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  1. #11
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    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by dbarrow View Post
    If only you could persuade your guitar players to use the Fractal Audio Axe-FX units. I have an Axe-FX II XL+, but I am on the waiting list for the Axe-FX III. These things have stunning tone for miles and can emulate just about any amp rig/pedal setup. You can run a stereo feed to the PA and have a separate powered stereo wedge mix, if you so desire. I recommended these to the Del Castillo brothers and now they both have the Axe-8 floor pedal units.

    https://www.fractalaudio.com/
    I actually perform with a guitar player who uses the Fractal system. Yes, pretty amazing. Also, the stage-left guitar player in this video uses the Fractal. The stage-right guy uses a thing called a "Pod???" SL guy gives SR guy crap for it all the time.

    https://youtu.be/hoGtKSn1Tzc
    DF

    http://soundaddy.com

    Intel DG965OT Motherboard (11/17/08) - Intel P4 LGA-775 651 (Cedar Mill) 3.4GHz CPU
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  2. #12

    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by Donnie Frank View Post
    I actually perform with a guitar player who uses the Fractal system. Yes, pretty amazing. Also, the stage-left guitar player in this video uses the Fractal. The stage-right guy uses a thing called a "Pod???" SL guy gives SR guy crap for it all the time.

    https://youtu.be/hoGtKSn1Tzc
    Rick and Mark Del Castillo have the Axe-8 floor pedal versions of the Fractal now.

  3. #13
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    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by dbarrow View Post
    Rick and Mark Del Castillo have the Axe-8 floor pedal versions of the Fractal now.
    For their acoustic guitars? Or are they using electric guitars now? Are you talking about the brothers from "Del Castillo?"

    D
    DF

    http://soundaddy.com

    Intel DG965OT Motherboard (11/17/08) - Intel P4 LGA-775 651 (Cedar Mill) 3.4GHz CPU
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  4. #14

    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by Donnie Frank View Post
    For their acoustic guitars? Or are they using electric guitars now? Are you talking about the brothers from "Del Castillo?"

    D
    Yes. They got the Axe-8 units, so they could run both their acoustics and electrics through them. I helped Rick make a tone match for his main acoustic guitar, going through a good studio mic and preamp. So, theoretically, his acoustic sounds like the studio quality he gets on the album.

  5. Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Here's my $0.02:

    In the video you've got a small stage, looks like a small hard room with a little PA. The lead vocal sounds good for this situation BTW.

    Firstly, the lowest root note on a guitar is 81Hz, setting your high pass anywhere above that and you're throwing away root notes for harmonics. I set my HPF to the lowest root note of the instrument and then set up the low EQ as a shelf. There are a lot of gutsy, mechanical and human sounds that come out of a guitar in the low range, I often find myself reaching for the fader as well as the low or low mid gain on the EQ to make it pop out without getting shrill. I agree with your instinct to grab 400Hz and give it that broad gentle boost, but maybe only during the lead breaks. I mix continually through the entire performance, I change my mix from verse to chorus - if something sounds wrong in that moment, that's the only opportunity you'll get to fix it.

    Secondly, on a tight stage your biggest enemy is open mics. When you have a guitar amp and then multiple mics that are amplifying that guitar amp that are different distances away from the source you get all kinds of wishy-washy phasing crap going on. I assign my backing vocals to a VCA and I pull that fader right out of the mix when they aren't being used. You can use mute groups, whatever works for you, but try taking stuff away rather than adding something and see if the situation improves. I've mixed allot of loud guitar players over the years and I find that getting rid of the audio delay line of unevenly spaced open mics helped more than any processing I did on the strip. In fact, you can make a small PA sound much bigger than it is by goosing unused mics and riding your keys and guitars, punching things up in their key parts and setting them back a bit when they require less prominence. Also, things like guitar amps in monitor mixes on a small stage is just a bad idea in my opinion. I'd rather go with a slightly louder point source than add a few more sources of the same signal.

