Tactical Sound Blog

Live music video shoot: 7 bands • 6 cameras • 22 tracks of audio • No sleep

Mike Jessick (Producer) and Phill Hunt (Engineer)

• Allen & Heath GL2200 • 32 channel mixing console

Rack One:

• Universal Audio LA-610 • Preamp & Compressor
• Mackie 800R • 8-channel preamp
• Presonus ACP-88 • 8-channel compressor / gate
• Aphex 207D • 2-channel tube pre-amp / limiter w/ AES outputs
• dbx 166xl • 2-channel compressor / limiter

Rack Two:

• MOTU 896HD • 18-channel ADA interface w/ AES & lightpipe
• MOTU 8pre • 8-channel ADA interface w/ lightpipe
• Sony DPS-V55 • Multi Effects Processor
• Behringer Ultragraph Pro FBQ1502 • 2-channel 15-band equalizer

Microphones:

• Shure SM-58’s
• Shure SM-57’s
• Shure Beta52
• Shure Beta 56A
• Shure SM-81’s
• Sennheiser e604’s
• Audio Technica AT-3031
• Audio Technica AT-4050’s
• AKG 414II
• Sennheiser e609’s
• Sennheiser e602
• Radial ProD2 • 2-channel DI box

• JBL Eon15’s • Powered monitor wedges

•••  GENERAL SETUP  •••

Microphones –> 100ft Snake –> Outboard Preamps –> Outboard Compressors –> Allen & Heath Mixing Console –> A&H Channel Direct Outputs (post-fader) –> TRS Snakes –> MOTU Interfaces –> MacBook Pro –> Digital Performer

Signal Path

When we ran out of the Universal Audio, Mackie and Presonus preamps / compressors, we decided how to use the Aphex and dbx effectively and used the Allen & Heath preamps built into the board for the rest.

Monitoring Path

Aux 1-2 fed the theatre’s power amp that ran to two passive EAW monitor wedges.  These were very small and stopped working halfway through Day 1.

Aux 3-4 went to our 100ft snake which fed our JBL Eons.

Aux 5-6 sent signal to the Sony Effects Processor** and the returns went to an open stereo channel on the Allen & Heath.

** This effects unit was jointly purchased by 11 people back in 1999. The members of Go For Broke and Downgroove went in on a large equipment purchase in order to self-produce their own records.  This Sony FX processor was hardly used.  We got as much use out of it this weekend as we did the ten years prior!!!

We tried to use the EQ patched into the inserts of Aux 1-2 to help notch the feedback frequencies that were giving us trouble, but scrapped this idea since it would only help with two of our four monitors.

Vocals

In almost all cases, we used an SM-58 for the lead vocal.  In all 7 acts, the LA-610 pre/comp was used on the lead vocal.  On the preamp side, we used the 2 bands of EQ only +1.5dB each to enhance the tonal qualities of each vocalist.  For a couple of the quieter singers, we increased the “Input Gain” dial to +5dB to make sure it was driving the compressor enough.  Preamp level was usually at about 6-7.  The Peak Reduction varied quite a bit, from 4 to 8.5 on the dial.  The make-up gain stage was dialed in until the MOTU interface showed an ideal average and peak signal level.  The VU meter was set for “COMP” and showed an average of 6-8dB of compression.  As always, we soloed the vocal to make sure the tonal quality resulting from the optical compression was pleasing and any audible compression artifacts were kept for a desired character, adding punch and emotion to the recording.

Backup vocals were all on SM-58’s and used the Mackie 800R Preamp & Presonus ACP-88 Compressor combo (referred to as “M&P Combo” after this).

Drums

Beta52 on kick.  Beta56A on the top of the snare.  I find the 56A a bit easier to fit into the small area between the snare, hi hat, other cymbals and a number of stands.  In one or two cases, we used a 57 on the bottom snare head.  e604 clip-ons for the toms.  Overheads – we used a pair of SM-81 condensers for the overheads in all cases, but the miking strategy changed with each band.  If a drummer only had two cymbals (in addition to the hats), we brought the mics closer to the two cymbals and tried to mic them specifically rather than the more common approach of getting a stereo image of the entire kit with a slight preference for the cymbals.  We positioned them in such a way that the snare was “hidden” by the cymbal in an attempt to minimize the snare bleed in the cymbal mics… and it worked!

