“Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Worship Band Builder podcast, where we are working with you to lay the foundation for skillful worship! I’m Eric Roberts. I’m joined by my co-host, Emily Roberts.”
First, why does the mix on our live feed sound TERRIBLE?
Problem1 - it's mixed for the live audience not the live feed
Fix: setup a separate mix for the live feed
Check the show notes for more info or contact me for one-on-one coaching about this topic
Problem: My vocals sound terrible recorded on the live fee
Fix: use lots of reverb and a ROOM MIC in your mix to create the natural vocal sound you want to hear
Problem: The bass guitar sounds weak on the live recording
Fix: Use a bass processor and/or a tube preamp setup made specifically for the bass.... ditch the standard idea of just going direct. It doesn't produce the right sound you are looking for
Things that worked for your room mix just don't work the same for the LIVE streaming mix. You have to tweak and make adjustments to your setup. You have to be intentional
How should the musicians change and adapt so they get the best LIVE STREAMING sound?
Let's go one-by-one
Acc Guitar
Strum softer - don't bang the guitar
Use some processing (compressor, verb)
Going direct sounds flat
Voice
Use the CORRECT mic for YOUR voice
Use a pop filter and don't work the mic as much
Mix with tons of reverb and compression
Make sure you are using a ROOM mic in your overall setup to get the natural sounds of the room in the sound.
Drums
Play with dynamics but not as much dynamics (keep it more steady in dynamic range)
Use far less CRASH cymbals to cut down on mid range noise
Bass
Don't go direct, use a bass processor or preamp!
Know you bass, tweak your bass, understand how to play it to get the best recorded sound
Don't slap your bass or make it pop
Mix with plenty of compression and low end
Keyboard
Play less overall
Play intentionally - don't chunk around on chords all over the mix
Find a spot you can come out in the mix and play that stuff
Don't change your volume on the keyboard in the service.... make sure all your patches come out the SAME VOLUME.
Electric Guitar
Seek out killer tone (pedals, pickups, etc) Look for every advantage
Electric guitars can be harsh, work with your tone alone and know what sounds good in the room
When using an amp, be familiar with the mic placement and make sure it's right every time.
When using single coil pickups, make sure they don't hum and buzz when its silent in the room
FIND ROOM IN THE MIX
Play the right parts..... learn the right parts.... don't make stuff up!
More Resources
Free Webinar: Improve Your Live Stream Sound with Gear and Musicianship
https://event.webinarjam.com/register/23/1zz3ptr
One-on-One coaching for your team http://www.worshipbandbuilder.com/coaching
Foundations sessions for audio and for every instrument for your whole team at www.worshipbandbuilder.com
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Eric:
Hello and welcome to this episode of the worship band builder podcast, where we are working with you to lay the foundation for skillful worship. I'm Eric Roberts and I'm joined by my cohost, Emily Roberts. Hello. Welcome to you guys on YouTube and on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, I assume you're getting them right there because you're on the podcast right now. But if you want to see us and actually look at us and talk to us and click the button, we're waving to you out there waving to the YouTubers. Okay. So how's it going, Emily? It's gone. All right. Yeah. We were doing a couple episodes and we did this funny five minutes before the podcast thing. That was interesting. We haven't done that before. Yeah. Make sure you watch that because it's just basically, I was talking about Hugh Jackman the whole time and how good looking he is.
Emily:
I wasn't doing it. She wasn't doing it. Alright. That's awkward. Um, where look, you can be awkward if you want to. Are you awkward worship leader? Put that in the comments. How awkward are you? Most of my friends are awkward. I grew up with mostly awkward friends and everybody knows it and that's all right. If I find you, I'm your friend. Just know. I think you're awkward if I really think you're cool then it's because I think you're awkward and right. Well, you do seem to draw some unusual types. Kind of like PT, Barnum, PT, Barnum. Well, that exists.
