All Things Audio with Ken ”Pooch” Van Druten

[00:00:00] This is The Tech Arts Podcast where we talk about tech, leadership and all things that can search audio, video and lighting. On to The Tech Arts Podcast and the phone live streaming studios. My name is Diel So glad to have you joining us today.

[00:00:24] Oh boy, do we have a great podcast lined up for you today? World renowned, fun house engineer, Ken, Pooch, Van Druten joins us to talk all things audio. Plus we have not one church tech tip for you. We have two church tech tips for you.

[00:00:43] These tips are some conferences that are coming up this year and they are definitely worth attending. But before we jump into that, let me take a moment to thank everyone who is listening and watching.

[00:00:54] This podcast is for you and we very much appreciate the thousands of views you are giving us on YouTube and all the lessons we are seeing on the podcast. If you are a regular listener to The Tech Arts Podcast, be sure to like, subscribe and follow.

[00:01:12] It makes a big difference with the analytics and all the different things that the different outlets use to determine how high up on the list we go plus. Doing this ensures you will never miss a show and will always be informed of our free giveaways.

[00:01:30] Now let's talk our two church tech tips. These two tips are the wave conference and the capture conference. Both of these are must attend conferences. Today we have a rep from each conference to talk a little bit about what they offer.

[00:01:47] Let's all welcome to The Tech Arts Podcast, the organizer and founder of Wave Ron Pocopio. Hey Ron. Hello David How are you? Ron I'm doing great. Hey I hear you have a ton of great stuff going on at the Wave conference this year.

[00:02:02] This is your third one right? Yeah this is our third one believe it or not. In 18 months it has been a quick rapid a cent as we've grown. We're going to be in Louisville, September 12th to 14th bringing together worship technicians,

[00:02:18] production managers, worship leaders, executive pastors and all of the teams really for some education and some exhibits. So tell us just in a few seconds why Wave, why should I come to Wave? Yeah I think ultimately it's about learning what is the latest technologies, one of

[00:02:37] the ways in which we can grow our production or engagement. I'm a big immersive fan of technology that's been something I've worked on over the years and so I believe that we can take technology to improve upon creating a really exciting

[00:02:57] experience for people, the congregation to feel more than just attend and be part of the church service and ultimately return. Yeah I know a lot of manufacturers are going to be there so people can go and check those

[00:03:10] things out and you have some speakers what speakers do you have? Today we just added Bill Swarren Jim you might know him from the church tech leaders. I do. Yeah really great guy he's going to be doing we're actually doing three luncheon sessions

[00:03:25] kind of lunch and learn he's going to be our third one doing planning and budgeting for production improvements. We have Jason Moore who's joining us was one of our general sessions. We've got Ben Staples and Mark McDonald they've the usual suspects you could see there.

[00:03:44] We've got Dennis Choi who's joining us again this time around. It's a really star-studded panel with really cool is that we're bringing this to Louisville. Weave is bouncing around the country and that's that's intentional.

[00:03:59] We wanted to go to the different audiences and these people that you're hearing there are the big heavy hitters that you see at the national conferences that we're bringing to the local regions. Well you forgot one important speaker and that's me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes sir.

[00:04:16] I'm excited to have you there. Yeah man, I'm going to be there. I think my class is on what's the most important tech position. But man there's lots of great speakers there, manufacturers.

[00:04:27] If you want to upgrade your knowledge be sure to sign up for Weave you go to Weave-Event.co. So again that's Weave-Event.co. Be sure to sign up today. Thanks Ron for coming on. Thank you sir. Look forward to seeing you.

[00:04:45] Joining us now is Brian Blackmore from Church Production Magazine. He is coming on to talk to us about the Capture Summit. Brian, welcome to the TechArts podcast. David thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

[00:04:57] Man I'm digging the Capture Summit's tagline where creativity thrives Christ shines. That's awesome man. I love what that says it means. Can you tell us a little bit more about the vision of the Capture Summit? Yeah absolutely. So it was originally called the Content Creation and Filmmaking Summit.