There was often the question of where to use an extra channel slot we had open, and it came down to “Hi Hat or Bottom Snare Head?”  Most of the time, the hi hat won out, on which we used the AT-3031 (taking the same snare isolation strategy).

Kick, snare and overheads all used the M&P combo. Toms went directly into the A&H board and used their preamps; no compression on input. Bottom snare and hi hat used whatever preamps and compressors were leftover, many times the Aphex.  Compression on drums usually took off about 3dB and at the extremes 6dB for extreme peaks.

Electric Bass

In all cases except Pray for Polanski, we had two feeds from the bass guitar: DI and direct mic on the cab with a Sennheiser e602.

Upright Bass

See The Alrighters below.

Guitars

On electrics, we started with an e609 on the guitar cab.  If there was a 2^nd guitar, we threw a 57 on one and the e609 on the other just to give the guitars some further distinction.  In one case, we actually also DI’ed the rhythm guitar (see Banana Phonetic).  Almost all were fed through the M&P combo.  The amount of compression varied generally by distortion level (since distortion via amplifier circuits tends to have a bit of compression already “built in”).  Cleaner channels lopped off 3-6dB while the more distorted were kept to 1-3dB.

For the two acoustics involved, we DI’ed them when possible and double-miked them.  The mics used varied.  In all cases, every acoustic channel was fed through the M&P combo.  We compressed the acoustics quite a bit more than the electrics (4-8dB on average).

Room Mics

Last year, we threw in room mics in a last-minute attempt to capture the overall response of the room.  There was no consistency to where they were placed, and the pattern varied between Mid-Side (M/S), XY and a spread out stereo pair.  Then I was asked to build surround sound mixes for the DVD!  I had to “manufacture” rear channels from the number of channels I had collected.  This year, we thought more about it and came up with a better strategy.  With the exception of the last act, we used the AT-4050 condenser microphones, sent through the Allen & Heath pres and the dbx compressor, for Rear Left and Rear Right room mics.  They were placed up on the same level as the audio booth (about 15 feet above the stage and 30 to 45 feet from the actual musicians).  These were compressed heavily (10dB).  The one thing that varied was the polar pattern for these (discussed later). We started with them in a Figure-8 pattern hoping to get direct signal as well as anything getting trapped and reflected in the corners of the theatre (8-10 ft away).

We also employed another pair of closer room mics in a Mid-Side (M/S) pattern.  For the side, we used the AKG 414 set to a Figure-8 pattern for the first six acts and the AT-4050 in a Figure-8 for Vikesh Kapoor.  This year, we did not enable the M/S encoder on channels 1-2 of the Mackie 800R preamp, instead recording the direct channels with a plan to process the mid-side encoding during the mixing process.  This allows us to change the perceived “width” of the stereo image in post.  The placement of the M/S pair, purpose, pres and compressors used varied.

Dividing Up the Work

Between just the two of us, we had a lot to cover even after everything was set on the ground floor!  I focused on the entire signal path up until the audio interfaces (AD converters).  During sound check, I’d make sure each outboard component was hitting the optimal gain setting, preamp first making sure it was driving the compressor the right amount.  Then for the compressor, I’d look to the compression or gain reduction meters and make sure the levels were in line with how much I wanted to shave off.  Output or make-up gain was dialed in while watching the signal level on the corresponding MOTU interface channel.**

One slightly annoying part of the Allen & Heath board was that the Direct Outs on each channel were hard-soldered post-fader; however, since we didn’t have a Front of House mix, we didn’t need to use the faders… except for this scenario.  We just set all faders to nominal (0dB) so it essentially passed the signal through to the interfaces.  It made me a little nervous since the faders were very sensitive and easily bumpable.

