Do you treat your live sound like your recordings?

[Roncore]

One thing that my band has a problem with, is live sound. We play a lot of small places, house parties and venues where usually the only things miked are the vocals and kick. We sound great on the album, but when it comes to live sound, it doesn't gel very well.

Do you like to EQ your guitar/bass like you would on the record? Any tips?

Sadly a lot of these shows we don't get a real chance to soundcheck Woe is me..

 

[K Odell]

nope, completely different in my opinion. Guitars need more mids generally in a live setting. You are battling the room so its generally a room to room thing for me as to how my guitar is setup. My settings will generally stay the same, but I do find myself changing the high end the most in a live situation depending on what the stage is made out of.

 

[xFkx]

well, having a good live sound is a road through hell. Kyle mentioning about more mids is a great tip (although don't overdo it). You will find that some amps/guitars /cabinets just have a tendency to just flub out or disappear live, even if the equalization seems correct. Same goes for bass amps, it's a tough job to have a massive and solid low end, without it turning into a subsonic blob of doom. You just have to gain experience and develop a ear for what will work. And then you get to drums, shity drumkits with crappy cymbals will just kill the deal, and you have no studio trickery to fall back on.

Well, I just wrote a whole bunch of nothing basically, you just have to gain experience on what works for your band and what doesn't

 

[drew_drummer]

I just put an 808 kick drum underneath everything, and play some shitty visuals. No-one cares about anything else anyway.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Live sound is one thing my band struggles with as well. Half the time we barely get a decent soundcheck.

And bass players usually love to be too loud which really muds up the mix.

 

[Sloan]

with live sound you are at the mercy of the room. if it fucking sucks, then it will fucking suck.

 

[LBTM]

If possible get your own sound guy that knows how to mix and have experience. I work with some bands. We do pre-production on my garage with a PA system. I run their guitars and bass through my computer and I treat them to sound good in the room, then everything else goes splits to a mixer with some outboard compressors. I mix them based on the sound coming out of the PA. In the clubs I record everything except amps (dis, drums, vocal splits). For the sound at the spot I've got some graphic equalizers that I'll adjust depending on the room. So the FOH gets the best possible sound that I've premixed + EQ'd on the spot and the band gets the same monitor mix every night. That works really good but it's a pain to move around all this equipment.

 

[Manicompression]

I agree that having your own soundguy is a big plus, preferably someone who has done FOH for a venue and worked in a club venue. The biggest mistake I think is when bands try to make the live show exactly like the recording sonically.

This thread title reminds me of when I saw All That Remains and Misery Signals years ago. Misery Signals came out and had a really good, polished rehearsal room vibe to their sound, lots of uncontrolled low end and attitude, everything sounded good and in tune but there were no bells and whistles. Then ATR played and they were all doing the in ear monitor thing with most of the stage volume coming through the wedges, I couldnt hear the guitar amps despite standing infront of them, and while the performance was technically good it didnt rock the club with any real power. I dont know exactly where the line is, I have nothing against "in ears" or rack systems. Nine Inch Nails used to play along with an Adat of backing tracks and the shows had a real power to them...

I see some people who latch onto the idea of trying to use IRs to get the recorded tone from their demo onstage and I wonder why. To make a tone fit for a recording you often sacrifice some of the low end that makes an amp in a room so gratifying to stand infront of. I think it may be a symptom of so many newer musicians playing with Superior Drummer rather than Joe Bob the real drummer down the street lol.

Also you have to consider the room your playing like others have said. If your doing the basement, small ass bar type venue then you dont want to be those douchebags who bring a light show and ego boxes.

 

[arvoitus]

As with recording, same thing applies for live sound: Get your shit together.
Don't show up with a crappy drumkit and midscooped solidstate amplifiers that are boosted with a Boss Metalzone being guided by out-of-tune bass guitar farts.

* Create a sound that works good live (Amplifiers with plenty of mid, bassguitars with a controlled low-end and a nice distorted sound (Sansamp or something).
* Don't use old strings or beat-up skins/cymbals, new skins/strings/cymbals just sound better.
* Make sure your instruments are in tune all the time.
* Don't play loud onstage (Most bars/clubs have shitty acoustics and playing louder only makes it worse, the softer you can play the better you will sound).
* Turn your amplifiers sideways on the stage so they won't blast into the audience.

