Keyboards: Live - Using small mixer to control onstage volum

[Dennis]

I could use some help. I know next to nothing about live keyboard set-ups but here goes.

A good friend of mine is playing a couple of reunion concerts with his old band (one was on Wednesday night, the other is tonight) and I'm acting as his tech for the shows. Wednesday night the monitor guy had the wedges BRUTALLY loud caused my buddy a lot of problems getting his volume onstage and in-turn out in the house.

I've seen keyboard players use a small mixer onstage to control volumes, would that work with our set-up? He's using two keyboards into a direct box that goes to the house and to the monitor guy.

How can I make this work? What would I need to get to pull this off? A separate monitor amp and speaker?

Thanks

[Tommy-boy]

Assuming the keyboard player has a decent sized rig, there are some concerns:

- The FOH will want to control the level of each individual keyboard out
- The Keyboard player will want to control the level of ech individual keyboard out for monitoring purposes
- It's important to for the player to control his monitoring.

My suggestion is to get a mixer with several direct outs. There should be as many direct outs as there are keyboard connections being plugged into the mixer. Have the direct outs feed the house mix system. Use the mixer to "mix" a keyboard monitor mix. This should be piped to a keyboard amp or amp/monitor system.

Way back in the stone age when I used to gig, I used my own keyboard amp for monitoring. I controlled my monitoring but not the house mix, which is the way it should be assuming the house mixer is reasonably competent.

I think some of the small format Allen & Heath mixers might do this type of job well.

-Tom

[kpaw]

What the above poster said is what I always found to be the best solution. Send a signal from each keyboard to the snake and let the soundman do what he wants with the signal. If it's too loud, simply tell him to turn it down or all the way off. You can do this because you'll have a mix of your keyboards that you can take from your mixer and run that directly into your personal stage amp. Set your own volume using your amp and be happy.

[dementedchord]

alternatively if theres not enough channels in the snake... use a mixer with 2 sub groups... one set and forget for the house and the second is for him...

[rainy-taxi]

I have a fairly big rig so its not possible for the FOH to control it anyways (as it would require a lot of channels). So I got myself a 24 channel rack mixer. I make a good mix on it and use it for the whole show (which is possible). Some volumes are set within patches and I use volume pedals too.

So a stereo pair going to the FOH and I can set up a monitor mix myself by just pluggin in a headphone and use the second bus.
IMHO sending loads of keyboards to the FOH is problematic in the sense that you don't have any control over your own sound (remember, making music is 60% listening, 40% playing) and the FOH engineers have to know the songs to make a good mix.
There are 2 things I send separate to the FOH and those are backing tracks (drummachine) and basspedals.

[Midiguy]

I always use a small mixer with my rig. I play with one or two keyboards, go into my mixer, send direct outs to the sound guy, and then have the sound guy send me a feed of everything else into my small mixer. That way, I can control the blend between my 2 synths and everything else, which is just usally vocals because I cna hear everything else pretty well already.

[alexp]

I have a fairly large system, and tend to take out a Mackie 1202. Its small, efficient, and even though it doesnt sound amazing, it has incredible flexibility. main outs to the FOH, monitor feeds the wedges. Simple, and fast! :)