Liquid_Drummer wrote:If I lived close hell yea I would do it. I know how to mix harmonies. Just tell the sound guy this. Backup singers with that are doing high falsetto have to be lower in the mix than the people that are doing full voice harmonies. Falsetto sounds weak on its own but when mixed properly with the full voices you get the desired effect. Make sure the lead singer is panned dead center and that the back ups all have their own little place in the stereo field.
In other words you dont want two people that are singing harmonies that are close in pitch both panned right at 2'oclock or they will cluttered and try to bury each other. If you have 5 singers and a dumb sound guy or you have to mix from the stage yourself you need a one size fits all mix. I mix like this under those conditions.
Lead vox dead center
backing one left 8-9 o'clock
backing two left 1-2 o'clock
backing three left 11 o'clock
backing four left 2.
Bass, kick and snare can be dead center with the vox however the toms need to be panned around a bit. With two guitar players I pan one at 10 oclock and one at 2. When in a pinch this type of mix has worked well for me and to be honest a lot of the floyd mix you have heard uses this basic formula however since we had a very good sound man he would change up the mix for the song.
A down side of having four guys share lead vocals. I even gave the sound guy at Aces a color-coded set list that Jason created so he would know which of us was singing lead on each song (he had never worked with us before). All these recordings were part of an Eclipse show. Jason sings about half, with George and I singing 25% each and Fred singing one or two. When we run our own sound from stage, I boost/drop the faders accordingly.
My hope is that we will have their main sound guy this Friday, and that he will get the mix dialed in during the Eclipse portion of the show since Jason will be singing lead on everything in the Escape set (other than my Greg Rolie leads in Feelin/Anytime and JTSW).
We have 3 BGV (drummer can't sing). I know it sounds like a whole choir, but there are only 3 of us. And NO TRACKS! LOL I cover the single part harmonies and the really high parts (with a few exceptions). Then George and then Fred. It helps to have someone like Jason pick aprt and help us build the harmonies. Great harmonies can truly set a band apart, especially one doing a lot of melodic rock like Journey and Styx.
Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 3:05 pm
. Serious bounceback in that room, and the vocals aren't loud enough, but at least there is no crap kick drum issue.
