ironside1966

Thanks for your help everyone. As far as I can tell the bass is well set up with to obvious faults. No rattles, plays well and it sustains well enough. The bridge seems solid and well fitted, it is well strung and I am the first to admit that I am no virtuoso but I am a very competent player with many years experience so I doubt if it is technique or player error. The nut is interesting but when you fret a note does that cancel out the nut any way? Has anyone ells had the same problem

I have a Squier deluxe 5 jazz bass, although it is a great bass it sounds dull and insipid. When I checked them out on you tube most of the basses sound completely different to mine. The first thing I thought of was new strings so I have a set of D’addario nickel wound bright but the bass still sounds dull, even when played acoustically the bass is dull compared to my other instruments? Is it worth investing in new pickups or dose the sound need to be there in the first place, EQ will not give me the sound that I want.

I used to have a Martin-audio F2 Rig + subs, 5 way system consisting of, 3 way top box 2x15 bass and 2x18 sub But even without the extremely heavy twin 18 subs the 2 x 15 cab was more than adequate. Pros Good clear punchy sound and I believe it will be far superior to the others mentioned. Loud Cons Very heavy You tend to lose a lot of top end (more than other rigs I have used) in crowded venues. Too heavy to lift very high

I am sure you know this already but you should look at monitors in a totally different way to Hi Fi speakers. Studio monitors should tell the truth and allow you to hear all the subtle detail within a mix so the best sounding monitors are not always the best monitors if you get my drift.

For me it is all about the results in the time available. It doesn’t mater whether they play by here or know the theory. I have auditioned many guitarists for cover bands over the years I would say that 90% could play the solos and 20% could play the chords. Unfortunately guitarists often can’t play anything other than a major, minor, seventh or power cord. Nothing wrong with this but if they want to become a good versatile guitarist I would expect them at least to be capable of a playing every chord in different voicing’s and inversions. But how many of us could play a simple walking in line to a jazz standard, bass players need to understand harmony also to understand harmony also

It is always good practice to cut everything below 35 Hz to 40 Hz with the graphic on big rig or even higher if the rig is only a couple KW’s, depends what you speakers/Room can handle. Using a high pass filter on the other instruments can also help clean up the bottom end. On a smaller rig boost the bass a little higher. If you HPF all the other instruments then try using a little help from the graphic as it more accurate then shelving EQ Do you really want trousers to flap? It is easier and better to get a good clean sound then it is to get the chest kicking punch. I have heard far too many bands with a loud punchy kick and snare and bugger all else.

I try to stay away from the one size fits all approach and it depends on many factors including what sound you want. The microphone position plays an important part. A simple guide would be Bass boost around 60- 80hz Low mid cut between 200hz and 400hz High mid boost around 3k to 5K Top boost 8K to 10K Remember less is more

A good sounding live room, good monitors in the correct acoustic space with the skill to use them. You need to be honest with yourself and clients how good you really are, the internet is littered with CD’S for sale that sound a lot worse than anything that has come from my home studio. Even so when anyone comes to me to for a commercial release I always advise them to pay the extra and go to an established studio. My ears a good enough to tell the difference

Thank you

Let me try and answer a few of your questions. To do this you need to understand how a lot of engineers mind works, first if you get the levels right then you are generally not far of a decant balance anyway but that is the last thing on your mind at the time. When the band first strikes up together you quickly reset the levels then it is a time of intense concentration as you focus in on individual frequencies and parts of the sound, listening for the slightest ring, making sure you have enough headroom resetting graphics if needed, listening to individual speakers you get the Idea of it, so you need to subconsciously block other sounds and after a couple of minutes your ears start to deteriorate because of the volume. I am not saying you do this but it has happened to me many times my concentration has been broken by the cry of “can you turn my guitar up” The second reason is I do not mix in a sound check so how can you tell what the mix is like? Because when the venues full and the band are going for it the sound can completely change, a good example of this is a couple of weeks ago when I did a jazz band, in the sound check it sounded dreadful no clarity no sense of balance but when the band came on stage my gear lit up like a Christmas tree and they sounded great, because I had the good sense to leave things alone if I had tried to correct the mix in the sound check I would have made myself loads of problems. Imagine if that were your band you would have come out and put the whole band on a downer believing that the sound is crap which may have spoiled the performance. How do we need to know how loud the BV or keys need to be? The same as you if the parts are interesting and play a vital role we can hear this and mix accordingly. Lastly why is it amateurish? Professional and well gigged bands are used to working with good engineers so they trust them and know for the reasons stated earlier that they are better of onstage playing as they would in a performance concentrating on a workable stage sound because it is easier to fix FOH in a performance then the stage sound. When you do a sound check and in my world a long sound check is a sign of incompetence, people expect you to get things right quickly so it is never more than one song unless there are problems.

