With high quality live sound gear more available than ever, it’s easy to get caught up in equipment fever and go overboard at gigs – especially small ones. Whether it’s having more mics than you know what do to with, way too much front of house mixing, or just being too loud for a venue, using your sound gear wisely is the key to making each show really pop.
In a typical live setting with a full drum kit, the drums dominate the room – but without a little strategy that often means crushing snare and cymbals, and not much kick drum punch. Especially for louder genres like rock or hip-hop, that good solid kick sound is important, so here are a few tips on getting punchy kick drums on stage.
This video demonstrates the incredible sound and easy operation that make the QX15A our finest 15-inch active loudspeaker. Premium DSP processing from Analog Devices™ delivers controlled sound from its 4 selections of normal intelligent sound, monitor playback, DJ, and external sub functions. 2 amplifiers provide enhanced intelligibility, one for bass and the other for high frequencies plus power to spare from the 1000 watt output.
Nothing is more frustrating than running out of time in the studio, or losing sleep because sessions take too long. Sometimes it seems that producing music is just a slow process, but it needn’t be unnecessarily so. With a few improvements to your workflow, you can find yourself finishing more songs in less time.
Here are our top six productivity tips for a faster recording workflow.
In an ideal world, every stage has everything a musician needs – a nice PA, plenty of space, great mics, a house sound engineer, and green M&M’s. Or at least passable AC power. We all know the former is almost never the case. It turns out even the minimal ask of having enough power to drive a small PA is sometimes too much. Whether it’s because the stage is outdoors, power’s out, or the venue just isn’t equipped right, it’s helpful if you have a strategy in case there’s just no power.
Of all the advanced techniques in a mixer’s toolkit, sidechain compression is arguably one of the most useful – and yet often the one that gets overlooked or misunderstood. Like most processing effects, you can live without using sidechain compression, and even get great mixes, but once you understand it, it’s hard to go back to working without it.
It’s common knowledge among recording enthusiasts that clean power is a helpful thing in a studio. But as with any subject as complicated as electricity and power, it’s not always clear why. Here, we’ll go over what clean power actually means and why it’s important for any recording studio – big or small.
Whether it’s a piano, guitar, or cello, it can be really satisfying to record something you haven’t recorded before. It can also be a little difficult – some instruments' best practices are well documented and some are not.
Sometimes the energy of a live show just can’t be matched in the studio – especially if you’re great at what you do on stage. This has long been known and the “live album” has been a staple of record label catalogs for ages.