[00:05:15] That was seven years ago so this is the seventh year for the event and a couple of years ago we changed it name to Capture Summit. It's primarily about video production and churches so the people that come to capture

[00:05:29] or primarily video production roles and creative and communications roles. So COVID changed an awful lot in our world let alone how we do church. So many churches jump started how they looked at video production, streaming and really

[00:05:51] how it all fits together with their digital strategy, their social media presence, their web presence and how they portray their church online. Those are the things that we focus on at Capture. Yeah video is such an important part of church now.

[00:06:08] I mean it tells a story, it tells a vision, it helps bring the audience in, everybody lives on their devices. So film and video it's just critical to what we do and I think Capture Summit from

[00:06:20] what I can see is helping to bridge that gap of churches who don't quite know what they're doing, churches who do what they're doing and churches who want to take it to the next level. There's a lot to learn from Capture.

[00:06:34] And notice you have a lot of cool speakers who speaking at Capture. Wow we've got about 60 sessions, some of the presenters are speaking on two or three. We're bringing in Phil Cook, many of you know Phil Cook from the Cook Media Group.

[00:06:50] He's a widely known consultant in the church media world. John Mark Caten is the senior pastor at Cottonwood Creek Community Church there in Allen, Texas that are host church. Boy, such a long list, Dennis Choi, Justin fire sheets, just a long long long list.

[00:07:14] Chad Vegas from Transformation Church. You can find the full list there at CaptureSummit.com. Again it's about 60 sessions, it's a two and a half day event, just just full of great information and networking. We're taking a special emphasis this year on networking and community and we've actually

[00:07:37] carved out a special location on the middle of the show floor that the show floor is where all the exhibitors and the vendors have their their stands, but in the middle of the show floor, we're having a location that we're calling networking central where

[00:07:52] we're bringing in a bunch of the leaders of a bunch of major church technology associations. The church creatives network, the Atlanta Church creatives, the Metro media and communications association, the North Texas Church production group, church IT network and several others

[00:08:16] that are all coming together and help people who don't know about these associations to get to know who they are and what they are and also for the leaders of these organizations

[00:08:25] to get to know each other. And maybe compound or magnify or amplify what they can do separately if they join together and you know get to know each other and just amplify what they're doing for using technology to spread the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

[00:08:41] Well the CaptureSummit is definitely something that people need to attend its August 7th through the night in addition to the over 60 educational sessions that Brian mentioned. Attendees will also have an opportunity to see the latest gear and technology from nearly

[00:08:57] 30 exhibitors including Canon, Nanlight, Sony and many others. To get your tickets you go to capture, summit.com so that's capture, summit.com and if you're listening right now you can put

[00:09:12] in the special code, get 40 and get a special discount there plus we are doing a free give away. So I'm going to give away one free ticket to the CaptureSummit and here's how you get it. You email me at the longest email address known to mankind. It's information

[00:09:30] at digitalgreatcommission.org so that's information at digitalgreatcommission.org. Email me there and say hey I want to free ticket to the CaptureSummit. We're going to take the very first person to email me there and we're going to give you a free ticket to the Capture

[00:09:47] Summit so capture. Summit.com Dallas, Texas August 7th through the night. Brian thanks for coming on and telling us about it. Thanks David I have a crowardy seeing you at Capture. Coming up in our interview with world renowned front-of-house engineer, Ken Pooch Van Druton we talk plugins,

[00:10:06] snapshots, the most important audio channel, what audio console he likes and more. It's all coming up right after these messages from our sponsors. Our main sponsor is digital great commission ministries. What do you need help building a team

[00:10:23] finding the right gear or just better understanding the church tech world? DGCM is here for you. Because they are a 501c3 donor sponsored organization, they come to your church for free and do an assessment of your tech, visionary engagement and online streaming. Plus we give away

[00:10:44] free gear. Be sure to go to audiovideolighting.com and register your email today. This will sign you up for all of the free giveaways and give you first access to everything we offer for free. If you want free resources training or consulting contact digital great commission ministries today

[00:11:05] by going to audiovideolighting.com that's audiovideolighting.com. Our next guest is a tenured and acclaimed producer recording engineer and live sound mixer. His track record of recognition for flawless sound engineering started from Berkeley College

[00:11:27] of Music continuing on through three Grammy nominations in a history of platinum and gold records. He is the front-of-house live sound engineer behind Jay Z. Travis Scott, Justin Bieber, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Guns & Roses, Lincoln Park and many more. He holds over a dozen live sound engineering

[00:11:47] accolades including a tech award, eight tour guide magazine engineer of the year awards and a Parnelli award. Please welcome to the Tech Arts podcast, Ken Pooch, Van Druton. Hey Pooch. Hey thank you for having me and this is awesome. I'm glad to be here.