Phill focused on the recording side of the path, everything from the MOTU interfaces into the computer and the signals displaying in Digital Performer 5.13.  We eventually fed the Main Outs back into the last two open channels on the board.  Now instead of being stuck hearing all channels coming into the booth monitors at 0dB (because the faders had to remain at this level), we could send just this Main Out recording mix to them.  Then from the Mackie Control, Phill was able to create a rough mix on the fly, bring certain instruments up and solo them when we needed to take a closer listen.  This was invaluable throughout the two days!  We also both kept a close eye on the actual visual characteristics of the sound waves in DP: how much head room, compression, etc.  Since this was really what we were walking away with, we took no chances!

Pray for Polanski

Phill and I are scrambling to finish getting everything set up for the first band.  We knew this was going to be one of the more chaotic points of the weekend, since nothing was really set up on the stage / floor level.  I was excited to get some horns involved in this year’s line-up, but I quickly came to find P4P had gotten rid of their trumpet player quite a few months ago.  Back to a 4-piece setup: drums, electric bass, semi-hollow bodied electric guitar and female lead vocalist.

The setup here was pretty much what is described above, except we decided to hook the bass DI up using the direct out from the bassist’s amp.  Bad idea.  Once in the booth and running through the sound check, we discovered some intense buzzing coming through the DI feed.  We asked him to mess with it, but it was garbage.  We scrapped the DI and went with just the e602 on the cab.  Thinking back, we should have taken the two minutes and put our DI in the chain instead.  Luckily the overall tone and character we were getting from the bass cab mic was stellar (except when he wasn’t playing and the buzz came through the speaker a bit).

We also went big and got both the hi hat and bottom snare head miked up.

I can’t recall exactly where we placed the M/S pair, so we’ll have to look back at the video.  With everything going on, we forgot to set the AKG 414 to the Figure-8 polar pattern to make use of the M/S approach.  Phill went and switched it after the 2^nd pass.

Results:   3 songs; 10 takes in total.  That gives me quite a bit to mix, but also a number of options for the video team to cut up / cut around.  As was the case with last year’s project, the first band’s tracks aren’t quite as tight or consistent (on our end) as those later in the band order since we were still tweaking.  The lead vocal on the earlier few takes is a bit over-compressed for my liking.  I dialed it back once we soloed it and found the optical compressor affecting the tonal character a bit too much.  Very happy with the Room mics!  Everything else is very balanced and the distance is apparent.

The Alrighters

For the BU Staff band, producer/director Alan Wong had a huge thing for The Alrighters and just had to book ‘em.  My initial reaction when I found videos online was, “Wow, these vocals are quite different and altogether whacky!”  But the overall energy I knew would translate well.

While setting up on the floor, I overheard the lead singer mention they opened for The Slackers and my ears perked up.  “I love the Slackers… one of my favorite bands,” to which he responded, “Yeah, me too!”  Good people in my book.

The setup here changed quite a bit because of the different instruments thrown in the mix: Lead vocal, 2 backups (sax player and bassist), very minimal drum set (kick, snare, floor tom, hats and a ride), upright bass and a bari sax, both of which I was excited to work with.  We took the AKG 414 away from the M/S setup and put it on the sax instead.  Keeping the AT-4050’s as rear-channel room mics (the only other ones we had with Figure-8 capabilities), we were forced to change the pattern for the closer room ensemble pair.  We went with an X-Y pattern of SM-57’s about 10 feet away from the center of the band, cheating them toward the upright (left) and sax/lead vocal (right) since we knew drums would spill through on their own.

With extra channels to spare, Phill and I were trying to get creative.  The bassist had his own bridge pick-up which he fed to his own DI and bass amp.  We tapped his DI, miked the cab with the e602 and he suggested putting another mic a couple feet behind the main meat of the body, pointing directly at the back of the upright.  Unfortunately because there was no possibility of isolation, there is more kick and snare in this channel than there is bass.  Maybe I’ll use that to my advantage in the drum mix!

We ran into a couple issues here, but neither was too drastic.  Something was funky with the routing of channels to the main mix.  Phill went to solo the sax and got the snare mic; the room pair… same result (the snare mic).  During the first “cut,” we went back and listened to each individual track.  It was what it was supposed to be.  It just heightens the nerves a bit when you’ve gotta roll through with a few unexplainable technology phenomena.  Also, one of the small EAW monitor wedges that the dance theatre supplied stopped working for the drummer.  The same wedge for the sax player was working fine.  As a quick fix, we just moved the bassist’s JBL in between him and the drummer.  The EAWs never worked after that point.