    My last point will probably seem out there, but I've found this to be fairly consistently the case in my experience. When it comes to music, there are two types of people; those that have good pitch and those that have good frequency and dynamic comprehension. It's not an absolute, but a sliding scale where you have some people who are really good at one aspect and terrible in the other, or maybe somewhere in the middle. There are those rare and talented ones that excel in both aspects, I'm definitely not in that group. So you will find people who are great musicians, but they have no concept of how to make their instrument sound good. This is why music companies invented the word 'tone', so they could watch guitar players chase their tail their entire life looking for magic sound fairy dust sprinkled in their gear. There is a whole secondary market where they all start looking for the gear they started out with when they started playing decades after they figured out there was nothing wrong with it in the first place.

    Some people won't mind a little 'guidance' with their stage sound, some will appreciate it, other's don't need it. I know I've offended people over the years and at least a few have brought it up years later and thanked me for it - there was usually alcohol involved, but still...

  6. #16

    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Back when I was running PA for bar bands, I got to where I would have the guitar players put their amps at one end of the stage and fire them directly at the drummer. Needed no guitars in monitor mix, amp sound wasn't sprayed directly at front vocal mics (yes, there was leakage, but not quite as bad), and I got more control at FOH. Basically, the backline became stage monitor for instruments, since the PA could carry the load for the audience. Then again, there was the rare player who brought a 5 watt amplifier, leaving it to me to make up the difference. I really liked those guys.
    Cary B. Cornett
    aka "Puzzler"
    www.chinesepuzzlerecording.com

  7. #17

    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by Cary B. Cornett View Post
    Back when I was running PA for bar bands, I got to where I would have the guitar players put their amps at one end of the stage and fire them directly at the drummer. Needed no guitars in monitor mix, amp sound wasn't sprayed directly at front vocal mics (yes, there was leakage, but not quite as bad), and I got more control at FOH. Basically, the backline became stage monitor for instruments, since the PA could carry the load for the audience. Then again, there was the rare player who brought a 5 watt amplifier, leaving it to me to make up the difference. I really liked those guys.
    The last time I played in a Rock band, we also eventually ended up putting the instrument amps at the long sides of the stage, like side fills, just to get the direct sound out of the vocal mics. Being the guitar player in the band, it worked fine for me. I could always hear the sound I wanted from my amp and the sound man had more freedom to shape it for the audience sake.

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    Albuquerque, N.M.
    Posts
    1,105

    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by Cary B. Cornett View Post
    Back when I was running PA for bar bands, I got to where I would have the guitar players put their amps at one end of the stage and fire them directly at the drummer. Needed no guitars in monitor mix, amp sound wasn't sprayed directly at front vocal mics (yes, there was leakage, but not quite as bad), and I got more control at FOH. Basically, the backline became stage monitor for instruments, since the PA could carry the load for the audience. Then again, there was the rare player who brought a 5 watt amplifier, leaving it to me to make up the difference. I really liked those guys.
    Yep...I've been doing that for years. Works like a charm, because the BAND (not me) will tell him to turn down.
    DF

    http://soundaddy.com

    Intel DG965OT Motherboard (11/17/08) - Intel P4 LGA-775 651 (Cedar Mill) 3.4GHz CPU
    2.0GB 800Mhz RAM - 40GB Intel X25-V SSD - 500GB SATA "Spinner"

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  9. #19
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    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy Hamm View Post
    Here's my $0.02:

    In the video you've got a small stage, looks like a small hard room with a little PA. The lead vocal sounds good for this situation BTW.

    Firstly, the lowest root note on a guitar is 81Hz, setting your high pass anywhere above that and you're throwing away root notes for harmonics. I set my HPF to the lowest root note of the instrument and then set up the low EQ as a shelf. There are a lot of gutsy, mechanical and human sounds that come out of a guitar in the low range, I often find myself reaching for the fader as well as the low or low mid gain on the EQ to make it pop out without getting shrill. I agree with your instinct to grab 400Hz and give it that broad gentle boost, but maybe only during the lead breaks. I mix continually through the entire performance, I change my mix from verse to chorus - if something sounds wrong in that moment, that's the only opportunity you'll get to fix it.

    Secondly, on a tight stage your biggest enemy is open mics. When you have a guitar amp and then multiple mics that are amplifying that guitar amp that are different distances away from the source you get all kinds of wishy-washy phasing crap going on. I assign my backing vocals to a VCA and I pull that fader right out of the mix when they aren't being used. You can use mute groups, whatever works for you, but try taking stuff away rather than adding something and see if the situation improves. I've mixed allot of loud guitar players over the years and I find that getting rid of the audio delay line of unevenly spaced open mics helped more than any processing I did on the strip. In fact, you can make a small PA sound much bigger than it is by goosing unused mics and riding your keys and guitars, punching things up in their key parts and setting them back a bit when they require less prominence. Also, things like guitar amps in monitor mixes on a small stage is just a bad idea in my opinion. I'd rather go with a slightly louder point source than add a few more sources of the same signal.

