Live Audio: The Art of Mixing a Show

Not what I was expecting when I bought it. Ranges from too technical and irrelevant to the beginner that’s trying to mix live audio in a simpler gig.... did bot finish reading.

Im just starting off as live sound engineer and this book was great and packed with tons of great info to get you started!

This book is a description of tasks and advice for people mixing the sound for major acts on big tours. Swallow was the sound engineer for La Roux on a recent international tours. In this book, he presents an overview of his approach to mixing sound for live performances, covering such topics as power and electricity, setting up equipment, PA systems, mixing boards, soundchecks, and packing gear.Although the blurb on the back cover suggests that the material in the book might be equally useful for mixing a small band in a cozy club or a stadium show, virtually all of Swallow's discussion is geared towards shows in halls that hold at least several hundred people--he terms a hall that holds 900 people "relatively small". Towards the beginning of the book, there is an informative chapter on acoustics and audiology, but the material there is never directly connected to the remainder of the book. Swallow certainly includes a great deal of information about dealing with microphones, monitors, PAs and giant mixing boards for large shows. But it's hard to see the direct relevance for a sound engineer who is just starting out, mixing for friends in a 25 seat club. And experienced engineers who mix for big-name groups in large venues would hopefully know much of the material presented here anyway. There are a few proof-reading issues that escaped the editor, as for example, on page 162 where an illustration labeled "a 3-D image of how the cardioid polar patterns work" looks rather omni-directional. Perhaps the best bit of advice to aspiring sound engineers is to "spend a week locked in a room with a graphic EQ, playing your favorite track through, and using the graphic to mix the track" to learn "where certain instruments sit in the frequency spectrum and how they can interact with each other". If the book had more useful suggestions such as this, rather than details about flying speakers for stadium shows, it would be a very valuable contribution indeed. Overall, the book relates quite a bit of Swallow's experience as a professional sound engineer, but the information is not geared to the intended audiences of novices and engineers who haven't yet developed the experience needed to find work in large venues.

In a perfect world, to learn all about mixing a live show, all we'd need to do would be to jet over to London, take Dave Swallow down to his favorite pub, buy him a few pints, and listen to his words of wisdom. But this is the real and imperfect world, where you don't have several hundred dollars for the fare, or Heathrow is closed for a couple of days when it snows, or the pub has stopped selling pints and now will only sell you something called "a schooner," and the band playing in the pub is so badly mixed that you can't hear a word Dave says.Luckily we have this book. I thought I knew something about the subject, but Dave shows that a great deal is involved, including a lot of things that will seem obvious after the gig but not during. In fact, of sixteen chapters, only one is actually devoted to the show. All the rest is planning to get things right ahead of time.The book starts off with a guide to the basics, but the rest of it is about what happens at the venue. This section starts with "load-in" and goes through all kinds of things like microphone placement, setting up the mixing desk, and everything through to the sound check. Swallow writes clearly and in a friendly manner, and his book is full of home truths ("Never put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow.") And in case you're wondering, you can't put your elbow in your ear. (Just another service of Amazon reviews).Dave has worked with people like Amy Whitehouse (who I would have thought was not too conscious about the quality of her sound) and a British band called La Roux. The Electropop act has performed in the U.S. at Lollapalooza and on the Jimmy Kimmel show, and it looks like Dave has been the soundman since the beginning.He has words of caution for newcomers to the art of mixing, including both how to deal with equipment and how to deal with artists and managers. He shows you how to create a PA Spec, or a list of equipment that you're prepared to work with. I was somewhat concerned when Dave said that there are certain makes he will not work with, but on reflection these are beginner level and there is plenty of pro-level (and pro-price!) equipment that is less likely to break down in front of an audience of thousands.Some people have expressed surprise at the price of the book, but if you just get one idea from the pages (and you'll get many) it will save you the cost of the book. Hopefully, it might even dissuade folks who think that they have the ability to mix music but pretty clearly don't. Not, of course, that I come into that group (hides head).So I was very pleased to read this book. It does what it says it will, it covers vital areas that aren't obvious to outsiders, and hopefully it will make musicians a little more sympathetic to the sound staff in general. Buy it.

This is a great guide for aspiring, or just-started, touring live sound engineers. The author is a professional touring engineer, and writes not only on the technical considerations of mixing bands in concert, but also on the more esoteric points concerning the psychology of working with musicians.There are numerous illustrations and figures, and the book is written in a no-nonsense, yet detailed manner. Recommended.

Kompakte Beschreibung der analogen Welt, auf digitales Mixing wird leider nicht eingegangen, nur schwarz weiß mit antiquierten Bildern und Darstellungen.