Now I'm going to kind of put the mix together really. So I'm going to pull down all my faders. What I've done is I've got the vcas and I've grouped them in a certain way. So I've got the drums on a VCA, the bass, the acoustic guitar, the guitars, the keyboards, the backing vocals, and the main vocal. And then I've put all the band channels, so the drums, the guitars, the keyboards all on one fader, so that I can balance between the vocal and the entire band, so I can bring the band up and down. So I'll just push these up.

So you got the babies and the vocal So just working on kind of focal mix to start with the trying to get balance between the back end focus and the main vocal. Gonna put a bit of reverb on all the the vocals that I'm using. gotta bring the Bandon Yeah, so kind of getting there, I'm still struggling to get this lead vocal to cut through. So I'm going to do a bit more work on the lead vocal, and gradually balanced up the vocals. And then I like to keep being able to bring the mix in. I quite like having the band on one fader.

So because my main concern as an engineer is the single most important thing, which is the vocal. It's something that you'll hear people on myself banging on about a lot. And I can't stress this enough. People come to a gig to hear the singing. The only complaint you'll ever really get is I couldn't hear the singing. I couldn't hear the words.

It's very rarely that someone will come up and go Yeah, fantastic gig. I couldn't hear any of the words, but it was more than made up by the fantastic bass guitar sound. It just doesn't happen. The people say, you know, I can hear the vocals, I can't hear the vocals. So you've always got to remember this and you've got to concentrate on getting the vocals up in your mix. Also, you've got to remember that a soundcheck is a sound check, it's you getting the balance, right?

You're not trying to get a mix, particularly you're trying to work on getting things to the right kind of level. I kind of know that all the individual sounds sound Alright, now, I'm happy with all the drum sounds, I'm happy with the internal balance of things. I know I've got the phone calls. And to a certain extent, I'm pretty much ready now to do a show. I know the vocal sound okay, individually, I know collectively, I can get them up in a mix. And you have to remember that at the moment, we're in an empty room as well.

So it's gonna sound very different than when the audience come in. The acoustics are going to change it's going to tighten up it's going to all sound better. So as long as I've got My individual channels then actually getting mixed together during the soundcheck is slightly less important and people often realize and to certain extent, I'm going to do most of the important work in the first couple of seconds of the first song, which sounds a bit scary, but it's pretty much the truth. It's going to change so much to the for the better, but you're going to have to do so much in the first song and that's when you're really going to start working the room and working and mix and getting everything together. Another problem you will face is that the bands will play differently during a soundcheck from a gig and once they do a soundcheck bands tend to do sound checks with very little enthusiasm, whereas they play gigs with a lot more enthusiasm usually fueled by alcohol.

So they tend to play a lot louder, faster, and generally more excitedly when it actually comes to the gig. Once they've got a bit of adrenaline inside. Then they walk out of the stage and you'll find the drummer starts playing, hitting harder, playing slightly faster guitarist is putting a bit more into it. Everyone's putting a bit more effort into it. Everything will get slightly louder. It's all going to change Slightly from from the soundcheck so the gig is always going to be different and there's so many factors that are going to change it.

But it's always going to be better. or hopefully it's always going to be better than a gig, the acoustic is going to be better the performance is usually better. So as long as you've got your individual channels happy, then you're pretty much on your way to getting a solid mix. One thing I'm going to do though, is I'm going to get out and wander the room. I'm going to get some bass and drums going, and I'm going to go out and listen to the room and just check to see what it sounds like in the rest of the room. Because I might have to come back and make minor adjustments.

So let's go and have a wonder about