Adam Boole, FOH Engineer for Bullet For My Valentine

Adam Boole is the UK based Sound Engineer who mixes Front of House Audio for Bullet For My Valentine.

In these 3 videos, he talks us through mixing Drums, Guitars and Vocals, including his use of parallel compression, EQ, groups and fx.

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are here in sunny york i’ve got a quick thing it’s not picking us up and opening oh yeah cars that’s a bollock yeah um how you doing everybody my name’s ben hammond i’m from house engineer for skunk nancy and we’re here in sunny york at real recording studios and i’m here with my good friend long-suffering friend uh adam bull who is front of house engineer for bullet for valentine we’re going to go through a bit of what we do how we set up the console how we go about things i think everybody kind of now knows their way around one of these so it’s not going to be a technical thing for how to use the console just more kind of our workflow and and how we do things so without further ado we’ll press play and tear each other to bits so for bullet this is a four-piece band that

0:01:01.1 –>
hit things which is what every band does but uh well yeah so going through things so that is my drum layer on layer which we are running at 14 15 channels there is an spds normally um and then i’m running my effects all for my drums here which we’ve got drum room over the kit the entire kit which if i go into here so that is just my drum room yes do you i’ve always kind of done the thing where for me like drums because of the most kind of transient thing on stage i’ve always used that to kind of build the room that i’m in if that makes sense yeah because as you’ll probably hear later i use a disgusting amount of drum reverbs but

0:02:01.6 –>
and i’m constantly kind of automating them to suit the song but when you listen to the whole thing you’re not hearing the reverbs i’m kind of using them to you know if we’re in like a 200 cap club or the next day we’re at like an arena or a festival stage or something like that i’m kind of always using i have a few certain reverbs that i’m using to kind of build the walls yeah and put myself in the same kind of building you know what i mean so it’s that’s pretty much what that my room is for yeah so so that’s dry it’s just giving it instantly just gives it that depth done it just kind of puts you again just puts you in a room that you can kind of then start start building things in so from that from that point then it’s at a snare verb which nothing too drastic and we listened to that yesterday i’m into the pre-delay on that i’m just i’m just straightened and i always for some i don’t know why falsehood i always dial

0:03:00.4 –>
the pre-delay i’m just straight away but i really like what the pre-delay is doing in the snare drum well it kind of works with the room so the rooms are zero yeah that’s good well it gives it that feeling of size as well doesn’t it yeah and then if so for tom’s big reverb depending on what song i’ll pull it back depending where we are and then the big boy the big boy which is yeah yeah it’s a monster but it works and the one thing i do it’s probably different to quite a few people well not different but the way i work um for all my effects i eq my effects going in as well as coming out so right so for my snare for my snare i’m eq in on the output um

0:04:03.5 –>
and is that mainly to get rid of to get rid of things or are you adding things in that like are you trying to push the bottom end more into the reverb or you know is it just kind of you know what are you getting rid of things on the way you know kind of subtractive thing to give the reverb unit less to think about or are you trying to really shape what the reverb is doing by eq and into it so now we’re doing it if i select there my pfl is set up on it right so i can hear what’s going inside so if i select there so you can see like obviously you’ve got your you’ve done pfl your yeah yes i can send on a shortcut right yeah that’s cool um that’s just so i can hear what i’m actually sending to him which normally during a show i haven’t got my headphones on i don’t hear the change and i i’ll use that in the daytime it’s weird that’s what you know i’ve i don’t think i’ve ever listened to a reverb send i hacked the return and i kind of you know for me it’s always like well that’s

0:05:00.5 –>
the sound i want i’ve done that on the channel so i’m going to send that and i never ever treat the sense that’s really interesting to actually listen to the send on the way in yeah i don’t know if that water i’ve sent to uh cameras but um yeah so all of them have got a little bit of eq to them the big it’s like i didn’t want all the mid there yes just cloudiness and then yeah yeah i mean it’s unneeded in my eyes but it’s good because it tidies it up but it’s still giving the reverb unit the kind of scope of that area on the way out so it’s you’re not just getting rid of that completely well that’s it from doing that i’m so yeah i’m doing work on the output still but if i turn that off and kick it in yeah you know how i use my outputs and my busses