Eric:
Okay. Think we need to start this. I know we don't. I have friends and they know they're weird and that's okay. We'll just go with it. We don't have a start over button. We, I mean, we don't have a start over button. It's unfair to start over because then people don't see our authenticity. It's like, so being authentic is, is the primary goal here? Yes. Not protecting my friend's feelings first. Listen, why does the mix on our live feed sound so terrible? Are you asking yourself that? Or have you asked that or was that a question that you were asked in staff meeting this week? Not me personally. No, not, you know, I know you would just get up and walk out. You'd be like, I'm out. Mix it yourself. That's how she, that's how she is. But no, this episode is called improve your live stream sound with gear and musicianship because you can't really just improve your live stream by gear.
Eric:
I know people who buy a bunch of gear and they think, Oh, we have all this awesome gear. And then they don't have great musicianship, whatever. Or you have this band, who's amazing. They walk in and you put like three junky mikes in front of them. And they sound like the best thing ever. There's something about the musicianship that can override any, any gear. You know, it happens in the studio, maybe not any gear, but you know, yeah. You give a really good guitar player, just some junky guitars and stuff. And he could put on a performance that would be phenomenal. Like, like my uncle red back in the day, making himself a banjo out of a PI PI, PI, PI PI making himself a banjo PI 10 PI 10. Yeah, he did that. And he was one of the best banjo players in the entire South Dayton area, red and the banjo Ramblers or something red in the rainbow, rambling red and the rainbow.
Eric:
And I have his record now. So problem, number one, people are gonna, people are gonna say that all of this live streaming is happening and people are going to go, why is it terrible? Because if you just take like problem, number one, it's mixed for the live audience, not the live feed. That's the main problem. When you take the live audience, feed off your board and just stick it into Facebook or sticking into your live streaming software, you're going to get a giant mess. Just, I'm just letting you know upfront. That's going to translate. Okay. So it doesn't translate for a few reasons that I don't think that's in here. So that's a good question. First of all, the room is plays a big part in the mix. So when you turn the vocals up a certain level, you have all the reverberation and you're mixing in the room.
Eric:
Now, when you plug that into Facebook, a direct feed, just say off your live right left. And right, if you just plug that in, you lose the room. It becomes a very, the biggest problem is it becomes dry reverb. There's nothing. And then the vocals are usually lay on the top because the drums are gone. They're not even in there getting plugged directly into this live stream. What happened is the microphones will be plugged into the board like normal. And then that output of the board goes to the speakers in the room. And then, then you get the room, sound, everything kind of mixes in and your ears hear the room. Then they take the other channel of that, like the left side of it and plug it into the live feed. And so you lose the live feed is not taking up what you are hearing in the room.
Emily:
Exactly. Only picking up what is going directly into the microphone, basically going directly into the microphone. So sounds bad. And you you've had that before, back in the day, they'd say we recorded your performance today and give you a tape and you get in the car and you press play. And you're like, just horrified. It never sounds like you thought it sounded. Yeah. So there's some tricks and I'm working on this a lot. This is one of my areas of expertise. And one of the things that I like to geek out on and our church is going through this process right now. If you go to our YouTube channel, you can check it out. I'm sharing videos of, of each step along the way. So the fix of this is set up a separate mix for the live feed. That is the fix. Okay. So check the show notes for the information or contact me if you want one on one coaching about this specific topic of getting your feed to sound better.
Eric:
Okay. First of all, the problem is it's mixed for the live audience and you plug it into the Facebook and it sounds like junk number two, the fix of it is set up a separate mix. Okay. That's the fix. All right. So how to do that is a completely different episode, but that's what you have to do. You have to use a separate mix, either a bus mix or an ox mix, or go into a computer system and do a mix like that. So it takes a little bit of setup, but you have to do it, or you're continuously going to want to jump off a bridge when you hear your live feed. All right. So let's talk about another problem problem. Cause we weren't talking about a lot of problems and how to fix them and then we'll dive deeper in our webinars problem.