[00:12:04] Yeah I'm glad to have you on me and I'm going to tell everybody this story about how we met. Well first for a jump into that it tells a little bit about your nickname Pooch.

[00:12:13] I've always called you Pooch but I've never asked you where did that come from? It actually came from the band Motley Crew. They're not very popular. Yeah, they're still out there doing it. It's amazing. They'll never finish I guess.

[00:12:27] I guess they're like guests. They just keep fair welling. But anyway, Vince Neal started calling me Big Dog because of my body size and and Big Dog kind of just evolved into Pooch. I think it was Nicky 6 and started calling me Pooch really but

[00:12:47] anyway it just evolved into Pooch and then following Motley Crew I did a Whitney Houston tour where I mixed her monitors and she just loved that nickname. And so, you know, it kind of just stuck in the industry and I just accepted it and said okay fine,

[00:13:06] you know, so that's how it was given to me. Well Pooch and I met. I don't know. I think it was 2011. I was working for a large church in the Dallas area. I think there's like 20,000 people attending or something like that and we had my

[00:13:21] air systems and I knew Pooch at the time didn't wasn't a big fan of the myr Milo or your fan of them now though, right? I'm a super big fan of them actually but yes you're absolutely right.

[00:13:34] As Pays go, Milo was not one of my favorite Pays but now I'm a super big fan. I love their Panther is now a really great box but I came to love them through the Leo Lion leopard series.

[00:13:53] Well what I was doing at that church was I wanted to critique our sound engineers and get better and so I reached out to Pooch and said hey can you come in and critique our guys?

[00:14:03] I know you didn't like the the Milo box and so for me that was a positive because I wanted you to come in and see how our guys were making it sound and mix on the Milo box and Pooch came

[00:14:14] in. He critiqued our guys very easy to work with was awesome helped our guys step forward really gave them some good pointers and helped us move forward and so that's how we met. So part of

[00:14:25] what we were doing when I brought you in was kind of trying to figure out what the most important part of the mix is and so when you came in and kind of talked to the guys coming from the same viewpoint

[00:14:38] that I did I thought it was very interesting so unpack that a little bit what is the most important channel in the mix when you're mixing? Well of course it's vocal you know I I have to laugh

[00:14:52] when I watch an engineer spend you know extended periods of time. I've watched an engineer 30 minutes on kick drum and snare drum and I think that that's just ridiculous you know

[00:15:07] your average concert go or church go or or anyone doesn't care about the kick drum and snare drum really you know I mean yes they're important and yes they create a vibe and yes they move low

[00:15:22] and etc etc all of those things so I'm not saying that they're not important but the most important thing is vocal and not only in a way of getting it to be louder than everything else

[00:15:38] but but the intelligibility of understanding exactly what that person is saying not only while they're singing but in between songs is very important as well and so yeah I mean I'll spend just because

[00:15:57] kick drum is your first input on your list and you're doing a line check doesn't mean that you have to start there you know I'll start with vocal and get my PA tuned and happy with the vocal first

[00:16:13] and then worry about other things so yeah I mean I can't stress it enough I think it's a common problem is that even though we all know that vocal is the most important thing in the mix

[00:16:27] people don't give it the the most attention that they should you know what's interesting about what you just said is it's not only the vocal but it's also the vocal during the song

[00:16:39] but it's the vocal in between the songs and I think whether it's a concert or whether it's a church service I think that gets missed especially by a lot of the young kids nowadays you know people come

[00:16:50] to hear you said you worked with Whitney Houston they came to hear Whitney Houston hundred percent and come to hear just a kick in a snare and you know or the under mix recording track that's happening and we shouldn't downplay the fact that the other things in the

