mike257

Many countries require you to present an A1 certificate to the entity that are paying the fee (usually the local promoter) for each person, which can be applied for on gov.uk and is proof you're a UK taxpayer, otherwise they'll hold a proportion of the fees back as "witholding tax" to cover any liabilities that a local taxpayer would have been subject to. To complete an A1 application you have to be able to list the countries you're visiting and when. Currently there's a bloody enormous wait time for a form to be processed, but promoters will often accept a proof of application in lieu of the actual cert. Doesn't answer your question, but is useful info to get ahead of for your situation, because the tour manager will no doubt be asking you for one!

Lovely stuff, what were you up to with it? I stuck with my contemplations from my last post and decided to take a dLive out on the road for a couple of tours. Spent most of September out around the UK with Lovejoy, took an S5000/DM48 out, with Shure PSM1000 IEM. Here's my youngest son teaching me how to drive it properly.... Currently in the middle of a UK run with The Pigeon Detectives, got a C3500 out on monitors for this one, a little bit more compact. I'm also mixing FOH for the touring support artist, Ellur, on the C2500 that we're carrying for Pigeons, haven't got a decent picture of that though, I'm always in too much of a rush to soundcheck my second band of the day by the time I walk to that end of the multi! Enjoying it though - all but two of the tours I've had this side of lockdown have been at monitors, it's fun to have a change of scenery and head down the other end for a bit!

Just got an Instagram ad for UAD giving away a new LA-2A plugin. Native too, doesn't need UAD hardware.

My most regular touring role is as a monitor engineer, so this is my typical approach if I'm starting from scratch with an artist/working as an in-house monitor engineer. For a wedge mix - I'll start off with each persons own instrument/voice in their wedge, plus anything that isn't making its own loud noise on stage (keyboards, sample pads, backing tracks, acoustic guitar, lead vox etc). I don't tend to put drums or amplified electric guitars in to start with unless its a large stage/festival stage and you're sufficiently far enough away from the person at the opposite end to not hear them well. I'll usually throw some kick in the bass players wedge, and some kick/snare/toms for a drummer. If there's multiple vocals that need the lead/each other as a pitching reference I'll make sure that's in there too. Basically, I'll fill the gaps around the sound that already exists acoustically in the space. That's usually a good starting point for most folks, and then I'll adjust to taste as requested. I avoid putting a full "FOH" mix in immediately as it's just adding more noise on stage and clouding what's going on if there's already guitar amps roaring and a drummer going full tilt. For IEMs, if you're wearing custom moulds you've generally got a very high level of isolation from outside noise, so I'll start with more of a general balance of the whole band with each persons own instrument/voice pushed up on top, plus a splash of ambient mics, that I'll ride up further in breaks between songs or in parts where there's a lot of crowd participation/singing. Again, this is usually a good starting point, but I can often end up miles away from this once an artist has made tweaks for their preferences. As a general note, if someone's struggling to hear something, it's better to find what's getting in the way and pull it back to make space, rather than continually turning things up until it's all a bit of a mess. Also very much endorse what @Bill Fitzmaurice has to say about low end in wedges - I'll slap a high pass filter over every wedge mix and get that low end gone. It makes for a muddy mess on stage otherwise, and can ruin the day for whoever's mixing FOH too. Happy to have my brains picked about monitor mixing if anyone's got questions (there's not much in there to pick though!)

Got a few favourites, most of them have had a mention here! The Beta58a is a reliable standard that works just about everywhere - it's not sexy but it does the job and you know what you'll get. My go-to all rounder in my own kit was the AKG D5 until very recently. I've got about 8 of them and they're ace, tight pattern and great sound, and very affordable too. Work on most singers I've thrown them at. I've recently been sent a batch of SE V7 to test drive though, and they've definitely jumped to the front of the queue for me. I'd tried them briefly a couple of years ago and they very much didn't suit the singer I was working with at the time, so I'd steered clear, but I took a bunch of the wireless capsules on a tour for a bunch of rappers earlier this year and they were head and shoulders above the Sennheiser 845 caps I'd had on previously. Currently using the regular wired ones for lead and BVs with an indie rock band on a tour I'm looking after and they sound great. Comparatively cheap too!

Eventbrite are ok for small events, but it's very much a "self service" platform and it's very hard to speak to a human if you have any issues - have had some issues using it on larger events (2-5k capacity theatre tours) that would put me off using it at that level again but still use it on some smaller things as it's pretty quick and hassle free to set up. They do charge an additional for their more advanced features like the social marketing stuff, but it's not essential to use that so can just be ignored if you want. Skiddle are great - I know a couple of the team there, it's a solid platform and staffed by some good folks. Dice provide ticketing for a couple of festivals I looked after this summer, and although ticketing wasn't my department, to my knowledge they provided a perfectly fine service.

