Members moleman Posted January 2, 2007 Members Share Posted January 2, 2007 What is a good way to do this? I've spoken to a few live sound engineers, and they often don't want you to send a signal to the board with vocal effects on it, since the engineer has no control over it then, and effects in the monitors can cause feedback. The effects we would need would be delay, which could be triggered on only certain lines of the songs, possibly some special effect type reverbs to make screams trail off, possibly harmony effects, and a lo-fi kind of megaphone effect. The problem here being we'd want the singer to be able to turn the effect on and off, and we don't have a dedicated soundman, so it's basically original music venues with several bands on a bill. Here's what I was considering:build a small rack around the shure SLX wireless beta 58 that the singer currently uses. It has an XLR and 1/4 " instrument output, which I believe can both be used at the same time. Send the XLR send to the board as usual.Send the 1/4" send to an effects processor onstage (possibly a TC helicon unit). The patch changes would be done by me (the guitarist) in concurrence with my guitar patch changes. So, The verse for a song comes up, I hit my patch for the verse to change my amp channel, effects, whatever, and also send the midi signal to the vocal fx rack to cue up that patch. Now, the signal from the vocal effects unit goes to a low Z volume pedal, out front of stage with the singer. Then the signal goes to the snake (possible through a DI first?) to go to the board. The singer can mix in the amount of effects using the volume pedal, the engineer gets his clean signal and the effects signal to blend together. So for isntance the singer wants to add a delay to ever other line of a verse, he rocks forward on the pedal at said time, and gets delay, rocks back and it fades out. I guess another way to do it would be to send from the wireless to the volume pedal first, then the effects, so you could have delays trail off more naturally, like an effects send on the board. What do you guys think? Too complicated? Is there a better way?The only downsides I can think of is that you can never get rid of the uneffected vocal from the signal, like when doing the megaphone sound thing.Oh, and sound engineers hating me when I try to explain this to them. Thanks,Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moody Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Get a megaphone for those megaphone effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members axe2 2001 Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Just get a midi controlled FX unit and insert it on the lead vocal channel and control it with a midi controller. As long as you don't have volume spikes the soundman shouldn't be pissed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Prog Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by moleman I've spoken to a few live sound engineers, and they often don't want you to send a signal to the board with vocal effects on it, since the engineer has no control over it then, and effects in the monitors can cause feedback. Other instruments use effects all time, so it's none of the soundman's business. If it causes feedback, tweak it until it doesn't. Run the mic directly into the TC if you like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rbts Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 I do NOT advocate things that make the sound tech's life more difficult, and I tend to wonder generally whether these kinds of things are really worth the trouble... (better to spend the energy just practicing vocal harmonies maybe), but there are some other sort of effect pedals for vocals that are available. I have one that digitech made... the "vocal 300", and while again I don't think you will see very many of them on real pro stages, the unit does in fact work, and if used sparingly, can make a difference. There are other units similiar in nature as well. One of the primary considerations in using these is to MAKE SURE that you maintain the integrity of the gain structure... so that the send that goes to to sound board does not change in AMPLITUDE when the effects unit is engaged... so that only the tone of the signal changes... NOT THE LOUDNESS OF IT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by Prog Other instruments use effects all time, so it's none of the soundman's business. If it causes feedback, tweak it until it doesn't.Run the mic directly into the TC if you like. What a bull{censored} answer. Guitar effects are not going to cause FOH feedback you idiot, whereas on a mic run directly to the FOH draumatic changes will have catastrophic results. However your solution is an excellent one (until such time you can afford a dedicated FOH engineer worth a damn to learn these cues), having the dry mic and the effect on separate inputs. Yes you should have no problems using both the XLR and line outputs simultainiously. I'd recommend however a compressor on the fx return, which, should there be something massive coming in, will keep it from being catastrophic. Plus by doing this you can run the fx to the house without having them in the monitors, where they are more prone to cause problems. I won't go into the difficulties of judging levels, especially on fx, but be aware that less is more when it comes to vocal fx, if the listening audience can't understand the vocals, they aren't going to bother to listen harder in most cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TimmyP Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Put the volume pedal ahead of the effect, so he can rock the pedal to control the vocal phrases he wants to feed to into the effect. This will also allow the verb or delay to trail out naturally, instead of being cut off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by TimmyP Put the volume pedal ahead of the effect, so he can rock the pedal to control the vocal phrases he wants to feed to into the effect. This will also allow the verb or delay to trail out naturally, instead of being cut off. An excellent suggestion!!!!!!!! Indeed, adjusting what gets sent to the delay will result in some wonderful special fx, with a natural decay. I always use the send to control the amount of delay when used for a special fx. (The typcial 1/4 note multiple repeat on particular phrases.