LARRY'S LIVE MIXING TIPS

  1. DON'T let the monitors be louder than the PA.
  2. Use your ears. It has to sound good to you.
  3. Trim down the bass EQ to reduce room boom.
  4. Use PFL (pre-fader-listen solo) to check for signal presence before opening the fader, and also to cue up recordings.
  5. Use AFL (after-fader-listen solo) to balance out groups of performers.
  6. Keep the vocals clearly understandable.
  7. Keep the absolute level low enough to allow the room reverberation to decay between beats. Otherwise, the bass and drums will meld together into a drone, instead of timekeeping beats.
  8. The PA must be either mono or surround. A stereo PA usually does not work, unless the venue is small. Mono or matrixed surround work better.
  9. Use EQ and pan (if not mono) to separate instrument overlaps.
  10. Walk the house to find dead spots and standing waves.
  11. Reset the board before mixing. Set everything to zero, off, or flat. Don't expect last weeks' settings to work, or to even be there.
  12. Pre-fader aux sends are for monitors. Changing the fader to change the mix does not affect this.
  13. After-fader (or post-fader) aux sends are for send effects. Lowering the fader lowers the effect too. Send effects add more sounds.
  14. Channel inserts and bus inserts are for insert effects. Insert effects are the effects that can reduce or remove sounds.
  15. To use one mixer to do recording, PA, and monitors, use the pre-fader aux sends for monitors, an after-fader aux send for the PA, and the LR bus (or the submasters) for the tape.
  16. Avoid using a piano and acoustic guitars together, unless indistinction between them is acceptable. If both instruments are present, make sure they are not both playing chords. Otherwise, you might end up with a "guiano" (or maybe a "puitar").
  17. Use EQ to smooth out peaks in vocals. Compress to smooth out level variations.
  18. How to control a singer's level:
    1. Adjust the singer's monitor send in the opposite direction.
    2. Add reverb to the singer's monitor send.
    3. Make sure the singer can hear the monitor. Solo it.
    4. Give the singer a dummy mic, and use a second mic to actually pick up the vocal.
  19. If you also play an instrument, be careful to not favor the instrument you play in the mix.
  20. Do not allow the musicians to control the levels of their own monitors. If they need monitor levels higher than the mix allows, give them headphone monitors.
  21. Reduce feedback with individual channel strip EQ, not the master EQ. A limiter also works.

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