Yeah, what fucking idiots. And I bet you “caffed” them when they couldn’t get it right for you.
My theory (and it’s a totally unsupported theory) is that sound guys in general have accumulated so much hearing damage over the years that the tremendously loud, grotesquely distorted unlistenable wall of sound that represents most concerts * actually sounds good to them *.
I’d believe that 100%. Probably half of the “sound guys” I’ve ever encountered were VERY LOUD TALKERS, which indicates either that they’re used to being in excessively lound volumes, or their hearing’s so far gone that they have to talk loudly just to hear themselves.
This also brings to mind the old Far Side cartoon that was captioned something along the lines of “Danny’s last day working for the band” and the hand reaching out and turning up the SUCK knob.
Maybe I’ll type it all out sometime and put it on a Web site, but the short story is that we worked a gig for Evanescence and the rest of the band was nice to us.
~Tasha
Lets expand this argument to the studio environment. I was mixing something a few weeks ago, and some idiot hovering over my shoulder was totally backseat driving the mix. Of course since he used Garageband, he felt that me and my 10 years of technical expertise should bow to his leet knowledge.
Garageband is the MS paint of music recording.
The best PA sound I’ve ever heard in my life was at a jazz festival at my high school. It was a decent-sized auditorium, enough to hold the senior class which was probably about 650 people. I wasn’t sure they were using it until they turned it off. It wasn’t horribly loud, and it was clear. I think they just used a couple of big 3-way speakers up on the walls, that had 15" or 18" woofers and cone midranges; maybe those sound better than the ubiquitous 2-ways with compression drivers. On the other hand, at the pep rallies in the gym we were treated to contemporary dance music at full volume and hard clipping. I don’t think I have a point.
I gotta jump in here, too. I’m a bass player who’s done his fair share of shows, so I have some knowledge. Take it for what it’s worth.
Yes, there are some lousy sound guys out there. I’m not even going to deal with arena-sized rock acts where the main goal of most soundmen seems to be “How loud can we make the bass drum?” I’m going to talk about places most of us have either played in or heard bands: clubs down to holes-in-the-wall.
In clubs or smaller, the band is on a smallish stage in a smallish to medium room. Here’s where the trouble starts, because most bands like to think they’re playing an arena gig. And yes, I do tend to blame the band more often than the sound guy. Not always, but most of the time.
We start out with the loudest acoustic instrument in any band: the drums. For all the rock guys (and I’m one), we tend to love John Bonham. Doesn’t mean your drummer has to beat the crap out of his drums like Bonham when you’re playing in a tiny club. If the band doesn’t have plexiglass surrounds for the drums, and most don’t, Bonzo Jr. is going to bleed into every vocal mic and also cause hearing problems for everyone else. Just play with a lighter touch. Trust me. EVERYONE can hear the drums. I’m not picking on rock drummers exclusively, but they tend to be a problem more than drummers in jazz bands, for instance.
Once you’ve got the drummer under control, you must tame the guitar amp. I agree 100 percent with the other posts saying guitar amps are too powerful and aimed in the wrong direction. If you’re in a band and your guitar player tries to bring a 50 watt half stack (or god forbid the 100 watt full stack) on stage in a club, punch him in the face. Anything larger than a 30 watt combo is overkill, and even smaller is OK. Get a stand, tilt that small combo amp so it’s aimed at your head, and mic it up. Trust the sound guy to put you at an appropriate mix level for the mains. And if the sound guy and/or rest of the band tells the guitar player “You’re still too loud,” we’re not kidding.
Bass players are much easier. Although it takes more wattage to hear a bass than a guitar, you don’t need that 8x10 300 watt SVT stack, or the modern 1000 watt+ monsters. Get a nice 150 to 250 watt combo (2x10 or 1x15 speakers are all you need) with a good DI, put it on a stand aimed at your head, and let the sound guy take a direct line. Balance out your sound with the rest of the band and you’re in.
The last challenge is keyboards, if a band has them. They’re usually easy unless the keyboard player likes to eq so much low end you can’t hear the bass - or the bass player and the keys are playing in the same range. We know some of you can play bass lines, too. Doesn’t mean you can play with the same feel as your bass player. Take things up an octave or so and keep the peace. Can you tell I’m a bass player?
The main thing is turn down, don’t start a volume war, don’t aim your amps at your calves, and try to work with the sound man instead of against him. Most of them aren’t jerks. If you’ll arrive early enough to actually talk to the guy and get whatever soundcheck you can, things will go much smoother. As someone else said, buy him a beer and let him know you appreciate a job well done. You’ll get great treatment the next time you play that club.
BTW - guitar, bass, and keyboard players in clubs - your amps are your monitors. PA monitors are for vocals. If you ask for the instruments in PA monitors, you’re asking for trouble. The singer can’t hear himself as well, you can’t hear yourself if you sing harmony, etc.
I want to use this as my new sig!
