You wanna talk about lighting? I gotta say I did pretty ok with this light considering it was just a desk lamp. I got that nice soft pool of light and a really nice contrast in there. Soft shadows. The works. With a desk lamp. And not even a good desk lamp. It's just a clip on. Despite my best efforts though, I could not get rid of the reflection of the lightbulb. I'll admit defeat on that part. But still... I like the lighting.

I couldn't think of a creative title this week.

Oh. Hi again. I guess it’s time for another blog post, eh? Well all right then. Good. Lets get started, shall we?

This month I decided I wanted to write about kittens and sunshine, but that wasn’t on the list of topics so lets just discuss an article from Live Sound magazine about Lady Antebullum. Yea, I know, not as cute as kittens but work with me on this.

Right, so… for those ignorant few out there who don’t know what a Lady Antebellum is, a Lady Antebellum is an up and coming country music group out of Naesh-veel Teh-nuh-seay (sounded out the spelling for that one) But to be honest, the band isn’t all too important in this weeks discussion. Not so much as the hard working chaps laboring behind the scenes to expose your cochlea to only the most accurate and pure vibrations possible. That’s right, this weeks article focuses on the thoughts and beliefs of none other than Lady Antebellum’s front of house engineer, Brett “Scoop” Blanden.

I’d normally kick this off by sharing some of his credentials, but as that’s no quite so important I’ll simply tell you that he has many, and they are very respectable. Good. Now we can get down to business, yea?

From the very beginning of the article, it’s clear that Scoop has a firm belief that the most important part of getting the sound right is remembering your fundamentals, and getting the sound right at the source. Blanden was quoted as saying, “Sonic Excellence occurs when you capitalize on the best opportunities for reinforcing the sound that’s already being created on stage.” It’s clear that he believed in keeping the signal as pure as possible all the way to the loudspeakers. It starts at the choice of microphone. Choosing a transducer that can accurately represent the tone of the singer or instrument is the key to a good start. Choosing you favorite microphone for every application may look good to you, but if it doesn’t do its job, that is, reproduce the sound as closely as possible to the source, then you’re already sacrificing sonic quality. It is important to match the performer to the microphone, and only rely on effects to nestle you sound in amongst the others in the mix. For example, Blanden goes on to say that he uses a certain microphone for all three singers of Lady Antebellum. The Sennheiser MD 5235. But rather that just saying that he generally likes the sound, he goes on to explain how well it matches the singers voices and how with that microphone he rarely, if ever, is required to use equalization to correct the sound for any of the three artists. In regard to gating the vocals, Brett prefers to leave them open, explaining how with proper micing and proper selection of instruments and amps with the right tone, you can get a great sound without the need to distort your signal heavily. Again, he stresses, ”Get it right at the source, and you’ll be working with a tonal picture that you can easily reinforce with the PA.”

Well, due to time constraints and technical difficulties, I’ll end this post here for now. I’ve a bit more to say on the matter, so I plan to conclude this post over the weekend. But as of now, I believe I’ve met the strict requirements the boss has set for me so I shall bid you farewell, and ask that you tune in later for the finale of this look into the wide world of Front of House Engineering.

How to keep your job when tasked with micing a piano.

In this edition of ThePeteyGSpot SPS blog, I’m doing to dive head first into what is some foreign territory for me. Piano Micing.

When it comes to live shows, I’ve always been a fan of the classic rock, two guitars a bass and drums, style music. I dig it. If I had it my way, when I graduate from this fine academy, I’d work on AC/DC concerts once a week and live my life in bliss as the luckiest roadie ever. Unfortunately, I realized that that dream is most likely not going to happen. Chances are, at least for a little while, that I’ll be doing shows for bands I don’t like, playing music I don’t like, wearing a white powdered wig. (No the wig isn’t necessary for the job, but I’d have to amuse myself somehow and I like looking fancy…) POINT IS…. I’ll most likely have to know how to do more than throw 10 SM57s at a drum kit and teach the vocalist to not partially swallow the mic. So I decided to take a look at an article with some interesting tips on effectively (key word) micing a piano. (The grand kind, not the one with MIDI cables sticking out of it). It’s an extremely common instrument for many genres and I truly have no clue how to approach the situation. Seems like a good time to start learning.