0:06:00.5 –>
essentially i’ve got my mix and then for the entire show i’m playing away on my groups i’m doing things on groups so we’ve got you know things going on there that i’m editing away yeah but the mix is there from the channels and the groups i’ll ask this now because i’ve been i’ve been told off by robin clark before in the past for using for using that one instead of dynamite how can we use that that’s what i used on the ilive and the gld yeah and i don’t know it might be me being the stubborn the auction but i’m kind of fixing the waves and it works yeah and the visuals are a little different than it i know when i went over to donate it was because you’ve all of a sudden got that which we didn’t have on that guy so you have to as much as you’re not mixing with your eyes you’re still like in a festival situation where you’re throwing stuff in pretty quick yeah it’s always cool to be able to say well actually i know that looks right you know so yeah so oh there you go

0:07:00.5 –>
robin i’m not the only person that’s doing that so you can you can dish out your rollickins to other people as well um but yeah apart from that at moment um yeah the majority of what i do during the show is on the outputs of the effects and the outputs of the groups and the stuff are you going straight into the subgroup and sub group to the mix are you doing any parallel stuff um on the individual drums i am not but then i’m running a drum group right which smashing that yeah smashing it it’s not doing overly about a lot know it just adds that little bit of weight a little bit yeah a little bit of weight and thickness i’m not one for overly overly doing things and when when i did started working with bullet and started on this console i was using this a lot but

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over time you start trying things and yeah i’ve gone back to doing it this way when we finished the site i hate looking at my show yeah don’t get me wrong i’m still using it on vocals like still using it yeah on vocals and stuff like that but i’ve always found with like parallel stuff live it’s always that kind of thing because you know in a studio you’ve got a lot more a lot more scope whereas live we’re using compression more as you you know it’s still a sonic thing but we’re using it for a probably a utility a utility rule you know i mean to kind of hold things in check so for me a lot of the times i was always kind of used to be a bit scared of parallel compressions i’m thinking well i’m putting that compressor on there to hold it in so why the hell would i want to put the uncompressed signal back in and then i’ve so it’s but then you know playing around and finding that balance and just that’s why that’s so cool because you don’t have to mess about setting up a new bus or anything you can just start dialing that in and sometimes it is just that you know

0:09:01.2 –>
thing that sits underneath and it does do that glue but doesn’t kind of doesn’t contradict the compression that you put on for the reason you put it on you know yeah um but yeah it’s you know i don’t tend to do much compression on the actual busses until i get to my you know everyone as well that makes me feel like less less wary of when we get to my show file and i’m hitting the red there’s something about this desk and i’m not looking at salesman mode but yeah it doesn’t clip and there is just that thing when it gets especially on the transient things it gets up there all of a sudden it just jumps out it just kind of steps out in front yeah and i’ve kind of i’ve done it before where you know you there’s so many people that mixed by sight and you see red lights you think that people you know i don’t care it sounds right that’s not distorting no and it’s sat where it needs to sit and it’s doing what it does and i always thought with the i lives on the same with these when you put them in the you

0:10:00.2 –>
put it into the roof they sound good yeah they do um and that’s obviously where we well i know i did on analog i’ve nagged the balls off quite a lot that’s what you used to do yeah if it sounds right we’ll see when we get to my show file you know for eq if it’s there i’ll use it you know it goes to plus or minus 15 for a reason right then so that is my drum kit like i’ll come back to my overheads and everything because i just add them in after my vocal yeah that was a question i was going to have with them being muted so yeah pretty much when i do like when i start a virtual check i start with this song because if anybody knows the people that do no bullet they are a very fast furious band yeah but pretty much the majority of the set um so this is an easy one for me just lets you feel the space a bit more yeah exactly when you’re in a big

