Tech newbie - need help

[mtg7643]

Hi all,

I've been playing live in clubs for about a year, and sparodically at that. As I'm evolving and getting better keyboards (I now have a Korg Karma and Triton Extreme), I'm finding that things are becoming so much more complicated then just setting up and playing.

For example, I play along with a backing track, but have to rely on a sound guy to mix me and have me coming through the monitors. Since I play by ear, if I don't hear a good mix, I'm pretty much screwed in terms of playing well.

I started thinking about wanting to control the sound, mix, and playing of the backing tracks, without having to rely on someone else.

I saw Satriani play in a guitar center a month ago, and he had a Mac laptop controlling his mix and his backing tracks, and it was flawless.

When I saw Jordan at keyfest, if I'm correct, I believe he was controlling everything as well, although he had a LOT more technological toys to play with.

I have a minimal budget, but can anyone provide me some guidance and advice as to how I can start controlling the backing tracks from my vantage point?

I'm a techie (test software for a living), but from a music perspective, I don't know much about using technology to help me. I know almost nothing regarding the two keyboards that I love playing. I know they have some advanced uses, but I don't know how to use them. I'm lucky I can program the banks with the different sounds right now.

[Grey Loki]

Get a small mixer - it'll allow you to take everything you want, and route it through so you can mix your own feed from the engineer, and also send him a submix of your keys.

I'd recommend one of the small Mackie or Soundcraft mixers - they're pretty neutral-sounding, and follow a generic console design.

[mtg7643]

Get a small mixer - it'll allow you to take everything you want, and route it through so you can mix your own feed from the engineer, and also send him a submix of your keys.

I'd recommend one of the small Mackie or Soundcraft mixers - they're pretty neutral-sounding, and follow a generic console design.

So you're basically saying get a mixer that will let me have the mixing already done, but all I need to do is hook into the club's soundboard?

The experience last night is what made me think about this more. I played in a club, where I'm pretty sure the sound guy was stoned out of his mind, and halfway through my set the mixing was completely off, I heard nothing good through the monitor and trashed a few songs.

[-=AnatomiC=-]

When I did a gig, while ago, there was even no PA guy at all... someone just turned the installation on (it was a small club) and said - "it's all yours" :confused:

Well, first of all, there couldn't be a "master" mix, in my case - 1 stereo cable was going from my keyboard to the mixer...
But!!! I had to my make own mix, using my keyboard... Most of the time, I had about 8 tracks at the time, so they all had to be mixed, to sound right - I needed an hour, before the gig, to get everything right, I'm glad I came earlier, so there were no spoilers for the public...
(It was solo performance)

Why I'm saying this? You don't really need all this fancy stuff... just plug your Karma to your Triton, and make all mixer internally - don't give PA any chance, to screw it up - just give them 1 freaking stereo cable, that's all they need!

You could also use additional outputs of your keyboard - assign different parts to them, and then plug them all in 1 small mixer.

Well, moral of this story is: don't give PA guys more than 1 stereo cable... they don't know jack about (your) music - and if they can screw it up, they will...
Unless we are talking about professional, payed PA men.

[mtg7643]

Why I'm saying this? You don't really need all this fancy stuff... just plug your Karma to your Triton, and make all mixer internally - don't give PA any chance, to screw it up - just give them 1 freaking stereo cable, that's all they need!

You could also use additional outputs of your keyboard - assign different parts to them, and then plug them all in 1 small mixer.

Well, moral of this story is: don't give PA guys more than 1 stereo cable... they don't know jack about (your) music - and if they can screw it up, they will...
Unless we are talking about professional, payed PA men.

You've nailed EXACTLY what I'm trying to get at!!! I just don't know how to use the Triton and connect the two together and make all mixing internally, I have no idea technically how to do it.

When I played last night the mixing guy was stoned out of his mind, and he screwed half of my performance up. I play by ear, so I rely on a good mix of the backing track and my playing to cue me in terms of playing in the right key, the right speed, and the right sequence.

I don't want to give a mixing guy any more power over it, I want to control it all. I'd love it if I could load my backing tracks into the Triton, and then just trigger the track from the keyboard, but once again, I don't know if this is possible.

[Grey Loki]

Well, moral of this story is: don't give PA guys more than 1 stereo cable... they don't know jack about (your) music - and if they can screw it up, they will...
Unless we are talking about professional, payed PA men.

Give them two mono cables instead - most mixers don't have a stereo input jack ;)

tbh, I worry about who you guys use as your sound engineers if they can't be bothered to go out and understand whatever genre of music you play.

