Rig Tour: Post Malone Front-of-House Engineer, Burton Ishmael

[@sweetwater]

Enjoy this epic, all-access look at Post Malone’s live rig with front-of-house engineer Burton Ishmael, and learn more about Post Malone's Front-of-House setup 👉 sweetwater.sjv.io/c/3163935/789347/11319/?u=www.sweetwater.com/insync/rig-tour-post-malones-foh-engineer-burton-ishmael/&subID=0jQfWYGxQP0-PostMalone

[@officialdjswan]

FOH Engineers are EVERYTHING to us, and Burton's talent is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. Reminds me of my concert production days as an advanced publicist with Bono & U2's ZooTV 1993 North American Tour watching their football stadium-sized concerts from the FOH Engineer's elevated platform in the center of the field.

[@FOHBurton]

@@officialdjswan thanks so much for your kind words

[@gingerichben]

Burton probably doesn't remember me, but I met him twice 20ish years ago near St Louis. I had just turned 16, he is the first person who ever showed me Smaart and he gave me (convinced my boss he should give me) a Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook, which I still have today... I've been in audio full time for most of my life partially thanks to the little bit I learned from him... He is one of the best!

[@michaeldrainer2299]

I was just reminiscing as well @ben. Burton taught me quite a bit in a very short time. It’s been cool watching yours and his careers excel over the years.

[@SafiTheProducer]

This is super dope to see. Burton don’t know me but he’s my “mentors”mentor. I have built a whole career off of the knowledge has has passed down. #appreciation post

[@officialdjswan]

St. Louis' jazz and arts education legacy is #legendary and #strong #milesdavis #gracebumbry #scottjoplin

[@rocksully]

This is impressive. I wonder what kind of rig he would use if he was mixing a full live band. Wow.

[@joraxani]

Post uses a full band!

[@gabrielrox777]

I really like what this guy says apart from the gear. That is something that comes with experience

[@lelhothedevil]

Yes!! Please do more of these FOH Tour Videos!

[@matthijsblomjous3671]

so great to see all these price ranges of gear mixed in, really says something about the engineer really knowing what he likes and not just having shit for the sake of it. I truly did not expect that audiofuse to be there, love it

[@FOHBurton]

Thank you for your kind words

[@diekkrid1207]

The massive passive is magic indeed. The Bettermaker Limiter is handsdown my favorite limiter ever. It does absolute magic.

[@austinbridge]

I love his shirt and his message about thankfulness to God. Burton gave great advice overall!

[@vivzermattjigosevilla]

agree!!! :)

[@Kampsy]

Yoooo those little nuggets at the end… inspired me man. I have the same outlook as you with my journey in the music industry. Glad I stumbled on this video. Love your FOH setup

[@AaronKelley]

I love his shirt. He also seems like a class act!

[@Studio-Rat]

Got my first big boy gig. Working on a Wing right now. The words are going to help these next few years of growth.

[@FOHBurton]

Every thing you do day by day and time invested to be better towards your big boy gig … is money in the bank

[@stephentyler4352]

Burton is one classy man. A+ for this content.

[@ronaldcoleman9370]

@SWEETWATER... You guys are just getting better and better with entertainment and behind the scenes CONTENT!!!! It really opens the mind of possibilities and life inspiration!!!! Truly inspired!!! Thanks #SWEETWATER!!!

[@sweetwater]

🙌🙌

[@chronicmango]

Man, what a lovely video. So helpful and what powerful life advice. Thank you so much Burton!

[@IWannaGoMissing]

If y’all get a chance you should talk to Lee McMahon who mixes The 1975, he has a really nice rack of outboard and a little nearfield rig with him at FOH but more than that has some very clever techniques regarding automation and footswitches

[@damroyaltyxxii]

thank you so much for the little words of wisdom & encouragement at the end, really needed to hear that

[@FOHBurton]

Keep pushing

[@Ibantar]

I envy you my brother😏. May you continued to be blessed with your talents and gifts. Loved the video!!👊🏾

[@FOHBurton]

Thank you for those kind words Matt I appreciate it…

[@voicesofvinyl]

Terrific video! One FOH tour I would love to see in the future is Chris Stapleton.