0:11:01.5 –>
open arena or a club or a theater i’ve got used to using this because it’s a lot calmer for me because when you’ve got interested while we’re on pan you do exactly the same as me i would never pan toms no i don’t because you look for me you lose the power well no and i’ve had this argument people are like yeah but you’ve got your kids now and thomas you’ve got everything up in the middle it’s like yeah but they’re not fighting i’ve always thought you hear people do that [Music] and it sounds great and i always think especially when you’re here in a big field and you think oh yeah that was great oh no this is where i’m different i’ve always like i’ve always tended to be it it’s only clubs i’ll start panning stuff because i remember years ago i used to use mono overhead as well yeah and only for doing this have i i always thought that’s because you couldn’t afford two mics because it was one way but only when i’ve been doing this is like i normally my eye ups are probably around about there and my ride’s normally about about

0:12:00.7 –>
there like i’ve split it up a bit just so there’s a bit of space obviously we’re not in a big room with a pa and you’re listening to here um but yeah i mixed pretty much in mono even even at festivals um which there was a lads a lad a fella um that i used i’ve known for years which you know as well yeah and first ever arena i mixed in i was 19 years old and it would give it an aim festival and i walked up to heritage from and we got line checking and everything they saw me going across pans and i’m line checking on headphones why are you panning looked at him like a bit shocked now they’re not going to hear what that’s doing oh yeah and it like ever since then that

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stuck with me and i’ve always been one for if you can get a monomix right it should be right everywhere yeah so that’s because how are you doing things like front fills and like out hands and things like that uh they’re all off the same page so they’re all nice but i’m doing all that that’s all coming off matrix tricks going on yeah just from that kind of imaging point of view because i because i’m always doing like i’m pills wise i always prefer lip fills and i’m always sending those in mono so i’ve always kind of got that for me it’s always been when i’m back here you’ve got the stereo thing when you’re down there you’re kind of out of it and you’re getting all the noise pollution off the stage as well anyway so then i’ve kind of always just seen pills or something just i’ll go down there and listen and think well you know especially with lesser now because people aren’t using loud backline for the most part anymore yeah but you know certainly like when i was doing my afi the bass was just super loud and you stood on the front row and the guitar cabs we had off stage so

0:14:00.8 –>
there was this really like weighted thing so then i’m kind of we’re doing mono fills but then we kind of started having to work with things and change it so we can we can bring the guitar we can get on and kind of get our stage but so yeah but it’s interesting just it’s the same as me hat’s right and overhead and everything else left the middle for me it’s always been it was always from a power perspective because as you’ve heard me mix i kind of just turned drums up and forget about everything else you know for for me it was always that out you know i always remember like when you hear like mick do metallica and you get this huge stereo tom thing and he goes around the kit and the whole field just lights up and it’s like oh yes i mean i’ve done it i’d like to do that but i just i’ve i’ve done it but i’m always thinking about during the show i’m always thinking about what if i was stood there yeah that’s my thing and it’s like yeah if i’m stood here i want it’s a bit same as when i’m stood there i see i think i’m a bit more selfish over the years i’ve just kind of got to a point where trusting the system and trusting the systems engineer

0:15:00.3 –>
and just kind of right i’ve done my walk around it plays on my mind too much so i’ll do my walk around in the day and then kind of think right that’s it now i’m going to go to front of house and i’m going to mix for front of the house i’ve heard the fills i’ve heard the out hands i’ve heard the delays i’ve heard what they’re as good as we can get them so now i just need to to be able to do you know what the band are paying me for and do that i just need to kind of just lose myself in that stereo thing and i’ll so i think i’m probably a lot more selfish than you are but yeah but other than that there’s not all right lot going on like it’s tom’s compressors i like the 16t on literally every drum i think yeah sometimes big fan of that but i mean on the close mics yeah well like you can see yeah um and then every now and again i change my snare all the time i’m constantly checking myself between this opto um and then yeah that’s pretty much it for drums.

