I find that starting from the levels that the arranger’s factory presets come with is usually best from a balance and headroom standpoint. Some very good engineers have determined that there is no internal overload, and they tend to be pretty good for a good balanced sound.

I’m afraid you need to explain to your friend that sorry, your arranger can’t split those parts out without considerable compromise in the sound (loss of effects on one or the other) and that no arranger (and darn few TOTL workstations) have split out parts that keep full effects.

They need to understand that playing with tracks (or an arranger) is a fundamental shift in the way you perform. As I say so often, with a live band with backline amps and individual monitor sends, most musicians play ON TOP of what they are hearing, and then a soundman at a mixer turns them down in the house mix (hopefully!) so everything is in balance from the audience’s ears. And whatever they want to hear is dialed into their monitors.

But playing with an arranger or SMF’s or stereo audio backing tracks, you have to play INSIDE the mix, you have to play at the level that the front of house engineer would have put you. Which is very often WAY lower than live musicians are used to.

But the nature of the beast is that this is what they have to do. It takes practice, it takes restraint, it takes changing your fundamental approach from being all about YOU to all about the live mix. Your bandmates are no longer guitarists, bassists etc.. They are now final mix engineers.

Even we, as experienced arranger players so often fall into the trap. Most demos put their solo parts WAY louder than a mixing engineer would put them.

There’s really one cure for it… constant live recording of the final mix. Constant self criticism. Constantly ask yourself, ‘If I were mixing this as an album, would I put my parts this loud?’. I’m afraid the honest answer is usually ‘No, I wouldn’t!’.

So you do it again with the parts turned down, re-record and ask the same question until the answer is ‘Yes’. And then that’s where you learn to play. WITHIN the mix. Your bandmates need to go through this process. But if they do, they’ll be better musicians for it, because music is collaborative. You can’t play as part of a collective if you aren’t hearing everything (including yourself) as a balanced whole.

There’s only one way they can keep playing the way they do. Separate keyboards for each sound. Old school! A drum machine. A bass synth. Several keyboards making ONE sound each. Then they can all have a completely different mix, hearing what each one wants. Bet you don’t want to do that!

We have (hopefully!) learned to play within the mix. They will have to as well…