[@erikwurgler]

What a lovely man. Such wisdom.

[@vivzermattjigosevilla]

agree!!! 😀

[@alchemydrive]

I was at the Post Malone concert on Tuesday here in Stockholm. I spotted the Avalon 737 on the top of the rack from the distance. Anyway, great sounding vocals during his performance. Nice work :)

[@ksinghldn]

Nice, the lunchbox rack gear is interesting to learn about; alot of use of maag eq which makes sense.

[@ProDrummer]

I am totally into analogue gear in a digital environment! I hate doing all processin in a digital desk. Sounds like crap. But with outboard gear, man.. heaven! Like in the old times!

[@robroilen4441]

Putting a $7,000 piece of gear (Manley Massive Passive) into a chain and then literally doing nothing with it is completely absurd. The industry is full of people doing stuff like this and then everyone wonders why everything is so expensive. All this maximalism absolutely snowballs and ends up getting paid for by the fans.

[@mailsoundace]

Liked this video much. Please keep posting more and more videos on live concert and the Pro gig used for the show.

[@danyavilaoficial]

The moral and philosophical advice at the end IS the real worthy part if this video. Check it out.

[@FOHBurton]

I love that you pointed that out!! Thank you

[@pullman1958]

Boy there is a lot to unpack here. Let me say right off that diligence, perseverance,reliability , and gratitude do go a long way in this business. Burton has that right. Knowing what your doing helps as well, I believe he mentioned that also. I wish I could have seen the PA. He made no mention of what brand / model PA he was using. 4 hangs of 16 per side in an arena really? Where do you point all of that. 3 hangs gets you to 270 degrees and 16 deep on that third hang. Enough said. The FOH setup was impressive, and everybody has there own way of handling the signal that is sent to you. Myself I prefer a more straight forward approach. If I can’t get the sound I like from the mic,the console and the PA I’m pretty sure stringing together a half dozen dynamic processors is not going to help me. All do respect ,sound is a pretty subjective thing and I guess the way you achieve it is as well.

[@gabbajon5654]

thats a big desk for mixing one bloke haha unless this tour had a band idk local crew must love him

[@skippster86]

Cool he uses such analog gear compared to rack presets

[@wrekdbeats]

Dope shirt!

[@FOHBurton]

That’s right

[@NoCamoJon]

Agreed!

[@diegooliveirabenjamin]

Magic!

[@samhurley180]

Burton, you are a savage 🤘🏽

[@AaronDaniels123]

Love this dudes heart!!!

[@gabriel_moulin]

What about the Auto-Tune?

[@mrcrud5]

Looks like it's on the playback rig video they did with Willie Linton

[@mateorincon3448]

Probably just a Real Time-Tune from that Waves Soundgrid

[@iamjord]

Love the T-shirt!!!

[@jjjohny_a5965]

kinda looks like its also set up for live recording

[@tonih.3911]

because it is. The DAW that they use for live can also be recorded via Ethernet or XLR from the stagebox

[@MrJonathanflick]

Love your shirt!

[@ChinoMagliba]

Sweet rig!!!

[@bristar3004]

Great video! I noticed he didn’t actually say the name/model of his speaker rig though 👀

[@FOHBurton]

Lacoustics

[@Jakeman90210]

The only thing I wanted to know was the PA. He made it sound like he doesn’t even mix the show live? Is there no band? Is it just 1 mic and all of the pro tools tracks? He tells the studio monitors he used to mix the “show”? So it’s pre-mixed? Huh?

[@Bobby_Uterus]

What do you have to mix for a hip-hop show? Aren’t you just hitting play on something and then adjusting a microphone?

[@bt719]

Good grief I remember just old sliders and knobs!

[@misterkenova6695]

So good. Cheers!

[@kingsleyfelixotu]

love you Burton

[@wwoo4809]

Love the shirt!

