Horns, vocals, and harps, oh my!

[dbMontana]

So last Saturday I ran sound for the gig I mentioned in another thread a while back -- seven musicians in a "boomy vintage ballroom squeezed" down into the twelve channels on my SL 16.0.2. I mixed totally from iPad (rock-solid connection all evening) and things worked very well. Most importantly the band and audience were happy with the results. I'm mixing this same band next month in a much higher-profile event. I do have a 16.4.2 lined up for that date and it will likely be mostly maxed out as well.

 

However, my question: There are three horn players in the group -- trumpet, trombone, and sax -- each of whom also sing harmony and lead on many of the songs (no, not while playing!). One of the three also does some prominent harmonica leads on a couple of other songs. The trumpet and trombone can pretty well carry the room unamplified most of the time (but may well need amplification in the next venue for certain parts) and the sax player has a clip-on mic. My obvious problem is how to keep the brass out of the vocal mics as well as the old problem of trying to EQ one mic for both a male vocal and horn/harp -- yes I did a lot of on-the-fly EQ/level adjusting. I'm planning on reserving one channel on the 16.4.2 for a harmonica mic next time -- that seems pretty obvious but am wondering what techniques others may have used for the brass and vocals issue. This past gig was on a very tight stage so the horns had essentially no room to move around but on this next gig I'm thinking along the lines of having them step forward past the mics when playing and then backing up to sing which should minimize some of the bleed through. I should note these are all very accomplished musicians who control their stage dynamics quite well -- based on what they can hear of course which is not always what is needed at FOH. I'm sure this is not a unique situation so does anyone have any thoughts/experiences to share on this? Magical techniques to defeat the laws of physics are not expected but would be welcomed nonetheless <wink>.

 

[Tomm Williams]

Could you put the vox on a sub group and control the volume more easily? This could work IF they all do vocals together, otherwise you might still have a horn blowing somewhere.

[dbMontana]

Yea Tomm, that might be my best way. The 16.4.2 has four sub groups. I usually use one for drums, one for (all) vocals, and the remaining two for reverb and delay respectively. Realistically reverb is the least important to have on a fader as I usually leave it pretty much unchanged other than muting between songs -- not so for delay. So I could split the vocals into two groups so that the three horn vocal mics are in one group -- that would help especially as when mixing from iPad it's not as easy to ride multiple faders as it is on the physical deck. To be honest I can't remember if there are songs where one of them is singing and the others blowing -- Murphy's Law would suggest so though. I am going to attend a rehearsal before the next gig so I'll make sure to check that out. Thanks!