[00:17:07] mix are important they are they they create impact they create emotion all of those kind of things but but you know you know where I learned this actually was when I first started in my career

[00:17:20] I asked a bunch of friends that were not engineers and not musicians I invited them to a couple of shows that I was mixing and then after the show I asked them what they thought of the show

[00:17:34] and then tell me a little bit about what you thought of the mix what you think you know what was important and what isn't whatever blah blah blah every single one of those people that were not

[00:17:44] engineers and not musicians I'm talking about it's like my best friend who's a lawyer said had comments about the vocal had no comments about anything else all their comments were hey

[00:17:57] I couldn't understand the vocal or you know or the vocal I thought the vocal was maybe too loud whatever whatever their comment was it wasn't about the snare drum and so that really shaped

[00:18:13] how I you know shaped my career and really you know to the stage what I tell people all the time younger engineers that should be your focus get that vocal right like I said it doesn't

[00:18:26] discount the rest of the mix but but get the vocal where you can hear it and it's clear and it's crisp and it's right there for everybody to understand and know what's going on even when they're talking

[00:18:35] and tell the stability is amazing it we're we talked about young mix engineers and one thing that I see a lot I don't I don't want you to talk about this a little bit I go in and I look at the console

[00:18:52] and I literally see a plug-in or multiple plugins on every single channel yes it's insane to me and how plug-in crazy we've gone talk a little bit about plugins I mean obviously they're they're

[00:19:08] helpful we need to use them it's a piece of the mix but talk a little bit about that how you approach it yeah I mean I agree with you I've seen I've seen younger engineers you know do that place

[00:19:25] you know way too many plugins and plugins on every single channel and what they're doing is putting a band aid on a on a gushing wound really and and the problem is it's because they're not using

[00:19:43] the fundamental parts of sound you know that that you should that you should be doing prior to even thinking about putting a plugin on a channel so for instance Mike placement you know Mike choice Mike placement game structure how the microphone preamplifier interacts with

[00:20:08] that microphone transducer those are all like really fundamental parts of being a mixer and I feel like it's it's easy to just place a plugin on something and try to fix what's broken and usually what's broken is a microphone a wrong choice of a microphone or a microphone

[00:20:32] this not placed correctly I can't tell you how many times I have gone you know listen to something through the PA and said you know what this the placement of this is not good walked up all the way

[00:20:47] I've got on this stage moved to microphone literally half an inch and then walked back and it was fixed I didn't need to put a plugin I didn't need to put anything else on that simply by moving a

[00:21:01] microphone a half an inch so the the problem to me that these young engineers are they're they're skipping the fundamental parts of this and and not learning about microphones specifically and and placement of those microphones and you know gain structure and unfortunately it's kind

[00:21:24] of a lost art because everybody has like pro tools at home so they just they start out as a guy who you know has a piece of computer software and they just do stuff and so the art of engineering

[00:21:39] is lost a little bit so I encourage younger guys to try to at least you know watch some YouTube's or watch some you know excellent engineers that practice their craft try to get

[00:21:55] that part of the fundamental part of this right plugins are great they're a great tool I use them all the time I don't use them as much as I think people perceive than I do you know it's like

[00:22:11] because I have a relationship with waves and do a lot of stuff I get perceived as being the plugin guy right you'd be really surprised I mean I don't ever use 64 racks of super rack even

[00:22:27] on 120 input band you know on Jay-Z which was recently I think 132 inputs or something I think I was using 16 racks maybe 18 racks so yeah I mean plugins are cool but it's like

[00:22:47] don't use it to be the band aid to cover the gushing wound you know fix the the first part of this and then you won't have to use a plugin yeah get the signal clean from A to B and then use the

[00:23:00] plugin when it's necessary to either emphasize or as a tool or as an effect or whatever it may be you know we're kind of dating ourselves here but we mixed in the day when there was no such thing

[00:23:14] as a plugin that's right it was outboard gear or nothing and back in the analog console days you had to you had to do exactly what you said you had to have a clean chain all the way through

