I have a performance coming up and I’m concerned I’ll lose my workflow when the gig happens. Only second time gigging. So Im just working with a digitakt, syntakt and Tascam mixer. i had a thought a while back that if I put my bass sounds on the left channel in the syntakt and put all other sounds on the right. So channel 1 bass syntakt, channel 2 perc and synths etc. will these present in 2 x mono on a system. I know a lot of systems are in mono. I do know the gentleman who designed the sound system so I can find out if it’s In stereo or mono.
Hope someone can give me more assurance that I am not being stupid haha
If your audio hits a summing mixer (collecting everything into a monoaural signal) before going to the amp and speakers, then everything will come straight up the center when played over the sound system regardless of the panning you set up on your machines. I’d make very sure that everything is going to be brought together and summed to mono before committing to that workflow though, I can’t see much advantage to doing it that way.
That approach is helpful if you want to record kick and bass separate from other elements for further processing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a live setup unless you have some external processing gear that you like on certain elements of the mix and you need pseudo individual outs. Another thing to consider that the fx can’t be used in tracks you make because you can’t hard pan them so the wet effect will also be summed to the kick/bass parts. If the pa system is mono everything will end up mono and if the pa system is stereo it ain’t a problem whether you have mono/stereo or a blend of audio from your equipment.
I’ll suggest run both devices thru the tascam separately on 2 stereo channels. If you need faders for live manipulation of individual track levels connect some kind of midi fader/knob device to control the mixer pages of the elektron’s.
Another tip for ease of mind when playing live for audience: record some of your tracks or some other audio and connect a “fail” device with that audio to the mixer. A phone or any device that can play back is fine, just in case you need to reboot or whatever can happen in a worst scenario with your gear you can mix in some temporary audio while troubleshooting.
One of the points of playing live though is that things can go wrong, isn’t it?. And that’s okay. It’s live :). Otherwise, what’s the point ? That bit of risk will make you more alert as well. I guess that’s personal but having a fail save would have an influence on how I perform. And if something fails you will learn so much. It will also make you more comfortable letting things go as the more you fail and the more bad situations you encounter, the more you will know about how to navigate through them in the future.
Regarding outputting bass left and the rest right: this is kind of a waste of recourses and I think it complicates things more than it should. Best to make sure your work sounds the best you can with the tools at hand within the instrument. That includes stereo imaging. That way it doesn’t matter where you play or if a system is mono or stereo. Just create the music in a way that you want it to sound and don’t overthink what kind of external factors are at play.
…no matter what kind of sound system u play, it will have some sort of subs, speakers for the low end…and those will work behind an overall frequency split somewhere between 120 to 80 hz and all that will be delivered in mono for sure …
do u already play with that tascam mixer?
if not, i hardly suggest to keep it simple and straight forward as possible and run the syntakt via the digitakt inputs and just practice a bit how fast u access the internal 2nd filters of both machines, where u have easy and precise options to tame or push ur low end elements…besides that, get used to play with mutes on ur devices and ur good to go…
will sound much more precise impact, is way easier and safer to play and means way less effort instead of sorting throughout all ur content just to pan hard internally…
apart from the fact, that such multi sound machines with just one combined physical stereo sum out are never well suited for such plans…
+1 for this. So if you’re using delay or reverb you will hear it on both outputs.
Overall a lot of excellent advice in this thread One thing that I’d like to add is that I never pan stuff when mixing, in case the sound system is stereo (some samples & synths do have stereo information bc of layering/chorus/etc but they all sit in the centre).
Badass But to be honest, i think this is why you managed to make a living with music and im still jamming in the attic. Entrepreneurs mindset, dare and take opportunities and don’t let fear sit in your way.
Possibly
Im very anxious before gigs though. Always have been. To the point of feeling more or less sick sometimes. Also because of that. But it also gets me in that high concentration flow state kind of thing. :). But yeah makes sense that pushing by through that is quite difficult and fearful at times, but the pay off is wonderful.
One thing that I’d like to add is that I never pan stuff when mixing, in case the sound system is stereo (some samples & synths do have stereo information bc of layering/chorus/etc but they all sit in the centre).
But to be honest, i think this is why you managed to make a living with music and im still jamming in the attic. Entrepreneurs mindset, dare and take opportunities and don’t let fear sit in your way. 