This was a very quick shoot, taking just 24 minutes including spaces.  We took 3 passes of the first song (which was a medley of three different covers) and the other two songs were banged out in 1 take each!  They left me with “Chilly Willy” stuck in my head for the remainder of the day…

Resulting tracks are great with the exception of the back-of-bass mic and the XY pair, the latter being just too low of signal which we never caught.  Not a huge deal since it’ll just add a bit of space to the mix anyway.  I can’t wait to see how this set looks on camera!!!

Sun Cut Flat

Holy isolation Batman!

5-member band, upping the complexities.  Luckily the lead singer / rhythm guitarist forgot his capo and had to run back… so that bought Phill and me some extra setup time!

Sun Cut Flat

We had two guitars here, so as mentioned above in an attempt to further differentiate the guitars, we used an SM-57 on the rhythm guitar cab and an e609 on the lead (check the video to make sure).  Everything else was pretty much the standard setup.  They also had a synth player, so I made sure his settings were panned up the center and we fed just a mono signal to the snake.  I think he was running a midi controller through soft-synths in his mac then out to a small mixer from which I took the signal.  His synth patches varied a TON in output volume, so we had to spend a bit more time leveling them out.

I’ll have to look back to see how the M/S mics were setup.

More of a note to myself for the mixing of Sun Cut Flat, but the lead singer really made his love for delay on vocals and L/R panning differentiation of the two guitars very apparent!

The song where the rhythm guitarist used a capo resulted in a slightly odd distortion characteristic since the capo was used so far up the neck.  Other than that very minimal issue and the lack of monitor mixes for some (sorry to the synth player… ahem, should be coming from the obligatory dance theatre ghost), this shoot was greatly successful!

Results:  3 songs; 7 takes in total plus a lot of tuning coverage.  I am amazed at the amount of isolation we were able to get between instruments!  And the SNR, headroom and overall tone of each instrument are incredible, in my opinion.  They were also very tight and well-practiced!  All of these factors will make the mix much easier for us.  Thanks guys!

Micah
First of three solo artists, and bringing hip hop into the BU Today mix!

She was initially going to be accompanied by a guitarist adding to the beat foundation, but that idea got scrapped a day or two before the shoot.

Micah

Now we really get to play with the number of open channels (while the video team plays with the insane amount of video monitors they have at their disposal)!  As they build a pyramid of live video feeds as a backdrop at the end of the Oriental Rug Runway, we quickly set up a single vocal mic, stereo feed from her computer and move the Mid-Side pair into place.  Unfortunately, we had to move this pair off-center to make room for the camera at the end of the Rug Runway.  I don’t foresee it being a big issue.

The room mics remained in the same position, still in Figure-8.  What was interesting here was we set up the audio monitors facing back in our direction, practically firing right up into the room mics.  We figured she would be rapping near the video pyramid, but she pretty much stayed up toward the front of the runway instead.  We never bothered to move the monitors out toward her since she just rolled right through her tracks and apparently could hear everything just fine.  Plus I didn’t mind the rooms picking up more of a direct feed of what everyone on the floor was hearing (plus a bit extra room).

I may ask her to send me the actual files to make sure the foundation of the tracks are as full as possible, taking the MacBook sound card and 1/8” TRS cable out of the mix.

She had a real smooth flow about her and a lot of attitude, so it’ll accompany the epic imagery of the low-lights, video pyramid and runway!  Something about her delivery reminds me of Sage Francis, but I’ll let the rest of you guys tell me otherwise.  I loved the third and final song, as it was filled with a bit more aggression and political angst.  An F-bomb was dropped, but apparently we don’t need to censor anything this year.  I can dig that.

Results:  3 songs, 2 passes each for a total of 6 takes.  Both the video editor and I have the great luxury of cutting to a specified tempo since it was all performed to a pre-recorded beat.  This allows us to mix and match the best parts of either take very easily, and I’ll probably even give BU Productions the tracks in a different temporal format so they can lay Audio Take A and Audio Take B up in adjacent tracks and combine different pieces.  If you’ve edited video in Final Cut Pro, you know how much easier this approach is.

