That being said I would always mic a bass on a high level gig even if it didn’t end up being used. Of course if a player is doing more than that, I think a mic is a given. Whilst I agree with you in a lot of ways Lee, in this day and age a lot of players are playing with cabs that are not much more than amplified DI’s. I really think that just throwing the DI d’jour on floor and saying plug into this, is about the same as thinking that the spikey/clicky kick drum sound a lot metal bands covet, should also be used on jazz and any other style of music. Especially in a situation where you don’t know the band. It could also be an “effects” send that represents the players effects that is mixable with the dry signal. Having a mic’d cab input not only gives you an additional sound to work with, should you choose to incorporate it, it also gives you a reference for the sound the player is trying to achieve. I generally try not to have my time so tight, that the 45 seconds it takes to put a mic on bass cab will make or break a show. I put up some mics, brought the cables over to the edge of the stage where the patch was and sorta dropped them off the edge. So I have a few more stands and a couple of ratty mics left. He gets all in my face about micing this & that. I did a kick, snare, OH and was pretty much out of channels. The drummer shows up with everything in the catalog, the big frame with 6 toms mounted and every cymbal you could imagine. I did a walk in bar gig once where there were maybe 14 working snake channels. I thought that mic’ing a bass cabinet (in addition to a DI) was mostly about making the bass player feel like you were getting his “real” sound. If it wasn’t already setup I probably never would have tried it. I wish I had time to do this more often, but mostly I’m scrambling just to get the DI plugged in. We had the DI up and brought in the mic to taste. I think he used an EV mic, but I could be wrong. The depth that the mic added was very noticeable. I was introduced to this as a guest mixer at a mini-festival. I generally think it works on “character sound” where the amp is an integral sound. You have to think about latency, a Little Labs device in between box can do this, or you can add delay to your digital console if it’s got it. The bass amp really needs to be adding something or it’s a bit of a waste. You can sometimes get a bit of something using a mic, but the stage acoustics need to be ok. Is it really a useful technique or just “something that works in the studio, so let’s use it live” thing. I understand how it can add definition, but won’t a little well placed EQ work? And what about phase interactions between the mic and DI? And add the stage bleed to that. But the few times I’ve tried it, I’ve soloed the mic in my cans and found that the drum bleed was as loud or louder than the bass. Maybe I’ve worked with quiet bass players, if there is such an animal. I’ll be working with some bands where the rider notes a mic and DI for bass. It’s lightly edited for grammar and formatting. Please contact our support department to have the necessary adjustments made remotely for your IBBL.Editor’s Note: Here’s an interesting thread from the PSW Live Audio Board (LAB) forums. This can cause problems for other systems like your payment or camera system. How ever, our services will be pushed to all devices that are connected to your network.
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