Guitar getting drowned out when the drums get loud

[TedEH]

I would think that if you're eating up all of your headroom, there's already a mistake being made somewhere. Reminds me of a conversation I had this weekend with someone I ran into. They're recording something and are convinced that something is wrong because they can't hear their recorded vocals over the instruments. Maybe there is actually something wrong, but it's also very possible that none of them know the first thing about mixing and they've just got a raw vocal track buried under a partly-mixed, likely compressed, instrumental, and nobody involved has the know-how to work with it. So they're trying out each daw one by one to see which one will make their vocals audible. Which is almost certainly not the solution to the problem.

Any time I've had to contribute to live sound, I go in the opposite order, because I'd want to go from the item you have the least control over to the item you have the most control over. In lots of small rooms, your drum mics are basically only doing a bit of reinforcement, and you're stuck at a minimum because you can't exactly turn a drum kit down. So that establishes the baseline and you go from there. Otherwise, how would you know how loud the vocals should be with no reference to anything around it?

It like when someone "checks the monitor" with just the guitar or vocal on it's own. What's the point? Sure, I can hear it now, but that tells me nothing about what I'll be able to hear once everyone else starts playing.

 

[l1ll1]

Hmm, sorry, I don't completely get your point...

Every show you're mixing is about maximizing the headroom, of the PA, of the room/venue, of the noise emission laws etc. So every good engineer will try to max out these physical or regulatory limitations.

"In lots of small rooms, your drum mics are basically only doing a bit of reinforcement, and you're stuck at a minimum because you can't exactly turn a drum kit down. So that establishes the baseline and you go from there. Otherwise, how would you know how loud the vocals should be with no reference to anything around it?"

Every decent engineer will start soundchecks by listening to reference songs or their own voice via the PA before inviting musicians on stage, so the have a... reference.
Especially in small rooms, every vocal mic will basically be a overhead for everything thats louder than an unamplified electric guitar. So there is no point in checking anything without those mics ON and processed for their specific source, because you can't tell how your snare or kick or whatever will react during the set. I can dial in the naughtiest snare on its own, it has no use if I then pull up the BG or main vocals right next to it and every hit is just a clunky mess of high end.

 

[TedEH]

I'm not talking about giant theater venues or something where the PA is doing the heavy lifting, I'm talking about bars, pubs, floor shows, cases where the limiting factor is going to be "how can we make sure everyone is audible once the drummer starts playing". In plenty of places, the PA basically just handles making sure the singer and the kick drum are audible, maybe a bit of snare, and the rest of the drums are practically pulling their own weight. Cymbals carry on their own pretty easily. Guitar and bass amps/cabs these days can demolish buildings on their own, so PA support is a bonus.

But then even for a bigger show, I think I would disagree with the premise that a good engineer just maxes out what's available. The best sounding venues and sound guys I've dealt with were the ones who had a good sense for what works well in their room, and stayed within that. The "louder=better" approach IMO turns into unintelligible mush really easily.

 

[GunpointMetal]

If it's hard rock or dance music, drums first. Pretty much anything else, lead vocal first. I don't really care what Metallica's FOH guy does, he also thinks he can tell an AxeFX from a mic'd amp at 110dB. It doesn't really matter if the drummer is going to hit like a baby during sound check or if the singer has no mic control and 60db of dynamic range in their singing voice. In small clubs the biggest problem is usually a "sound guy" who doesn't know what to do with what he's hearing when he's referencing a track through FOH or how to ring out monitors. Sometimes it's a limitation of the gear, usually it's a limitation of knowledge.

 

[l1ll1]

As someone who has used this uproach in clubs from 150-1000 cap I can tell you it works. Every time and especially in smaller rooms.
OP asked for a solution to "drowned out" guitar, which means that something in the system (= band + room + pa) is out of headroom. What I'm suggesting is simply a different way of structuring that headroom. But to each their own...

 

[l1ll1]

I'm not talking about giant theater venues or something where the PA is doing the heavy lifting, I'm talking about bars, pubs, floor shows, cases where the limiting factor is going to be "how can we make sure everyone is audible once the drummer starts playing". In plenty of places, the PA basically just handles making sure the singer and the kick drum are audible, maybe a bit of snare, and the rest of the drums are practically pulling their own weight. Cymbals carry on their own pretty easily. Guitar and bass amps/cabs these days can demolish buildings on their own, so PA support is a bonus.

But then even for a bigger show, I think I would disagree with the premise that a good engineer just maxes out what's available. The best sounding venues and sound guys I've dealt with were the ones who had a good sense for what works well in their room, and stayed within that. The "louder=better" approach IMO turns into unintelligible mush really easily.

I'm not talking about "louder=better". Every concert with a full band will be dealing with the physical or in best case only regulatory limitations of the whole system (again, that means band + room + pa). And every engineer will try to maximize the performance of that system for the music.

 

[GunpointMetal]

band + room + pa

Not many people think about the room as part of that system and it's to everyone's detriment. When I do live sound drums, then bass, are the two things that eat up most of headroom. If my system supports it, I'll get those things comfortable before bringing other stuff in, because the other stuff isn't going to put near the pressure on the system. If it's a small PA, I'll start with vocals because everything else in the PA is going ot be support.