[00:23:25] and you had to get your mic placement right so one of the things that I like to do when I'm trading a new sound engineer especially younger one who's kind of into the all the plugins as I say

[00:23:36] hey you have to build a good mix for me without any plugins and once they figure that out then we start adding plugins in and what's amazing is how how they use a lot less plugins once they've

[00:23:53] learned how to build a mix without plugins and kind of you know there's some push back there and whatever and I say look here's the deal your racks get a fail it's going to go down what are

[00:24:03] you going to do yeah you can't stop the show you can't stop the service you've got to figure out how to EQ it and make it work correctly without plugins you know the second thing that I think

[00:24:16] kind of gets some young engineers upside down is snap shots yeah I the two you know a plugin on every single channel and then snap shots like 25 snap shots this song yeah 32 snaps shots for the

[00:24:31] verse yeah like what is going on here so talk a little bit about snap shots how do you use it where where do you put it in practice you know and again you know we're talking about all this stuff

[00:24:43] we may it may come across like we're slamming it but really what we're saying is there's a time and a place for all of these tools yes and that time in place will make your mix better but if you just

[00:24:55] use it for the sake of using it it could make your mix worse and so we're not saying don't do plugins don't do snap shots but we are saying there's a time and a place for it that will help you and

[00:25:06] there's a time and a place that will hurt you so so please talk a little bit about how you use snap shots I think for first of all I think you're speaking to a common problem which is

[00:25:18] people mixing with their eyes and not their ears because so many tools are computers now and and our lives are absorbed by you know a little pocket computer we carry around now you know that's that's how we function in life normally regardless of mixing so I think it's

[00:25:44] part of the problem is is that people get lost and mixers get lost in looking at gear and seeing what it's doing and not really paying attention and listening and and so that leads into

[00:26:01] snapshot issues you know I have mixed feelings about snap shots snapshots are an unbelievable tool that have allowed me to create things that you know 15 years ago there I couldn't do you know

[00:26:24] what I'm doing now um literally you know for instance a band like Iron Maiden which has a 45-year history their records all sound very different in fact there's some records that sound completely different than other records when they play live they put those songs next to each other

[00:26:47] and trying to um navigate the making this sound like this record and making it sound like this record those two songs there's really no way I could do it without using snapshot technology because sometimes there's upwards of 300 parameter changes in between songs you don't have 25 hands

[00:27:11] and 15 or something. Well I mean you know sometimes it's funny because I think about you know the days I was on the excel for a minus excel for years for you I don't know 10 years 15 years

[00:27:25] maybe um and I look back at that and I go I don't know how I used to do it like you know what I look at what I can do now and and I think honestly it's that I couldn't do what I can do now

[00:27:42] but don't get lost in it because the art of mixing is still mixing and it em and flows and a guitar player plays louder in some section you know every night or softer

[00:27:56] or whatever all of these are mixing ebb and flows that if you treat that as a snapshot and say every single day this guitar solo is here and point, point, point, point on the snapshot thing

[00:28:14] it's not really mixing it's it's really kind of being like well I'm going to click the snapshot and then you know hopefully it'll be right some days it isn't some days it isn't so I tend to use

[00:28:29] my goal is to get is to use a single snapshot to establish the song so in between songs all all establish a new mix which is sometimes like I said 300 parameter changes of stuff that

[00:28:44] establishes the song and usually from that point forward I do mixing the only time that I start adding snapshots in the middle of songs is if I can't possibly do what's needed to make the

[00:29:02] section be right so there are sometimes where a song may go from you know super loud heavy metal stuff to a real quiet you know acoustic key kind of section I probably would create a snapshot

[00:29:20] in that situation but generally I think you get a better result by being a mixer and doing manual things to compensate for what's happening either in the room or what's happening with those musicians on that particular night so that's that's kind of my philosophy

[00:29:47] although what's interesting is that lately you know I've been doing this heavy metal band Iron Maiden and the way that that band really works is there's three guitar players and they're all in different parts of my mix so they're all you know either far left

[00:30:05] of far right or center those are the three guys so what happens when they solo right so the guy that's far left over here you don't want him to have his solo in the far left side of the PA because