[@mvilla36]

Sweet!!

[@cbshaw]

He didn’t mention the autotune in the vocal chain. I’m curious how that is implemented and which plugin he is using.

[@FOHBurton]

Auto tune is done in playback world

[@SebastianJeri]

bc autotune is not part of mixing

[@stingray1irwin0]

@@FOHBurton pitch correction is used on live vocals all the time. you either have no idea what you're talking about, or are being obsequious and pedantic about WHICH pitch correction plug-in.

[@stingray1irwin0]

@@SebastianJeri wrong. it is all the time. it sucks, but it is.

[@SebastianJeri]

@@stingray1irwin0 is not part of mixing. The vocal is sent from de DJ/Producer to the mixing engineer with autotune already, so it is not part of the mixing chain. Fact, not my opinion. Thats why is not mentioned here.

[@duvass]

Nice. a lot o gear for playback.

[@elishahocking2885]

U blew that speaker in columbus. But you made up for it in Tennessee

[@GMM8891]

@Sweetwater so is there 2 different vocal chins? Monitor n FOH. Or is the FOH vox chain after the Monitor vox chain?

[@FOHBurton]

There are two vocal chains..

[@visualimagery9919]

What school will show you everything he does???

[@JB-HisDisciple]

Pretty nice!! But I Love the Shirt! #HeGotUp

[@andreahawkins5890]

Wow

[@dmbdwn]

the vocal chain is cool and all but have you ever heard bout 40 flyin subs?😂 yeah.

[@landonlewsaw1762]

That's a lot of gear and processing for 4 inputs.

[@rolandmdill]

I wonder where he gets his gear from

[@itsadvm]

WE WANT MORE OF POP ARTIST ENGINEER !

[@LARGERTHANLIFE21]

No f*cking way a 500 series chain is being using in arenas🤯

[@gregmcveigh9966]

What brand of speakers on the hangs?

[@FOHBurton]

Lacoustics k2 and KSB subs

[@gregmcveigh9966]

@@FOHBurton got it. And I realize this is a Sweetwater video - but what sound company are you out with?

[@FOHBurton]

PRG provided the speaker system

[@paulmiller657]

Seems like a lot of over kill for a one man show! With the technology you can get on Behringer or SSL you don’t need all those racks of gear!

[@demonicsweaters]

they want to make it seem like it's not just a guy singing karaoke with autotune

[@comalation6614]

At first I was thinking he is compensating for something with huge pointless rig for one man show, but it all cleared up at the end lol... Champ move to leave out the actual system that delivers the sound.

[@modelcitizen1977]

I’m able to record the show, track for track……..because it’s already 95% prerecorded and I’m really just tracking Posty’s vocal and guitar on any given night. What an easy gig.

[@alexh7336]

Parkinson's law

[@Scott__C]

Well, he's got the gig. Go convince PM to hire you.

[@danymalsound]

Nothing easy about being in that pit amid 10's of thousands of people...

[@stevengangaram2825]

The fact that you said this is easy clearly shows how much you don’t know about pro audio. Mixing at a high standard takes years of practice, and in a massive arena like that it’s much more difficult to make anything sound good.

[@Scott__C]

@@stevengangaram2825 Truth.

[@SonicVibe]

weird i can do all this with just an Ipad lol

[@jas_bataille]

Oh yeah so you do FOH for top touring artist with just an ipad? Please show us. Doing this in real-time + soundcheck in an arena is lightyears away from doing this in the comfort of your home studio with an iPad, which wouldn't even be close to the needed reliability and hands-on control.

[@duvass]

Moneyy money money, give me free gear, have o idea, but is free

[@edo12310]

Mans using more outboard gear on his liverig then i have in my whole studio 😂 very nice

[@johnkowalsky303]

mixing into backtrax..... schwag

[@steakandeggsmedia]

Wow. That's a fancy vocal chain for lip-syncing. :)

[@FOHBurton]

Absolutely no lip syncing here .. he is the real deal

[@angry-steve]

I could do the same on a x32, people love to over engineer