Finding a Baseline

Finding a baseline in my mixing technique has been a huge focus of mine lately. Here's what I mean by that: I've been on VENUE for over 5 years now mixing almost 4 times a week. That's a lot of hours getting used to certain "perks" and features that are specific to VENUE systems. Especially the TDM plug-ins and the large selection of EQs, dynamics, and FXs all just a mouse click away. Working at House of Blues as well as Onstage Systems has forced my to try and find either analogue replacements for some key processors in my mix setup or spend loads of time trying to create the same sounds with different digital consoles.  It's a fun journey to find my mix style so to speak with other consoles, but it definitely makes me appreciate mixing on VENUE on Sundays. One piece of advice I can give anyone out there having to branch out and mix on a ton of different consoles is this: Throw away any numbers or setting you have in you head and just listen. Listen with your ears and start from scratch if you've never mixed on that particular console before. I used to walk up to a new console and try to "pre-mix" the drums channels and never was please with the results. Each console, preamp, and PA will have a completely different response then one of a different make and model. Even guys who carry their own mics and console must still focus on the system side of things and try and mold the existing system to fit their mix. Unless I'm doing a show with our PA, consoles and mics, I try not to get too far ahead of myself in terms of pre-mixing.

  Some of the things I've been considering to help duplicate my mix more consistently from console to console has been Waves Multirack. Multirack utilizes any audio interface as an insert point for Waves native plug-ins running on your laptop or desktop. This would allow me to say drop an 1176 on my lead vocal and an API2500 compressor on my master bus. Depending on the size and capabilities of your audio interface, you can insert plug-ins until your computer freezes or you run out of channels. For me personally I love the color that the 1176 adds to guitars and vocals and quite honestly probably rely too much on it to help color my sounds. I'm not 100% obsessed with plug-ins, just 90%. All kidding aside I do go to great lengths and spend time with the bands to make sure the source sounds good to begin with. I also check my mic positions and have taken the long walk to the stage many of times to correct a mic position on say a guitar cab or floor tom. (MON guys never seem to pay attention to the com flashing lol) Another thing I've considered is buying a few key hardware compressors such as the API2500 for my master bus and an 1176 or LA-2A for my lead vocal. I've seen alot of guys carrying channel strips for the lead vocals and have also considered those, but I find that if I can get the right mic for the vocalist I'm working with, the typical 4-band parametric on the console strip will suffice.

  Lastly; I've also taken a step back from the gear craze and considered this: I had the privilege of working with my friend Scott Ragsdale on a Lincoln Brewster gig and was blown away by the mix he got up and running with Brewster's personal Yamaha LS9/16. For starters when the MON tech pulled out the LS9 I almost offered to rent them a Profile out of my own pocket lol. Scott assured me that Brewster has been touring with that setup and everything was pretty dialed in, but still I was doubtful about the quality of the mix. After line check the band took the stage and all I can say is WOW.  Is Brewster's band amazing? Yes, and it does all start with the source. Scott maybe took 6 minutes to dial in the band and then we started walking around the room listening to the band and checking the PA coverage. No high end channel strips or compressors. No $80,000 console or Meyer MILO PA.....just a great band and great FOH engineer. That day was definitely an eye opener for me in terms of gear usage. Do I one day want to own my own Profile(or whatever new amazing console Avid releases)? Yes! Do I try to always carrying my mic pack on my gigs? Yes! Do I want have a few pieces of hardware comps and pres that I can carry for my vocal chain? Yes! More important then all that is this: I want to be the engineer who walks in and regardless of the console, mics, outboard gear, or PA, creates an amazing mix for the artist and the audience! That is why I am in this business and why I hope everyone else is as well. The love for the mix.

Even More Change

Well it's a new year and even more has transpired. For starters I'm told this blog is no longer an option and so I hear by promise to try and blog at least once a month. Last time I blogged I had left my full time position at the church and was working almost full time at House of Blues. I'm now in the process of balancing the church, HOB, and a regional production company called Onstage Systems. I had several people tell me that to get some more systems experience I had to get with a production house and so that's what I did. Wow what an eye opener! First week on the job we did One Republic at Cowboys Stadium, followed by a latin pop show at a 7500 seat theater. HUGE difference when your apart of the PA crew that rigs and sets up the PA. It's been great getting L'Acoustics certified and learning about their full range of products including all the new K-Line of PA. Our company has been the PA,lights,video, and staging provider for the George Straight tour since before he was big and it's been great talking with Strait's FOH Engineer/System Tech and learning the ins and outs of large scale PA alignment and some cool shortcuts to make my life easier in large venues. So that is where I'm at now, and I promise to start posting more in the next few weeks to talk about some of the different events that I've worked and all the awesome gear that went along with it.

