Hello,

I am Josephine, an MP&T major from L6T2 at ICOM. It's a pleasure to be given this opportunity to share my experiences and tips of being a live sound mixing engineer at ICOM.
Sound check

Sound check

Before the actual performance takes place, it is essential to conduct sound checks in order to get the right stage set up and mic placements, as well as getting the right "sound". As a mixing engineer, cooperation with the stage crew is very important for a smooth run of the show. We need to work together to achieve the best "sound" during the show. After having the stage set up, the line checks are next, while doing this, working at unity gain is a good way of ensuring healthy and optimum signal paths from each mic/line input. Graphic EQ plays an important role for 'ringing out' in live sound, where it is used to cut out the "disturbing" frequencies to avoid feedback. These procedures are the "prelude" to a sound check. During the sound checks, many things are to be taken into consideration:

As the venue for final Friday performance is small, there won't be a monitor engineer involved. Thus, the mixing engineer's other responsibility is to create monitor mixes from the console to cater for the musician's. Therefore, communication with the musicians is important in order to understand what they want to hear on the stage. Nevertheless, the problem that I always encountered was that although too much monitor level was sent to the vocalist, it still was never enough for them, therefore causing feedbacks from the monitor. A Lesson from this: find a balance between the stage sound and the monitor level. For example, if the vocalist wants piano, guitar and vocals on the monitor, I would probably just send the vocals and very little of guitar and piano, since it is already quite loud on the stage.

The Actual Day

The settings for each song are penned down during sound checks for reference on the final Friday performance. Things to be crosschecked beforehand are:

The "thrill" begins as the lights are turned down to mark the start of the show. While mixing the performance, it is crucial to bring out or highlight instruments, which need to be heard. For example, the guitar, whether it is playing rhythm or a lead line. If there's a lead vocal, make sure it stands out among the rest instead of being masked by the other instruments. When it comes to the improvisation section, it is necessary to keep your eyes and ears open to actually notice which performer is playing his/her solo. The stage for an engineer is similar to a score for a musician. We have to keep our eyes locked towards the stage, or else we might miss out on boosting a certain level or cutting it and hence make a silly mistake, or worse, create technical problems such as feedbacks, etc. I have committed a few silly mistakes in the past, like- forgetting to unmute the emcee mic when he actually started making announcements; another, leaving the backing vocals mic turned on during an instrumental performance, which as a result caused feedback. From then onwards, I would always remind myself each time I was in charge of the mix.

In conclusion, I am glad to have had the opportunity to carry the responsibilities of a mixing engineer for the Friday performances, and also several other shows like the ICOM tribute event. These shows are good learning examples where I can apply my theory and knowledge of audio engineering. I think the experience that I have gained overall has led me to becoming a better audio engineer, and I hope to go further in future.