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[livesound]

LIVE SOUND TUTORIAL

[livesound]

Getting to know the setup!

The way my daw is set up is that tracks are being sent to groups or busses then routed to a filter band on bus 8 which ultimately gets sent to the stereo mix to the master. I wont focus on mastering so much for this but rather how it works. I had fun producing this little snippet of music and got my mic connected as well. I can simultaneously play all this instruments at once or preferably have a band do so in one recording because with the Scarlett I have up to 18 inputs to use. input 1 mic input 2 is guitar then 3 is piano or any other instrument of course. I used a little of the compressor set on the guitar and it was interested playing with the dynamics of the guitar like how loud it got or how suppressed it could be. When I moved the attack and release dials you can hear how muddy the sound is and setting the threshold to certain levels can really elevate that so I should always be cautious with this tool. It was great seeing this for myself and now I have more possibilities. the noise gate is also a great tool to use as well because you can hear on vocals how much sound is being cut when you push that filter to higher attack levels. it is perfect for getting those background noises out too.

[livesound]

Set List and Stage Plot

I had recently went through set list and stage plot with class and came up with my own design. I had placed the keys and guitar to the stage right, drums and vocals center and another guitar stage left. Both Guitars will be mixed together in Mix 2, Mix group 3 will have Drums and Bass, Mix 4 is Vocals and Mix 1 is piano. I wanted to do it this way because the idea in my head was to give the vocals and piano much more freedom in volume range while keeping the bass guitars, guitars, and drums the stability of the piece. I also had ideas of setting amps to the piano and guitars but sadly the template I used didn't have the opacity for the amount of design I wanted to put into the stage plot.

[livesound]

Today my classmates and I went through the diagnostics of sound performance and the journey toward the outcome was very interesting. During the event we all worked together to retrieve the signal of sound and laid out the inputs and outputs to see how the tracks volume leveled and then placed them into groups to use in a mix. To begin, the performers were set in a usual jazz layout with piano stage right then proceeding with bass, guitar, drums, on the right as well but closer to center. After comes the horn section with trombone and trumpets in the back of stage left and the saxophones front of their section. What was troubling at first was figuring out what was going on with white noise coming out of the mix, but through testing different wires and checking back on the mix we realized that evidently it was the stage box being messed up. Lucky our professor helped with deciding that it was best to re route the input from another box which then took care of the noise. Later we were shown how to level a mix and with the software we were working with it could also be controlled with the iPad, which I was mind-blowing to my discovery. It took some effort, mostly from our instructor, to create the least amount of feedback to signal a nice clean sound. Overall it was a great learning experience and I hope to do more live sound in the future.