Mix It Up

It’s looking like we won’t have as many bookings for the band next year, and any new ones that do come along will no doubt be offering less money due to the cost of living crisis. We are going to concentrate on those venues that have their own PA as we would be able to play for less if we don’t have the cost of hiring equipment. To that end, I bought a new mixer for the band last month, with the intention that I would be paid back over a period of time.
After a bit of discussion, we have now decided that I will retain ownership of the mixer and let the band use it FOC whenever it is needed. If the overall cake is going to be smaller, but we all get a slightly bigger slice, then we should each end up with same amount per gig as we do now, after PA hire charges are taken off. Having said that, most of us just play for the love of it and the money is not that important, though it is nice to get a bit in your back pocket at the end of the night. And if the situation gets worse and gigs dry up completely, I can always sell it and get something back.
So I thought I’d better try and get to grips with the mixer, in order to have at least a rough idea of how it works. Downloaded the software and the manual then plugged in my bass, a speaker and my in ear monitors. After a bit of jiggling with the controls (and once I’d actually plugged the amp into the correct channel!), I was able to get noise “out front” and in my in-ears.
And that’s as far as I’m going for now. There seem to be an absolute multiplicity of settings one can tamper with, but I’ll need somebody more used to these things to point me in the right direction with regard to FX, EQ, etc. Our next gig is a week on Saturday, which should give us time beforehand to input some base settings for all the other channels, and then we can do some fine tuning during the soundcheck.
Well, that’s the plan, anyway…