[quote name='willyf87' post='1153728' date='Mar 8 2011, 01:10 PM']We can agree however Cubase is pretty awful.[/quote] Why?

When you work with a band regularly you can get a relationship and work can with them on the sound but if it’s a quick hello and sound check then coming out front giving directions is just a waste of time and very amateurish. If you have any special requirements type them out and hand them to the engineer at the desk. What is the best use of an engineer’s time getting you instruments sound has you want them for it all to change when the band strikes up and the venues full? Or getting the monitors right making sure you have enough headroom for vocals. A great sound starts with great arrangements and instruments tone that leave enough sonic space for the all the band to cut through. The problem starts when every musician wants a larger than life sound that eats all the sonic space so they are fighting each other for space and that’s where you have to EQ them to death to get a mix and it is the bands that come out front barking orders that have the latter sound in my experience. Good engineers with good bands just make the band louder and project better. A good band can more or less mix themselves you don’t need anybody to say turn so and so up because the band does it for you so you just provide help when needed. I was a pro engineer working many nights a week for over 15 years but on the odd occasion when I gig has a player I never go out front I never tell the engineer what to do even though a lot of the time the engineers a quite you and inexperienced, it’s like a vote of no confidence

It all depends on what you want, if you just want something to sketch a few ideas on hardware unit would be fine but most of the budget hardware records have cheap preamps were as the Focusrite preamps and digital converters are far better than a unit of these price deservers so the actual recorded sound quality is better. The best investment you can get is time learning how and where to place microphones will pay dividends in the end

All I want from a sound check is to set the levels make sure that there is not going to be any problems and set the monitors if there is no separate mix. When people come out front I just turn it down and ask them how the monitors are. If I am a player I just let the engineer get on with it. You will always get somebody who says you need to do this and you need to do that but in truth no two jobs are the same there are many other factors come in to play and time been the major one, the next is that most of the time you are seeing bands for the first time and the only time you hear them is in a short sound check so you stick ways you trust

I use a pod most of the time and it works fine after I realized two things, don’t use presets as they are overcooked, find an amp model you like that’s treat as you would the real thing. The sounds that are great in isolation often sound s*** in the context of a mix and the insipid ones work a treat. I agree that a lot of the lower budget recording and some musical styles tend to lose the bass from the mix. But you do need to be objective about it. Make sure that before you go into a studio you listen to their work, and then decide do you want something that’s sounds like the band playing live or do you want something that sounds like a record.

I could say that it could be down to time and budget, I could also the sound you hear a few feet away from you cab may not be the best for the track or the tone had to be tamed down to create sonic space for the other instruments. I find it hard to understand why having a fixed to is so important even a orchestral player who spends years perfecting their tone need a conductor to make it work with the other instruments. As a musician my role is to act as part of an ensemble often laying the foundations and groove in which all the others other instruments sit, many of my best lines are quite unnoticeable in the finished track but when they a tracked they bring the music to life. I don’t have the holy grail of bass tone in my head I just use hear what works an d 90% my sound is in my fingers so it doesn’t matter what the engineer dose within reason if the recordings great I am happy. All I want from a sound is for it to communicate what I am trying to achieve musically. If that makes sense.

In my experience the successful cover bands are the ones that entertains, playing a bunches of songs is not enough you need to get the audience on your side, not every one is interested in watching a good musician but most people like a good show. Playing is important but if a band hides behind music stands, never smiles, looks like the are part of the audience and makes no effort in presentation then you need songs like mustang sally that sell themselves. I have played any thing from level 42; Go west, Bowie to Albert lee to unto date charts in cover bands.

You don’t have to play the same old standards but you need to know your target audience. Try to get the “what a great song I have not herd this for a long time” appeal To run a successful cover band you need to treat as a business it is relatively easy to get the odd gig but if you are looking at 15 gigs a month things get a little more difficult.

