Do you remember the 1980s? Riding along in the back lounge of the audio bus, solving the world’s problems and wishing for a console with “total recall.” Those of us old enough remember the massive effort it took to “chart” an analog console so you could “dial it up” on a different desk. Oftentimes, multiple opening acts would share the same console, requiring the “dial up” procedure to happen during set change, which was always nerve-wracking and prone to mistakes. The idea of a console that could recall a complete setup with the push of a button was a “pipe dream” that defined the distant future of audio mixing.
Living the Dream
Fast forward to 2012. Digital consoles are now industry standard, and science fiction has become pro audio fact. Modern consoles can now recall a complete setup with the push of a button, and much, much more. Before digital consoles, we simply dreamed of a global “snapshot” that would set up a desk for a particular show. The idea itself was so far fetched that we never thought through just what having recall power would mean and how it could be leveraged to make our shows sound better and our consoles do more than ever before.
Now that we have all of this power, the question is: What do we do with it? Most people commonly think of scenes or snapshots as simply “presets” that provide a particular setup for a particular show. That is a naive view that ignores all of the other possibilities snapshot automation brings to our business. In addition to the ability to recall a particular setup, we have the flexibility and control to use snapshots to program extremely complex shows with various controls being recalled on some scenes and left unchanged on others. We can even trigger those scenes via switch closure, MIDI or timecode.
Modern digital consoles can be programmed so that “scenes” or “snapshots” can be used to do just about anything. From changing the entire console setup to simply changing the EQ on the acoustic guitar channel to compensate for the differences between the “main” and the “backup” guitars. They can be used to change setups for groups of instruments like a horn section or drum kit or to provide a one-button change for many instruments between the “normal” show and the proverbial “acoustic set.”
Seize the Power
Looking beyond simple “setups,” you can use scenes to actually help mix the show. It is common to create a snapshot for each song, but limiting the “scope” to only include mutes and fader levels. This allows the operator to have an analog style workflow on the entire board, while automating the “starting point” mix of each tune. Once you have a scene for each song, you can start taking advantage of more power by having the snapshots change the effect setting, echo times and other parameters of the processing gear either internal or external via MIDI signals. That is when the power really starts to shine.
These functions can be mixed and matched seamlessly. You can have console set up snapshots and song by song mixing snapshots on the same desk at the same time. Can you begin to see the magic?
Now, imagine tying the console in to timecode coming from the playback system or video decks and using specific frames to trigger snapshots. Now you can have the console mix for you, changing levels, mutes, EQ, routing, whatever you need, automatically with the flow of the show. You can even use timecode-triggered snapshots to fire sound effects and other audio program material in perfect time, every time, freeing up the operator to do what he or she should be doing — mixing sound, not pushing buttons.
Programming Your Show
As you begin to contemplate mixing with the help of snapshots, there are a few rules you should always keep in mind.
1. Know Your Goal
Your goal will obviously be driven by your needs. Do you simply want to prepare for an opening act, or do you need to fly in sound FX in time with a video roll? Do you want to compensate a few channels to allow for instrument changes or do you need to “open” the click track to additional musicians at certain times in a song?
2. Have a Plan to Achieve
Your Goal
Once you have identified your goal, you can begin to devise a plan to achieve it. There are multiple ways to structure your programming approach. Think through the pros and cons of each and develop a plan that gives you the results you want and that your equipment and skill level allow you to accomplish.
3. DO NOT Automate
ANYTHING You Don’t
Have To
This is very important. Be liberal with your use of the “safe” feature. Anything that is “safed” is isolated from the recall and will therefore function, for all practical purposes, like an analog device. Go through your setup and “safe” every input and output strip that you never want to be included in any snapshots. The less you automate, the less you have to keep track of.
4. Keep It Simple
Lay out your console to be easy to use and your programming to be easy to follow. Programming subtleties that seem obvious at the time may bust you in two months when you are having weird console behavior during a show and you have long forgotten what the heck you did back in rehearsals!
Programming the Board
There are several approaches to programming the console to make effective use of scenes. Which approach you choose is determined by what you are trying to achieve and how comfortable you are with your console’s software.
Approach #1: Global Setups
If your goal is to simply fulfill that ancient longing for “total recall” of all console settings, the process is very quick and fairly painless. Begin by setting the console up exactly how you want it to be for your show, then “take a picture” of it by creating a new “scene” or “snapshot.” The console records every knob, button and patch into memory, every time you make a new snapshot. The trick is telling the console what to recall.
