Live dudes: your take on low freq's ?

[ze kink]

Hell, I occasionally do free gigs just if I like music, have some free time and want to distract from studio grindings.

I do this every once in a while too with a couple friends' bands. Usually with the pretext that I'm going to experiment and get my part of their raider's beers afterwards. I've probably learnt the most about running FOH on these gigs, because there's no pressure or rush, it's just having fun with some mates and getting to see a good gig for free.

When I'm hired to run FOH, I'll do everything as fast as possible and just using things I've tried and trust.

And completely agreed on the own sound guy part.

 

[John_C]

It's EXACLY the band's fault if they don't have their own soundguy. For me, thats means that they are don't giving a shit about their sound. To rely on some random dude is just stupid.

In my experience working/playing at festivals, the resident guys are always half-decent and the touring guys range from pretty damn good (a few) to completely abysmal (most).

As a matter of fact, the only touring engineer who i was genuinely impressed with when i worked at glastonbury last year was the only female engineer on the bill. She actually used her ears instead of just turning everything up louder than everything else. Also, most of the in house guys produced good sounding mixes at reasonable volumes, wheras almost all the touring guys suffered horrendous fader creep leading to poor gain staging and overall nasty sound.

 

[egan.]

It's EXACLY the band's fault if they don't have their own soundguy. For me, thats means that they are don't giving a shit about their sound. To rely on some random dude is just stupid. You see, as an artist, it's YOUR decisions that affect the perception of your music by other people, be it the choice of label, the choice of studio to record in or the choice of your soundguy (or absence of one, in which case, I'm sorry for you). And don't tell me about money, there's always some guys around who'll do it for you for free or for very low price, just to get experience.

Even a "free" guy costs you significant money on tour and if you're getting some guy who's "just trying to get experience" you'll probably do as well or better with the house guy at decent clubs.
I've seen some shitty house guys but I've seen some great ones as well including most of the guys I know who tour (when they're home).

 

[burst]

Even a "free" guy costs you significant money on tour

Yeah, and to rely on club guys is going to cost you that less people will hear your music the way you intended. So it's up to you to decide.

Besides, tour over here are extremely hard to organize, especially with my band's material (dillinger'esque mathcore or something) because it's not mainstream, but we do take full backline, some P.A.(esp. the subs), digital mixing console and all the mics so we can sound consistent from gig to gig. It's surely costs money, we are not making any money on those tours, even spending somewhat, but for us it's only way to do it, because our stuff tends to sound like white noise if sound is not good. AND I was under impression that this kind of stuff is a lot easier to pull off in countries that are more developed that ours, and with bands that are better than we are, which is easy, since we totally fucking suck compared to you guys

 

[drew_drummer]

I'm no sound guy, but I feel I have a pretty decent understanding of the principles. When we play gigs, it is often to about 60-100 people as we're still relatively unknown. Basically the lower tier of venues, where they don't have much equipment, and the sound guy barely even talks to the bands. The drum sound usually comes first, and that's it... that's the drum sound for the NIGHT. I've never understood that personally, as everyone hits differently. But whatever... They only ever mic up the kick drum, sometimes the snare, very rarely the toms. Often enough all they mic up is the kick drum and the vocal.

Now when your drummer is as much of a beast as our drummer is, and your guitar isn't mic'd up or feed through the monitors, your amp NEEDS to be loud on stage. No two ways about it. If you want to get feedback, your amp needs to be loud. If you want to get a nice even spread of frequencies and a character to your guitar sound, your amp needs to be cooking.

I'm really bored of FOH guys always turning the guitars down for the sake of the kick drum and bass guitar. I know when I'm too loud, because I know the songs. The engineer has this preconceived notion of what a band should sound like, and often enough it matches up with a METULLZZZ band... which we are not. So we shouldn't be mixed like one.

/rant

 

[Danny Drama]

This is kinda sorta on topic, I went to see Whitesnake a couple weeks ago, I've seen them a shit ton of times before but this gig... Damn, that was the best live sound I've heard in years.

 

[if6was9]

I'm no sound guy, but I feel I have a pretty decent understanding of the principles. When we play gigs, it is often to about 60-100 people as we're still relatively unknown. Basically the lower tier of venues, where they don't have much equipment, and the sound guy barely even talks to the bands. The drum sound usually comes first, and that's it... that's the drum sound for the NIGHT. I've never understood that personally, as everyone hits differently. But whatever... They only ever mic up the kick drum, sometimes the snare, very rarely the toms. Often enough all they mic up is the kick drum and the vocal.