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Prog Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by where02190 What a bull{censored} answer. It takes a long time to train in sound personnel. I do it myself and leave them out of it. For some musicians (not many) effects are part of the music and can be "played". Sound crews can't do this. Very few can. If they think they can then they have to rehearse with the band. So, again, it's none of their business the way I do things. Sound crews are just another variable for me to eliminate as much as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members OverdrivenEL34s Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by TimmyP Put the volume pedal ahead of the effect, so he can rock the pedal to control the vocal phrases he wants to feed to into the effect. This will also allow the verb or delay to trail out naturally, instead of being cut off. basically if you could use an expression/passive volume pedal to control the ambience effect level on the vocal it would work great unless you wanted a whole other type or dratically different setting of the delay, echo, or reverb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moleman Posted January 3, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by OverdrivenEL34s basically if you could use an expression/passive volume pedal to control the ambience effect level on the vocal it would work great unless you wanted a whole other type or dratically different setting of the delay, echo, or reverb. That's kind of the idea, I would have basically one patch to use on the verse of a song, and maybe a different one for chorus, and the singer rides that expression pedal to add delay and reverb to certain lines, or when he does a big scream, it makes the scream kind of trail out (Tool is really big on this.) Then have a few patches for special effects kind of stuff. He doesn't need to focus on what button to hit when or any of that stuff. The downside is that he would not be able to move around as much, but we're on tiny stages anyways. And I'm already hitting all the buttons on my midi controller to change guitar patches, so I can tie that to the vocal patch changes. I'm going to give it a whirl at practice. I need to pick up a few things first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted January 3, 2007 CMS Author Share Posted January 3, 2007 Originally posted by Prog It takes a long time to train in sound personnel. I do it myself and leave them out of it. For some musicians (not many) effects are part of the music and can be "played". Sound crews can't do this. Very few can. If they think they can then they have to rehearse with the band.So, again, it's none of their business the way I do things. Sound crews are just another variable for me to eliminate as much as possible. What you do with your band is obviously your business. But suggesting that it's perfectly fine to run a mic into an effects unit, without explaining the repercussions of the variable output, doesn't help the OP at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted January 3, 2007 Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 It takes a long time to train in sound personnel. I do it myself and leave them out of it. Or you hire a profesional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moleman Posted January 3, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 3, 2007 If we were doing shows where it was just us for a couple sets, or a cover band situation, we'd probably hire our own guy to do it. But our current situation is the usual Chicago 4-5 original bands in a night with like .25 seconds of changeover time so we can get our 40 minute set in type of thing. Good times! Thanks for all your help guys, I'm glad to hear my idea should work. I was just worried I was overlooking something. Of course we will test and refine the idea during rehearsal to make sure we get all the bugs worked out before using it live. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted January 4, 2007 Members Share Posted January 4, 2007 Originally posted by moleman If we were doing shows where it was just us for a couple sets, or a cover band situation, we'd probably hire our own guy to do it. But our current situation is the usual Chicago 4-5 original bands in a night with like .25 seconds of changeover time so we can get our 40 minute set in type of thing. Good times!Thanks for all your help guys, I'm glad to hear my idea should work. I was just worried I was overlooking something. Of course we will test and refine the idea during rehearsal to make sure we get all the bugs worked out before using it live. In that scenario ( the usual Chicago 4-5 original bands in a night with like .25 seconds of changeover time) I'd definitely recommend against it, as the house engineers are not going to be interested in dealing with that, and if there are any complications, what