Eric:
My vocal sound terrible recorded on the live feed. Okay. So specifically now we are focusing on the vocals, not just the entire thing, sounding bad. Now we're talking specifically about the vocals. You got a train wreck or you just listen to your vocals and go, ah, my vocal song gross. It's really. And this is, let's say you set up the whole mix and even do some of the more expensive stuff. And your vocals still sound bad. Here's fixer that add reverb to the vocals in the live, in the, in the live live stream mix reverb, reverb. And here's my secret sauce. This is the secret sauce. Add a room, Mike to the live feed. And this is something, are we going to go into all the details of the general picture here today? Yeah. We're giving you the secret. Think about this. Add a room mic to your live feed and to your monitors.
Eric:
We've talked about it a bit, but basically you stick a big diaphragm condenser somewhere in your room and you turn it on in the live feed only so that the live feed people hear the room, they hear the VR, the natural reverberation it's then it almost sounds like they're in the room. So when people clap that back in that was left out. Yes. So sometimes you would see an alive like concert. You would see a crowd, they called it like a crowd mic. So you can hear the crowd cheering can hear them clapping. That's kind of what I'm talking about. It's a room mic, but we're not going to call it a crowd mic because we're really just putting it there to open up the room in the ears of the live feed. Cause that's the, that's the fix. All right. So what was the first piece of that?
Emily:
If we're talking about vocal specifically as reverb, easy, use some real revert, some, some actual reverb from your mixing board or from your reverb unit, because that'll give you like the real mic is going to help the overall sound. But yeah, and the room Mike helps the vocals to the room. Mike creates a natural reverb. So you can use a little bit of reverb or you can sometimes you can just get away with putting a room mic in there and that would be enough to make it better. So on our mixes right now in our we're in level one, we're running off a bus. We have a little bit of reverb. Yeah. It's just a bus mix. We're a separate bus mix. And I'll explain that in webinars. I don't want to get too technical. So I got a lot of stuff to do today. Uh, so we've got a little room Mike and we got, my son is just down there just yelling and screaming. And so if you hear that, that sorta like would be like a room mic. That's a good example because these mics are picking up our voice. They're picking up just what's in front of him. He cannot hear what he is doing downstairs. Probably not, but he's screaming like crazy. All right. So let's do another problem.
Eric:
Let's do another problem. That's okay. The bass guitar sounds weak on the live recordings. Okay. What did we do? Okay. First the fix is use a base processor and or a tube pre-amp set up made specifically for a base. Okay. So expensive items. No, I did a actually now would be a good time. I did a webinar already on this. It's called the gear for live streaming and I go on Amazon and on musician's friend and I'd look up and I show you the ones. And I think there like some, for like 400, some for 1500 and some for $49. There's different versions of this. Yeah. You can spend a lot of money on processing, but you can also just get a $49 or a $79 zoom processor. Yeah. It's just as good. I mean, okay. For all you nerds out there, it's not maybe just as good, but it's better than a direct box.
Eric:
So if you're a small church and you're like, the bass sounds terrible on our live feed or the bass sounds not great in the mix. It's because you're plugging your bass direct and direct. Doesn't give you a preamp. Does it give you a cue? It doesn't give you any of the base processing that a base, a little bitty base processor gives you even a $79 zoom base. Zoom based processor will give you that little bit of boost. You need for the bass to sound like something. And you know, you can spend like $2,000 on one of these helix pedals and base stuff, and you can spend a lot of money. And literally you can just walk up with a $49 cheap base process or plug it in. And the most average people and some even professionals are not going to be able to tell the difference.
Eric:
Sometimes you just have to do use this, your brain and your ears, you know, and I don't know if I could prove this, like, Hey, there's a $2,000 pedal versus a $50 pedal, but there are videos on, on YouTube that do that. And it's really sometimes hard to tell you can't even tell. And then people pick the cheap one and it's like, Oh, so sometimes cheap stuff works. And I've always been for that. I've always been for like, Hey, if it works and it sounds good, I'm not gonna go pay like $2,000 for some thing. That's just because it's a brand nor should, you know, and you shouldn't be either things that worked for your room mix just don't work for the same for the live stream mix. We kind of talked about that. You have to tweak and make adjustments to your setup and you have to be intentional about your live mix.