Changes All Around Me

Well lots more has happened since my last post...I know I should probably learn to check my own blog and update it more then every 3 months. Where to begin? Well doors where opened at House of Blues in Dallas for me to get a job as an audio engineer. I had come through with a band and mixed a show and gotten a job offer back in August. After management finally received the budget increase I got a call to come in. After about a month it was clear that to get more frequent gigs at House of Blues I would have to be open in terms of my schedule. Completely open and so that lead to my next decision. I'm no longer full time at my church as the Audio Director. I still mix most Sundays as well as get paid to come in about 10 hours a week just to keep the stage and gear prepped for Sunday and take care of any ghost that might pop up during the week. I'm also completely done with the youth production area. Even before House of Blues I was getting stressed going between the different buildings and services checking on everything and so it's nice to only have to focus on the adult services and allow some of the volunteers to run the youth production. I will definitely miss working up at the church full time. We've all grown up together and it will always be home to me. However, I really enjoy my new family at House of Blues. The rest of the production staff are great people and a lot of fun to work with! My ultimate goal as an audio engineer is touring with a band on a decent sized tour around the country and possibly overseas as well. Basically big enough to carry my own console and mic package and maybe my own PA.....maybe about the PA. That's just a whole other can of worms. Oh and for those wondering....Avid Profile would be my console. I have used the VENUE system for over 5 years now and I really don't want anything else. Got to use the Soundcraft Vi6,Yamaha M7CL,PM5D, and LS9. Oh and recently got to play around with a Midas Pro6....still want the Profile! The snapshot automation and 100 slots for plugins and the super simple link to ProTools HD makes it unbeatable. It offers so musch create mixing options it's insane not to at least give it a try! I know, I should work for Avid.....back to the blog. I'm not entirely sure arenas would be something I enjoy mixing unless of course I had the PA and budget like U2, or like Tom Petty. With that being said, House of Blues is the best place I can be in Dallas to get me hopefully one step closer to reaching that goal and being around other techs and bands that operate on that level. Several other of the HOB guys have been asked to go out on tours by visiting bands and management, which is really cool. I was always under the impression that you could never get hired mid tour, because obviously the tour already has the necessary techs. Needless to say I always bring my A-game at House of Blues.

House of Blues has been an eye opening experience to say the least. The non-church production world is a lot different and way more fast paced. Also I've found that unless your the headliner and are a national touring act....less is more. I've had some of my co-workers wide eyed when I said I wanted a snare bottom mic on one of the support acts, or a double guitar mic setup. Hey, I figure we have a huge closet full of mics and cables and plenty of console channels why not?! It's also eye opening when I see costumers or bands acting just like they do in the church world. People with a sense of entitlement or control that they are so far from actually having its hilarious! I guess dealing with people is just life! Well until next time....