Day 1 wrapped!

Too tired to function, I fall asleep mad early on the couch and have to get dragged to bed.

Allison Francis

Another solo artist, this time along the acoustic singer/songwriter genre.  I still could swear I have heard her song “Massapequa” in a movie other than “The Single Mother.”

SM-81’s for body and neck mics on the acoustic, plus a DI.  58 on vocal.

This was the set where the audio team got to be the good guys for once.  We had to break down a ton of our mics and switch the stands around, but we were set up and sound checked in no time.  I had no idea what the video team was doing for so long!  I noted that we were buying ourselves time credits we undoubtedly were going to use up during the transition from Allison to the next band; knowing we had to put all the mics and stands back into the mix!

It was really a funny sight:  Phill and I looking down on Allison from the booth.  6 cameramen pointing right at her and another 5-6 crew members pacing around.  I can only imagine how intimidating that is with all eyes on one person.  In an attempt to quell her obvious boredom, she eventually started running random songs as everyone else continued planning shots and lighting.  I had Phill roll tape as she warmed up.  I was stoked when she busted into a version of “Two-Headed Boy” originally written by Neutral Milk Hotel, another one of my favorite bands. She didn’t initially plan on recording that one, but I talked everyone into rolling tape for another pass at that since we had time (or atleast we thought we did).  She also played Pt 2 and later mentioned the guy that played the saw for NMH was in town and caroling Christmas tunes at her friend’s place that same night.  If it wasn’t raining bullets when we got out, I would’ve made it.

Allison Francis

With the exception of “Kaboom” where we had her take a second pass due to the B’s in kaBOOM popping on the vocal mic, she nailed all of her songs in one pass plus a great version of “Two-Headed Boy.”  5 takes in total.

Her Fender acoustic was a bit more one-dimensional than I would’ve liked.  Hopefully it’ll be possible during mixing to bring a little bit more depth and body to the guitar to accompany her powerful voice.

We took a slightly different approach with the M/S pair this time, using the AT-3031 and AKG 414 condensers.  Since it was going to be a much lower level signal, I wanted to get these mics closer while keeping them as out of the shot as possible.  We moved them to the shortest stands, previously taken up by the kick and bass cab mics, placed them on the rug about 8 feet from Allison and pointed them up toward her guitar.  The signal we captured from these was outstanding, and I’m excited to process it via the M/S encoder and see what it does for the stereo image!

The room mics ended up being kind of useless (unless you want to hear Phill and me talking in the booth)!  They were about 55 feet away from her, and when I went out on the balcony I could hear more audio coming out of our booth from the monitors in there than I could from the actual stage.  Chris Maggio was up there with us, so maybe there will be some dialogue Alan can use for the before / after outtakes in these mics.

Banana Phonetic

4-piece band playing an interesting mix between indie rock, funk, jam band with some electronic elements.  The lead singer rigged up his guitar and synth through the same amplifier.  We decided to not only mic this (SM-57) but DI it as well.  The bassist admitted his amp had a pretty nasty buzz in the DI so we just used ours and passed it via the thru-put onto his amp which we miked per usual.  The lead guitar had an e609 on the cab.  For drums, it was an easy setup with the AT-3031 on the hats with the -15dB pad switched on, two minimally-used toms and (check the video to see if it was just two cymbals which we miked more directly).

In addition to the mic & stand switch-back, we invested a bit of time into re-tuning the snare.  Something was really off about it.  It had this boxy sound to the top head and the snares were not very prominent at all.  We couldn’t really spend much more time on it so just moved right into recording.

I’m really excited to hear how the Mid-Side affects the mix in this one!  We positioned the pair in the middle of the band where the mid was pointing at the drummer from 6-8 feet away and the side was picking up the two different guitars on either side.  Even before M/S encoding, the separation is great and I can foresee this working great for the intended purpose.

At this point, we switched the polar pattern on the AT-4050 room mics to a cardioid pattern; half to change it up and half to reduce some of the percussive drum attacks coming back from the corners.

