So this weekend I went to an event across Leeds called live at Leeds. I went to 8 venues, saw 10 bands,and to my ears every venue,bar one, well done headrow house, had everything turned up to 11 to the extent that it was pretty much impossible for me to even be in the room, despite wearing pretty good quality earplugs.
(Disclaimer is that I don't cope very well with extreme volume generally due to playing too much metal and techno in my teens. )
It seemed that sound engineers turned up the bass drum so loud that I could feel my cap shaking off my head and my trousers rattling when it was struck. This then boomed round the venue's space, making it impossible to make out any bass tones because the space was already filled. Possibly in response to this, every bass player I saw was using a pick, presumably to cut through. ( I was super surprised to see noone playing fingerstyle!).
I'm about to start gigging and I really don't want to deafen people, or myself, at gigs, and I also want a deeper tone rather than a jb with bridge pu and pick tone.
How do people tend to work with sound engineers to reign the levels in and get the unique sound you want for your band? Our drummer uses a cahon for bass drum and those cymbals with loads of holes in so the drums don't overpower us, and I'd like our live sound to keep that balance, even with a bigger pa.
Any why is everyone using picks?
Thanks
Chris