[00:30:19] the people over here in the right side are not getting that full impact of that solo so lately I've been creating snapshots that are guitar solo movement snapshots for his solo in the center and then

[00:30:35] a snapshot when he's done it it slowly moves him back to where he was so it's not abrupt the snapshots of the centers are abrupt when he starts playing a solo you wanted to go boom

[00:30:46] center here you go but it moves him slowly back to the left after solo so I've been creating more snapshots then usual because of that but in general the philosophy that I have of less snapshots

[00:31:03] are better is pretty much it what I hear you saying is get the snapshot to get your mix kind of established yes but use your console as an instrument use it as an instrument that you're going to

[00:31:18] mix on ice you know in the church world we call it an instrument of worship yeah but it is an instrument I mean it's nothing different from a keyboard or a guitar or whatever you're just mixing all those

[00:31:29] sounds together and when I hear your use of snapshots even how you're saying hey I you know use it to snap them to the center or whatever you're essentially using things to accentuate

[00:31:39] your instrument that you're mixing on that's right you're not mixing with your eyes you know you you're mixing with your ears and you're allowing your ears to define what's going on that night

[00:31:51] the crowds a little bit louder a little bit more into it a little bit more guitar needs to be come out in this moment and so that's what I hear you're saying you're using it as an instrument

[00:32:02] that you mix on and I think that's what's key and I think that's a lost art nowadays I think a lot of people are mixing to their eyes as you say one of the things I like to do when training sound

[00:32:16] guys is you know and we don't do this forever but we'll say hey we're going to actually cover up all of your knobs and so the only thing you have access to is your faders nice now I don't

[00:32:27] recommend this all the time and we normally only do it during rehearsals but the problem that I I noticed with some younger engineers is they're mixing with their head down into the console all

[00:32:39] the time yeah and they're missing nuances like a vocalist who decides to talk in between a verse or whatever because they're not seeing that on the platform again they're mixing with their eyes into

[00:32:53] the console and they're not seeing it from the platform in the church world it's a big deal when the artist is standing on the front of the platform and they look out at their sound engineer

[00:33:04] and he's no basically nowhere to be seen because his head is down right versus when his head is up and he's making guy contact and they're turning around saying hey we're going to go to a

[00:33:13] kick drum here they see that and feel that and mix it as an instrument and so that's a little kind of technique we do when we're training is just cover up the console where all they have

[00:33:22] access to is the faders and it opens up that whole mixing with your ear thing so it's just something that we do but speaking of covering up the knobs which we don't do during a normal service

[00:33:35] a lot of EQ talk a little bit about EQ how you use it you know when I get into EQ I tend to mix with my ears as well so I dig a lot more than people would expect you know they're moving

[00:33:50] and they're looking at the meter and they're turning it down a little bit and say that 3 dB change should make the difference I tend to dig in or you know amplify a little bit more than maybe I should

[00:34:00] but I'm mixing with my ears so I'm curious you're approached to EQ how do you use it what's your purpose why EQ you know kind of give us some background on that first let's start with just how much

[00:34:14] phase and latency EQ does to channels I don't think people realize how much phase relationship between coherency between channels is changed by a simply inserting an EQ and you know utilizing even just

[00:34:33] a small amount of it you know the big buzzword in digital consoles these days are is you know how we have to line up all our channels latency is important and you know all these kind of things

[00:34:46] which it is but but I don't think people know that just adding analog EQ changes the phase coherency of the relationships of other channels so let's just start with that conversation

[00:35:04] because if I don't have to use EQ I don't like on purpose because to me it's a tool just like anything else you'll probably if you were to look across my channel of my console you would see high-pass filters

[00:35:26] and low-pass filters for sure on almost everything but EQ and if I'm doing EQ it's pretty drastic like you you know I'm using it as a tool you know like let's take kick drum for example you know

[00:35:48] kick drums generally sound horrible at 400 hertz so you know I cut the crap out of 400 Hertz to make it less boxy boost 60 to give it a little bit of oomph in the bottom and then find

[00:36:02] wherever the click is and that is you know plus six db or more of information and so if you look at that EQ it's a brain you know it's it's drastic and so EQ for me is a tool that is just like