Phill & the Recording Mix

To make up for the inactive EAW monitors, I had Alan pick me up in the morning so I could bring my Alesis studio monitors just in case.  I gave one to the lead guitarist, but I fed a conservative amount of signal into it, so I’m not sure how helpful it was.  The lead vocalist’s JBL monitor was feeding back quite a bit (especially during the song where he played guitar), while he still wanted more volume in it.  That made more of my job during their set focused on the AUX3 knob, bringing it up when the full band was playing and back down for the quieter parts to minimize feedback.  The drummer (who from the booth reminded me of a younger Jake Gyllenhal) was just psyched to have a monitor at all, so no issues there.

Results:  2 songs, 2 takes each (plus two re-starts) making a total of 4.  One thing I really enjoyed seeing was the lead singer get more comfortable as the set went on.  You will be able to hear it in his vocal performance.  His voice warmed up as well, and he was able to hit the higher notes in Song 1 much easier than the first pass (which he stopped for more vocals in the monitor anyway).

Still, there are a lot of general issues and variances throughout this whole set which will make the mix more time consuming.  The balance, both in volume and tonal character, between the keys & lead guitar, rhythm & lead guitars and the bass change from song to song.  I have a feeling they’ll all need some room dialed in and some creative tweaking to make them mesh together better.  The snare sounds pretty bad, so I’ll want to reinforce it with a BFD2 snare using the drum trigger plug-in.  If I were to guess, I’ll EQ out mostly everything except the true snare sounds and favor the bottom head channel in BFD2.

Vikesh Kapoor

I have had the chance to work with Vikesh quite a bit over the last few months prior to this shoot.  After producing three tracks for “Spitzer Space Telescope” during last year’s BU Today shoot, he pulled me into some of his folk-friendly Hootenanny and Grand Ole Hoot shows as a live and recording engineer, one of which featured Vikesh Kapoor.  As opposed to Spitzer, Vikesh has a more mellow folk sound and much less whacky live performance!

I really wanted to change it up for the last act.  The six prior had the AT-4050 condensers up in the balcony as room mics.  That didn’t really work for the other acoustic solo artist, so I pulled them down from there.  I also really wanted to feature my AKG 414 (both in its sound as well as in the shot), so we moved that from the Side mic and used it for the lead vocal.  However, the M/S approach we took with Allison Francis worked out great, so I wanted to still have that option.  We used one of the two AT-4050’s for the Side mic and a 57 on the Mid, again about 8-10 feet away.  For the room mics, I took the SM-81’s on the huge stands and raised them up as high as they could go, but from the floor this time.  My estimate was about 35 feet away from Vikesh.  On his guitar (of which he used two different acoustics depending on the song), we used the other AT-4050 for the body and the AT-3031 on the neck.  His pick-up was feeding a very low-level signal, so we scrapped it.

We had an SM-58 sitting off to the side in case the AKG was too sensitive or reacted to P’s, B’s and Esses drastically.  Because he was playing a harmonica as well, this was another cause for concern because of the difference in output volume between this and his softer voice.  However, the LA-610 kept us in check and sounded amazing for everything he threw at it!  We were even blown away with how much isolation we got in the vocal channel with much, MUCH less guitar than we would’ve anticipated.  Unfortunately, by the fourth song (which was also the only single-pass recording), I think the consciousness of the AKG sensitivity and pops that could result dissipated.  It could have also just been the more aggressive vocal part on this particular song, but we have some louder POPS which I don’t know how much I’ll be able to work around.

We noticed surprisingly different results with this Mid-Side pair in comparison to the same approach with Allison’s set.  The preamps had to be jacked way up on the Mackie in order to get even mediocre signal level.  This induced much more noise in these channels and even some buzzing on the Mid channel.  I guess it could be due to (a) Vikesh being a quieter player and (b) perhaps lower sensitivity from the 57 & 4050 vs. the 3031 and AKG used on the prior set.  I even sent Phill down to the stage to swap out the Mid mic cable, but that didn’t seem to do much better.

Results:  3 different songs; 5 takes in total.

written by Mike Jessick, founder / producer @ Tactical Sound