TEXT:

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and then we go for base so with the back line for bullet we are completely kemper and this is a mono and it’s not very long it’s the same tone for the entire show um and jim if it’s a guitarist wears it and he digs into it quite a lot so we i’m using the option on it um which i love and i am actually using quite a few things for you it’s not really made for but i like i like it no i remember when that came out and i chat to dave mcdonald there’s another day live guy and he said he was like it’s amazing but it’s all about that emphasis in it yeah all about and it is it’s like you know it’s excuse me bad time to be coughing in it but but yeah is it kind of does that it’s almost like it does the kind of

0:01:00.8 –>
turns it into a almost like frequency dependent kind of peak compressor almost and it like seems to find that kind of the bit that’s sticking out and again you can do a lot more with it makes the attack and the release a lot more usable than an l82 which are obviously inherently really slow it makes it it is an amazing compressor it does way more than i expected it to do when i looked at it yeah no i’m exactly the same that’s why like i’m surprisingly using it clear on my overheads rides and it’s done it because it’s just kind of like as much but you see you know it’s just kind of letting that front edge of the snare through yeah it’s like when let’s bring it back to these yeah it just gets it to sit there from it it’s doing that nice kind of thing

0:02:00.2 –>
where you still get the transient the front edge because you know i i’ve been guilty of it in the past over compressing other heads i mean you just lose a definition you get that kind of and you lose the front edge of things but it’s nice because it’s just letting enough attack through just to almost accent the snare yeah but still keeps everything in control don’t it yeah exactly so bring all right back up it’s like with me it’s i’m using that on them because like like i said this song is a steady song for me to get used to my show [Music] but this is also probably the calmest song of the set for jason yeah so he’s not eating everything as big and rashy as he is for the rest so with this anywhere so back to here and the base is going through that first of all multiband which

0:03:00.4 –>
has got a bit of an eq going on i’ll lean on that big time base to kind of reign in the distort what the distortion is doing as well yeah i mean full band works on a bass really well and then the second you start to distort it you’ve kind of really got to start start digging in with something like that yeah i mean with with the kempers it’s like obviously when we set up all the chemicals it were all set with flat channels um but they have it did it all on monitors yeah so it’s all built on what they wanted um which is great because it means they’re getting what they want pretty much off the bat when we’re doing fly shows if we have to use other consoles or whatever which luckily enough we haven’t had to um no we have done once in the last two years obviously like that kind of side of things is you know again where i’d normally start pulling but as far as from an ears perspective they need all that because that’s where the actual note is and that’s where

0:04:00 –>
they’re going to get their definition and obviously in india’s mix you want to be cutting above everything else whereas for us we need to sit down and that is it’s always kind of like you need to get it to sit yeah 100 to 200 thing for me is is where it’s kind of like you know somewhere around about 120 140 160 so it’s kind of where you get that that almost swell yeah when they’re really especially the fastest stuff when they’re digging in down the bottom um so from there yeah it goes into a bit of an eq which is just like i’ve got my base digging into that obviously all right which just kind of rounds it off and it finishes off [Music] obviously actually you’re losing a lot of the front end on that then yeah that’s really interesting without it’s just getting rid of that kind of pic pig noise on the strings well there you go i’ve i’ve i can go up now i’ve learned something today i’ve i would never have thought about using that the bass guitar ever no

0:05:01.7 –>
i didn’t but i think i just [Music] one day in pre-production thought right i’ll add it in so yeah it seems to work yeah well because it’s again it’s leave especially in that kind of that dude it’s leaving that kind of front end free for the drums so it’s almost it’s not doing a kind of side chain but it’s the same effect as kind of almost side chain for the drums in it you know i mean it’s it’s leaving room for leaving room for the drums to kind of have that front end yeah i think since i dialed that in i’ve never touched it it’s amazing i’ve literally i’m going to go around have a play i’m going to go inside that’s the first thing i’ve stolen from we’ll see the result in 10 minutes time right um so yeah from there we go on to guitars which if i put it on a bit of a [Music]

