but this dude's way better than me. And that's why I paid thousands of dollars to come and check this out. Right. So. You know, I'm, I'm thankful for all those moments in my life of perspective, right? 

To be able to teach because I didn't have it until recently to the last few years to be able to go do a lot of this stuff and check it all out and go like, okay, man, here's all the things that we've been reading on the internet. And it's a crazy place because like, if you don't have a filter, like if you don't have the internet filter, you don't know what's right and wrong. 

And you're chasing down every fucking idea that you see. And it's just this like spiral rabbit hole of. Disaster that you're like trying to put things together that don't belong together or whatever, you know what I mean? And then you'll get some like nuggets where like, Oh, here's a few genius things. 

And then you're like, okay, but how do I implement that? Or like, what do I do? You know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, see, although I misunderstood when you said don't have a filter, I'm like, that's my problem on the internet and this podcast is I have no filter. Different, different kind of filter. 

Sean Walker: right. Totally. Okay. But we were just did bass, right? So let's go to guitars. So for me, 

Andy Leviss: I'm gonna, can I, I'm gonna, sorry, but from, while we're on the pause point, I'm gonna throw in the, it's a, I disagree with nothing Sean has said so far. This in fact is a subject where I would posit that potentially Sean is smarter than I am on this subject. 

Sean Walker: Easy killer. Don't, don't, don't reverse our roles, bro. I'm good with this. I'm all good with the low expectations here, 

Andy Leviss: Freaky Friday, y'all. 

Sean Walker: Right. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Um, the one thing I'm going to say, which is something that like, I feel like when I've learned this in the last couple of years, or had it pointed out, it was one of those things that I thought like, I should have thought of that beforehand. And I think we may come back to it, depending on if we hit one of the things we were talking about earlier or not. 

Is the only difference in the order we're going through is I've started before I do kick. I do lead vocal. 

Sean Walker: So you've got comms up and they can talk. 

Andy Leviss: So they can talk and just also because that's the most fucking important thing. And also, frankly, it's a mic that's going to be downstage center. So it's really a third overhead half the show this anytime they step back from the mic. 

Sean Walker: That's a great observation. I think about it like a room mic, but yeah, I did. That's a great observation. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so both a get that dialed in a little bit and sounding decent with a voice on it just so it's ready to go. And B, dial your drums in with that mic up, or at least make sure you listen to it with the mic up if you dial without it, because you can get the perfect drum sound going with all your drum mics up. 

And the second you bring that lead mic away and the singer steps back from the mic for a bridge or whatever, your drum sound's gonna totally change. 

Sean Walker: That is an excellent observation. And I was going to come back around to that because Even though it's not linear, like I go down my, I go down my channel, uh, left to right, channel one to channel whatever the, wherever the fuck we're going, and I, as I get to the vocals, I then come back to the snare and flip the polarity of the lead vocal, the vocals against the snare, uh, I should start, thanks for the tip dude, I'm gonna start doing that next, snare, once I'm done with my drums, I'm gonna, yeah dude, I'm gonna, while I'm still at drums, I'm gonna go to lead vocal, Flip that guy open and do my polarity there and not come back around to the whole thing. 

Damn it. See, you are the smart one. Uh, okay, cool. Yeah. So think about your downline vocal microphones, your, your, Oh my God. 

Andy Leviss: Frontline, 

Sean Walker: Yes. Frontline. There you go. Frontline vocal microphones as like drum room mics or everything room mics, right? Cause that's really what they are. They're picking up freaking everything and they're, and they're so loud. 

And depending on if you're a dipshit like me, often very compressed and super affected. So choose wisely. People choose wisely. Okay. Guitars. Let's take, let's take everybody's, you know, most common 57 on a guitar cab. For me, that has 25 dB of gain on it. And usually that ends up at minus 18 on my channel fader. 

And that has been a decade of all kinds of different guitar amps. If you're a place where you hear that and you're like, man, just need more guitar, which has rarely happened to me. That's like one out of a hundred shows. You can turn it up, 

Andy Leviss: player every time. 

Sean Walker: you can, right? You can turn it up a little bit, but like, I find once I get past like 30 or 32 db of gain on a 57 on a guitar, live guitar amp, I start getting a lot more like rumble and stage and s that I really want in there. 

Because my signal to noise ratio is not what I'm hoping for. So at that point, I might do the unthinkable and I tell them over talkback that this is the unthinkable when I do it. But I was like, Hey man, I have never in my career asked a guitar player to do this, but could you please turn your amp up a little bit? 

