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[Shad Hall]

hi,

the other night at church, we decided to test out a theory. on the a&h gl2800 board we are using, we are taking advantage of the 8 group faders with #1 & #2 set to vocals. on the 8 vocalist channels, we panned the backup vocals to about 1:30 on the "even" side (for the #2 group fader) and the lead vocal left alone at the 12:00 position. i liked how this gave me control over the bg vocals separately from the lead singer in the group faders.

what is your input on this approach?

thanks

[Brian Ehlers]

Is your house system a stereo system or mono?  In other words, do your odd groups feed a left cluster of speakers and your even groups feed a right cluster of speakers?  If so, then by panning the background vocals you just removed them (somewhat) from the left speaker cluster, which is probably not what you want.

If instead all of your groups are getting summed and are feeding mono speakers, then you could take your idea even further and hard-pan the lead and background vocals to different groups to give you even more independent control.  This is commonly done (not just with vocals) so that your 8-group board can really be used to create 8 independent groups (instead of 4 pairs).

[Shad Hall]

Brian Ehlers wrote on Wed, 05 January 2011 15:12

Is your house system a stereo system or mono?  In other words, do your odd groups feed a left cluster of speakers and your even groups feed a right cluster of speakers?  If so, then by panning the background vocals you just removed them (somewhat) from the left speaker cluster, which is probably not what you want. If instead all of your groups are getting summed and are feeding mono speakers, then you could take your idea even further and hard-pan the lead and background vocals to different groups to give you even more independent control.  This is commonly done (not just with vocals) so that your 8-group board can really be used to create 8 independent groups (instead of 4 pairs).

hi brian, it is a mono system setup. thanks for the input.

cheers

[Dick Rees]

Run your backing vocals through a sub-group so you can process them as a group.  Run your lead vocals straight through and process them individually.  Pan your backing vocals L/R to taste so that when you solo the backing vocal sub-group you can better hear the overall balance before it gets sent to the mains, adjusting the individual BV channels as needed.

[Shad Hall]

Dick Rees wrote on Wed, 05 January 2011 17:24

Run your backing vocals through a sub-group so you can process them as a group.  Run your lead vocals straight through and process them individually.  Pan your backing vocals L/R to taste so that when you solo the backing vocal sub-group you can better hear the overall balance before it gets sent to the mains, adjusting the individual BV channels as needed.

dick, i have read and re-read your thoughts and i'm wondering if i'm understanding you correctly.

ch.1~8 are vocalists
ch.1~8 are run through grp.1 & grp.2
(currently at the moment, i don't have anything merely through "mains" without being run through a sub-group.)

i believe you to be saying/suggesting that i run all background vocals (ch.2~8) through grp.1 & grp.2 and running ch.1 (lead vocal) not in a sub-group at all, but rather straight to the fader for the "mains".

is that right?

thanks

[Dick Rees]

Shad Hall wrote on Wed, 05 January 2011 22:01

Dick Rees wrote on Wed, 05 January 2011 17:24 Run your backing vocals through a sub-group so you can process them as a group.  Run your lead vocals straight through and process them individually.  Pan your backing vocals L/R to taste so that when you solo the backing vocal sub-group you can better hear the overall balance before it gets sent to the mains, adjusting the individual BV channels as needed. dick, i have read and re-read your thoughts and i'm wondering if i'm understanding you correctly. ch.1~8 are vocalists ch.1~8 are run through grp.1 & grp.2 (currently at the moment, i don't have anything merely through "mains" without being run through a sub-group.) i believe you to be saying/suggesting that i run all background vocals (ch.2~8) through grp.1 & grp.2 and running ch.1 (lead vocal) not in a sub-group at all, but rather straight to the fader for the "mains". is that right? thanks

Yes.....for the reasons stated in my first reply.  I'll reiterate.

By grouping the backing voices and running the lead vocal directly to the mains you can process them separately.  You can then compress them to taste.  Possible scenarios might be:

1.  Lightly compressing the backing vocals via the group inserts and not compressing the lead voice to let the lead pop out a bit.

2.  Side chaining the backing vocal compressor to be triggered by  the signal from the lead voice channel.  This will require tapping the signal from the lead voice channel via a post-fader aux if you have an extra one to burn.  Then when the lead voice comes in the backing vocals will be compressed as much as needed by setting up the compressor to taste.

DR    

[Shad Hall]

got it! thanks again.

[Tim Padrick]

As your system is mono, you need only use 1 subgroup for the BG vocals.  However:   If there were a way to solo/PFL a group pair in stereo, you could pan the vocals for separation to help tweak the individual levels in your headphones - but I don't think your console can do this.

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