0:06:02.6 –>
he’s a heavy down picker um and what we found here is i’d never thought of using this until i got talking to you one day and it changed my life it is magic it does something harmonically yeah it’s like you’ve put the guitar through a ton of valves and just cooked it and it does the glue thing but then it just seems to just fill out everywhere it’s mental i mean if we leave well i don’t feel bad about staying in transit enhance things exactly so without it it just adds so much more urgency to it yeah and when he’s digging in like you can see it and you can hear it digging into it yeah um which i’ve got that running on

0:07:01.5 –>
both guitars which bring it all together [Music] i mean that’s not playing on this bit but i find it’s it just gets my guitars to sit which my entire show when he got sick doing this like bullet he sat 9900 all the way through yeah and with my guitars again let’s just eq into that and nothing else that’s same for then we go into a group i’ve obviously tried that at some point yeah um yeah then i’m using my graphics like i said i use that’s where i’m doing this yeah and it’s a more nightly thing yeah because i’m using a graphic rather than actually because you know you never

0:08:00.6 –>
want to change the tone of the guitar because that’s their voice you know it’s like asking the singer of singing a different optimism or you try and sound a bit more like barry white you know that’s that’s their voice but i kind of obviously you know you you get if it’s microphones on a cab and you’re used to hearing a car from over there if you hear this then all of a sudden you put a mic there yeah and i find it the same with the kempers no matter how i’m a big fan of kempers but no matter how much you do to them they still need work on the back end yeah and i think whether it’s just from a sound engineer’s perspective but you miss even though they’re profiled with it i still miss the sound of a microphone on the cabin that so i i always find it’s like a little bit of like really short room reverb and and a little bit of kind of pitch thing to spread it out and kind of just emulate that that you see yes i’ve tried the picture thing and tried all like that with this van it doesn’t work with bullet it’s like as much for me anyway i suppose with skunk i’ve got one guitar as well yeah so i’ve got a bit more scooped up but then saying that

0:09:00.7 –>
i do always you know yeah i mean i i tend to stay pretty especially with these i have to stay basic because it’s such a lively game um not basic but um if i start adding too much to it it’s taking away from what they’re actually doing yeah it’s like their album albums they’ve got sparkle on vocals and everything but you’ve got to try recreate hear them and everywhere but backline wise live there’s not loads of sparkles like when you listen to it you’re not hearing yeah extreme you know effects everywhere i mean apart from my little drums well that’s an added thing i do like a piece of me play as a big big instrumental bit and wherever it’s all right cool punch it up 3db and get everybody proper going at it and when that finishes that big drum swell that’s an added sparkle thing um but like with guitars like i was saying um guitars have been profiled they’ve

0:10:02 –>
altered them slightly for the veneers like matt likes a lot more top end in this area and like that’s what i’ve done beforehand in the channel and then typically me on the shoulder i’ll be hacking away in that area yeah and it’s massively system dependent as well kind of all those little bits i’m doing the same i’ve got graphics on all my sub groups and um that’s you know that’s the most kind of the channels pretty much stay the same and it’s it’s my output output processing that i’m using to kind of yeah i mean bring that show into that venue bass guitar i’m doing everything on channel i still send it to a group just because that’s how i settled my show files um and then it’s just like you can see on each group there’s little altars i mean i’ve loaded the festival failure which every day i’ll when i’m on a festival unless i’ve had a diabolical day which i hope hardly ever i’ll load this i’ll

