Leveling keyboard patches for live shows...

[Prime Mover]

Got an ongoing problem for all you other keyboardists out there. I'm always struggling to even out my keyboard patches for live shows. I play 5 hour classic rock sets in a bar house band with everything from synth-driven 80s rock to contemporary pop and 60s classics. I'm constantly getting criticism that my levels are uneven, but I'm not sure exactly how to effectively combat this when doing such high variety material. I play live with MainStage with one patch setup per song, and when I practice and create my setups, I really try to make them even and they sound pretty smooth, but in a live venue, that all goes out the window. B3s either scream or are inaudible, pads that I thought were under control just blow out everything else. I'm constantly switching between various patches mid song, and the differences can end up being quite pronounced. Not sure what to do at this point, my bandmates tell me to go even out my sounds, but I thought I already did that! It's made more difficult because some songs need more forward keys than others. I practically keep one hand ready on the volume slider at all times, and give myself my own monitor to try to keep things under control, but I'm not nailing it all the time.

Any suggestions from gigging keyboardists?

[David Polich]

I'm not sure there is any way to level out
your patches except by ear and patience.

One tip I can offer is this - find what you
believe is your quietest patch, and set that
as the benchmark against which you compare
the rest of your sounds. Your quietest patch
should be your loudest, in other words.

If you're having trouble hearing your quietest
sound, crank up your monitor level so that
you're hearing that patch really loud. Then back
off the levels of the rest of your patches to
sit at the quiet patch's level or somewhere
slightly below it.

One thing you have working against you is
the lack of headroom in MainStage. There
just isnt any, and by the time you get more
than three sounds layered you are clipping
the master bus in Main Stage. Because of
this, you have no choice but to increase your
monitor level.

I work as a keyboard tech for David Foster,
as well as doing live gigs with my own
tribute bands, and I also do sound programming
for Yamaha and Korg. This is the best method
I've found for leveling patches.

Oh, and dont do level balancing at the end
of the day or while onstage or during rehearsal.
Do it in the morning, in a room where there
are no other musicians noodling away.

[Prime Mover]

I don't have many problems with clipping because I tend to try to set a reasonable unity level inside the individual patch VIs, so they're well below -6 in the channel strip even when set to 0. I also have one slider on my board set to master volume and I start at no more than halfway when beginning a gig (often the level will rise as the night gets going more).

As for doing my leveling. I feel like the ONLY way to get a good level is in context with the rest of the band, ie: at rehearsal or at a gig. When I level things on my own they feel right at the time but not in context with the rest of the instruments.

[Michael Canavan]

The solution after you've done as much as you can to mix your various keyboard parts to match the rest of the bands volume levels is to get a live mixer.

Bass, drums, guitar vocals all occupy a certain frequency range, so in a live situation they may sound different than the way they sound in a practice room but not so different from song to song. Keyboards, with the variety you can get out in terms of frequency, overtones etc. change so drastically from song to song that the same volume leveling you do in practice doesn't work in a live situation with different room nodes and frequencies.

Basically the live setting is exaggerating different frequencies than your practice studio does, so all of a sudden certain songs have your part too loud or quiet etc. The two solutions I can think of:

Tune your practice room, room treatment run Room EQ Wizard etc. to make it as flat as possible so frequencies are more or less evened out when you go into rooms that aren't flat.

Get a mixer, someone to ride your volume. <-- Depending on how bad the rooms you play in are acoustically this is the ultimate solution.

Of course if you always play the same venue you could adjust and save volumes in MainStage etc. while playing live over a few nights, and save that MainStage patch as "Venue XyZ".

It's an annoying part of playing keyboards and electronic music that certain rooms either exaggerate or suck up various frequencies. Played a show years ago where an entire sequences baseline was gone, just had to imagine it was there and hope....

[HCMarkus]

Volume pedal and good monitors.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Volume pedal and good monitors.

