Hello i am a newbie when it comes to sound i really could use your expert advice. Heres the situation. I play in a live set and i'm haveing trouble with controling how loud my keybourd mix comes out of the monitors. Heres the set up i'm useing a 24 channel Allen and Heathe the monitors are plugged into group out 1 and group out 2 and i control the volume with the faders. Theres also a monitor mix where all my instruments are comeing out i have a bass, keyboard, organ, drums . I would like to be able to separate each instrument how loud it's being heard out or the monitors how can i do this?
What you need to do is to move your monitor sends off of the groups and onto the AUX busses. Groups are good for providing secondary mixes that follow along with the main mix or for putting like instruments (like vocals) all together and then running a single compressor or effects send off of these rather than needing one per channel.
What you should do is pick two AUX channels (it looks like you have 2 monitor mixes, but on most 24 channel boards this should work for up to 4) to be your monitor sends. Each AUX you have acts as a separate mix, but instead of faders to push you have pots to twist. In the POST mode, these are governed by the position of the channel faders - as these move the level of the channel being sent into the aux changes - great for effects. For monitors you want to use PRE-Fader AUXes. This means that you dial in a mix to each aux channel and the level doesn't change with the main faders. You then set the AUX Send master to the level that suits your need. Only changes in level from the instrument/vocalist themselves will now affect the level. Remember that you only need to put into the monitors the things that people need to hear - if the snare drum is already loud on stage and everyone can hear it will don't put it into the monitors. This also lets you really crank up the vocalist (for example) in their own mix without affecting what the audience hears.
You mention keyboards so I will throw out one more tidbit - one of the biggest troubles with keyboard volume is that as you change patches they are often at different levels so you end up having to adjust volume at the mixer - spend some time (if your keyboard allows it) setting these patches all to the same level and you will save yourself a lot of trouble at gigs getting na even sound.