And every time the entire stage laughs, I mean the whole stage laughs, sometimes like a full belly laugh like I would do. And other times just like, ha ha ha, funny, funny. But like now we've broken the ice and everything else I ask for they give me, right? 

Andy Leviss: I dig it. 

Sean Walker: But also if you're at 25 DB of mic preamp gain on a 57 on a guitar cab and that is clipping You now can be like, hey man, your shit's too loud. Turn your shit down. And some place between like, hey, you know, hey, How important are the vocals in this, in this thing? Oh, they're super important. Cool. I'm gonna have a real hard time getting the vocals above the band if the guitars are this loud. 

Could you do me a huge favor and help us all out and just bring that down a little bit? Maybe like, you know, 25 to 50 percent cause they don't know what numbers are. They don't know what DB is typically speaking. Like I know some really smart guitar players that do engineering, but by, by and large, they are, Wonderful, awesome creatives that want to go rip and show off and they aren't going to know what 9 dB is. 

You know what I mean? So if we just say, you know, could you bring it down 25 or 50%? They'll pick some arbitrary number and hopefully it comes down a little bit. Usually it won't, but at least you can know. It gives you an anchor point, right? And then a pretty good kind of signal to noise ratio. Something like that would be like high pass it. 

You know, depending on the artist, like 50 to one 50 on the guitars. And I know that's not really helping a bunch, but like if it's got a bunch of chugga chuggers, that's gotta be real, like junk. I'm not gonna high pass as much or maybe at all, but as much. Or if it's like a sparkly, country twangy kind of thing that I just need to get clear and outta the way, it's gonna have a lot more high pass and low pass on it, you know what I mean? 

I, I also low pass my guitars and basses. Uh, bass is low pass to like eight K guitars, low pass between. Five and 10k usually, you know, sometimes lower if it's really spanky and gross. Um, but that'll give you a good like gain structure. So now you're like, you're, all your stuff will be typically speaking, like in that zero to minus 10 range on your faders as you're moving things around to kind of make it sound, I mean, how I want, but probably how you want to, it's not like something's at plus 10 and something else is at minus 40 and you can't figure your freaking life out. 

You know what I mean? Like it, there should be pretty helpful for somebody to try to figure it out. Keyboards. are the wildcard because they come out at all different levels. They are, if you have a DI, it's going to be 10, depend if it's passive or active. So I don't really have a, like this number, but I would say that keyboards, I try to gain up. 

So they're at minus 18. So they're basically at, at line level. Right. And then I bring them up or down as I need to. And that's the one that often for me lives at minus everything, because it's just. It goes from a whisper to a roar, and a whisper to a roar, and a whisper to a roar, and they can't seem to figure it out, and it doesn't matter who it is, they just can't make their patches sound even remotely the 

Andy Leviss: Doesn't matter how many times it's soundcheck you ask, just play me the loudest thing you're gonna play. 

Sean Walker: it's always 

Andy Leviss: It's never going to be the loudest thing. 

Sean Walker: no, totally, and then it's crazy pants. So, uh, I would just get, you know, when they're playing something, ask them, hey man, is this a pretty loud patch, or can you give me full volume, or whatever you gotta say. Get it to like a minus 18 level, put a compressor on the channel that's like threshold at minus 18, maybe three to one, 10 milliseconds attack, no hold, 100 milliseconds release, and maybe like plus three on the makeup gain and just let that ride. 

And when they dig into it, it won't take your head off. And when they're not into it, it'll be fine. And that'll be pretty helpful. You could kind of use that same compressor setting for damn near anything on your channel if you wanted to, and it would be just fine. That's a pretty like, I stole that from the SSL bus compressor, 10 milliseconds attack, a hundred millisecond release. 

It fucking works on everything. Just fine. There are better settings to use. There are better, you know, you can tweak that in, but I've not ever put that on any source where I went, Ew, what is that 

Andy Leviss: including, including vocals or excluding vocals? 

Sean Walker: Uh, including vocals. Yep. I, I use a faster attack on vocals than that. Uh, that would work just fine on everything. 

10 millisecond attack, a hundred millisecond release. Three, three-ish to one ratio, and, you know, a threshold at, at minus 18 or at zero, depending on what your desk says right at, at unity, at zero vu ish. It works 

Andy Leviss: that's the one that is I've, I've gone on my vocals. I've started going slower and slower attack lately. Cause I feel like I, for a little while was overdoing it and losing clarity and consonants basically. So I've started slowing down, which is why I ask, which is not to say that you're wrong. 