Small Festival Type Event

So the month of August has been super busy! Starting with a week long trip to Seattle for our 1 year anniversary. I can honestly say that is one place I would love to move. The weather and the environment is amazing. Plus the public transportation is so cool that we didn't even rent a car and just rode around on the subway or street cars. After Seattle we had a special youth Sunday service which involved a full stage strike to get the youth band all setup. After that weekend I had 2 weeks of prep with 4 bands for a event we called 365. Basically it would be a worship service followed by 20 minutes of speaking. Then the audience would have a 30 minute intermission where we strike the worship band completely and have a support act then a headliner. Then the following morning it was just the worship set. Then again the following evening we had the 2 bands after. Knowing that I would have a lot of people pressed up against the front portion of the stage I decided to try some make shift front fills. I knew I needed them to sound pretty close to the mains so I spent all day the week of the event working on the tuning and level of the fills to work alongside our mains. Above is a pic of 2 per side in place on the front of the stage. They're way bigger then normal since they're not really designed for this application but the got the job done and we now use them on Sunday mornings since we have people down front fro praise & worship. I have to say the 365 event would have been a huge headache to me had I not had a VENUE system. Also 2 amazing volunteers made the set changes really fast and smooth. After laying out the number of inputs on paper that I would need for each band I decided that I would rather just create a show file for each individual band. By keeping the console architecture the same in terms of number of inputs,mix buses,L/R/M config, and such I was able to as soon as one band finished load the next band show files with only a 16 second pause before audio was able to pass for the ipod. I had originally wanted to use snapshots and had used them to switch between entire bands before but I liked the isolation and control having separate show files offered me. All the bands were running IEMs and I also had 2 sub fills on stage and a butt-kicker on the drummers throne. Stage patching was pretty easy; I just used our core Sunday band patching for the headliner and then ran an analogue snake to the middle of the stage for the worship set as well as the headline support. this way the headliner's patching would never be changed after the final sound check. This ensured set change for them went twice as fast and added a sense of security on my end of the snake. Having had rehearsal with all the bands except one(first night headline support) I felt super confident as well in my patching and gain structure which allowed me to really focus on mixing each band and not hunting down patching issues or trying to reset my gain structure the whole first song. The bands definitely had a blast and were super appreciative of me and my guys. Two things I will say always makes a huge difference even before wicked cool consoles or any piece of gear for that matter are: Preparation & Quality of Service. In terms of preparation; it would have been a whole other experience for the bands if I had waited till the day of the show and not had any rehearsals with them! They wouldn't be familiar with our stage, our IEM system, and certainly wouldn't have the time to find the right stage volume for their amps that worked with our size stage. Also, had I waited till then to find out what instruments they were bringing, or how many vocalists and where they needed mics it would have been a long frustrating day for everyone. Doing a lot of advance work such as input list, stage layouts, and building your show files ahead of time will go a long way in making your time with the bands smooth and enjoyable for everyone. Come to find out the day after the event our pastor was getting constant emails and phone calls regarding the service I provided for them and how thankful they were that were basically "rolled out the red carpet". In fact one of the headliners has asked me to mix all their shows from now on and later in the year I'll be mixing live and then the tracks after the show for a live album they are planning on releasing. That being said you never know what will result from the work you do. Always go 110% and make every effort to plan ahead. It will save you when things get crazy and will also make you look professional.

System EQ and the Big Picture

My friend Dave Stagl recently posted this on his blog and I think it really gets the point across on why I like to tune my PA a certain way and will open the door for maybe a few more posts regarding system optimization and tuning. I Know I'm always searching for the flattest response so that what I capture is reproduced with the least amount of coloration from the PA allowing me to have the cleanest starting point to create my mix. So read Dave's post already! :) Oh, and please follow his blog, it's full of amazing info and knowledge that will definitely help anybody in the live sound world!
Harsh Reality: Part 1 – All Things Not So Equal

Snapshots,Snapshots, Snapshots......

Well today was a day that reminded me why I absolutely love the VENUE's snapshot automation! Granted I had to put in the time to setup the snapshot and test it to make sure it would fail me in a live situation, but it was totally worth it. I have a lead singer that sing's once a month, and when she sings there is usually BGVs singing parts that don't normally have to cover with our other lead vocalists. The reason I needed a snapshot for this vocalist was two parts. First my own, almost lazy reason: I don't want to have to re-label the input,FX channels,IEM outputs, and FX sends, or have to recall my saved EQ for her channels and IEM output. Second reason being that she likes a totally different style of stereo mix in her ears as well as her mic level needing to be different in the rest of the band. Oh, almost forgot; all her FX plugins themselves. So all that being said, I created a snapshot called "AMBER LEAD". I scoped pretty much everything but 'midi" and "vca" and took the time to dial in the bands IEMs during a rehearsal with this vocalist. After about an hour in rehearsal with this vocalist and the band, I felt comfortable using it live. So this morning as I was bring the board online I just scrolled down and recalled "AMBER LEAD" and everything to do with the lead vocal section changed for her and the band required zero monitor adjustments and her vocal needed to dynamics or EQ adjustment. What a time saver on a already packed Sunday morning! Now if you are wondering why with a VENUE I can't just have a separate set of channels for each vocalist and their FX returns here's why: I have the drums, main vocals, and rest of the band all on bank 'A' just like you'd find on a traditional analogue console. I do this because when I work with a band I want all my main stuff on top so to speak. Fader bank 'B' is BGVs,Loops,iPod,DVD, speak mics(headsets) and other items that will only be touched at specific times. Bank 'C' is the entire band and vocals double-patched to be EQ'd,compressed,gated,and tweaked for the band's IEMs just as if I had a separate monitor console. That's a whole other topic/post so I'll save that for next post......maybe tomorrow. Also I'm going to try my best to take a lot of pics to help describe visually what I'm writing about here. Especially since I just got the iPhone 4 with the HD camera. That's all for now!