will suffer is the vocals as they will simply turn them down. Have your regular engineer come mix the show, or at least instruct the house guy on delay cues. Don't make what is already a complicated situation with multiple bands more complicated for the house guys, in many cases it'll just piss em off. Keep it simple. Use what your given, make friends, and you'll get what you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members olejason Posted January 5, 2007 Members Share Posted January 5, 2007 ^ Definately. I run sound for 3 original bands a night and I can't count the number of times people have brought in vocal FX without understanding the ramifications of hooking something like that up. As long as people are friendly about it and understand that you are adding a very big variable to the mix then there usually isn't a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moleman Posted January 5, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 5, 2007 Originally posted by olejason ^ Definately. I run sound for 3 original bands a night and I can't count the number of times people have brought in vocal FX without understanding the ramifications of hooking something like that up. As long as people are friendly about it and understand that you are adding a very big variable to the mix then there usually isn't a problem. I definitely don't try and spring things on the engineer at the last minute, any special needs are communicated to the guy before the first band even sets up, even if it's just letting him know that the singer is on a wireless, or whatever. Olejason, what do you think of my idea of splitting the wireless signal and still providing the board with the same uneffected signal they'd normally be getting? If catastrophe ensues, engineer can always rely on having the clean signal and just kill the effects signal. Not worth the hassle? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Meriphew Posted February 12, 2007 Members Share Posted February 12, 2007 How about using a little Mackie mixer (1402/1202) onstage just for the vox and vox fx. From the Mackie send a (dry) vox signal, and a left and right vox fx only signal to the FOH (total of 3 outputs to FOH)? Would something like that be feasible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kevinnem Posted February 12, 2007 Members Share Posted February 12, 2007 BOSE PAS honestly , I Think the best way to do this is to use 2 mics, one with effects, and one with out. however, buy doing the effects yoru self, you forever give up teh right to bitch about your sound mans, .. ifyou not going to let him control stuff, youi can't blame him when it goes tits up. Also consider, that the sound guy MAY be better at mixing the show then you are ..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Meriphew Posted February 13, 2007 Members Share Posted February 13, 2007 Also consider, that the sound guy MAY be better at mixing the show then you are ..... Tis true, but there is no way a soundman will know the precise times to cue on AND off your fx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ATOMICDOG1 Posted February 13, 2007 Members Share Posted February 13, 2007 If we were doing shows where it was just us for a couple sets, or a cover band situation, we'd probably hire our own guy to do it. But our current situation is the usual Chicago 4-5 original bands in a night with like .25 seconds of changeover time so we can get our 40 minute set in type of thing. Good times!Thanks for all your help guys, I'm glad to hear my idea should work. I was just worried I was overlooking something. Of course we will test and refine the idea during rehearsal to make sure we get all the bugs worked out before using it live. I've mixed one of your Chicago band brethren called Marazene up here in Mpls before. They have a pretty cool solution. They have a series of backing tracks, some are synth pads and extra percussion etc. and there are also stereo vocal effects tracks and a pair of extra vocal tracks. What they did with those is have the distorted vocal parts and backing vocal parts seperately and the stereo main vocal delay and verb sounds together and then the singers live voice is mixed over it. It works great and no feedback issues at all. Of course you have to be able to play with a click, a lot of bands can't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Gregidon Posted February 13, 2007 Members Share Posted February 13, 2007 I understand the desire for vocalists to have control over vocal effects. I think the concern that Where and others are showing is that the vocalist rarely understands the impact that these effects have on FOH. Vocals are a lot more touchy with effects than guitar. I think it would be possible for a vocalist to control their own effects, but only after having tweeked their settings in a live setting with a lot of help from the soundguy to make sure that the patches they use work well. Otherwise they suffer from the same problem many guitarists with multiple settings suffer from, that is patches of many different volumes. I agree with Where (ack!, j/k) that in a case where the soundguy gets burned by one of these patches, they are more likey to just turn you down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Meriphew Posted February 17, 2007 Members Share Posted February 17, 2007 Here's a couple links that might shed a little more light on this topic: http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=109489 http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1540666 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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