The live intensive is the final stop on the studio 2 train for our group, another one that I’m looking forward to. The lead up to our live gig in week 12 is looking quite promising in my opinion, we have some good acts lined up and we’re all keen to get to behind the desk and have a beautiful sound protruding from the SAE sound stage on the night.
Some things I’m looking to get out of this intensive would be to have the experience of running the mix on the night. I have had some minor experience doing stage hand work for community carol nights and the sorts, but I’m very keen to be the one mixing the sounds coming from the stage.
A professional in the industry who I found to have an interesting take on live mixing was Dave Rat who is mostly known as the FoH engineer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There were a few things that I found interesting about how he works. One being that he still insists on taking an analogue rig on the road, most working professionals would find it much more efficient to have an easily portable digital rig, but Dave insists on the opposite. He has a few reasons for this, one being the sound that analogue equipment has on the performance, outboard processors act as another form of ‘colour’ in his live mixes. Another reason for the analogue console he uses is that he can make changes much more quickly, as everything he needs is right in front of him and he can make multiple eq or level adjustments all in the span of about 30 seconds.
Another aspect about Dave’s approach which I found interesting is the way that he orientates himself towards the stage. Instead of having the console in front of him when he mixes, he has it facing perpendicular to the stage. His reasoning for this is that he can face the stage front on and not have a console in front of him, this enables him to feel like he is a part of the crowd opposed to a mix engineer, thus he feels enabled to make more objective decisions about the mix.
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