There's definitely some overcomplication of a simple concept happening in this thread. Yes it's fine to do what you're doing Yes there's a possibility the signals will be slightly out of phase with one another No it's not a problem since you're not mixing the two signals together I frequently split sources across more than one channel to process them differently for FOH and mons - even when I'm mixing mons (which is where I usually am) I'll frequently split certain channels to be treated differently in wedges vs IEMs, or for different people's mixes. What you're doing is absolutely fine and shouldn't cause you any issues. I know someone's mentioned splitting it digitally within the desk, which is how I usually do it for my needs, but that takes away your ability to process it separately from stage, so what you're doing now is absolutely the right way to achieve the result you're going for.

Russ has (as usual) got it nailed on. My personal view on this, after trying multiple things, is that unless you've got budget for the right sort of mics and vocalists prepared to use them properly, and drum shields/quiet stage/IEM aren't an option, the best thing you can do is to live with the bleed and mix around it. I've tried various approaches when I've had issues with this, but ultimately, no matter how you're dipping the volume of the channel, when it opens up to let the vocal through, all the bleed comes back along with it. On a stage with multiple live vocal mics, this can be quite a noticeable and unnatural sonic change - one which I'm sure @dave_bass5 will be able to duplicate by listening to an instrumental section of his recordings with the vocal mics alternately on and off. I'll start my soundchecks with vocal mics all open in the PA, so that when I'm hearing it in the room, I'm hearing it in the context of how it'll come at me during the show - instead of dialling in loads of lovely sounds in isolation, then opening up all the vocals at the end of the soundcheck and essentially having the same effect as switching on four or five more overhead mics full of cymbals! The only piece of hardware/software I've found that really fights this off is the reassuringly expensive Rupert Neve 5045 Primary Source Enhancer, which (when dialled in right) really does do absolute magic in clearing up spill on a vocal line, but I've only had the luxury of carrying on one or two tours, and they cost a bloody fortune to buy. The software emulation equivalent built in to the higher end Yamaha mixers also makes a damn good go of it, although it does have the unfortunate side effect of making you mix your show on a Yamaha mixer. There's various plug-in versions out there available too but I can't say I've given them enough of a go to comment on their effectiveness.

@BigRedX is right - if there's no blend of the two signals, then their phase relationship doesn't matter. It's only if you're blending two similar signals that are out of phase to one another that they start to interact and cause cancellation or summing of certain frequencies.

But..... that's exactly what "gain" is. It's an increase in signal level. When you do it at the front end of a circuit it's just making it louder at that point in the path.

The grille is just velcroed in to place. Mine is buried in a lockup but I'm pretty sure the piping is stapled to the frame around the sides. Pop the staples out of the piping, rewrap with new grille cloth, staple piping back on and you have a nicely matched cab!

There's tons of bands making use of tracks, for sure, but that doesn't make it karaoke. I'm sure artists would love to have a massive band line up on stage recreating all the parts they'd like to squeeze in, but it's not financially or logistically practical for the vast majority. Even for bands touring reasonably sized venues, every player you add to the show adds a cost in wages, catering, travel, accommodation, rehearsal time, equipment etc. You add a few extras players and you need to start increasing the crew size to manage it. You go past the amount of people you can fit on a sleeper bus and you have to add an additional bus and driver to move your touring party around, with all the cost and logistical issues that entails. For smaller bands touring in vans, you can fit 9 people including driver in a typical tour van (any vehicle carrying more than that requires a CPC trained driver and a tachograph to log drivers hours, so isn't commonly used in small scale touring). If you can squeeze extra players in, you still have all the other additional costs attached, and given that the vast majority of tour vans are usually already running over the legal weight limit when packed with backline and a few bodies, accomodating extra players and their kit safely and legally isn't really practical. Operating costs on tour are higher than than ever at the moment and budgets are being squeezed. When you see that side of it, you can see why it's more practical for bands to add additional elements on playback than it is to add another couple of musicians to the lineup. The majority of bands that use click tracks and playback are using it for parts that enhance the overall impact of the show, but are still a fully functioning musical unit playing live together. Some modern genres of music are more dependent on electronic elements that don't all lend themselves to being recreated through live performance too. Running a click track also means that lighting rigs and other visual elements like video content can be locked in sync to the performance, adding to the overall experience that's created for the audience. Some artists I work with are using click tracks live purely to lock in with timecoded visuals and don't have any playback element to the show at all. Expectations for production standards on live shows have risen considerably over the last couple of decades, so artists and their teams are just making the most of the technology available to create a memorable experience for the audience. The majority of the crowd at most shows aren't musicians, they're there to see and hear a show and be entertained. A drummer having a click in their ear, and a couple of layers of backing vocals and keyboards being dropped in on playback doesn't invalidate the performance that's happening and the experience that the audience are enjoying.

