I would be interested in knowing what other performers do to keep their volume output relatively consistent… I play in a group which does a variety of music. I have spent a lot of time creating specific performances for specific songs… Some songs just call for a specific voice (piano, organ or strings) ...

When I am creating a performance (whether it be a split , or layered ) I am doing this via headphones plugged directly to the keyboard… It seems to me when I listen to the performances through the headphones all of the instruments sound balanced against each other and the different performances seem relatively even in volume ...however live they don’t ...

Could using the LED’s be a way to judge the relative volume being sent to the board (providing I’m not moving the volume slider or the expression pedal)?

Since I am sometimes using just a single voice for a song should I be making that single voice a “performance” ? (sometimes the single voices’ output are factory set low)

Just curious what other players do to get the volumes set ... is it just tweak tweak tweak ?

(this is really to address the volume the sound guy is getting because on stage I can adjust my own mixer if need be) ... 

running mono out to a di box, xlr from di to board from box, di out to my mixer

thanks
gary

blueskbrd - 24 November 2014 02:03 AM

[...]When I am creating a performance (whether it be a split , or layered ) I am doing this via headphones plugged directly to the keyboard… It seems to me when I listen to the performances through the headphones all of the instruments sound balanced against each other and the different performances seem relatively even in volume ...however live they don’t ...

[...]running mono out to a di box, xlr from di to board from box, di out to my mixer

A likely cause is that when monitoring with headphones, you’re listening in stereo. A mono mix introduces phase cancellations, which can affect some parts of a Program more than others, causing the sound at the venue to be different.

If you must supply a mono mix to the house, then I’d suggest that you monitor the same way while creating - that is, from a decent speaker being fed a mono signal - and set levels accordingly.

A secondary possibility is that differences between the frequency response of your headphones and that of the venue’s sound system might be sufficient to mislead you.

purcell:
Don´t use headphones!...in general!
Everything is different with headphones…

I don’t agree. If you’re using high quality studio monitors and decide to use good reference headphones for monitoring as an alternative, you should more or less get the same result. If not, it might have other reasons.

I think what purcell probably means is that music mixed on headphones doesn’t translate very well to the outside world.

To simply hear yourself, headphones are perfectly fine.

They are problematic when it comes to making decisions about details.

People often go for headphones because they assume that headphones will take the room and its complexities out of the equation right away. This seems logical and it is true, but they take it all away.

The problem is that mixing on headphones is very much like mixing in an anechoic chamber - something nobody would ever do. So, in purpose built mixing rooms, you will notice an element of liveliness and there is interaction between the sound and the environment, but it is a highly tuned, good interaction. 

Try balancing up the level of several sounds on headphones first, then try it on a half decent pair of monitors at a low listening level and you will end up hearing a better translation from the balance you made on the monitors, even though you thought you were correct on the headphones and it all sounds great on them...and even though the room might negatively affect your balance on monitors. 

This is why ‘nearfield’ monitors were designed.  They take a lot of the room out of the equation and if you don’t use them too loud (to minimise room interaction) you can get a good level of translation with them.

By translation, what I mean is that your balance will sound much more like it should on everybody else’s audio equipment.  Which is what you aim for.

You can certainly relate that to the OP’s question when balancing multiple voices in a performance.  This of course does not take the venue and sound system in to consideration, but it’s a good place to start.

Consistency is the name of the game.

If you have the luxury of an out front sound person then you need to deliver as consistent a level as you can to them so that they can ‘do their job’ and mix the show as a whole.

Problem is, of course, some sounds, be they Voices or Performances or whatever, cut better than others. Some sounds simply ‘are’ featured more than others. Etc etc. This is a perennial problem for keyboards and keyboard players.

What you need to do is work with your sound person, if necessary on a song-by-song basis so that they have enough room to play and work with at all times. A FOH engineer should be able to tell you in seconds if a sound you use on such-and-such a song is always too hot or is hard to balance etc., and you can then make adjustments accordingly. Sometimes it’s also a matter of EQ. Motifs tend to produce some rather nasty harshness in the high frequencies which will benefit from adjustment at your end. Untreated, a FOH engineer may bring your levels down too much whereas all you need to do is remove a little bit of harshness with EQ. But, to comment on your question whether this is trial and error… yes.

I would love to run stereo to the FOH but mono is the only option given to me ...

so with that , no headphones , and mixing in mono, I’ll see where that takes me

Thanks guys for all your responses and suggestions , really appreciate it ...

If anyone has suggestions/pointers/insight on what they do, will be helpful.  What MrMotif suggested is exactly what I’ve wanted to do.  Work with FOH.  I’d like to have recorded tracks without keys so we can properly level.

Here is what I currently do.  I practice at home with headphones and as best I can, try to get levels feeling good before practice.  Then, tweak during practice.  What’s nice is, the Edit mode remembers your last edit location, so when I go to Edit, it immediately takes me to output levels and I tweak output to fit.  Then, we get a practice CD which I practice along with and do my final tweaks at home.  I also try and ask FOH if anything was a problem and make appropriate changes.

I have all of my sounds for the week in Master Mode, so I typically change the Output level directly on the Master.  Sometimes, even at 127, the Voice/Performance is still too quiet so I go to the specific Voice/Performance and edit the output levels.  On very rare occasions, I need to get down to the element level of a voice and turn up the element levels on an individual basis.

I save each set to USB so I can go back and load sounds.  It’s not ideal as it contains a mish-mash of levels.  I’ve noticed I’ve slowly been setting things louder and louder, so a patch I may have done two months ago may now be too soft.  So I increase the volume on it and now I have two versions floating on my USB.  My plan is to get the Melas Editor and eventually get standard levels and a master save file.  Then I can pick and choose what voices/performances/masters I want on my board.  That is what I am trying for (eventually).

Yes.  The sound levels can vary.  There is masking going on.  It can change based on instrumentation.  Some organs can pierce through and some pads are hard to hear.  As mentioned above, we need to tweak these to get them where we want them to sit and to be consistent.

One of the things I really like about the MOXF is the live tweaking I can do.  I use the filters as appropriate to brighten a pad, or warm it up.  I’m just starting to explore more with redefining the EQ on my sounds.

Maybe this is too obvious: mix on what you will be using live.  Keyboard amp, PA monitor speaker, whatever.

Keep in mind that every room you play in will also affect the sound. The master EQ can really help here.

Oh yeah, set your amplification chain so you can run with the master volume of the MOXF at 50%. That way you can turn up or down if needed suddenly at the gig.