Local Club Trends

One of the things I've noticed mixing at pretty much every club in Dallas is that the system EQ seems to be the same everywhere.......HARSH with trashy low end. House of Blues was the only place I went where I only had to make like 3 or 4 adjustments to the system. Every where else it's like there's this obsession with 2.5k,3.2k,5k,8k, being 4db louder then everything else! Lets not even get started on low end.......on place had their subs crossed over at 400hz! This was not some small club either! Needless to say my growing communications skills I was taught in the police academy helped a lot! In every venue I've walked into I've been able to get the house guy to let me either tune the system a bit before the doors opened or store my own presets in the FOH processor or graphic. The most recent show I mixed at was this past Saturday at Trees in Dallas.(pic on the left) Soundbridge line arrays(XYON™ 7208XY) and Soundbridge subs. The system processor was and Ashley Protea 4.24C with QSC amps for the tops and Powersoft amps for the subs.....not too shabby. Definately the most beefy system in the local club scene. FOH console was a Yamaha LS9-32. While I was happy to break away from the mid-size analogue desks that are found at all the other clubs, I almost started wishing for one during sound check. Unlike the M7CL...NO TOUCHSCREEN! Very big speed issue when you wanna move quickly but you have to tab up,down,left,right with arrow keys instead of a trackball or touching the screen. If I ever mix here again I will definitely be using the StudioManager Yamaha offers and setting up my show before hand to make it easier on myself. One thing I tried at this show was using the house mic package. Trees is probably the best equipped club so I felt relatively comfortable with their selection of Sennheiser and Shure stuff. It definitely cut my time in half in terms of any EQ adjustments on the channels just because they were relatively close having been used with that system in that room all the time. I think with the exception of lead vocal mics, or just a horrible mic selection I may leave my mic package at home next time to help eliminate some time before the band starts. I'm looking forward to some shows that we'll be able to bring our own console and mics and be completely independent of the house setup. More then likely that will be another House of Blues show in late August. Until then, I guess I'll keep mixing in the trenches! Yes, I know I'm spoiled, but what can I say?! I love the VENUE and would it, well an SC48 even for a 4 channel wedding if I could. Musicians have their favorite brands and models of instruments, FOH guys have their favorite mics and consoles. Anyways, hope I can start being a resource for people all over as I start posting alot of the stuff I've been learning lately and dealing with on the job as an audio director. Also if you want to follow me on Twiter my ID is just JamesButera.

LONG TIME NO BLOG!

Wow my last blog post was Febuary 22nd of 2008! I can honestly say I just forgot I have my own blog. I've been so busy since Febuary of 2008, really busy. For starters I got married; August 8th of 2009 to Audrey Katherine Butera. Well she's Butera now but her last name was Young. I've also attended a regional police academy and become a certified Texas Peace Officer.....aka cop. I'm still the audio director of Church in the City in Dallas, and going to be reserving with Dallas Police Department that way I can still do all my audio work and get to do police work once or twice a week. I've been doing more freelance audio work for corporate events, weddings as well as working with several local bands regularly. It's been a huge technical growing experience just because in all the clubs around Dallas even the nice ones you don't get to have all you boutique stuff even if you bring you own mic package it's still low quality in everything else. I have to say though if you have the chance to get out and mix "in the trenches" do it! It's made me a better engineer and a better communicator. Now every time I mix on the VENUE I appreciate it WAY more! Lot's more stuff has happened since then and I promise to start posting regularly to keep this thing updated.