Now, from what I gathered, there are many, many ways to mic up a piano. This article, however, focused on a few different methods, which used only a single microphone. Neat, effective, out of the way, and most importantly, give a good representation of the complex sounds of a piano. I’ll start from the beginning…

The first method the author described was dubbed “The High Hole Method” Schnazzy. This seems the most straightforward and simple methods of the single mic techniques discussed, and it showed in the way he described it. His simple instructions were to listen to the piano, and determine which sound hole has the fullest sound. With that done tape a piece of foam to the piano just behind that hole, and then tape a microphone to the foam so that just the head sticks out over the hole. And that’s about it. The only other instructions were to not cover any other holes with the foam or tape, and to not leave any cable flopping around inside. Otherwise, as I said, very simple, very straightforward. As for the choice of mics, the author said that just a basic SM57 would work with this method, but in order to get a better overall sound out of it, he liked to use the old AKG 414. He noted that it gave it a more “musical” sound. All in all I believe that the mic choice will depend on the genre of music to be played, as well as good ole personal preference. But it’s at least comforting to know that if all else fails, you can still run to walmart and pick up an SM57 to get the job done in a pinch. Now, on to method number 2…

For this method, the author admits he picked it up from a colleague he worked with named John Lewis, who I found out after a quick Google was the pianist, and the musical director, for the Modern Jazz Quartet. That in itself should give an idea of the sound he liked out of the piano.

When I read about this method, I liked it immediately. It actually seemed simpler and easier (and used less tape) than the high hole method, but the sound still stays accurate and full. As for the simplicity, here goes…

Take a Sennheiser 421, and set the roll-off to “m” (stands for music, very little roll off, if any, from what I understand) Put the mic on a mic stand and position it parallel to the ground about three-quarters of the way up the lid and about an eighth of an inch away from the lid.

Boom. You’re done. That’s all there is to it. As usual, don’t let the mic, cable, or stand touch the piano, and according to the author you should have a flat, slightly dark, full piano sound. I like the idea. Unfortunately with this method though, there are some restrictions. First of all, the author states that it’s the 421 that really gets this method to work perfectly. He doesn’t go into details about it, but he suggests that the 421 is the only mic to use in this situation if you want to actually get a decent sound out of it. That’s issue one. Issue two has to do with the piano itself. This method only works when the piano is at “High Stick” Personally, I have no idea what that means, as I’ve never so much as touched a real piano in my life. Let me Google it…

… Ok It either means when the lid is all the way open, or when someone gets hit in the face with the stick in a hockey game. Judging by context, I’m gonna guess the first definition is more relevant.

But yea, if you’re in a situation when the piano lid can’t be fully opened up, or if you don’t have a Senn 421 on hand, you wont be able to pull this off properly, and will most likely end up with a terrible sound, and subsequently get fired because you ruined a major performance. Bottom line… A great method if you can do it right, but if you can’t, don’t even attempt it. You’ll have a bad day. Okie dokie. On to number three…

This last method is one I personally would never have thought of, again, because I had no idea how a piano worked other than “Press key, make noise”. But, with one last trudge through the depths of Google images I understood how it worked. Like all other stringed instruments, the piano has a soundboard that makes the vibration of the strings a bit more audible to the listeners. What I didn’t know was that this soundboard is easily accessible at the bottom of the bottom of the piano. Now, the method does involve micing under the piano at the soundboard, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. The author described a method to find the sweet spot of the soundboard. You simply slide yourself underneath the piano and tap the soundboard near the high side (I think that means the side with the small strings… Googleing… Yep, it does.) and listen for a balanced tone that’s not too high or low. When you find it, get the mic as close as possible without touching and you should get what the author describes as a dark, woody sound. The sound wont be as flat as the other methods, but it will still have a very warm sound. And, as he also pointed out, it’s a great method if you need to keep the microphone hidden, such as in video or theater productions.