To make this work, you'll need a function band that can pull £1600 plus per gig, IMO, for a 4 man band, or multiple of £400 per man for anything larger, which in itself isn't that hard..and you'll need to be doing them most weeks the year...which really is. [/quote] That’s ridiculers most bands of the bands I know run at a 10% to 15% drawings of their fee when you take out the agents fee off at 15% to 20% and the cost of fuel and the day to day upkeep, promotion and general improvements of a band> Bands need investment. The only way to get more money is if you own the band and pay wages. Like every business it takes time to build and the fees are not going to be great straight away, a good reliable van and PA are essential and more important treat the band as a business not as a hobby. It is rewarding watching something you are part of grow and some of the best times I have had is at the developing stagers of a band were ever one is enthusiastic. I am sure you can do it but have realistic expectations on wages and make sure you have an understanding partner, do your homework . Lastly the bands I know are not run by the best musicians but great organizers with a business mind and a feel for what works. Good luck in whatever you decide

You could learn how to master in a couple of hours but spend a life time perfecting the art’ There are a couple of reasons for mastering, 1. To add polish 2. The main problem with home mastering is most home studios have far from ideal acoustics and monitoring but so long as they are not too bad professional mastering engineers can make adjustments for any frequencies anomalies, If you don’t know there is a problem how can you fix it, to put it simply if your studio is bass light you will compensate or at best just guess the right amount of bass so when you master nothing has changed how you know you have the correct amount of bass. You can help yourself by compering a similar commercial track side by side when mastering but most home studios do not have the transparency or depth of a professional suit. 3.To make all the tracks on an album work cohesive. You can get great results in the home studio but it can go so far my advice would be if you are putting the projects for commercial release have it mastered properly. [b]Beedster[/b] do you want a hardware Reverb because you can pick up a Powercore card that has decent reverbs on ebay for next to nothing or try the IK Multimedia classic verb

I have learnt over the years that there is no one size fits all solution I have worked alongside many great engineers and they all do things differently and have different ideas, every job and set of circumstances are different so the best bit of advice I can give you based an many years as a professional sound man is let the engineer get on with it there is no need to tell him his job. If you really want the best sound then make sure you play at a reasonable volume get a stage sound you are happy with then leave it, that is far more important then whether you have a DI or microphone.

The problem with some venues is that the pay is crap and they treat the soundman like Sh** so all they get is people hoping to get experience or on an ego trip. The more lucrative bands and musicians and venues tend to work with better people because they employ people who they trust. You would be lucky to get a good engineer for little more than the bar bars staff. For me a sound check is basic a level check and to set the monitors if there is no separate mix engineer. If musicians think that they should come out front and listen to each individual instrument advising the engineer how it should sound then they are mistaken, this is not arrogance it is just that it doesn’t work. It is easy to read book understand the theory and there are many great recourses about but what books don’t tell you is the politics of been a sound engineer, the limited amount of time you have I have done many band with just a line check without any contact before or afterwards. There are times when you know that there are better ways of mic’ing or you could use better mics but if you can’t keep an eye on them someone will pinch them or keep knocking them over. There are times when you have to be curt, after years of saying can you not play yet please I am sound checking the drums been constantly ignored time you tend to get to the point quicker. It the engineers good then let them get on with it if they are bad then confusing them will make it worse. In my role as a bass player I never listen to the FOH sound because if I am not happy it will spoil my enjoyment.

[quote name='artisan' post='1101985' date='Jan 25 2011, 12:28 PM']stick to your guns mate,the sound eng's job is as you say "to amplify your sound" period. if he thinks tweeking it a tad may improove that sound then he should discuss it with you first,but ultimately it is your sound so the final say is yours. some engineers are just lazy bastards & take the easy option,but unfortunaley for them i'm big enough + agressive enough (only when needs be) to put my point accross effectively . however i do find most to be receptive to good constructive input & very good at their job,but i'd never buy one a pint.[/quote] May I respectfully say you are so wrong. Most of the people I have worked with do the best they can with the time and resources available too them. We are lazy in away becouse if instrument sounds great why change it? a sound engineers priority is to make the band sound good. unless the band are paying me direct and demand otherwise I always take the audience and the venue into account, what I mean by that is if I am working at a family party in the park type of event and a metal band are on the bill I try to make them more palatable for the family audience and would mix them differently to a out and out metle gig (This should not effect the tone of the instruments )most pros like this becouse if the audience are happy and the venue are happy they get rebooked. Another reason engineers DI is far too many peoples sound doesn't work becouse they stand a few feet in front of often a large rig and pay little attention to how the sound works in the context of a mix. What a lot of people fail to realize is that even at a moderate sized venue the majoraty of the sound still comes from backline.

Ask yourself what you can do for the song not what the song can do for me. Musicians sometimes forget that they are part of an ensemble and with each player playing his or her part. Look at any orchestral part and see how each instrument and section compliments each other never fighting for space, often the double bass part is just one or two notes a bar even though there are some great musicians no one ever complains about keeping it simple or underplaying. In fairness on some sessions I have done for guitarist singer songwriters they have little idea what a good bass player can add to the music and want plodding rout notes sometimes it work others the song need uplifting rhythm to stop the song becoming even more insipid. But at the end of the day it’s about the music