    My last point will probably seem out there, but I've found this to be fairly consistently the case in my experience. When it comes to music, there are two types of people; those that have good pitch and those that have good frequency and dynamic comprehension. It's not an absolute, but a sliding scale where you have some people who are really good at one aspect and terrible in the other, or maybe somewhere in the middle. There are those rare and talented ones that excel in both aspects, I'm definitely not in that group. So you will find people who are great musicians, but they have no concept of how to make their instrument sound good. This is why music companies invented the word 'tone', so they could watch guitar players chase their tail their entire life looking for magic sound fairy dust sprinkled in their gear. There is a whole secondary market where they all start looking for the gear they started out with when they started playing decades after they figured out there was nothing wrong with it in the first place.

    Some people won't mind a little 'guidance' with their stage sound, some will appreciate it, other's don't need it. I know I've offended people over the years and at least a few have brought it up years later and thanked me for it - there was usually alcohol involved, but still...
    Great anecdote. Thanx for the advice. The problem with the VCA idea is that background vocals are all over the map. A "one fader does all" helps when cumulative background vocals + lead become over powering. For that, I DO use the DCA. But because my clients tend to switch lead/backup vocals, I have ALL vocals on the DCA. So there are no real "backup vocalists" per-se. That said...

    What I REALLY wish I had was a subgroup with a noise gate. THAT might be a great idea. I've always been a huge fan of subgroups, but have pulled away from them in the Behringer X32 offerings because they were weird to set up (easy to set up in SAC). Now that I'm a little more familiar with the interface, I think I'll go back and revisit subgroups. That said...

    What you said about the guitar really hits home. 81Hz, eh? That's intriguing. I've always left the guitar full range in the mains (rarely high-pass at the channel strip), but left them out of the subs. As you can imagine, my mains are crossed over at 100Hz using a 24dB Butterworth, so the crossover acts as a natural high-pass filter. Are you suggesting adding guitar to the subs?

    D
    Last edited by Donnie Frank; 07-18-2018 at 03:42 AM.
    DF

    http://soundaddy.com

    Intel DG965OT Motherboard (11/17/08) - Intel P4 LGA-775 651 (Cedar Mill) 3.4GHz CPU
    2.0GB 800Mhz RAM - 40GB Intel X25-V SSD - 500GB SATA "Spinner"

    RME HDSP 9652 (x2 - 1 spare) - Behringer ADA8000 (x5 - 2 spares)
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  10. #20
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
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    Default Re: Audio engineer guitar players...

    Quote Originally Posted by dbarrow View Post
    Yes. They got the Axe-8 units, so they could run both their acoustics and electrics through them. I helped Rick make a tone match for his main acoustic guitar, going through a good studio mic and preamp. So, theoretically, his acoustic sounds like the studio quality he gets on the album.
    That's amazing. What a small world. I don't know Rick, but I know Mark very well. Please tell him Donnie Frank says hello, and give him a big hug. If you want to freak him out, call him "Mr. Castillo" in a thick English accent, fully pronouncing the L's like a Brit would. Some guy at one of our hotels in England called him that, so that was his name for the rest of the tour. Good times....

    I assume they're still in Austin, yes?

    Here's a photo I took of Mark in Bosnia:

    http://drummerdonnie.com/music/Ravin...ApacheMark.jpg

    D
    Last edited by Donnie Frank; 07-17-2018 at 08:53 PM.
    DF

    http://soundaddy.com

    Intel DG965OT Motherboard (11/17/08) - Intel P4 LGA-775 651 (Cedar Mill) 3.4GHz CPU
    2.0GB 800Mhz RAM - 40GB Intel X25-V SSD - 500GB SATA "Spinner"

    RME HDSP 9652 (x2 - 1 spare) - Behringer ADA8000 (x5 - 2 spares)
    CM MotorMix (x3 - Host system) - Behringer BCF-2000 (Remote system)


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