It is, however, the nature of the sound guy to want to control as much of your mix as possible - it's what we do. I know that if a band member comes up to me before a set and tells me what they want, and even why they need it, i'll be certain to pay their mix, or lights, or whatever very special attention to make sure it's right for them. Have you tried talking to your sound guys before the show to explain what you want? We aren't mind readers :P

Back on topic, you can mix within most keyboards in one way or another, but an external mixer gives you a lot more flexibility than a straight-through connection. It literally allows you to mix your keyboards to send to the sound guy, then mix your feed of the keyboards in with whatever the sound guy sends you back, and all sorts of other fancy routing to external FX units and such - I still think your best bet would be a small mixer like something from the Mackie VLZ3 or Onyx series. The Onyx gives you the added bonus of a FireWire connection to a PC, so you'd be able to record your own stuff at home through this mixer at pretty good quality.

[el mae de las teclas]

If it's ok with you, I would like to give you a few tips.

Basically the other fellows here said all there is to it, all of them are right, I would just combine things.

1) First make your internal mix of your keyboards as much as you can. This is very simple actually.
But first I want to make sure that you are using your Triton and Karma in the combi mode, unless you need to use your sequencer mode for some reason. If you are currently using any prog bank sounds and are switching between combi mode and prog mode, that is not effective and you can avoid that by copying your prog mode sound on your combi mode (just get a "blank" slot on the combi mode and select the prog sound into one of its 8 available "tracks", then go to menu and copy the corresponding insert FX and Master FX). Is usefull to control your performance on the combi mode as you can select a patch change with a switch pedal.

Now, to actually do the internal mixing, you need to make a rehearsal with the playback music and play on top of it, trying to determine the best volume to each sound in relation to the overall. Keep in mind soloing sounds need to be louder for example, that type of common sense things. To actually to the mixing, each sound on the combi mode has a mixer, where you can change the levels to its desire position. Remember to save your combination with its new volume level.

The goal is to have the levels of the sounds of both keyboards as smooth as possible, because normally sounds differ very much within each others. Of course there are exceptions of sounds needing to have more or less volume. As a general rule, have your main volume slider of each keyboard to a 70% of its full range at all times. That assures mostly high volume and still some more space to rise it even more if required.

2) Get a small mixer as you have been told also. Connect both keyboards and the output of your computer. Set the volumes as desired. There are a few important rules concerning the ideal volumes of several controls on the mixer to assure best performance, but that is clearly described on most mixer's manuals.

You will have two outputs from your mixer, the mains stereo to send to the PA, and the ones to the monitor. This way you can set your own mix for internal monitoring and the PA guy will have only the signal you send him, in which case you will basically also be in control of the external sound. This is good if you manage to have a good internal mix, as described on step 1.

If you think about it, the mixer will only help to have a fixed mix and really few live changes, as you can't be playing and controlling your mix effectively.

Think practically!

What a long post!!

Cheers!!
Andrés

[mtg7643]

If it's ok with you, I would like to give you a few tips.

Basically the other fellows here said all there is to it, all of them are right, I would just combine things.

1) First make your internal mix of your keyboards as much as you can. This is very simple actually.
But first I want to make sure that you are using your Triton and Karma in the combi mode, unless you need to use your sequencer mode for some reason. If you are currently using any prog bank sounds and are switching between combi mode and prog mode, that is not effective and you can avoid that by copying your prog mode sound on your combi mode (just get a "blank" slot on the combi mode and select the prog sound into one of its 8 available "tracks", then go to menu and copy the corresponding insert FX and Master FX). Is usefull to control your performance on the combi mode as you can select a patch change with a switch pedal.

Now, to actually do the internal mixing, you need to make a rehearsal with the playback music and play on top of it, trying to determine the best volume to each sound in relation to the overall. Keep in mind soloing sounds need to be louder for example, that type of common sense things. To actually to the mixing, each sound on the combi mode has a mixer, where you can change the levels to its desire position. Remember to save your combination with its new volume level.

The goal is to have the levels of the sounds of both keyboards as smooth as possible, because normally sounds differ very much within each others. Of course there are exceptions of sounds needing to have more or less volume. As a general rule, have your main volume slider of each keyboard to a 70% of its full range at all times. That assures mostly high volume and still some more space to rise it even more if required.

2) Get a small mixer as you have been told also. Connect both keyboards and the output of your computer. Set the volumes as desired. There are a few important rules concerning the ideal volumes of several controls on the mixer to assure best performance, but that is clearly described on most mixer's manuals.

You will have two outputs from your mixer, the mains stereo to send to the PA, and the ones to the monitor. This way you can set your own mix for internal monitoring and the PA guy will have only the signal you send him, in which case you will basically also be in control of the external sound. This is good if you manage to have a good internal mix, as described on step 1.

If you think about it, the mixer will only help to have a fixed mix and really few live changes, as you can't be playing and controlling your mix effectively.

Think practically!

What a long post!!

Cheers!!
Andrés

Hey,

Thanks for the long post. I think in the next month, I'm going to attempt to work with things a little bit, and then stop performing out for a few months, so I can really learn the ins and outs of the Karma and Triton.

I'll write an update soon.

Looing forward to meeting DT tomorrow night.