Eric:
It, you have to start thinking about it today as a separate mix. It's your, it's your room mix. That's your live that let's call that your front of house is what they would call it. Like the industry front of house. That's like your speakers blowing the sound of the people that is one mix. And then your Facebook stream is entirely different mix with its own problems with its own levels, with its own needs in terms of compression and reverb and a room mic, and some other things. And that's how you get a good live stream on Facebook. So does this mean I need two sound guys now. Yeah. You're going to have to just go ahead and get two sound guys. Yeah, yeah. Get two sound guys. So, uh, let's, let's go on to this. So you've got some gear and you've got some sort of fixes, but I wanted to go through this maybe.
Eric:
And I don't know, maybe we, maybe we should have Emily. I've been doing this. This looks like a ginormous amount of, uh, of information. And, but I kinda think we should just go for it. Let's just go for it. Um, you've gotten more still here. We've got a whole nother page of this, this, this, this is really exciting because we said this is improving your live stream with gear and musicianship. And so let's talk about musicianship and we'll buzz through these because I've got it for each instrument, some tips for each instrument, we've kind of already talked about the base. Um, and I'm getting these for real. This is real life stuff because we're working on our live stream right now. And I'm working as the sound guy right now and kind of the producer of the sound mix. But I'm also going up to the stage and saying, Hey, bass player, can you not slap your bass like that?
Eric:
If you slap your base, it sounds okay through the system, but it sounds really bad in the live feed. So there's some things that you have to take care of with your band. And that's what this list is. Excellent. So let's hear it. Okay. Acoustic guitar guys, strum softer. This list is on the website to strum softer don't bang on the guitar. There are a lot of guitar players out there just banging their guitars really hard and strumming really loud. And that it gives you terrible tone on the live mix. Now, is that true? Also just in general. Yes it is. Yeah. I thought it might be. Yeah. So we have, um, you know, like Maddie's tone, Maddie's guitar tone is phenomenal, but Maddie plays very soft, but that's like a mixers dream, you know? And I used to play really hard, but you just, over time, you can tell, you can put two guitar players on the same guitar next to each other.
Eric:
And the sound that you get is different. One of them play soft loan hits pretty hard. The one that's hitting hard is more jangly. It's more harsh. It's brighter. So in general, if you're trying to play for a record or if you're trying to play for recording or if you're which you are now, because you're playing for your live stream, you're going to have to lighten up on the guitar overall. Okay. So acoustic guitarists ease up, ease up, use some processing, some compressors, some reverb going direct sounds flat. So that's a lot to say, but we're not going to go through every little detail, but get yourself a processor to, you know, get yourself a little floor pod that has some reverb has some compression and that's something you covered in that webinar. We covered that in the webinar. What's it called again? Oh, it's just on there.
Eric:
It's I think it's called improve your live stream with the gear and musicianship. It's the same title. It's just a webinar. It's really cool. It's just me going through basically a shopping spree. All right. Voice number one, use the correct mic for your voice. And how do I know that? Just have to find one. That sounds good. Try a few on, yeah, try a few on. Sure. SM 58. Start there a hundred bucks industry standard. So you don't have to pay like thousands of dollars, but right now we're going through our worship band picking the different vocalists. We've got a guy who's got a really deep voice. His voice doesn't sound great on the same mic that our worship leaders voice. Who's got a more of a tenor voice. The mic matters. I found a mic that fits me. It's a PR Heil, PR 35.
Eric:
I love that microphone. And I just add to that, that you are a baritone baritone and it has a very great bass response. And in fact, the mic that sounds great on Robbie is the CAD one 95, which is an older mic, but it was the mic that I used to use in the studio because he is the tenor. You refer as a tenor. That mic is a very good mic. So I'm mixed with a lot of reverb and compression and make sure you're using a room mic. We kind of talked about that with the all right, let's go to the drums. Find a mic that you love and bring it with you. I think it's gross to sing on other people's mikes. Anyway, that was for the vocalist. I just threw that back in now. We'll go on to the jumpers, right? So drummers, which is really causing our room a lot of trouble right now, our drummer is it's not his fault.