Business Conference

Well, this weekend I'm helping out some friends from church with a business conference by the airport. I went into this never having done conferences outside of church based meetings. Wow! What a change! Not having the pressure of bands and live video is really relaxing. I chose a loadout based on what the initial discussions of what would be happening during the conference. By the time we setup, and began tuning the PA, I knew I had brought way too much gear. We went from 3 floating wireless mics and a LAV; to a wired podium wired mic, and a LAV. The room: more than half the size I was planning on. Ya, I had way too much PA. I'm running the LAV and al the other mics through DBX DDP processors and I have a DBX 2231 on the LAV as well just to ring it out for different speakers. PA has a DBX DriveRack feeding it, and that's it. I needing to have 2 recording splits off the FOH console as well as a video feed for a guy taping from the back so I brought an old Yamaha analogue desk: MC24/12. Nice little desk although I wish it had recallable mutes. Anyways, today is day 2 and so far so good. Everyone is very impressed with the sound and the error free operation of it. I'm guessing that their past experiences have been pretty bad. Do any of you ever do small conferences on the weekends? What's your loadout?

House of Blues

Well, Tuesday night I saw One Republic at the House of Blues Dallas. The show sounded really good. At FOH they were running a Klark Teknic DN9340 Grapic EQ and a DBX 4800 series DriveRack. Awesome punch and alot of mid-range clarity. Something I find alot of smaller venues lacking these days. What DSP do you use at FOH?

VENUE Plug-In Action

I've always been an AUX-fed EFX kind of guy. Maybe its due to the fact that I learned on an analogue system that was wired a certain way and never changed; but recently with the VENUE I've been trying to free up some of our AUXs. The VENUE offers up to 16 FX returns and so I would have enough room to work with. Something I didn't know is that you can route the input off of one of the 4 available inserts on the VENUE, and then patch the output to the FX returns. All digitally of course. Yet another cool feature that makes the VENUE system worth every penny! If you already were aware of this awesome feature.....good for you hot-shot! Anyways, if you have any other creative ways to setup your FX plugins please leave a comment and et me know.

JBL VRX Arrays Anyone?

I'm curious to hear what some of you think about the VRX series from JBL. They also make a self-powered version of these as well. Our youth group meets in the school gym and I'd like to eventually move to a line array to get audio in the back of the room a little better. With the the point and shoot boxes we're running now, our sound is at its best up until FOH. Anything past FOH gets swallowed by the gym. I know.....gym swallowing sound instead of reflecting it everywhere you don't want? Yep. We have this weird rubber style floor and there is significant sound paneling around the entire walls of the gym. Recently our numbers have been increasing and now most of the kids have to stay in their seats due to room down front filling up. So now our focus is shifting from tweaking for worship down front to worship around the entire gym. Although I would prefer to go M'elodie series from Meyer in here, our budget isn't that large quite yet. Most of the reviews on audio blogs are very mixed. I can tell you this: we like to keep it at 105db at FOH usually during worship. So anyone with live experience with these cabs let me know how they stack up! Side note: anyone ever play around with the QSC WideLine array? Specs look pretty good, but haven't gotten to hear one in person just yet.

LOST Season 4

This show just gets deeper and deeper every 10 minutes that it plays. Does anybody just think its going to end without ever telling us about who Ben really is and what the crap that black smoke is? That would suck. I personally believe that at the end of the day, the whole island is just going to be some awesome super-secret government project to operate in different parallels of time. Or something like that. The minute they found all of that money and those passports for Ben I thought,"wow this reminds me of The Bourne Series." Anyways, any of you out there more in-tune with the TV show LOST please feel free to comment.

Start of Something New!

Well, this is my first post on this blog thing so here goes:

Being the Technical Director of my church is a little bit more demanding than I imagined. Before actually being named TD; I pretty much functioned as one as far as the Youth department was concerned. Ok, so I manage 2 systems instead of one? Easy, right? Not hardly. Alot more expectations from the big guys to have things running perfectly in both venues even though you can only be in one at a time. That's where having a great crew comes into play.

My youth crew has consisted of 5 guys for several years now, but recently dropped to 4 due to one leaving for college. These guys are all heart. I've spent many a late night with these guys and they truly are great. We've got an event coming up where the youth group will pack-up and head to a hotel for what we call an Advance. I thought I would do something special for these guys and rent a Digidesign Profile for the trip. We have a VENUE back home in the main sanctuary and they love working with it. Granted our youth groups budget isn't high enough to purchase one, but I've got a guy giving me a great weekly rate on one. So with a month and a half to go; I'm slowy setting aside some personal funds to make sure we get that console. My guys need to finally come out ahead for once and have it easy. Would they kill me if they knew I paid for it? Yep.....but it's such an awesome console! :) Anyways, this is my first of many entries to this thing. All you fellow FOH or Lighting guys feel free to leave comments or email me!