+1

[Prime Mover]

No need for a pedal, I'm more comfortable with a slider. Pedals are inaccurate. I love expression pedals for wah and modulation, but if I need to fine-tune accuracy, I'll take a slider or nob any day. I'm not so busy that I can't reach up and pull something down. Problem is, I'm having difficulty telling when something is too loud out in the hall. Hammond is especially bad, huge full frequency response that changes depending upon whether you're playing staccato or legato. I've got a personal monitor wedge that I've got pointed at my face. I can often tell when things are too loud but by the time I've corrected it, I've already blasted the audience away with a few loud notes.

[daniel.sneed]

IMHO, best volume pedals are Ernie Ball. I've used many Morleys in the past, and still do nowadays.
But now, I'm more confident with Ernies' volume curves.
BTW, matching load impedance makes much sense about effective curve.

[David Polich]

I don't have many problems with clipping because I tend to try to set a reasonable unity level inside the individual patch VIs, so they're well below -6 in the channel strip even when set to 0. I also have one slider on my board set to master volume and I start at no more than halfway when beginning a gig (often the level will rise as the night gets going more).

As for doing my leveling. I feel like the ONLY way to get a good level is in context with the rest of the band, ie: at rehearsal or at a gig. When I level things on my own they feel right at the time but not in context with the rest of the instruments.

Yes, but if you try to get good levels in context with the band, you're just chasing tails. You turn up, they turn up, you turn up, etc., etc...it just goes on and on. It's pointless to try to keep balancing with the band. That isn't even your job. It's the job of the front-of-house mixer.

If your band has no soundman...well sorry, you just have to have one. I've never seen (or been in) a
band that self-mixed themselves correctly. Someone will always want to hear themselves "just a bit more clearly" and the battle of the volumes resumes. And rooms, moods, and instrument levels change from venue to venue, night to night. You can't second-guess all the variables.

Your concern should truly be getting your own patch levels balanced, send your onstage mix to the house, and let them deal with it. Start with your own world, lay down the law and say, THIS is what I'm sending you guys, that's that.

[Prime Mover]

Yeah, no FOH at all. This is a house bar band, they've been doing it for 15 years and wouldn't dream of shelling out the cash. Thankfully the guitarist and vocalist are both wireless and spend a lot of time out in the house, so they can run back and tweak things if things aren't level in the long term, but for individual patch changes, no beans.

It's not a loudness wars problem. If I need more volume, I turn up my monitor, not my slider. I'm just trying to level out my patches so they sit best in the mix.

[Michael Canavan]

Yeah, no FOH at all. This is a house bar band, they've been doing it for 15 years and wouldn't dream of shelling out the cash. Thankfully the guitarist and vocalist are both wireless and spend a lot of time out in the house, so they can run back and tweak things if things aren't level in the long term, but for individual patch changes, no beans.

It's not a loudness wars problem. If I need more volume, I turn up my monitor, not my slider. I'm just trying to level out my patches so they sit best in the mix.

OK since you're playing the same place every time it's hopefully possible to go there when it's closed or mostly empty and fix the issues? IMO like I said it's the frequencies of the room itself that are exaggerating different patches than when you're doing it at home, practice etc.

[Shooshie]

Way back in the 1980s when I first started doing MIDI, I thought I just HAD to find a way to make all my patches respond at the same levels. I thought if I was playing a velocity of 45, then it should sound like a 45 on all instruments. Pretty soon I realized that it's probably impossible. Different instruments have different transients, different velocity response, different keyboard maps, and many other things. It's a hopeless task! You mentioned the B-3, but most organ sounds don't even DO velocity.

I'm with HC Markus that a volume pedal is a good thing. But ears are the most important thing, so if you're not hearing FOH and don't have a FOH soundman, then you need some better stage monitors, or perhaps just a louder monitor feed.

Shooshie

[David Polich]

Ok, house bar band, 15 years in the same
bar, no soundman. That spells non-pro to
me. No wonder you've had such trouble.
These guys think they know what they're
doing, but having no soundman proves
they dont.

