ICEinLAVA's Domain

One of the perplexing quandaries of newbie live sound guys is, “How do you know how to assign the channels?” There are many reasons offered from many sound persons, but most begrudgingly admit to falling into lockstep with their mentors on this topic. Choosing instruments and assigning them channels can be done randomly, but more often than not, there are reasons for following the crowd.

When left to no other preferences, the traditional method of mixing console channel assignments follows two rules. The first is upstage to downstage (back-to-front) assignments. This usually means the rear located drum riser gets preference, plus any other upstage performers on risers. The next rule is stage right to stage left assignment, so that a Front of House console has assignments that positionally correlate left to right as the sound person looks upon the talent onstage.

Traditional Thoughts

Given this back-to-front, left-to-right sequence from the FOH position, several traditional groupings have come about from working with modern music groups. The first grouping, taking the first channels on the console, has been the percussion inputs. The second grouping is the bassist(s), typically composed of one or two inputs. The third grouping is the collection of keyboard inputs and guitar inputs. Typically assigned left to right visually, they may be grouped as keyboards and guitars in multi-act (festival) channel assignments to minimize the amount of preamp gain changes between acts.

The fourth grouping is usually vocals and tends to be placed in the middle to right half of the console, close to the subgroups or VCA groups. This location is meant to keep the sound person’s work at the middle of the console, where riding vocal faders and subgroup/VCA faders are expected to be the main focus during the show. If there are to be open (unassigned) channels, they would tend to be with the keys/guitars grouping and the vocals grouping.

The effects returns are considered the sixth grouping and are placed either far right on the console or on dedicated returns above the subgroup/VCA master section. Generally, the effects are two or more stereo effect returns that are minimally altered during the show, at least in levels and equalization. The last grouping is the CD and tape playback inputs for intro/outro and break music between acts or sets.

Modifications

Practicality sometimes interferes with neat arrangements of console channel assignments, and sub-snakes are a prime example of modifying the traditional way of doing things. This all has to do with sub-snakes running to the backline and side of stages back to monitor beach, where the main snake patching is done. Figure 1 shows a typical stage with sub-snake runs. While a backline subsnake can pick up drums and other upstage-center mic/DI inputs, big stages may have backline runs from upstage left and upstage right that can confound things.

Of course, the “patch-master” can always cross-patch the inputs back to traditional groupings, but there may be a good argument to straight-assign the sub-snakes across the console. For example, a 12-line sub-snake for the backline may contain the drums and chew up the first 12 channels on the main snake and monitor/FOH consoles. Then the stage right sub-snake gets the next eight channels, and the stage left sub-snake has the remaining four channels on the 24-channel cluster to the left of the consoles’ master sections in a 40-channel system.

The remaining channels (25 to 40) would then be left for a downstage sub-snake to pick up the vocals, and the effects and CD/tape returns.

Assigning percussion to the initial channels of a mixing console has always been a traditional (adopted) process, with usual kick, snare, hi-hat, toms and overheads being that tradition. This order mostly comes from where you truncate channels on the assignment list as the venues get smaller or the available channels diminish. For example, small to mid-sized clubs will not need miking of the crash or ride cymbals for most drumming styles. If available channels are in short supply, the toms will lose some or all mics. And if you ever got down to one channel, you would still attempt to reinforce the kick drum over any of the other percussion sources.

Festival Assignments

Most multi-act performances or festivals that share monitor and FOH consoles will enact a “festival” system of assignments with 40-channel or larger consoles. Following the above-mentioned order of sources, the first eight to 12 channels will be assigned to percussion. The next dozen, approximately (e.g. 11 through 24), will handle the remaining instruments. Another eight channels (25 to 32) will normally handle the vocals, leaving the last eight for effects returns and CD/tape inputs.

While most festival setups commonize all the inputs such as guitar1, guitar2, etc., across all the acts, sometimes smaller shows with a dominant touring headliner and local support acts will “spike” the consoles. Spiking is a term used here in the sense that the headliner’s gear, mics, monitors, mixes or anything related to the console is not to be tampered with after the headliner’s soundcheck. Then the support acts must adapt by using the remaining channels for inputs, and live with the existing monitor mix equalization. Of course, this is “bad form” by the headliner’s production crew, but the practice is born out of the necessity of having the headlining act changeover happen quickly. With the emergence of digital consoles with global recall features, such spiking is going away.