Table of Contents
Overview
First and foremost, welcome to the team. We’re very glad to have you. The purpose of this page is to get you guys up to speed on as much as possible by just reviewing and studying the information presented.
As I’m sure many of you upon first visiting page, may know very little about what we do. Allow me to expound upon that.
We mix church livestream remotely via a digital audio workstation in real time every Sunday. This is obviously where you guys come in.
At this present time, we have about 180 active churches, and we’re probably adding 30-40 to that a month. We’ve got over 30 remote mix engineers.
At the very least, what all this means is systems, structures, procedures and thus uniform training and executing of responsibilities are of the utmost importance.
This page will lay out key, not optional strategies and requirements that you absolutely must know and follow to the letter in order to execute your responsibilities and of courses mixes effectively.
In pretty much all cases, our internal, full-time team have already gotten the mix up to the standard the client likes. What that means is this opportunity is not a playground to just go ham with someone’s mix. This job will probably be the easiest mix work you will ever do. I’ll dive more into the mix itself later. If you thought this was something else and does not align with what you were expecting, please reach out to Clayton directly to discuss.
We strive to provide top-notch mixing services for our clients, and that absolutely, 100% involves strict adherence to systems in place by you with very, very little deviance and opportunity for what sounds good to you.
Let’s dive in.
CREDENTIALS
Upon acceptance of position and prior to onboarding call, you will receive credentials for:
- A branded email that we will push your schedule to
- Splashtop, our remote viewing software
- Slack
- Audio Movers LISTENTO
Whether you’re provided the credentials or the platform allows you to make your own password, you’ll probably want to store them in a note somewhere.
SLACK
This is where our team communicates with one another, and it’s also where we communicate with our clients. Pretty straight forward stuff here. Your responsibilities per each church on Sunday is as follows.
- Let them know you have logged into get to work on their mix
- Acknowledge and address any of their comments, questions, mix critiques
- Let them know when you’re signing off after the time slot is up
You will for sure notice communications outside of Sunday. You are not responsible for or expected to engage in them. You are welcome to if you want, but you will not be paid for that time.
SPLASHTOP
This is how we log into each church’s computer. Pretty straight forward stuff. You’ll need to download Splashtop Business and log in with the credentials you’re provided.
You’ll be assigned computers to your “group” and should be all you see. Attached below is what the application looks like, only my view has a lot more groups. You double click the computer and you’re in. Done.
STUDIO ONE
Studio One is gonna have a few screens you’re gonna have to deal with, assuming it isn’t already open and loaded. In most cases you’re gonna be using Studio One 7 Pro which looks like this:
When you boot studio one, you’ll arrive at a screen that lets you select a session. The correct one should be pretty clear what that is. Should have “FINAL” in the title or be the one that was most recently opened.
This is from my computer. So the sessions don’t resemble what I just said. But this is the first page you see when you boot studio one.
The I/O device is set here. Usually the first tab when you go to preferences.
99 times out of 100, the input device needs to be same as output. Of course, if you’re on windows, there’s only one device anyway.
What device that needs to be used for the most part should be pretty clear.
- X32 = X-USB, X-Live, X-UF
- SQ5 = SQ
- QU32 = QU
If you’re not sure, feel free to DM Clayton on slack.
LISTENTO
…is how we hear the sound from their studio one on their machine. Use your credentials to log in. If you haven’t gotten any yet, let Clayton know.
WATCH THIS EXTERNAL VIDEO ON HOW IT WORKS.
About the only thing I’d caution you to know here is the session settings. I would run with the default. You can make latency lower, and you can make definition higher, but it’s more taxing on their computer. There’s usually a sweet spot. The “stream” starts getting choppy if you’re trying to run it too hard. I do not believe studio one itself is actually affected by those settings, but it’s good to know that if you’re manipulating the session settings and it’s sounding bad, you may just be experiencing that on your end. Again, default settings.
MIXING
the main mix strategy I employ here is we are gonna have the plugins tuned to where the mix sounds good with all faders at unity, or zero. This will empower any engineer to have a “home base” if you will to know where we set things.
You guys shouldn’t need to touch much. Definitely nothing with band.
You guys should really only need adjust vocals depending on who’s leading. The leader should sound good at unity. the rest of the vocals need to be -10db or so. When the leader changes, move up the leader of the song, which should be outlined in the setlist you’re provided. pull old leader down to where all the other vocals are.
Do not change labels other than vocals if you’re provided different names on the set list than what you already have.
Your mix session should look almost identical to this.
Do not under any circumstance change anything at the plugin level. Do not do any EQing, compression, wet fx, nothing that hasn’t already been set.
If you feel you are good enough to do stuff like that, I’ll put you throw some testing to feel out what you’re capable of doing and we may can change that arrangement. But to start, we really just need basic maintenance that we have laid out for you guys.
Studio One mix session should appear as follows:
You’ll notice the red and blue icons on each channel. Those must both be enabled.
You must:
- Multitrack record each service you mix
- DO NOT CLOSE STUDIO ONE EVER
- Leave computer on. Leave everything as you left it
- Don’t mute anything ever unless it’s something extremely problematic like a pastor who never turns off if headset
Some churches don’t pay us to be clocked in for their entire service. It’s obviously important we leave studio one passing sound as it is.
If you’re assigned a church and you encounter a setup that wholly or in part does not resemble what I’ve laid out here. Please bring it to my attention.
I can be reached pretty quickly either on slack or by emailing me at honcho@claytonmixes.com