So..you're stuck with two solutions..quit
the band, or ignore their complaints and
carry on as you have been. You will never
solve this without a soundman, trust me.

I recommend finding a tribute band. The pay
is better, you dont have to learn as many
songs, and you will usually have a soundman
and play in much better venues.

[mhschmieder]

Back when I still did live keyboards (in tribute bands), I heavily EQ'd all of my presets, eliminated all reverb (of course), and minimized low frequency content on anything assigned to backing. Most unevenness comes from over saturated bass frequencies in conjunction with how those behave from room to room.

For live parts, I did a lot of bass stuff since often I was using both hands for the keyboards vs. one on the bass and one on keys. Even so, I always did a high pass filter around 80 Hz or so. FOH people can do what they want when it's dance music, but filters typically are shallow anyway so it's good to provide more headroom for the rest of the frequency spectrum even if one is actually using some sub-lows as part of the schtick.

I don't use factory presets; I always make my own. Factory presets are designed to make a keyboard sound "exciting" when played on its own in a store. I have yet to encounter a factory preset that is balanced. Also, reverb in most keyboards is awful and will further smear the lows (since it rarely is HPF'ed), tempting one to turn up the bass frequencies even more and create yet more problems with the house sound.

Although it's not done as much anymore, for traditional keyboard sounds, using a good amp (e.g. Fender Deluxe Reverb) that is known for electric keyboards, can go a long way towards evening out the sound from room to room, but it's unlikely many FOH people will be willing to mic the amp vs. going DI-only. I haven't tried this approach on synths yet, but imagine it would have similar effect as on Rhodes, Wurly, Clavinet, B3, etc.

As for how to generate your presets in terms of EQ etc., it's best to go for a so-called "thin" sound that cuts through the mix, don't over-compress your presets to where the attack doesn't cut through, and if possible, use a keyboard that has a couple of knobs or sliders you can use for "real-time correction" at the scene. Some have assignable knobs, so these are good to set to HPF frequencies and maybe a parametric EQ or two in areas likely to build up.

[Prime Mover]

Ok, house bar band, 15 years in the same
bar, no soundman. That spells non-pro to
me. No wonder you've had such trouble.
These guys think they know what they're
doing, but having no soundman proves
they dont.

Of course it's not "pro", considering whether you think a local bar-band is pro or not. We're looking to make money first, it's work we're after not the Nth degree of perfection. The band makes $1000 on a good night, and we're probably the best paid house band in Honolulu. Work is tight these days and we're doing the best we can. Throwing an extra person in the mix is going to severely lower our cut with little financial gain. It's not about what they "think" they know or not, it's just not a good financial investment. Sure, it would be great to have a FOH mixer, it also be great to have a dedicated monitor mixer, a light tech, roadies and a bowl of green M&Ms, but it's just not in the cards. I find it kind of presumptuous to pooh-pooh a band for being able to afford something that doesn't make any economic sense.

We're a BAR BAND. We play covers of old classic rock songs. No aspirations for this band to make it big and play arenas, but within the confines of our budget, we're hoping to do the best we can. I've got another band that I'm writing and recording originals that I hope to tour the world with one-day, but that's my long-term investment band. Right now, the bar band makes the money while my recording band builds its base. Both are viable projects.

An update on the issue. This week was a lot better. I think the new board that was installed last week was on the fritz and going up and down. There was a particular song that was really loud last week, this week it was really low because I had turned down only a notch. SO I think that the board somehow jacked me up during that section of the gig, and now it's evened out. I believe our main tech for the band came on and worked out some things, so it's better. Obviously, this isn't going to be perfect, but we're just aiming to make drunk people dance, have some fun, and walk away with a moderate pay check.

You can't be too picky being a musician these days, you have to be prepared to sell out a bit, play some Neal Diamond and Journey if you expect to have a roof over your head.