[hollywood_steve]

I'm on my way down to the studio in a half hour to reconnect my gear and begin mixing the show I recorded the other night. Based on what I heard in the room and through my phones while tracking, I know of one definite problem I will face; wildly varying bass levels throughout the stage area. The trio (bass, piano & drums) set up in a little alcove at the end of the main room; the alcove was maybe 20ft across, 12ft deep and 10ft high, and opened into a 50ft x 40ft x 10ft room.

The mix of hard surfaces and plenty of soft furniture filled with softer bodies (the yacht club / blue hair crowd) actually yielded decent response for everything above 100hz, or so. But below that it was UGLY. Nodes were the big problem, when the bass player played an open E, the SPL in the alcove could vary by 12 to 15db or more in just a couple of feet. In other words, the bass mic could be picking up a balanced level, while the drum mic 6 feet away might be "hearing" TWICE the SPL for just one specific bass note! Depending on what key the song was in, there were times when I had the bass channel preamp "off" but the bass was still too loud in mics 6ft or 8ft away that were purposely placed with their nulls towards the bass amp. And to make me seem insane, the bass sounded fine out in the main room; this problem dropped off as soon as you left the alcove.

A couple of observations:

1. As a general rule, I hate it when acoustic bass players use an amp, particularly in a small club, low volume setting. (I'm certain that they would overplay less if they had to concentrate on sounding each note cleanly and strongly, but the amp gives them the confidence to "noodle.")

2. This recording may be the first time that I will ever have thought that automation might make my mixing work a little easier. Something tells me that I will be muting or at least pulling down the vocal mics countless times in an effort to minimize these bass hot spots.

And a question:

1. Has anyone got any suggestions for how to deal with this sort of bass node problem, where the relative bass volume on stage varies WILDLY with each step as you move across the stage? It wouldn't be so bad except that the problem is frequency dependent, so that a location that is a hot spot on one song is a dead spot on another song, or even on a different part of the same song. (In other words, when I felt satisfied that I had solved the problem of the booming bass in the drum mic, the band changed songs and the problem suddenly jumped to the piano mic, then to the left side of the stereo pair. And so on, all night long......)

It should be interesting to hear how this all sounds......