 

[LBTM]

@Manicompression it's our job as "sound guys" to make a band sound as good as possible in whatever (album, live). now if that requires to try to copy album sounds or use automation and other studio techniques live why not? if they don't want to sound the same live they can ask for different tones or change their compositions.

 

[Manicompression]

@Manicompression it's our job as "sound guys" to make a band sound as good as possible in whatever (album, live). now if that requires to try to copy album sounds or use automation and other studio techniques live why not? if they don't want to sound the same live they can ask for different tones or change their compositions.

I think we agree, Sound guys who wont ride a fader for solos and dont atleast try to make the band sound good suck butthole. Of course some recording techniques carry over. My rant was just more or less saying that in 500ppl or less capacity clubs going to that next level of anal retentiveness can backfire and you can lose some of the attitude even if your fortunate enough to have your own soundguy/light show

 

[LBTM]

* Don't play loud onstage (Most bars/clubs have shitty acoustics and playing louder only makes it worse, the softer you can play the better you will sound).

From my experience, some bars/clubs have awful reverberation and the only way to "get rid" of it is to crank the volume higher that you would normally do. I actually hate this kind of thing. It's annoying when the volume is higher-than-it-should-be but sometimes it's the only solution to get a half-decent sound. I always work with the owner if possible in these situations to minimize the reverberations but sometimes it's just better to crank the volume.

 

[xFkx]

somehow I thought the gist of the thread was a bands live sound, not how a band should equalized, compressed and badonkadonked through the PA

if you have a lot of bad tonal choices even a committed foh dude will not save your ass.

I always thought (and I did this experiment), is that when you pull down the faders* it still sounds like music, just quiter, and not noisy garbage



*not including vocals

 

[if6was9]

Your quality of live sound is 80% you and 20% every other factor.

If your amp sounds shit in rehearsal then it's going to sound shit at a gig. If the bass is really muddy and out of control when you have band practise, being on a stage won't fix this. Same goes for drums, if you can't hear the snare during fast parts at practise then he's not hitting them hard enough when he plays fast. If the cymbals are overpowering everything then he's hitting them too hard. If the toms sound crap then they will still sound crap though a pa.

A huge thing is people letting their guitars feedback between notes and through stops. TONS of bands do this and it really hurts how you sound to a crowd. Being in tune and having your guitars properly intonated is another big one where many bands fail. Same goes for hums and noise from pedals and bad grounding. Sort that stuff out and you'll hear everything better. Less noise = better sound overall.

You need to sort out your gear and tones, noise problems and your bands dynamics yourself in the practise room before you gig. Once you get this sorted or at least take it into account you'll start sounding better. Talk amongst yourselves and find out what are the problem areas. Check out how other bands solve these issues, you'll notice bands that tour a lot have their shit together and sound great at most of their shows no matter what the venue is.

As someone else pointed out, when the PA is off it should still very much sound like a band playing and sound good. I do lots of live sound and I've found the biggest reason bands sound bad is because they expect the sound engineer to fix all the problems they have with their sound, problems that exist in the practise room also. It doesn't work like that and the engineer can only do so much.

 

[LBTM]

if6was9 i can't agree more. that's why a live sound engineer who takes his job seriously should only work with good bands and do pre-production on everything to get the best possible results. and that probably will not sacrifice you money as eventually you will start working with better bands that pay much better for someone who knows what he's doing. and not only live work. i've got a lot of bands i've worked live with in the studio for EPs/albums.

 

[arv_foh]

Well when you play at shitty places you shouldn't be surprised that it sounds like shit. Play at a real venue with a real PA that is capable of reproducing your sound. Places with a real PA and not a 2 speaker shitbox mic up more than the kick and vocals

When you're not mic'ing up bass and guitars you have to make sure all the levels are balanced. Bass supports gtrs but doesn't overwhelm, neither guitar louder than the other, lead guitarist uses a boost during solos. Make sure you're NOT louder than the PA but louder than the drums.. that's about all you can do. It's a crapshoot no matter how you swing it depending on how the room sounds