[00:36:22] plugins where I try not to use it but if I do use it it tends to be drastic yeah and so one of my questions I was going to ask you is how do you make your snare drum sound amazing I think I know

[00:36:34] the answer to this make the snare drum sound amazing yes that's it you know it's so funny about that I'm I um in the same breath that we had in that conversation about plugins if that person who puts

[00:36:50] plugins on all their channels the end result is good who am I to say that they're doing it wrong I you know I I go back and forth with this all the time I look at somebody's channels and I say

[00:37:08] wow that's a lot of processing and that's a lot of stuff happening and whatever but if what's coming out of the speakers is good then I don't know I mean it's good it's good you know to me so

[00:37:27] it's better if you learn your fundamentals and you get it cleaner and I don't know what the right terms are but it's it's better if you do it this simpler way and not use a hundred million processing

[00:37:44] things I guarantee it that if you can start doing that in your workflow you will discover that you can get better results than what I'm talking about but hey you know everyone's got their own

[00:37:57] way and who might have said that it's wrong I don't know I think you said it in the snapshot conversation when we talked about snap shots you use snapshots you use probably a lot of snapshots I do

[00:38:10] there's people out there that know what they're doing they've been doing it for a while they understand the fundamentals and they use a lot of plugins and it sounds great it sounds fantastic what we're really talking about here is if you're getting started mixing

[00:38:25] and you don't have a lot of background in mixing and you're jumping right into it maybe you've been mixing for a year or two you're mixing for a church or for local club or whatever

[00:38:36] go check out the fundamentals there was a day before plugins before snap shots when we had to figure out how to get it right and we still made I would argue some of those mixes sound

[00:38:47] better than today's mixes agree because of the band aid conversation and so what we're saying is yeah you know if you get a great mix and it sounds awesome on play we're not saying don't use

[00:38:58] plugins or don't use snapshots there's a lot of people who use it and make it sound great we're just saying the fundamentals can get you there first and then you can take it to the next

[00:39:08] level with those tools you know I attribute my success to being able to watch some real artists like I didn't make any of this up that I do every single day every single thing that I do

[00:39:23] every single day and succeed at is because I watched another engineer do it and learned from some of the best engineers out there and so I wouldn't encourage you if you're a younger

[00:39:38] engineer like big borrow and steal to hang out with whoever you think is a great engineer and steal their stuff I'm telling you every engineer the best engineers in the world are

[00:39:54] willing to give it all up like here take take this information man you know I'm willing to tell you everything that I do and the reason is is because I didn't make it up I learned it from Bruce

[00:40:07] Whitney you know I mean it's like it's a it's a legacy of engineering artistry that I think is really really important and and should not be ignored by a younger engineer so if in your church

[00:40:23] if you have you know the head engineer or maybe not head engineer maybe an engineer that you just respecting go man every Sunday that it sounds amazing this guy or girl I want to follow around

[00:40:36] and make sure like how that person ask them questions I guarantee you if there any any worth or salt they will share every single detail in the information that they have

[00:40:49] and that's how you learn it is how you learn plus I like to say get outside of the Christian community don't stay inside the bubble of churches the Hillsong, Bethlehem whatever and there's there's nothing wrong with that those guys know what they're doing but get outside the Christian

[00:41:04] community see what other secular artists are doing and how they're doing it the secular world tends to be about seven or eight years in front of the Christian community some say that's a good

[00:41:16] thing some say that's a bad thing but my point to that is if you get outside the Christian mix engineer community and you start talking to some of secular engineers that are out there or even

[00:41:27] engineers that mix both in the Christian and secular world they will start to give you some tips and tools that you just don't experience in a church service on Sunday every single weekend one

[00:41:37] tool that I was given one tip that I was given I used to mix my base guitar like really fat sounded awesome I would solo it and it just sounded really good but in the mix everything just always seemed

[00:41:50] muddy and so I talked to you know I had been in the Christian community most of my life and I can't remember his name but I talked to somebody in the secular community that was mixing just at a at a

[00:42:01] local bar and he said hey it is very important that I mix my base guitar so it fits with my kick drum so when he soloed his base it's a sound a bad like it was really thin didn't sound