0:11:00. –>
load the same style file from pre-production and you’ll build on that right in the morning see i always go from the night before unless i leave myself a note saying this is awful burn it never use it again i always go the night before and i always i reset my output buses because i’m finding as the tour goes on and the more i’m learning and the more i’m finding out about the arts things i’m trying different things and i’ll try that compressively i don’t want to go back to the start because i feel like unless something goes wrong my show should be getting better every night evolving and then i’m kind of i’ll i’ll reset all the balance on the dca’s and the sub groups and then i’ll flatten the graphic eqs and probably wind out any output compression and then that’s my starting point yeah unless last night was yeah i mean don’t get me wrong terrible it’s not like i do it everywhere i do say of every show and if i have i’ll always try it yeah and sometimes i’ll go with it sometimes i’ll go with you know

0:12:00.1 –>
what i see as my startup which might change throughout [Music] um for me it’s a good job like that screen isn’t coming because i write myself little notes all the way through horrendous never use again awful pa if i’d have selected them that’s when you see my notes um so yeah from there from guitars uh we have a little trackbusters we bullet the newer stuff has um more tracks going on there’s nothing nothing brutal out there there’s little bits of bv’s effects guitars um and then we have a sub bass which is used in a few songs um if i’ll skip it that’s the beginning of that and then so what you’ll leave here yeah you know the little bits extra of it i’ve done it studio and to recreate live we’re doing it that way instead of getting somewhere pianos or whatever that’s not really worth bringing out an orchestra for is

0:13:00.3 –>
it no exactly exactly and then from there um so my dca setup is pretty stunning it’s labeled kit because i probably just did that automatically when i built the show file two years ago and never even noticed until now so yeah fixing a hat overheads toms then we’ve got this my guitars in my tracks and they all go into here my band which is my trusty little friend um yeah from this my mix just sits like i’ll keep my finger on that throughout the gig and i’ll be just giving it a little bit of riding yeah choruses and whatnot it’s our solo coming up from harvest they are dialed in in the campers to give them a boost and all that so if i like it’s not like i need to do it but i do tend to give them up and down i’ll keep my finger on it if

0:14:00.4 –>
i do not environmentally dependent anyway you know from moving from a festival to then the next day you’re in a horrible tin shed somewhere you know one of the big old cattle sheds that you get putting in america’s 5k in the guitar all of a sudden when you’re ripping your head off yeah that’s why i never use snapshots that’s why i always i’m there because for me it’s playing playing the show every night because i don’t i don’t ever want anybody or anything to dictate that this guitar solo at that point jumps up four db on this because he might have done last night it might not tonight you know it’s uh like that we bust it there we go cut that bit out um yeah where are we god knows i won’t listen from the start i’ll tell you what’s really terrible nice up and down um so yeah guitar solos um like how i used to do it when an

0:15:00.5 –>
analog and on on a certain other console i’d have on the group i’d have a punching eq just to lift right lift the guitar in certain frequencies for the solos instead of pushing it i’d do that but how i find it now like now especially with bullet i don’t need to do that because it’s all dialed into kemper yeah so they’ve got the little booster in the kenpo already so you’ve got to be a little bit careful compression as well though yeah a little bit um i mean that’s why i’m saying i’ll always have my fingers out there and ready to go.

TEXT:

0:00:00.1 –>
where are we now here from all this we’re going to vocals and we’re matt um like i say we’ve got uh jason behind him really pounding hard i’m super flat for a vocal as well yeah but this thing we’re using nine four nine four five on it’s okay um and he sings right on the mic and what i’m finding is like by on the mic it’s kind of there and it’s how he’s always done it and i get a lot of drunk kit down it when he moves away as soon as he moves away so i’ve got the diesel doing the sullivans and it’s also catching quite a lot of cymbals then from that i have my eq into a compressor that digs into him when he’s with his pops more than anything yeah try to smooth him out and then normally i have a piece of analog equipment

0:01:00. –>
and inserted here um which can i name it yeah normally i have a rupert neve 5045 yeah inserted there to try catch for cymbals so it i would say essentially when he walks away from the mic yeah yeah i mean i’ve tried to recreate it here but i mean doing it um but yeah the 5045 is amazing um and it helps me out a bunch with that vocal um and gets me say three or four db extra like out of the vocal which is a big help and from there the vocal goes out of a channel into the group which the group nothing inserted on that um i normally have like a punching eq for in between songs um because obviously matt’s playing guitar and then in between a song he’s done goes on to mic it doesn’t cup it but when he puts his

