You might be guerrilla mixing, if …
“From my own experience, and that of fellow engineers, this perfect world is about as common as a unicorn dancing on a pot of gold underneath a rainbow. In the real world we have the exact opposite - wrong or no information and everything needs to happen 5 minutes ago. Mixing in such an environment, where you are forced to react rather than prepare, is what I call “guerrilla mixing”. And chances are you are fighting the same petty warfare as well ...”
In a perfect world of mixing audio, you would always have the right information and plenty of time to act on it. The right information about the artist, the venue, the mixing console, the PA, the microphones, the audience, the timeline - anything that helps you make informed decisions about your approach, technique and style of mixing. Plenty of time to turn all that information into a great sounding show - time to listen to the artist’s material, to talk to them and get to know their target sound, to check every cable run and every microphone, time to setup and align the PA, to have a detailed line check and sound check, to program your console for each section of a song, to dial-in your effects - to create a sonic landscape that is impactful, emotional and memorable.
I have been in the business of tweaking knobs for a while now. From my own experience, and that of fellow engineers, this perfect world is about as common as a unicorn dancing on a pot of gold underneath a rainbow. In the real world we have the exact opposite - wrong or no information and everything needs to happen 5 minutes ago. Mixing in such an environment, where you are forced to react rather than prepare, is what I call “guerrilla mixing”. And chances are you are fighting the same petty warfare as well ...
You might be guerrilla mixing, if …
the artist does not show up for soundcheck.
You work in a club or for a rental company and you have to mix a show for an artist tonight. You got their rider in advance, you have the stage setup and are all set for the sound check that should happen in a few minutes. There is just one little snag- the artist is running late. Their van broke down, or there was a traffic jam, they got lost on the way (yup, even with all of the navigation apps, that still happens!), their flight got delayed - for whatever reason, the sound check isn't happening. In fact, they barely make it in time for the show (after the club is already open), setup their gear and … lo and behold, the rider you got is a bit outdated and you now have additional input channels, two more monitoring lines and your entire patch list has gone out the window. With 5 minutes to showtime you have just enough time for a revised patch list and line check. Guess what? In 5 minutes you will be doing guerrilla mixing.
You might be guerrilla mixing, if …
you are doing sound for the opening act at a festival.
Oh man, you are so excited, the local band you are working for got a big break and landed a gig at a large festival with thousands of people watching and you get to mix them! Sure, you will be running a console you have never seen before, but you have seen all the YouTube videos and you have allocated time for a sound check that will get you more familiar with the board. But the main act is running late and they are having technical issues. They eat up all of your time for sound check and now your band is on stage, setting up, ready to go on in minutes, while you have about a thousand things to program on the console, work on their monitors, set up a mix from scratch and are feeling just a tad overwhelmed. Yup, you are a guerrilla mixer, my friend.
You might be guerrilla mixing, if …
you have made a name for yourself and now have so many gigs that you have little time to prepare.
When you get to a certain point in your career, people start calling you to do all kinds of gigs. And, since you love the craft and seem to be available on that day, you take the gigs. Even the ones that happen tomorrow because a resident sound engineer got ill or a band got a call to fill a slot at tomorrow’s festival and they called you up last minute. You do not have the time to prepare properly, but you want to maintain your reputation of being a reliable sound engineer that creates great sound. So what do you end up doing? Guerrilla mixing. It could happen because your business is booming and things are going right, not because something went wrong.
You might be guerrilla mixing, if …
your gear breaks down and you have to improvise.
Touring takes its toll. Not only on the people, but on the gear as well. Yesterday, the gig went great. Today, you setup your gear and your console is out of whack. Maybe it got dropped during transport, maybe it just decided to test your resilience and nerves - but today it is just not cooperating. There is no way you can get an identical replacement to the venue in time, but the local rental company can provide a console that will allow you to make the gig happen. All of your meticulously crafted scenes and cues are taking a break on your unused backup USB drive you were hoping to use until all hope was gone, while you are now rushing to remember all of the cue changes you have to run by hand during the show. Please, give the guy a “Don’t talk to me during the show, I am guerrilla mixing!” T-shirt.
What to do, what to do??
Live sound is unpredictable. Even though we strive to take the element of the unknown out of our work as much as we can, it always finds a way to creep up and yell “SURPRISE!!”. And for some of us, it is the norm. There is no pre-production time for any of the shows. There is no time for adequate sound checks and maybe you get to work with a different artist every night - it is the equivalent of audio speed dating.
If you find yourself doing a lot of these types of shows, you might be wondering by now: "Does it ever get better? What can I do?" Here are a few things I figured out work for me.
Don’t panic. Accept the fact that you will occasionally get a visit from the proverbial Mr. Murphy, who tends to mess things up.
Get all the information you can. Talk to the band, call a fellow engineer, look at a YouTube video of their live gig. The more info you have, the better decisions you will make.
Get methodical in your verification steps. Have a list of what absolutely needs to get checked before running the show so you can do your job. All of the mixing chops in the world won't fix a missing input.
Focus on the stage first. If the artists can’t hear themselves, they can’t play. If they can’t play, you can’t mix.
Ignore the trees, focus on the forest. People might not even notice you don’t have the right reverb decay set, but they will surely notice a guitar solo they couldn’t hear because you were fiddling with some obscure parameter that makes your snare pop a bit more.
Train yourself to be a better guerrilla mixer. If you have access to a console, initialise all settings or recall a blank session. Set the timer to 5 minutes and start working. Using an input list, see how many items on your checklist you can get to in that time period and evaluate if there is something else you might need more than what you have setup. Reset, restart, compare. It works even better if you have multitrack sessions you can route to your mixer - then you can really get the speed aspect under your belt.
You might be complaining about the amount of guerrilla mixing you have to do, but I consider it to be one of the ultimate rushes of adrenaline. It can be extremely satisfying to create a good mix when the cards are stacked against you. I also consider it atrue testament of a good sound engineer - making something out of nothing. So don’t be shy to say it out loud: “I am a guerrilla mixer!”