Sean Walker: No, I, I'm 

Andy Leviss: I feel like 10 would definitely be the fastest I would do. Like there was a time where I started creeping down to like five cause I'm like, you know, just nip it in the bud. And it was like, Nope, Nope. That's too much. 

Sean Walker: the interesting part about what we do first, I got thick skin. I'm not offended. You know what I mean? You have your own opinion. I'm just trying to share some like 1 0 1, 2, 0 2 size tricks, not, here's how to be the best guy ever, right? This is an art. And a science. These are, these are starting points for people who aren't sure where to start. 

This is not how, this is the only way to mix a show. Who the fuck am I telling anybody that this is the only way to mix a show, right? There's so many people so much better than me at this that like, I couldn't possibly go there, but that is one compressor setting that will never be horrible on anything. 

Like when in doubt, just try that because auto usually sucks. And you can use that setting on a bus, you can use that setting on a channel, you can use it on almost anything. And the way I came to that, remember I came up in the studio, was that the SSL G Series bus compressor has a bunch of options. And the ones that we, being most of the industry used, are 10 milliseconds or 30 milliseconds attack. 

And a hundred millisecond release or auto and, and either two to four to two or four to one. And that was that bus compressor setting. That was for all the people I've talked to in the whole industry, all the records I've made, all the, you know, I mean, CLA's and Chuck Ainley's and everybody else I've talked to, they all kind of fit in that wheelhouse. 

And I was like, okay, cool, man, when I'm on desks that don't have that and I have to make it out of nowhere, but that that's where I'm going to start, right? Those guys are smarter than me. I'm just going to take those, take those tricks and numbers. Same thing on bass guitar and vocals, because in my opinion, the 1176 is the jam for bass guitar and vocals. 

And at its slowest attack, the 1176 I forget exactly, but it's like a second or not quite a second or millisecond. I'm sorry, not quite a millisecond. It is a super fast attack and its fastest release is 50 milliseconds. So in your classic, like in your classic Dr. Pepper kind of setting with like threshold at 18 and output it, I mean, it was 18 18 or whatever that is where it's like 10 and two, you know what I mean? 

And the threshold and, and I'm sorry, the attack and release on that are backwards from what we think, right? So left is. Is slowest attack, right? Is fastest release kind of deal. Those are like one millisecond or less than one millisecond and 50 milliseconds. It's so fast attack and release. And that's the setting that most people have used on vocals and bass for so fricking long. 

It's unbelievable. So I just try to mimic those when I don't have plugins available, right? Right or wrong. It doesn't matter. That's just what's worked for me. And I'm trying to get like six, really I'm trying to get seven, but six or seven ish DB of gain reduction on my bass guitar. And I know we're talking circles right now, but you just were like, you got this look in your face. 

So I'm going around here, but like six or seven DB of reduction on the bass guitar. And that's going to keep it real, real steady state. Uh, but I, I think a lot in settings of other compressors to then make on these digital compressors, right? Like the classic compressors that we used. What are those? And what's happening there, same thing on the SSL channel compressor, the fastest release on a 4k channel compressor is 100 milliseconds. 

So at fast release, on the channel compressor that made every freaking record we've ever heard in our life, 100 milliseconds is the fastest release. And it's like a 1 millisecond attack. At fast attack or slow attack, it's a little variable, but it's, it's not a millisecond. So again, there's that 100 millisecond release again, that seems to just kind of work for people in SSL. 

And so I just use that on my channels, I use it on my bus, and then I fuss from there if I need to. But like, you know, when you got to get going faster than 44 minutes and 38 seconds of trying to explain it to somebody

Andy Leviss: Speaking of which...we're only like halfway through our outline for this episode, so...why don't we pause it here, and come back next time to pick up where we left off?

Sean Walker: Thank you to Allen and Heath for, you know, making the AHM and some consoles and letting us talk some nerd shit. And thanks to RCF for making rippin' speakers that, you know, everybody can afford to go make some money with and letting us, uh, you know, talk about speakers and podcast audio shit.

Till next time. That's the pod y'all. 

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

Andy Leviss: Hey, you're listening to another episode. Yeah, see, we gotta start doing video cause, cause I started making Sean go, Sean starts making me go, and then we've got bloopers before we even start. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. 

Andy Leviss: Of course, then I just make more editing for myself after we'd finally gotten to the point that I don't really have to edit much, and here we are. Let's take it again. 

Sean Walker: and Scene.