Now when your drummer is as much of a beast as our drummer is, and your guitar isn't mic'd up or feed through the monitors, your amp NEEDS to be loud on stage. No two ways about it. If you want to get feedback, your amp needs to be loud. If you want to get a nice even spread of frequencies and a character to your guitar sound, your amp needs to be cooking.

/rant

I do sound in alot of small venues and pretty much always mic everything for this very reason. That way if you've a beast of drummer, you can push the guitars and pull down the snare/toms and if it's a weak drummer you can do the opposite. It's a control thing, if you have a mic on it then you have the option of using it. if you don't then during the gig if the sound sucks you're powerless to help it. The amount of times I get people telling me "why did you mic the toms/snare/guitars?" is frankly crazy. Hell even if they just get used for monitors it was worth the extra 2 minutes it took to set the mics up.

Also, regarding the touring without a sound engineer. Most bands can barely afford to go on tour. Adding an extra person for travel, accomodation and food is expensive and I don't know anyone that would go out on tour for nothing and work every night. I know I certainly wouldn't do it. Even if the sound guys only getting 25e a night which is insanely cheap, a 14 day tour soon adds up for bands expense.

 

[burst]

+1 to micing everything, the only good way to go. For me, small venues is usually a battle with cymbals, those fuckers are always VERY loud, so there's only two options: to dampen them a bit with duct tape or to make EVERYTHING ELSE LOUDER. Asking drummer to hit them lighter is not an option

drew_drummer, regarding your perception of your guitar levels, remember, it's VERY subjective. I've been there many, many times when some band member is like "Maaaaannn, why there's no me in the mix? Put me up, duuuude!" when in reality, there's so much of him that you can't fucking hear anything else.

About touring, if6was9, I guess I can understand your point, our goals are different. In Russia, you just can't make much profit off tours, esp. with our music, so for us it was never about the money, it's about doing what we like most.

+1 to "Live and tours" sub-forum by the way....

 

[drew_drummer]

drew_drummer, regarding your perception of your guitar levels, remember, it's VERY subjective. I've been there many, many times when some band member is like "Maaaaannn, why there's no me in the mix? Put me up, duuuude!" when in reality, there's so much of him that you can't fucking hear anything else.

If I can't hear myself on stage when I'm standing right next to my amp, when our drummer and bassist and other guitarist are all blaring out... then I'm too quiet.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but I have a very good sense of when something is too loud, and I don't put much faith in your average small club engineer... sorry.... musician-pretending-to-be-a-live-engineer...

 

[egan.]

Drew, w/o being in your shoes it's impossible to know but I have definitely been in situations where the guitar amps are so loud that they #1 aren't in the mains at all and #2 dictate the entire rest of the mix. Guitar amps carry in a really weird way were 30' out most of what you get is the grating stuff. What I would suggest to you to keep the volume you want and work with the sound engineer is to side fire the guitar cabs from the left and right of stage. This is often a really great compromise allowing the FOH guy more mix control while keeping things the way you are used to hearing them.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I haven't been in a band for 6 years now, and I have been to enough live shows to know there are a plethra of horrible fucking house and sound company guys...

Shit I've been to enough semipro shit (in flames for example) to know that even the tour guys suck ass.

And it fucking floors me, why do your job so shitty? Doesn't that make the job shittier?

Like I said, congrads to the guys who do it and do it well. But you are most definitely the minority. Most of the time you will find a 40 something behind the desk who is butt hurt that zeplin isn't still making records. His mic stands are shit and he has no problem hanging a 57 over the top of an amp (WTF if your going to do that then sell them and buy e609s).

 

[arv_foh]

Ok so there are 4 main variables that you have in any live sound situation (my opinion of course)

1. the room (not applicable if the show is outdoors, but wind can be a factor at outdoor shows depending on your distance from the PA)
2. the equipment
3. the band
4. the skill of the engineer

If any of these one things is lacking, it could destroy the mix. I mixed a metal show in an old church a couple of months ago, and just imagine trying to mix a modern metal song that is coated in 80s style cavernous, natural reverberation. It didn't help the fact that the bands wanted their guitars blasting at 110dB from the backline and even louder from the monitor wedges. The bands that had the quietest monitor mixes had the best FOH mixes; some rooms don't have this issue but you sometimes it is necessary to adjust to where you are playing (ie side washing guitars in smaller venues).

Guitar volume is especially problematic at smaller venues and can easily ruin a mix, because often times these venues don't have enough PA and the guitars don't even end up in the mains because you have to use every ounce of that power to get the vocals above the guitars. Some guitar tones just won't cut; no amount of EQ can bring in mids that aren't there.