0:02:00.3 –>
hand on the mic it does change yeah how it sounds so i have a cup eq that i punch in usually there um and then i’ll be hacking away at that throughout the show yeah so it changes you know it changes with spit humidity and skin will walk out into the crowd and she walks on the crowd and like some of the biggest songs of their entire set she’s singing them 30 feet in front of the pa so for me again that kind of eq on a subgroup it’s that’s kind of almost like the game you’re playing through the set and then i’m watching her she’s coming back and then as she’s going you know she’s she’s coming near the infields or whatever and i’m kind of bouncing the infills and then we’ve got between me and arthur the the audio guy on the audio tech on skunk we’ve got a great kind of like communication give me a thumbs up or a little look when we’re out the danger zone and i know i can push it back up if i can’t

0:03:01.1 –>
particularly you know it’s yeah but yeah yeah all over that light it’s cool because so many people don’t use subgroups and for me it always came from working in crappy little venues with massively underpowered monitors well and so i couldn’t compress on the channel so i had to leave the channel as open as i could and get the channel pretty much doing the work for the wedges and then put things into eq and put things into subgroups so i was on like you know a gl or something like that and it’s like i remember going back finding like old graphics that we weren’t using anymore and linking graphics into compressors and kind of yeah doing that we’re creating a chain yeah exactly so i could then have processing on the output group for me for front of our so i didn’t have an app that i’ve never met before screaming at me the whole monitor sound crap it’s you know it’s so it’s it’s that’s always gone with me that and kind of multi-mic things we’re still trying to make the same instrument so for me like i kick in sounds like a kick in because it’s a bit of plastic

0:04:00.4 –>
getting a bit of plastic yeah and a kick out sounds like a kick out because it’s 22 inches of air being pushed for a little hole yeah so a microphone picks up his bottom end but you hear that as you hit a kick drum and you hear everything else around you at the room and you hear one instrument but a microphone we have to get those different elements but they’re not that instrument we have to put this together so for me whether i don’t know if it’s a subconscious thing or what but putting those things and doing that kind of summing almost in a sub group so i’ve got like a mono kick monastery stereotom stereo of reds all my guitars go sub groups my bass doesn’t and all my vocals go in but the drums are the super important one and the guitars like you know again with skunk i think i’ve got like six or eight mics on guitar cabs um so to be able to bring all that together and treat it as one for me kind of i think sonically there’s you know this it makes a big difference but yeah no um because doing that takes me back to cockpit days like you know being out and out in there and

0:05:01. –>
when you were doing front of house if you weren’t doing monitors from front of the housing main room versus going way back you know uh we’d have the graphics at front of house and when they brought in a monitor they were like oh these graphics are all x spare yeah so that’s what exactly remember there’s about 900 360s yeah oh it’s tons and tons of stuff and then i used to leave my stuff there and all sorts but um well you used to turn up with your 160s yeah in iraq yeah yeah i remember that getting them up the big brown rack of doom um but yeah it used to do it in chainsaw yeah and create a chain and then yeah i’ve never stopped doing it i mean my wife’s only just changed eric from an analogy to digital and even in hers she’s got lightning a graphic going into a compressor bully signature yeah it’s just stuff i can’t sell um to anyone else

0:06:04.8 –>
so um yeah so from that we’ve got jeremy well let’s start with page actually so with page there’s all this he does maybe four or five bits during a set yeah so reason why you can’t see any signal there is where running or not to get on his microphone so which is dialed in just to keep his ears clean to keep me a bit cleaner it’s there and channel wise it’s pretty much doing a bit of eq congratulations you’ve definitely got to do so much more creative eq done it yeah again we’re using foot switches yeah so you know like have a look at them with casters to fly he’s got he steps on a momentary switch to sing and it just means that you’re not doing the you know you’re not having to do so much to kind of combat the environment you’re in yeah and you can just because it’s only on for that point to a degree because you still don’t want that when the stand on it but it frees you up