There's definitely viable careers to be had, and while you're young and have no significant financial commitments or dependents is the best time to have a proper crack at it. I came the long way round, and after dabbling in the industry when younger, I left a "sensible" job of 7 years at the age of 28 to come back to working in the music industry. Its a lot of hustling and you have to have a bit of a "portfolio career" and be open to doing different things. I started out with a mix of function band playing, sound engineering and driving vans for bands. Got busy enough with both that one had to give, so I stepped back from playing and shifted to the production side fully, and I now predominantly work as a tour manager, production manager and monitor engineer (with occasional bits of stage management, backline teching and FOH). Whatever you're doing, it takes a few years to build a network and professional reputation but there's work out there for the taking. I'm typing this from a dressing room at Reading Festival now, waiting around to look after a headliner on one of the stages here, and I'm just a blagger from Liverpool who got lucky, so if she's actually talented, the world is her oyster 😉

What era do you come from? They've been an option since the 80s at least.

Been at the mercy of festival house consoles for the last few weekends. Lots of the larger frame dLives, which was nice. Hadn't spent a ton of time with them in monitor world, I'd mainly used them at FOH, but I'm seriously considering making the jump from Digico for my next couple of tours.

Don't see those very often at all! Panasonic/Ramsa have all but vanished from the pro audio world outside of Japan. Heard the DA7 was a cracking console for its time though.

IEMs are great (when well set up) but Bluetooth is completely inadequate for them. The latency is way beyond anything vaguely acceptable for monitoring live performance. If you could do it with cheap Bluetooth buds, everyone would be doing it instead of spending hundreds on proper radio systems.

I made a living predominantly from playing for a few years, but supplemented it with bits of sound engineering, driving bands about on tour, that sort of thing. All the full timers I know are doing a mix of functions, more frequent but lower paid bar gigs, bits of teaching or studio work, and various bits to fill in the gaps. I went the other way, hung up the bass (from a professional standpoint - I still play for pleasure) and threw myself in to the backstage side of it, and I'm now fairly busy all year round straddling multiple roles in live production on fairly decent sized shows - tour management, production management, sound engineering and backline teching. There's decent living to be made from music, but it's hard graft, you've got to build a good network of people and a reputation for being decent at your job and pleasant to work with, and be good at sniffing out opportunities to do things. It's also very tough on family life and if you've got a family, requires huge compromise and sacrifice from yourself and and your partner to make it work. It's not for everyone, but it's out there if you really want it.

Scott Dixon's do, over time, take a beating and the lids start to get a little out of shape and become a faff to put back on. That said, I've never seen a guitar come out of one damaged, and I work as a tech with multiple artists who use them and they've all earned their dents and bumps on huge numbers of flights and truck rides. Toured with an artist who had their basses in an Enki last year and was very impressed, it's a great case and a snug fit, and we flew it around Europe for a busy summer of festivals with no issues. Haven't seen one that's been in use for as long as some of the Scott Dixons I see though, so can't speak for the longevity in the same way.

Thanks! Won't be slinging a bass there, I'm afraid. I'm there as a production manager with an artist. Hoping for a slightly more relaxed visit than last year when I did six shows over three days, doing three different job roles 🤣

I'm staying on an extra day after the show I'm doing at Glasto and hoping to catch him there. They've (very inconsiderately) scheduled Queens Of The Stone Age to clash with him, but they'll be back again, and he won't, so I think I'll be sticking around for Reg.

You'd be correct. The Ui16 is particularly dreadful. A company I used to freelance for had one that they'd send out on small corporate events when it was just a couple of mics and some playback, and I had such horrendous, show stopping issues with the control interface seizing up (even with a wired network connection to my laptop, sometimes) that I stopped taking it on shows at all. I wouldn't trust the built in WiFi on any mixer from any brand in a show critical situation.

And on the Yamaha front, I had the great displeasure of a very tired PM5D as a festival monitor console that I had to throw and go on the other week. Had an absolute stinker of a gig for various reasons, but that old dinosaur definitely didn't help 🤣

Looks like a good run! Every time I get behind a Midas Pro and hear how bloody great they sound, I (almost) forgive them for the bloody trackball and the patching screen 🤣 Spent today prepping an SD12 package for a couple of weeks touring with Circa Waves. Had to do some chicanery to make it work, but have squeezed my SD Rack, the FOH dLive rack, split/patch and all the IEM in to a double wide, so it'll be a nice easy build each day! We're in production rehearsals tomorrow so I'll try and snap a couple of pictures. Haven't had many chances for desk photos for a while, been pretty solidly in tour manager/production manager mode and doing less audio, although I did just have my SQ5 out for a few weeks round the UK with Bad Boy Chiller Crew. Even more compact package with my stage rack, splits, power distro, RF and battery chargers all tucked in to a little 12u.