If you're in the crowd, a lot of the time mix issues can be solved by moving throughout the venue until you find the "sweet spot." It'll probably be near the FOH desk, but not always. If you think the subs are too loud, you can always move back, because we have to mix for the people at the back of the crowd too, and that sub has to carry a reasonable amount of distance. If you can't hear the vocals and are near the front of the stage, move back.

Most of the tour guys I work with tend to be pretty good; I'd say about 70 percent good to 30 percent bad. Anyways, enough rambling, but everyone makes it seem like it's always the engineer's fault, but the engineer can't upgrade the equipment the day of the show, change the room to have ideal acoustics, or teach guitar players to have good tone

However, there are some dudes that just plain don't give a shit that make everyone else look bad, but I think you have that with any profession, and that's why those guys work at shit bars without adequate equipment.

 

[xFkx]

Yeah, I second arv.

Have some understanding for touring guys, the amount of wierd stuff you can encounter in a club is just mindnumbing. I always stress to have a decent check for my band before a show, more for my comfort than theirs, becouse I can adress many issues and I have time to resolve them.

But like i said, shit happens and you just have time for a quick line check and you set the mix during the first 1-2 songs (i can't even put into words how stressful this can get).

Rooms tune diferently so you have to make the right decisions quickly, and sometimes thay can be quite odd, but they work.

Mics get knocked over.. but that's nothing... a dbx driverack in a club once froze on me and all the crossover settings went to hell. I'm sure most of you guys would say I did a shitty mix

I know that you might point out that sometimes the club dude can do the stuff better, and it might be the case from time to time becouse he know his room and equipment, but i'm hired not only becouse i mix the band live, but also becouse I know the songs in and out and i can ride the faders, throw in vocal effects, boost the solos the moment they start and not halfway through they started, and I know the bands monitoring preferences (if the monitors are done from the FOH console)

 

[drew_drummer]

Drew, w/o being in your shoes it's impossible to know but I have definitely been in situations where the guitar amps are so loud that they #1 aren't in the mains at all and #2 dictate the entire rest of the mix. Guitar amps carry in a really weird way were 30' out most of what you get is the grating stuff. What I would suggest to you to keep the volume you want and work with the sound engineer is to side fire the guitar cabs from the left and right of stage. This is often a really great compromise allowing the FOH guy more mix control while keeping things the way you are used to hearing them.

Yeah man, we already try to do that. Some stages are quite limiting though in these smaller places. Sometimes you're literally playing on a triangle no bigger than the drumkit. Gah.

 

[if6was9]

Mics get knocked over.. but that's nothing... a dbx driverack in a club once froze on me and all the crossover settings went to hell. I'm sure most of you guys would say I did a shitty mix

Had the exact same thing happen me at a gig. Stressful!

 

[egan.]

Mics get knocked over.. but that's nothing... a dbx driverack in a club once froze on me and all the crossover settings went to hell. I'm sure most of you guys would say I did a shitty mix

Another +1 to Arv here.
I just had to add to your DBX a story a crazy one of my own. I was on an LS-9 a few weeks ago and the volume of channel 1 started going crazy. The physical fader was stationary but I could see on the display that the internal one was flying all over the place (-100 to +10)! Obviously the fader had gone bad and luckily I had an open channel but talk about stressful.

 

[-Noodles-]

This is wildly off topic but I'll add in one extremely controversial bit of opinion:

If musicians would learn how to use ear plugs when playing in venues - there would be a lot less problems with their wedges.*

The amount of difficulties that I've experienced as a direct result of bad amp or cab positioning, bad tone and 'more me' guitarists makes life go bad quickly. If you place your cab pointing at your head, leave some mids in and keep it a moderate level there are very few issues to be had from a monitoring and FOH position.

A lot of players like to have it super-loud, pointing directly into the crowd. Great.
How are you going to hear your world-changing solo? Oh..

By using ear plugs (professionally moulded ones, such as the ACS Pro 17) then you can hear 'everything' with increased clarity and not enter into an SPL war with the cabs / drums / vocalist / wedges / front of house.

Some of the best shows I've ever worked was where the bands used their stage sound as part of the FOH sound, or conversely, completely eradicated it from leaking off stage via in ears.*

I do realise that it's not kvlt to use hearing protection. But, in these days of high powered shows and music adopting the moniker of 'business' even more stringently - I'd say keeping your shows as best as possible while being able to conduct business the next day is probably pretty handy.

But.. there ya go. I said it!

*As an aside: It's not really a surprise so many bands are moving from wedges to in ears. Makes so much sense. You can get as much "me" as you'd like without feedback and also exclude those pesky folk you share a stage with from your auditory canals. Ear plugs offer a similar benefit in that if you are excluding a lot of the upper frequencies your brain is able to concentrate on your playing and listening for you beneath the din. You'll also not go as deaf, as quickly.