Eric:
It's just that the room is long. There's no, it's very concrete on the walls. It's got metal doors all over it. So the drums are like, he's in, he's in a Canon. Basically. It sounds like he's at the end of a big Kenny hits the bass drum. It just it's huge. So I told him the other day play a little bit softer. He was kinda playing real soft and rehearsal. And I said, that's really about what I need you to play so that I can mix everybody else. So play with dynamics, but not as much, um, play with dynamics, but not as much dynamics. I don't know what that means. Oh, don't go quite so loud, but you can still add the emotion to the song. Yeah. And what I meant, what I did mean to say that keep it steady in the dynamic range.
Eric:
So don't be on our live feed. The problem sometimes is our drummer would get real soft, like on a soft part. Well then he would disappear on the live mix on the streaming mix. It'd be like he would play the bass drum really soft. There's not a lot of room for him to go all the way down to a pianissimo and all the way up to a fortissima he's got an curtail his range. I think so. And at least in our, in my mixing experience a short time I've been with working on this. He, I really liked the solid bass drum feel, but then when he goes soft, like the bass drums gone and they want to hear the bass drum. So I say, don't be so loud, first of all, and then play, play dynamically. But don't go real soft, real loud, real soft, real loud because we're, we're trying to mix it.
Eric:
Stay in a medium volume level. Yeah. Especially until you have the mix really tweaked out. In other words, the room mic is really good and everything is perfect. Then you might be able to get some dynamic, but in general, your mix is, is rough. It's dry and rough. So you just, you need your musicians to play at a more steady level. Drummers included and use far, far, far less crash, symbols it to cut down on mid range. So drummers who are banging on the crash symbol all the time are destroying the actual produced mix. They're basic unless we can get it out, but we can't get the symbols out in our room because they're just overshadowing everything. So almost you could use almost no symbols. And I'd be happy with that. As a mixer, maybe like one crash symbol, every like 20 measures. You're breaking hearts all over the world.
Eric:
So get off the crash, symbols, drummers, and it really, the more expensive crash symbols you have and the smaller crash symbols are going to make it a lot better. So if you have some cheap symbols, then that's not as good. Alright, so let's talk about keyboards. All right. Keyboards are a weird instrument. I don't think people think about this. If they don't already, they don't have any reverb really, unless re well, you can put reverb on, on a panel unless you add it, but they're kind of are, they're already plugged into the board. Yeah. They're plugged in the board, but the keyboards themselves come with like millions of sounds that come with tons of effects in them. You know, you can have like piano and in hall piano in large hall. So it's going to sound coming through your soundboard. Like it's in a large hall.
Eric:
And the other thing with the piano is it has every sound. And this is what people don't think about keyboard keyboard. Our piano has 88 keys. It goes from the lowest sound of a bass guitar all the way to the highest sound of anybody in the band. So you have the full spectrum of VQ, anything, anybody else in the band beyond anything, unless you got like maybe the way top of them like Jake, but the thing is that the piano slash keyboard as an instrument in a worship band can stomp out everybody in terms of the spectrum of frequency. Okay. Yes, it can. It can play low notes. So low that it's like the bass player it's muddying up the bass notes. If you chunk around in the middle of the piano, then you're kind of like jumping all over the acoustic guitar and the vocals.
Eric:
And if you play a pie, you're kind of, that's really probably the best place to play because you're kind of up there. Nobody's really up there, no land, no man's land. And you can tell that when you're playing keyboard, if you play a pie like the fourth, fifth, sixth octave, you can kind of hear yourself in the mix because there's not a lot going on right there. Yeah. Cause through, um, but in general for keyboards, here's what you gotta do. Play less overall that I would say that for 90% of keyboard players listening, you should be playing less than what you currently are, unless you're.
Emily:
But you're talking about, this is assuming that you, as the keyboardist are playing along with an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar, right? Yeah. So, so we have all of those band pieces and you have to be a team player by playing less, less is more from the keyboard is if you're in a full band situation, obviously if it's just the keyboard or keyboard and percussion, then your role changes.
