Three minute reads for audio engineers and music makers

By Thomas Dulin

Hey Reader, I hope you've been well. Here's this week's Take Three email.

TAKE ONE: QUICK LINKS

• ​Teenage Engineering co-founder says the company will stop making synths, and that the OP-1 was about more than just productivity.​
• ​Oasis Sues Former FOH Engineer for trying to auction off $2M in board tapes​
• ​Ableton has announced Live 13 with ARA support.​

TAKE TWO: RECENT REVIEWS

One of the coolest exchanges I've had recently was with legendary mix engineer Jeff Juliano (John Mayer / Dan and Shay / countless others) who started using PhaseLock and got in touch with me through a mutual friend.

He told me that after using it, he went back to the producer of a song he just finished and asked if he could please print one more mix with PhaseLock.

This is mind-blowing to me as someone who has studied Jeff's mixes over the years. He was kind enough to give this review for the website:

If you have a review you'd like to share, hit reply and let me know, it might end up on the website as well!

TAKE THREE: DON'T FREAK OUT

I recently had the pleasure of mixing FOH for Ben Rector at Disney World and it was almost a complete disaster.

When you do a show at Disney World, you set up and soundcheck the night before the first show, when the park is closed and there are fireworks going off literally right over your head. The timeline is tight, and it can be a bit stressful.

The production team there is truly world-class. They had arranged for all the backline we requested as well as an analog split and a pair of DLive consoles -- one for me at FOH and one for my friend Caleb at monitors. They had even tested everything earlier in the day to make sure everything would go smoothly.

We specifically requested DLive because our Ben Rector show files have been refined on tour over the last 2 or 3 years. The idea is that we patch the stage, load our files, and be ready for the show without having to build from scratch. That is not what happened.

About 30 minutes into our 2 hour setup window, Caleb called me over to monitor world. He and the Disney team were gathered around his console like it was on an operating table. His console had experienced a failure that I've never seen before on a DLive system. It was completely unresponsive.

We spent 5 or 10 minutes working through the troubleshooting procedures, but it quickly became clear that this might not be a solvable problem. Every minute we spent troubleshooting this had the potential to be a precious minute wasted.

A choice was approaching: keep working on this potentially unsolvable problem, or abandon it and start building from scratch on the house console.

This feeling of uncertainty is not comfortable.

You can feel the blood pressure of everyone around you start going up, the fireworks exploding over your head, and the minutes remaining ticking down.

Moments like this are inevitable on tour. They will happen. And I've learned over the years that there are only three ways people respond in these moments:

1. Helpless / Deer in the headlights. They tense up, freeze, and go completely blank. This isn't helpful.
2. Sheer panic / anger / frustration. They yell and lash out at the nearest person, and try to control the situation by finding something or someone to blame. This also is not helpful but it can sometimes make the person feel like they're being helpful.
3. Calm / resolved / working the problem. Experience has taught this person that the only way forward is to slow down, communicate with kindness, and take it one step at a time.

Because this wasn't my first experience with a console failure (I think in 15 years I've had four failures of this scale) AND because of the experience and talent of the rest of the team, I was able to stay calm and think through the problem.

If we couldn't fix the DLive, Caleb was going to have to re-patch over to the house Yamaha console and build 5 IEM mixes, 2 wedge mixes, and 1 drum sub mix completely from scratch.

I looked at Caleb and said "My console works. Let's switch. You take mine, I'll build from scratch on the Yamaha." Caleb would have had to build 8 mixes, but I was only going to have to build 1.

We delegated out the things that needed to happen and got to work. I think we all felt a bit of relief to have at least decided on a way forward.

While Phil, the amazing Disney FOH tech, took my input list and started labeling the Rivage for me, I approached Ben calmly and explained the situation. Ben didn't need every detail, but he needed to know that we were working through an issue and we had a plan to solve it.

Because Ben and his band are also experienced professionals, they did not freeze or panic or scream at anyone -- Ben calmly said, "Okay, sounds good, what's the ETA for soundcheck?"

We were checking and rehearsing about 20 minutes later. I didn't have talkback, I didn't have PhaseLock, I didn't have any scenes, I didn't even have VCAs setup yet. But I had gain, high pass filters, and faders which as I've said before, is all you need to build a good mix. Not a great mix, but a good mix.

By the end of soundcheck, I had dialed in a bit of EQ, compression, and effects, and felt ready to do a show on the Rivage.

When things had calmed down a bit, Phil and I were discussing how these things just happen sometimes. I said something like "I'm sure you've seen lots of different kinds of responses to stress," and he said something like "Yeah, the ones who freak out and yell typically don't get invited back."

In the end, Disney was able to perform Disney Magic and secure a replacement DLive the next morning, so I loaded my original file and got to use my scenes and my plugins and all the other comforts of my show file. But because everyone on the team was calm in a stressful moment, I would have been totally fine either way.

Next time you're in a stressful time-sensitive audio emergency, ENJOY IT. That's an opportunity to stay calm, work the problem, and find a way forward. You knew it was coming, it's inevitable. Don't freak out.

Until next week, happy music making, Reader.

Thomas Dulin Producer / Engineer / Mixer

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