My general opinion is that for the most part almost ALL bands are about three times too loud for their venue. I am a sound designer/ enginneer. I have toured and done house sound for many, many venues. If the artist is willing to work with me, I can generaly give them the mix they like for the house we’re in. That said, almost everyone wants it LOUD. (“Our amps go to eleven.”)
Musicians and soundmen listen up! If your audiences ears are ringing at the end of the evening, it is too loud!!! That kind of volume makes all of the different sounds blend together as white noise and kills any chance of the vocals being understood. I bet if you pay attention, that you will notice that many times at concerts that the back up band has the best mix. That’s because the headliner won’t let them get too loud. When the headliiner comes on they are much louder and it spoils the mix. IF a particular human ear wont register any sound over 110db, then when the mix is 120db, all of the different voices and instruments plateau at 110 making it as though there is no mix. This is bad enough at a stadium concert, but unacceptible in a club.
Actually, it is. One of the toughest thing to do is reproducing an accoustic guitarr through a PA. And as you say, it’s an art. Had it been science, there would be formulas and algorithms to get the setting straight.
Actually, not that many. When they have that amount of equipment, the sound tends to be good. Very seldom crappy. Bad sound invariably comes at smaller gigs.
Did he have “ten thousand dollars worth of complicated looking rack-mounted black boxes covered in flashing lights and a 36-channel mixing board as big as a 68 Caddie”. If not, then it kinda negates your rant.
There’s an old saying Garbage in - Garbage out (or Shit in - Shit out). If that’s the case, then the sound person (there are women doing this job too, you know) can’t “fix it in the mix”, which usually is the sollution prefered by lazy musicians.
The outrage of your rant was fine, the substance - not so much.
While we’re at it, let’s talk about movie sound. I can’t watch a movie unless I have the volume control in my hand to alternate between music sequences and conversational tone (which is unintelligible unless I turn it up to “11”). Ye GADS!
To the OP, I say A-fucking-men! And I’ve been playing in and going to see bands for nearly 20 years now.
Certainly goes against my experience.
Words to live by. 
Fuckin’ A, totally.
My friend’s band played at these smaller bars a few years ago, and the mix was so freaking loud. I had to wear earplugs not only to protect my ears, but to hear the music clearly. Honest to God, the sound was so much clearer and better when I had my ears stuffed with neon yellow/pink swirled foam.
To the OP—Preach it brother!
I actually changed my songwriting to cut out synth & theremin (although I still toy around a little with the theremin) because live mixes never did a passable job with these instruments. In over a dozen different venues, the soundguy only seemed capable of mixing bass/drums/guitar and sometimes vocal mics. I never had a problem-free show in regard to my keys. In fact, the only local acts I’ve seen with a decent synth sound have, like you did, provided their own live submix.
Nothing is worse than when you think you’re playing a great gig, and the time comes to sing that big 3-part harmony only to find that the lead mic is on, but the back-ups are turned down, leaving your big harmony part as a sad sounding vocal solo. I’ve asked about that and learned that back-up mics will cause noise in the overall mix, so the sound-genius turns them down to lower the noise. Of course, why even fucking have them up there then? Figure out the cause of the noise, and aim your mics/monitors appropriatley. I manage in my basement rehearsal room, that has less open space and tons of opportunity for feedback, and I’m not that smart with this stuff. If I can do it, soundguy getting paid by the club can do it too.
This thread tends to help make my point about musicians.
Board location makes a huge difference too. My crazy friends who’ve been playing forever, (no professional aspirations. They’ve been packing a location for years, but they are just decently successful bunch of hobbiests) don’t play venue or festivals where the sound board is behind the stage, because no matter how talented the sound guy is, he’ll never know what it sounds like out front.
But there are also a lot of sound guys who are partially deaf because they never protected their ears during all those years of loud crowded venues. One guy always makes everything sound like crap because he honestly can NOT hear the higher end stuff well. So anyone with a full hearing range and good frequency response thinks it sounds way too toppy: neighbohood dogs must shriek when he’s behind the board because he cranks the upper end up so high.
When my buddies mixed their own CD last time around, they had to have an engineer remix it. Tommy can’t hear bass levels worth crap anymore and his mixes were so bass heavy, to the regular listener, his mixes sounded muddy. He keeps cranking up the bass.
Warehouses venues can be challenging because sound bounces around so much. It can sound great if you happen to be in one particular spot. So to the sound engineer, it may sound great, but if you’re anywhere else in the room it’s crap. I was lucky enought to be at a warehouse event where the sound was awesome. So it can be done.
I was thinking the same thing.
~Tasha
I think a lot of modern DVD players, or maybe it was the surround-sound receivers, have a compression function you can turn on to even things out.
Movie theaters are also often too loud though.
If any of you soundie-types are looking for a new job, the guy(s) at House of Blues Orlando suck giant hairy yak balls.
I must have been to fifty concerts in that building, and the vocals were audible at, gosh, maybe five. Two of which were Bowling for Soup.
Your point about how musicians all hate tone-deaf morons being in charge of how their music is mixed live, you mean?