Eric:
If you have a full band, which you, which usually you probably do, and you're leading from keyboard, even you've got some keyboard, you got some guitar players. A lot of times I'm playing. If I'm playing keys, I'm playing three notes in my right hand. And that's it, or two notes in my right hand. And one note in my middle left hand, not low, low left hand, a lot of bass players, I even saw a thing on line where they took some like duct tape and taped off the first two octaves of the keyboard. And like the bass player wrote on there, like don't play, Oh my goodness. Because, because when you have a bass player playing and then you have a keyboard, players will stomp on those bass notes, it just kind of makes it muddies up the baseline. So bass players, don't like keyboard players thumping all over the low two octaves of their keyboard.
Emily:
I get that. No last it doesn't that feel restrictive to the keyboard player.
Eric:
Not really. I mean, it's the same with any, anything. I mean, if you, if you want to be in a band and you want to be in a mix, then you got to know where your places and generally your places in, on the bass players line.
Emily:
That makes sense. But you're saying just a few notes at a time, even if you are leading from the keyboard,
Eric:
Maybe. Yeah. If I'm, if I'm, uh, like, it depends on the scenario. If you're talking about, you've got an acoustic guitar player and a piano player and a drummer, you know, you might have to carry more of the rhythm, but as a keyboard player, you really don't want to be driving the rhythm. It's not really, um, endless, that's the style of the song that you're playing, that the keyboard is the driving rhythm. And
Emily:
Most of the contemporary songs now are guitar driven. So usually the keyboard might get a starring role. Um, in an intro, maybe they get a lot of instrumental break books
Eric:
Are a lot of piano stuff. So you might play driving force, right? No, they're not. And they, unless it's, um, some style of music that's driven by an actual keyboard part. They the cool intro part. And then the rest of the time, they might only be playing fits in the fourth octave and just little notes and stuff like that. And that's okay. You need to be able to think like that, uh, find a spot that you can come out in the mix and play that stuff. So maybe you find out, Oh, our electric guitar has gone this week. I'm going to play in the 60 active, you know, like up in the C6 area. And I'm going to play some just Okta, some fits and some like driving little notes or some little licks up on that high end that can actually, that you can actually hear.
Emily:
I think that's really such an excellent point about musicianship, that it's more important for you to fit into the team and the overall sound than it is for you to just have fun and get to jam out and do whatever you want to deal with.
Eric:
That's exactly what this whole thing is about. Musicianship. If you're by yourself, you're probably going to play all the notes and stomp on the bass and hold the pedal down on the keyboard. You're gonna fill up the whole room. But if you do that in a band, it's going to sound terrible. It's gonna most likely result in you getting turned down in the mix, especially a piano player, because when a piano player is doing that, as the mixer, you got so much going on and all of those frequencies that you have to turn them down because they're, they're basically stomping all over the guitar, the bass and the vocalist. So you hear a bunch of keyboard and that's why the keyboard gets turned down. That's a great way to not get heard is basically just be playing all over the place. And that the mic, there is no way to mix that into a band. It generally is like the bet, the only way to really fix that is just turn it down a lot. So it doesn't just muddy up everything. But if they're doing some really cool stuff up here on the fifth octave, they're just playing like eighth notes on an, on a fifth, you know, in there. And you're like, Oh, that's cool. You can kind of mix that high. And it's like, it's adding interest. So you're playing in the band.
Emily:
And that's really what you've been asking of each of these instruments as you're going through the specifics of how to sound better in an overall live, uh, live stream, um, is to be a team player. And it's a sacrifice, cause it is more fun to strum hard and it is more fun to ride the symbols and, you know, play more. But, um, the goal has to be the overall mix.