Well, looking back at what I read tonight, I definitely got a few ideas to use if I ever have the need for piano micing. And for the line of work I hope to get into, I will definitely have the need at some point. I’m glad I will be able to go into a situation like that and actually know what to do instead of just panicking and aiming a few mics at parts the look like they might vibrate. Definitely a very helpful article, especially when enhanced with Google.

Aux Fed Subs. Science fiction? I think not!

So in my quest to find an article worthy of writing a blog post on I decided it was a good idea to choose an article that would be not only useful to me, but also something that directly interests me. After skimming a few articles, I actually found the article on aux fed subwoofer systems to be extremely interesting. Partly because it’s something I’ve never thought of before, but also because it’s a pretty simple solution to a common issue.

To those familiar with audio and/or live sound the name does a pretty good job of summing up what happens in the setup. To clarify for those who don’t have a firm grasp on the subject, here’s a little summary…

In a standard live sound speaker setup, all of the microphones that have been set up are run into the Front of House console, mixed, twisted, modified and extruded out of the main stereo bus. At one point in its path to the actual noisemakers, the stereo signal makes its way to a crossover where it is split up into generally three or more bands of frequencies including at least including highs, mids, and lows. There’s a bit more to it than that, but for the purpose of this post that’s all that is really important right now.

What changes in the aux fed subwoofer system is pretty simple really. Instead of feeding the subwoofer from a split signal coming from the stereo bus, an aux master is calibrated to match the crossover that is sending signal to the higher frequency speakers, and that aux channel is fed directly to the sub woofer. So in the end the result is your highs, high mids, low mids, etc are still fed from the stereo bus, and your subwoofer is fed from an entirely different aux path.

The picture at the top taken from the article sums it up fairy simply.

Now, why is this significant? Because when too many low frequencies get together and have a party, things sound messy. With the standard splitter approach, every single microphone and instrument sends its low frequency content to the console, and in turn, to the sub woofer. Everything. Even things that don’t really have any valuable low frequency content. The article used examples such as plosives from speech, as well as undesirable proximity effect from various microphones.

Generally, the common solution to ridding a mix of the low frequency muddiness is to apply a high pass filter to drop off anything below a certain frequency. However, with this approach, low frequencies still get through to the subwoofer due to the nature of how a high pass filter works. Even though this removes a fair amount of the low frequency information from the channels, the summing of all the microphones and instruments across the numerous channels can still lead to a very nasty sound coming from the sub. With the aux fed sub system the mix engineer has the ability to completely remove a track from the subwoofer output. This makes it possible to use the sub to enhance only the channels that focus on low frequency information. And the setup is also very forgiving. If a mix engineer decides during a performance that a channel should be added or removed from the subwoofer, it can be done very simply and easily with most live consoles.

For me, this seems like a great idea. Nothing ruins sound for me quicker than a muddy low end sound. I can deal with other tuning issues from a tinny sound to harsh highs or quiet mids, but crowded bass tracks make me want to stop listening. This approach is extremely simple and can be easily done on most modern gear without the need to buy additional components. The most difficult part of the process is the initial setup, but it’s still not too difficult to learn. Some people insisted that the system has some negative effects, such as affecting frequency response of some of the sources. When you look at the big picture however, you have to look at all of the pros and cons. Most every method of live production has some drawbacks. And as with those other methods, you have to learn when this approach is appropriate. In my opinion, I’d much rather have a clean low end with slightly affected signal response in the highs and mids, rather than an overpowering, boomy, unpleasant low signal.

To wrap this post up, the aux fed sub system is a great, cheap, easy, and especially effective way to do some low level hertz cleanup on your mix, especially if you have an excess of inputs to worry about. Because it’s easy to collect a heaping monstrosity of bass in many live sound applications, I believe that this technique could come in very handy.