Saturday Night Live

Does SNL's studio not have automated digital mixers with memory settings? "Typical bad SNL musical guest sound" made a lot more sense when technology wasn't up to the task.

i'm not very fluent in stagehand union laws/regs but i'm more fluent than most and iirc you can remove an iatse tech from a job as long as you replace them with a another iastse tech of equal or greater seniority

I don't know what the thing is, I just know it's always the same guy and he's been there a while. I am far happier knowing that NBC stage-hands have their jobs protected despite public opinion about what constitutes a "bad mix". I mean, on one hand, I've never actually seen any game-changingly bad performances on the show, I've always thought it's been pretty good. If I'm sitting there thinking "I am hearing a new Kanye song for the first time and it is live" then I'm not thinking about the mix. On the other hand, taken objectively, I can't think of any live-in-studio TV performances that have been well-mixed, like, ever. All the performances-I-thought-were-great on SNL I saw as a kid ("Doll Parts", "Caught A Lite Sneeze", "Red Light Special") are actually really badly mixed on second viewing

I felt the same when I heard "Radio Radio"

sometimes a bad mix is a benefit; my first exposure to 10,000 Maniacs was their SNL appearance and I thought they were a much different-sounding band due to how ragged the mix made them sound, to the point where when I finally heard In My Tribe my first reaction was "I had no idea this was an easy listening band"

i'm not going to post a million youtubes but IMO bands always sound better on letterman than SNL, and that guy is mixing 5 times as many bands a week

not live though

fair point

though tbf in AF's case there are probably 48 channels of audio so the in-house guy is probably just thinking "fuuuuuck yoooooou"

The SNL house band's mix sounds ok. Maybe dude pays attention if you put a sax solo in your song.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.aoltv.com/media/2010/02/jonhammsnlsergio.jpg

AF had two saxophones!

live from new york's ok if you like saxophones

queef latina makes a better dn than a tina fey joke, imo

xp they weren't soloing!

Sun Ra's mix in the third season was surprisingly good. Lots of saxophones. And they're from Saturn.

^^^

haha

J0rdan S.
Posted: October 3, 2013 at 4:54:36 AM

that said i thought the "new cast member or arcade fire" sketch was really funny though mostly because
of kenan

the tall arcade fire guy was pretty funny

also arcade fire go disco someone on a blog somewhere must've predicted this

yeah tall arcade fire's meet the parents thing was great

I've never actually seen any game-changingly bad performances on the show

lana del rey was for a second there

but that wasn't exactly a mixing issue per se

his deniro impersonation was one of the funniest jokes of the whole nite xposts

there's a direct-to-netflix oral history doc on the greatest hits & misses of SNL musical guests just waiting to made

ashlee simpson was famously bad on snl

which iirc was both a performative and mixing issue, all the issues

Which was worse for Ashlee Simpson's career? The SNL tape disaster, or actually singing live at the Orange Bowl?

I mean, this is...BRUTAL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5YPiBx9MJs

i feel bad for everybody on that stage/field who is not ashlee simpson

haha wow

she looks so proud of herself and then

live from new york's ok if you like saxophones

Actual, if I recall correctly, the first really bad sound red flag really came with TV on the Radio a couple of years back, and they were jam packed with horns.

This came a few months after the SNL thing, and a big deal was made about her singing absolutely live. It was not the best idea.

lol the giant anarchy symbols on the giant prop drum kits

http://jakefogelnest.com/post/798738330

when i visited SNL set as a teenager they emphasized how the studio was like built especially for acoustics and is somehow detached from the rest of the building idk the details but i remember being shocked at how impressed they were w/ their acoustics when generally they sound pretty terrible. i think they bragged about how bands loved to play SNL for that reason -- i'm sure bands love to play SNL but probably not bc it makes them sound better.

maybe it sounds good live

broadcast sound and room sound are totally different things

I've never actually seen any game-changingly bad performances on the show

but that wasn't exactly a mixing issue per se

Sorry, yeah, I've deffo seen some bad performances on SNL, but none that I can recall were because of "a bad mix". I haven't seen the TVOTR one tho. Maybe I did! Saxes on the stairwell? Colin was in that one, too. I never really know what TVOTR are supposed to sound like, though, even with their records I'm like "are you sure? is that your final answer?" so who knows

interesting - i didn't realize that. i assumed if it sounded good live it would sound good on whatever expensive broadcasting hardware they must be using. or is the problem that they're not using high quality broadcasting equipment? you'd think they could afford it.

I would assume they have two totally separate mixes - one for the band/live audience and one for broadcast

^^^

also, if they are broadcasting the room mix out live, that would explain why it's often super horrible

yep

@ Mordy "expense" is the least of the issues. The mixer is strictly mixing for broadcast. There is one mix. The mixer is not even in the room, s/he is mixing in a separate room on monitors. There are just so many factors that could contribute to "bad mix", esp. if the mixer is confronted with too many channels.

In my experience the hardest thing about putting a Working Band on a studio stage with new faces at the desks is that the monitoring is completely different and most musicians don't know how to verbalize their needs. Every band that's big enough to appear on SNL will have a full-time monitor tech to ring out their wedges and get their vocals sounding good. And they'll have excited people in front of them to make them psychologically "not give a shit". Singers have gotten used to a particular environment and struggle in a new one. In my experience.

Ultimately tho I don't really care I don't watch SNL's musical performances for anything but research and/or lols

I do have big respect/awe for bands that really shine in the studio environment tho (Vampire Weekend)

goon tie can you confirm this rumor a musician friend told me: when appearing on a late nite show, for each "vocal mic" that is requested and set up, the band's appearance fees go up by like an additional $900 due to some union rules/regs?

so a band like ozomatli can rake in an extra $5k just for asking that each member have a vocal mic for a call and response part of the song they're performing

sorry everyone for shitting up the snl thread i'm sure there's a better place to ask

If that is/was true, it might explain why for years on "Late Night" the "band" would often just be one or two principals playing with the house band (e.g., two Pixies, two members of Pere Ubu, Ray Davies without any other Kinks, etc.)

gr80 I can't confirm that, I've never heard that, but it wouldn't at all surprise me. Singers can be members of both AFM and ACTRA, and both unions are known for special dispensations for special ""skills"".