Eric:
Yeah. Especially because you're live streaming to Facebook and wherever else. And you're going to be heard by the masses of people who are going to play it back and go. That sounds terrible. So you really gotta be thinking, it's not just that moment, that live moment in the room, negative, just jamming with your friends and having this big worship experience. But you're actually using your instrument as a produced part of an overall live mix. That's, what's really happening to church right now with all of this live feed stuff. All right. And then, uh, don't change your volume on the keyboard, last thing. And this goes for everybody, but the keyboard players, the most, most likely to do this because they have a volume knob right there. So they can turn the volume up and down and the guitar players too, but they, they have their like pad or their keys and that every one of those has a different volumes. So you need to make sure that your patches all have the same volume and that you're not moving your volume up and down once the service, once you're, once you're done getting set, the gain set, the first part of rehearsal, you should not be messing with your volume knob. I can imagine
Emily:
Just throws a real wrench into the
Eric:
It throws it. Yeah. And especially with the inner systems now, or girls and girls too, the inner systems are basically set to the gain. So if you set the gain in the front of rehearsal on the keyboard and he's at like 50% on his little slider and you set all the interiors up and then you go into your first set and he turns it up by 20%, it now blows everybody's ears up that much more.
Emily:
Oh. And if you've got any your monitors,
Eric:
So it messes with, yeah. The game structure, gain structures have to be set up front and left alone. Okay. And all your patches, we're going to segue into electric guitar. Now, uh, basically this is really key for electric guitar, your overdrive, your clean sound, all of those things. You have to take care up front to set those all to where as you flip through your different pedal sounds that they're all the same volume, because then you, uh, like for guitar players, if your electric guitar play, you know, that your boost or your solo channel, your boost lead channel is going to be like 5% or 10% higher than the other on purpose. Because as you go into a lead, you click your boost. And that's what it's meant to do. It's meant to pop you out of the mix for your lead. So if you're running that mix, that's not what I'm saying.
Eric:
I'm saying your, your, your clean sound or this sound or overdrafts on all these sounds should generally be the same volume except for your lead boost, which should do what it's meant to do. Pop you out of the mix by 10%, um, seek out your killer tones guys, pedals, pickups, look for every advantage on the electric guitar. Electric guitars are hard. Um, they can be harsh. Okay. So work with your tone, um, and find out what sounds good in the room. Our guy last week, I had to go up and say, Hey, this guitar tone is really bright. Now his tone was probably fine, but in the room we were in, in that moment hearing from the house, it was like really harsh, bright, harsh. So he had to go turn down his highs. But so like in his room or in his practice space, it probably sounded great through an amp or whatever. So you have to set up your pedals in your amp and everything for the room you're in.
Emily:
Can he or she, whoever is playing the electric guitar. Can they hear that themselves where they're sounding or do they have to rely on the sound technician to tell them this is, you know, sounding out of sync out in the room.
Eric:
Well, you have to go in the room to hear it. So if you trust her sound guy, you can have him tell you if you like, for me, I'm a guitar player. So my guitar players, they're in the band. They're pretty much trust me. If I come up and say, Hey, it's really bright. They like, Oh, and they've turned their brightness down. I do the same with them. Some of our sound guys are guitar players. And I just ask them, what's it sound like? And they say, it's a little muddy and I'll turn out, you know, turn down the lows. But when I was, I'm setting up my pedals and my aunts, and if I really want it to be good for me, I set it up from the middle of the room. I pull my guitar in about, or my cable all the way out to the middle.
Eric:
And I play in the middle of the room and I listened to the room. And then I go to my pedal and make changes. If you want to get really, really crazy with it, set up your guitar pedal and everything dead in the center of the room, in your sanctuary when nobody's there and play and, and listen to it. As it's coming through the speakers, listen to the soundboard, listen to everything. And I spent hours doing that because little tweaks in the middle of the room make a big difference. You think it sounds good in your amp and it might, but then when you're you hear it coming through the mains, you're like, eh, that's, that's terrible. That's brighter. That's harsher move the Mike around Mike placement matters. Amp volume matters all that matters. But if you're trying to tweak your tone as a guitar player, tweak it yourself from the middle of the room.