[00:42:16] correct to me but when he put it with the kick drum it sounded sweet in the full mix of things and I think I was like 17 or 18 something like that I wasn't supposed to be in a bar but I was and

[00:42:30] and it would he went over that with me it just it revolutionized it kind of changed how I thought about how instruments work together with each other yeah talk a little bit about that talk about how

[00:42:43] putting everything together is more important than each individual instrument that's really great you know I say the same thing all the time if you were to go through a virtual playback of my

[00:42:58] mixes and solo up individual things you would be like wow that's pretty crappy sounding you know or whatever and the reason is that I'm making compromises to fit other things in the frequency

[00:43:14] spectrum you know there's a lot going on when you're talking about trying to make a bunch of inputs all work together and especially when we were talking about base guitar you know that range from

[00:43:28] 80 Hertz to like 250 is the hardest part of mixing in my opinion getting that part right in a in a large-scale line array PA is the most difficult part of what I do and trying to make things be

[00:43:49] intelligible and things you can pick out in that particular frequency range is tough it's tough it's really hard the way that I think about it is this nothing gets to share the same frequency space or stereo space

[00:44:09] or depth space there's three things so stereo depth and frequency space those are the three things that are going on in my head as I created mix so in other words if the focus of a

[00:44:22] kick drum the center frequency of a kick drum is 60 Hertz nothing else gets to get 60 Hertz nothing else gets to be prominently addressed at 60 Hertz so I actually move like maybe the base guitar

[00:44:40] is it's center is also 60 but on purpose with EQ I moved the center of that base guitar to 80 so that it is not sharing the same frequency space and then thinking about the same process

[00:44:56] I never ever put if something is at 10 o'clock say guitar is at 10 o'clock there's nothing else gets 10 o'clock other things get 10 15 10 30 but they don't ever get 10 and so in my own brain there's

[00:45:13] this width right so you're deciding where things can go in the stereo width but you're also deciding frequency center wise what gets to be the star so for instance you know snare drum

[00:45:28] I love big fat snare drums and I love like a hundred or 125 in the bottom of a snare drum I love that but that's also where a lot of things exist you know it's the you know the

[00:45:43] middle of a base guitar it's the bottom of regular guitars it's maybe even some vocal sometimes you know so juggling that is is a little bit hard but oftentimes I say nope snare drum gets

[00:45:58] that 125 because that is the big thick great sounding snare drum that I want so now I'm going to shift other things to be higher so I'll high pass my guitars so they're a little bit higher than above

[00:46:12] that 125 range and so the third concept is depth and that's a little bit it's a little bit more advanced but thinking about putting things using artificial reverb and effects to place things further away

[00:46:31] from you or nearer to you is I think about that in the same way that I'm thinking about the frequency and the stereo width so you know if vocal if you want vocal right up front in your face nothing

[00:46:47] else gets to be there everything else has to be behind it and surrounding it and so that includes you know pre delay and and length of reverbs on certain things to make them feel like they're

[00:47:06] further away it's a it's a it's a little bit more of a difficult concept and it's something that I later on in my career like kind of one-down went aha okay I understand it but

[00:47:19] but I just wanted to share with you those are my three things that's really going through my head the entire time that I'm creating a mix it's all about not sharing the same space

[00:47:31] yeah that's awesome so what console do you prefer to accomplish those three things on our interview with kin pooch man-drewton continues on the next tech arts podcast in part two we talk

[00:47:44] about what audio console he prefers what PA he likes and more you don't want to miss it well that wraps up things for today's episode I can't wait to talk to you on the next

[00:47:56] tech arts podcast until then I'm David Lujner signing off by wishing you a great day and praying God blesses every moment of your week see you soon you have been listening to the tech arts podcast presented by digital great commission ministries DGCM is a 501c3 non-profit that was

[00:48:16] started to help churches with all things technical whether you need help building a team finding the right gear or just a better understanding of the church tech world DGCM is here for you find out more about our free onsite visits reports and consulting by going to audiovideoletting.com

[00:48:34] digital great commission ministries will help you run your church service like a pro find out more at audiovideoletting.com