Less Is More - Pt. 2
Are you concerned about “not sounding full” live?
In my previous post, I talked about the difference between Christian and Mainstream music that you hear on radio today. I also shared about my previous band and struggles we had with having a clean live sound.
Today, the band I’m in has such a clean sound. Even if it’s a loud part of a song, you can still hear our lead singer, Ben, if he’s merely talking to the audience to invite them to participate. He can be heard easily for multiple reasons, but a main factor is because everything we play live or have in our backing tracks are all serving a purpose. Our guitarist and lead audio engineer Bill, carves out certain frequency ranges in the tracks for Ben’s vocal to sit in nicely and Bill chooses what guitar parts to play that best adds to the song instead of taking away and causing clutter (i.e. noise) which can easily step over the lead vocals.
Bill and I were side-stage during a band’s performance at one of the festivals we were playing and working production for. Bill was running monitors, and I was the patch guy. He called me over and had me listen in on a two-piece band’s in-ear monitor mix. He pointed out by them having drum loops in the tracks and every time the drummer was slightly off, you could really hear it! When you have a live drummer, it’s a great idea to take out any unnecessary drum loops in your tracks.
If you are concerned about “not sounding full” live, if you have a basic three-piece setup with drums, guitar and bass, you already have a full sound! All of your tracks then need to be an added ear candy instrument, not full of double rhythm guitar tracks, synths and pads all in the same frequency range.
When in doubt, remembering the ‘less is more concept’ will never hurt.
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