Eric:
That's what I do. And then, you know, it sounds good. And I know it sounds good. I don't like to trust other people to tell me like, Oh, it sounds good. You know, I want to know what it sounds like. Also, I like to know each one of my tones, like what, what the, how it makes me feel when I'm in the middle of the room. Is that bright? Is it harsh? Is it rocking? Is it set my cleaner tone? I like to feel what all those feel like, just so I have the competence, but that's, if you have extra time to goof around with your tone, um, same, same with the keyboard player. Uh, um, as he would do find room in the mix, if you're an electric guitar player, play the right parts, learn the right parts and don't make stuff up all the time. Go go to the, to the websites out there that are available, like worship online.com and some of these other websites from the publishers show you exactly the parts they play on the record. And you can actually pick a few of those parts and do them,
Emily:
And you don't have to do everything that they're doing because some of those can be very complicated, but am I safe in saying that the electric guitar is like the keyboard in that less is more on the lead lines?
Eric:
Yeah. Cause an electric guitar really in worship can overpower everybody. You also have a very wide range of frequency and you have a very annoying range of frequency and you have a lot of weird pedal sounds. It can be super stupid sounding. And you know, you just need to be very careful in what you do. So for me, when I play electric, I pick a couple of tones that I know are really good. I don't use like 37 different tones. I use like one tone and I have these on my website. I show you my pedal board, go to the YouTube channel. You can see kind of the stuff. There is a worship, tone sound. There are some pedals you need. I show you all that on my YouTube channel, but I pick really simple tones. That sound really good. And I just use them and I just play play less because everything you do on electric guitar can sound scary when it's bit, you know, you play it and it comes out through the whole room and you realize you can like hurt people's ears with the high notes. And you just have to be careful because the electric guitar is powerful in a lie.
Emily:
It can be tricky because every song can require a different tone from your guitar. So you probably have to pick some that generally sound good with most songs.
Eric:
Yeah, exactly. I have like a, an overdrive sound and a couple different pickups on my guitar and I switched them and I used my volume knob to get a little less drive or a little more drive. And you just, you can have a couple different drives, but in general, I like just a really solid, good tone. And then I use my playing ability to create all the interest, you know, so it's, the tone is good, whether it's a little overdriven or a little clean, and then I just roll back and forth. I've always been a pretty simple tone guy back in my Hermes due days, I had, I had an amp with clean and dirty. That was it. I didn't have any pedals or anything ever. And I just did everything. It was either clean or dirty. And I just used interest. I used parts. I used where I was playing on the neck. I used other things like that. Not like I have 37 guitar effects that I'm going to use to.
Emily:
I was going to say that's interesting because I've seen that where, where the pedal board can be as big as a bus. There's just millions of pedals on the floor.
Eric:
Check out my pedalboard on the website there go to electric guitars. Or if you need to find it, just send me a message. Um, I have a couple of really, really killer pedals that do what I want them to do. The rest of it is just a really good amp tone. Alright, so we're, we're at the end of this, there is a free webinar called improve your live sound stream with gear and musicianship. It's on our website. There's also a link in the show notes here to just, it's a free webinar. You can register for it and take it on demand. Then also we do one on one coaching now for your team. So go to worship band, boulder.com/coaching and Emily and I are both available individually to coach you. She does a lot of stuff about, you know, building a set list and helping worship teams and talking to you as a worship leader, how to deal with the stress and cope with being a worship leader and building teams.
Eric:
And I work with a lot of people on how to do the stuff we're talking about here, produce your band, set up your band, build your band, develop a really good team around you. And then the foundation sessions for audio and for every instrument and your whole team are@worshipbandbuilder.com. That is it. This was a long one, but it was a fun one. Yeah, I enjoyed this. Yeah, she's good. She's getting good, man. She's going to get her guitar out and get her pedals hooked up and she's going to start doing something and jam out. Actually, I think she's just going to be recording a jazz album. Is that right? She wants to do a jazz album. Well, keep an eye out for the jazz album. We'll see you guys next time. God bless Jesus jazz. All right. Not none of that, you know, bar jazz different. All right. Um, let's know what you think. We'll see you next time.