Briggs

You comment on compression, I am very interested in exploring this topic more. The sound guy informed me it was standard to be compressing keys, but I understand he was using compression to help level my sound. I could have understood him wrong but I do know compression was being used quite heavily. This thread has reminded me that this is a subject I’ve seen brought up elsewhere so I may start a new three on this subject if it doesn’t already exists. Its always hard when people with experience have conflicting thoughts but I can imagine compression impacts the sounds I spend so long creating.

Well, what amazing responses - thank you everyone. It’s really nice to hear that my initial thoughts and set up were not miles off. It’s great to hear the opinions of sound engineers too. Whilst some of my patches could do with being tweaked in the patch itself, as many of you have said it’s near impossible or to achieve consistency. It’s decided, I will stick to my guns and manage the balance of my two keyboards at the source and let the sound engineer have one stereo feed with both my keys. Thanks to you all again for such detailed responses!!

Thanks for this. The issue is that we’re using apps so we can control our individual monitor mixes, so the ability to be able to mix the keyboards separately actually is a hindrance as it causes my in ears to not reflect the balance between the too in the FOH mix.

This may have been covered, but I’m new here and wanted to open up this topic. I’m moderately new to playing keys live (previously a drummer) and have some areas I’m struggling to find a general consensus on that were highlighted in my last gig. Some background. I run a Juno DS 88 and a VR-09b through a personal mixer and send just 2 channels (left and right) to the main desk. I will sometimes incorporate stereo DIs but rarely for small gigs. I also have in ears feeding me a mix from front of house so I can here the levels between the two and control this throughout the gig. This set up allows me to manage the mix between the two keyboards as I find it near impossible to level every patch to sit perfectly without adjustment throughout a performance. The issue: my patch levels are not consistent, despite numerous hours attempting to fix, however I’m finding this is common from conversations I have had. At my last gig the sound guy (an experienced guy) was keen on sending both keyboards separately to the main mixer, giving him 2 sets of stereo lines. This gave him more control, but made it near impossible for me to manage the level between the two keyboards as my in ears feed didn’t necessarily reflect FOH. I understood his point but my set up has been working for me. Footage from the gig made it clear that a lot of the time the levels of the keys were really poor, or not heard at all, however my in ear mic was great. This is because both keyboards were mixed separately in my in ears so gave me no reflection of the balance between the two FOH. What are your thoughts here? Is there a better way to level my patches, should I have stuck to my guns and kept my original set up giving me control of the balance between the two keyboards; or should I be trusting the sound guy, relinquishing control and awareness of the balance and levels? I am still thinking my original set up of just sending a single stereo mix for the two keys to the main desk works best.