Category: Cheat Codes

  • Ring Out the Monitors Before the Band Ever Arrives

    Ring Out the Monitors Before the Band Ever Arrives

    Feedback during the set feels random. It isn’t. Every room and every wedge has the same handful of frequencies waiting to take off, and they’re findable on a Tuesday when nobody’s watching.

    The routine: one open mic at the vocal position, monitor up slowly until the first ring appears. Find that frequency on the EQ, pull it a few dB — not a crater, a trim. Bring the level up again. Second ring, same treatment. Two or three passes and you’ve bought yourself real gain before feedback, calmly, with coffee in hand.

    Why alone matters: ringing out with a band on stage means hunting a squeal while eight people wince at you. Doing it empty means the dangerous frequencies are already handled before a musician ever asks for “more me.” The request that used to be a risk becomes a fader move.

    The restraint clause: every cut costs tone. If you’ve notched more than three or four spots, the problem isn’t EQ anymore — it’s mic choice, wedge placement, or a singer cupping the capsule. Fix the physics before you keep carving the sound.

    Feedback isn’t bad luck. It’s a to-do list you haven’t done yet.

  • The 30-Second Soundcheck Trick That Saves Your Whole Set

    The 30-Second Soundcheck Trick That Saves Your Whole Set

    Soundcheck always runs long. Always. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got 20 minutes or 2 hours, someone’s monitor mix isn’t right, someone’s guitar isn’t in tune, and the drummer wants “just a little more kick, just a touch” for the fourth time.

    Here’s a trick that’s saved more of my sets than any piece of gear I own: before anyone plays a single note, I go around the stage and ask every single person one question, in this exact order.

    Field Notes — Cheat Codes

    “What do you need to hear, and what do you need to hear it over?”

    Not “how’s your monitor.” Not “you good?” Those get you a shrug and a thumbs up that means nothing. This question forces a real answer, because it’s actually two questions stacked on top of each other, and most musicians have never had to articulate the second half out loud.

    A vocalist doesn’t just need “more vocal.” They need their vocal loud enough to sit over the kick and snare specifically, because that’s the thing eating their pitch reference. A guitarist doesn’t need “more guitar,” they need enough guitar to hear their own timing against the click, because that’s what’s actually throwing them off.

    Once you know the “over what,” you stop guessing. You stop doing the slow, awkward dance of pushing a fader up, getting a vague “a little more,” pushing it again, getting another vague “a little more,” until you’ve fed back three times and everyone’s annoyed.

    Do this in order, stage left to stage right, before you run a single song. It takes maybe 30 seconds per person. On a five-person stage that’s two and a half minutes, and it will save you fifteen minutes of trial and error later, plus a much better first impression on anyone new sitting in with the team that day.

    Field Notes — Cheat Codes

    The bonus move: write the answers down. Not in your head — actually write them. “Drummer: needs vocal over kick.” “Bass: needs click over everything, doesn’t care about anything else.” Next time that same lineup plays, you already have your starting point before anyone steps on stage. Soundcheck goes from twenty minutes of guessing to five minutes of confirming.

    It’s a small thing. It is not a small result.

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  • Gain-Stage Before You Touch a Single EQ Knob

    Gain-Stage Before You Touch a Single EQ Knob

    You bought the plugin. You watched the video. You know the frequency for “boxy” and the frequency for “harsh,” and you’ve got a shelf move for “air” that you use on literally everything. And your mix still sounds like it’s fighting itself.

    Here’s the thing nobody tells you in the plugin tutorial: most of what you’re EQ’ing out is a gain-staging problem you’re too impatient to fix properly.

    Field Notes — Cheat Codes

    If a channel is clipping into your converter, or worse, if it’s so hot that every plugin in the chain is being driven into its own version of distortion, no amount of surgical EQ is going to undo that. You’re not sculpting a sound at that point. You’re doing damage control on a sound that got hurt three steps earlier in the chain.

    Before you touch a single band on that EQ, do this instead:

    Set your input gain so your average level sits around -18dBFS. Not the peak — the average. Peaks can flirt with -6, that’s fine, that’s headroom doing its job. But if your average is sitting up around -10 or hotter, you’ve already lost detail you’re never getting back.

    Check every plugin in the chain, not just the first one. A compressor with too much input gain will squash a signal in a way that no amount of post-EQ can undo cleanly. If your compressor’s gain reduction meter is slamming past -10dB on a normal phrase, that’s not “aggressive,” that’s broken gain staging with extra steps.

    Then, and only then, reach for the EQ. You’ll find that half the “problems” you thought you had — the muddiness, the harshness, the thing that sounds like it’s “fighting for space” — get a lot smaller once the gain structure isn’t actively working against you.

    Field Notes — Cheat Codes

    I get why EQ is the first move for most people. It’s visual, it’s satisfying, you can see the curve doing something. Gain staging is boring. There’s no cool curve. It’s just numbers sitting where they’re supposed to sit. But boring is doing the actual work here, and the EQ move you make after fixing gain will almost always be smaller and cleaner than the one you were about to make before.

    Try it on the next mix that’s stressing you out. Pull everything down, get your levels sitting where they should, and see how many of your “EQ problems” just quietly disappear. You’ll save yourself twenty minutes of chasing a frequency that was never actually the issue.

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