Most digital consoles have the ability to control which parameters are affected by the snapshot recall and which ones are not. This is commonly called the “scope” of the snapshot, and understanding the capabilities of this function is critical to getting the scenes to work the way you want them to.
In the “global setup” situation, you want to be sure and “scope” every parameter on the desk so it will be entirely “reset” when you recall the scene. The screenshot above is of the snapshot system on an Avid VENUE console. It shows the “scope” section set up in a way that will recall every parameter of the desk, allowing complete setup changes between the Opening Act, the Main Act and the proverbial “Acoustic Set.” If a input or output strip is selected for recall, it will be red, if not, it will be grey.
In Fig. 1, you can see all of the strips are selected. The “SCOPE” section lists the control sets associated with the selected strips; once again, the selected controls are red. In this example all of the strips and all of the controls are selected for recall. When this snapshot is fired, it will set the entire console just like it was when the snapshot was stored.
Approach #2: Song-by-Song Snapshots
Once you are comfortable with global setups, you may want to take the next step and begin to use snapshots to improve your mix on a song-by-song basis. By utilizing the “scope” features you can limit each snapshot to affect only the parameters you want to change while leaving the rest alone. To build this kind of workflow, you should start by creating one snapshot per song before the rehearsal even starts. It doesn’t matter what order they are in, it is easy to drag and drop them into any order.
Individual song snapshots allow you to “tweak” the desk before the start of each new song, muting unused channels, changing fader levels and pan positions on others. As you progress through rehearsals, you can begin to use the snapshots to change effect settings and delay times, allowing you, the engineer, to simply push “next” and listen to the results. This is where the artistic payoff starts to happen. You can actually concentrate on what the show sounds like, not on all of the buttons you must push and settings you must change between songs.
Fig. 2 shows the snapshot page being used for song-by-song snapshots. Note that not all of the channels will be included in the recall. You can also see that only the Fader level, Mute state, EQ setting, Dynamics parameters and Pan position will be recalled for the selected channels.
Even with all this automation, you can still maintain an “analog” workflow where it is needed the most. By leaving things like the drum EQ and every channel’s input gain out of the recall, you can freely trim tone and levels throughout the show, adapting to changing conditions without worrying that the next snapshot will reset the changes you just made. This comes back to rule number 3: don’t automate anything you don’t have to. Unless you need to change it, don’t scope it!
Approach #3:
Detailed Section Snapshots
If your goals are lofty and you not only want to have a scene for each song, but you want to use snapshots to tweak the mix from the verse to the chorus, pump the solo and trigger a sound effect at the end of the song, you should start out by creating multiple scenes per song and labeling them accordingly. As rehearsals progress, store the desired console state into the snapshots you have created. You don’t have to worry about thinking of everything ahead of time. It is very easy to add more snapshots or delete them from the list, but having the snapshots there as “placeholders” helps keep you organized and minimizes the amount of data entry work you have to do while the band is playing.
The individual section snapshots should have a very limited scope set due to their specific nature. For example: a snapshot that is meant to set the solo sound for the lead guitar will only need the lead guitar channel selected and the fader and pan controls scoped. This example is illustrated in Fig. 3.
No matter what you choose to do with your “total recall” console, there is no arguing with the fact that this technology makes things possible that were never even imagined before. As you begin to dig deeper into the more advanced consoles, you begin to realize they have way more power than I have room to touch upon in this article. Whether it’s band-to-band, song-to-song, section-to-section or phrase-to-phrase, you can do it all — if you just have enough programming time.
As an engineer, you have to accept that scene mixing is challenging and will require some study time. The only way you can get comfortable with faders and knobs moving on their own is to practice programming in your down time. Most console manufacturers allow some sort of off line editing and control software that will let you to sit quietly in your hotel or at home and get familiar with scene mixing at a time when mistakes don’t cost you your job.
Summing Up
Modern digital consoles may or may not sound as good as their analog predecessors, but they can certainly do a lot more “mixing” than could ever be done in the analog world. You can harness these powerful features to improve your mix and bring on a level of precision that was never before attainable. It all depends on the power of your particular mixing system and the amount of work you, the engineer, want to put into programming it.
Live sound designer and engineer Steve McCale has mixed at FOH and monitors for U2, Steve Miller, Lexus Motors, Kelly Clarkson, Shania Twain and many other top artists and corporate clients. He also served as senior product specialist for Avid’s VENUE live console products for four years. He is now available for a variety of audio-related services and can be reached at smccale@mac.com.