0:07:02.3 –>
to do a lot more kind of creative stuff for the vocals yeah yeah um but yes same with jamie so jamie’s going he’s got dsl as well which is digging in quite a lot and then we’ve got the eq compressor like i said i like them on vocals um and another multiband and that’s going paj and jeremy go to my group um and yeah as you can see there’s not much going on because this is a startup and there’s parallel compression on the group of both of them um my main vocal and my bvs and with my main mic and i have to say with the radio mics so they’re linked in all dynamics so every change gets copied across and yeah the guess mic is actually a split of vrf2 which if we have a guest then it it’s not like i’m opening that up

0:08:00.5 –>
and then changing up settings because it changed my main and it’s there to be the same as my main if we need to swap which it’s rare every now and again we’ll swap it because it might got too damp or whatever um see i would always do it i always had the same as that and i had the channels ganged apart from fader and mute and then now i’m using the uh the multi on there like i said early on i get stuck in my ways yeah but it’s it is nice for that kind of visual feedback so even though i’ve got that i’ll still have for a line check purpose and down here my meters i’ll still have dead channels that aren’t going anywhere but still have those inputs assigned yeah so i’m not having to and we’ll flip through you know we’ll do the main we’ll do our f2 then we’ll do the spare hardwired and then right before we’ll go back and we’ll do you know we’ll do the main rf mic again yeah but again for that reason but as i say i’ll always have them assigned to a dead channel down there just so i can see him flash up in a line check situation yeah um so from there we’ve got effects which running a haul

0:09:00.7 –>
on both matt and jamie separate um my map not a dt actually that’s a room um which i’m using you know when you’re just scrolling through because select that give it a scroll yeah right and find something like mixing with your ears not your eyes yeah exactly find something you like and then it’s like all right do a little bit of alcohol into it and then i’ve got a matte delay and a german delay which they’re on a global tap and my mutes are literally right here i’m 24 25 which is in the center returns sentence all right so same as maya yeah i mean like i said there’s not much in the way of big sparkles on vocals because there’s so much going on with the band yeah it’s a big heavy band and how they are on how they are on record how they want to be live they want they want it to be there they want the vocal literally online they don’t want it’s 10 db over top or all that

0:10:00.8 –>
if you’re doing that kind of balance it brings down the rest of the band which you’re going to lose the power yeah so if you can like you say you do that and you’re treating the vocals almost as an instrument it gives you that kind of scope to bring everything else up and make sure that it’s it’s really really punching in it yeah um but yeah from there [Music] see this is different so yeah worthless after i’ve done my work and i’m getting happy i will play this one it’s so nice of the drum levels consistent no matter how fast it gets he still hits just as hard which so many people don’t it’s so nice to not have that kind of thing and it just drops off and then your gates screwed up you lose your reverbs i mean this guy hits his drums and it’s a 50 pence piece he’s literally emitting that point every

0:11:00 –>
single time [Music] so normally but the intelligibility is still there they’re still you know you can tell that the space and everything’s there because there’s a lot of mixes where you pull them down at that point they completely not they disappear especially like you say with you mixing so much more you know the image towards the center but there’s still so much space for you the intelligibility and the clarity and what you’re singing still there yeah um about normally on the output i mean today we’re running today we’re running a ducati so we can talk over this um but normally there’s a tiny little compressor on there and then if i if i’ve not got

0:12:01.6 –>
i use a max wedge dcl um inserted on my output if i haven’t got that i’ll have a little compression on there i’m always using the opto one on that and it’s like 1.5 to 1. everything’s super slow and just kind of constantly held in about 2 to be a game reduction it just seems to just um but that’s pretty much bullet show file amazing and now i’ll bring mine up and i’ll embarrass myself [Music]