Support bands and bad sound.

[drake]

Infuriating when this happens. Can you imagine the lead guitarists Telecaster DI'd before the amp? We have the luxury of having our own sound engineer and we use him on the desk at every venue. Most house engineers, even at some of the bigger venues don't seem to mind this at all.

Edited January 12, 2017 by drake

[Baxter]

That worked the other for us once. The headliners - a good old act to be fair - asked for the support (us) to run lower than them. The were pissing the sound guy off a bit during the sound check, he's a good guy who we had worked with a lot. Anyway told us in advance what the tour manager had said and told us not to worry as we would be getting the best front of house that night.

[Bilbo]

You guys need to join a Jazz band. The audiences are never big enough for us to NEED a PA or soundman.

[mcnach]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1486104874' post='3229214']
You guys need to join a Jazz band. The audiences are never big enough for us to NEED a PA or soundman.
[/quote]

and you can play bum notes galore as long as you stay in time

[christhammer666]

ive walked off stage before where the sound was so crap.all through soundcheck my vol went further and further down I couldn't hear myself or even feel it.Got 2 songs in just took off my bass and walked off.said to the soundguy I cant heara thing whats the point
whole band followed to

[mcnach]

[quote name='christhammer666' timestamp='1486116568' post='3229321']
ive walked off stage before where the sound was so crap.all through soundcheck my vol went further and further down I couldn't hear myself or even feel it.Got 2 songs in just took off my bass and walked off.said to the soundguy I cant heara thing whats the point
whole band followed to
[/quote]

I only walked out once.
It was an 'independent' festival. Well, it's a locally famous protest site in the woods (people moved in to protect the woods from a motorway building project... 10 years ago... they invited us to play at their 10th anniversary party and it sounded interesting enough). They had a great set up, it was beautiful there... but of course you can imagine there were no permissions etc.
Of course the Police showed up, and they did when we were on. They were very cool, just walking around chatting to a few people, they were not about to shut anything down, and they didn't. The wood is far from houses. The nearest thing is an industrial estate which was empty on a Saturday night.
The organisers obviously wanted to not give too many reasons to the Police to intervene and stop the party... and they thought keeping the volume down would be a good move.

Unfortunately they dealt with that by sending a clueless guy onstage to tell *ME* I was too loud and needed to turn down. He wasn't polite either, which is what really annoyed me. Treat me like crap and guess how I'm going to respond. Although at first I did laugh because it was ridiculous. I pointed at my onstage amp. It was a tiny 30W Gorilla practice amp. I could not hear it onstage! It had a line out and they used that to feed their desk. For guitars there were a couple of 100W 212 combos which if you need to find a source of noise you might want to go to them first however, and this is what I told the guy, we do not control the levels... go to your desk and tell your guys to turn the PA down, as we're all going through it. He was having none of that and I turned around and ignored him. He left... Drummer asked what it was about... I told him. He rolled his eyes... and between songs I was able to quickly tell the rest what had just happened. I also added "the dude comes back again to me with an attitude and I'm out of here".
And he did.
So I just unplugged midsong and walked. As I walked I yelled at him "your guys are the ones who are able to control the volume, right there on that hut where the desk is" I may have added a few choice swearwords to spice up the message. I still think he just thought I was a diva who walked because he was asked to turn down .
The band did follow. They stopped playing, singer said goodbye to the audience (who were great, I have to say) explaining we'd been told we needed to quit live music (untrue but...) and that was that.
I found later that this guy was one of the guys helping run the party, but that nobody had told the guys at the desk to turn down a bit while the Police was there. I think he just freaked and took initiative about the volume but was clueless as to how the sound was generated...
Argh.

Still... until that moment it was pretty fun

[radiophonic]

I'm coming to the conclusion that total control is the only solution. Our sound is an odd mix and we know how to mic ourselves up and get the right amount of separation, control feedback issues from an amplified acoustic violin and keep the bass from setting off the Cajon (the drummer is usually in front of me and is mic'd from behind). With very few exceptions, club sound engineers have no idea how to handle this kind of set up. I suspect they panic a bit and get defensive, but my sound is [i]meant[/i] to be toppy. I play a Stingray on purpose. I use harmonics as part of an arrangement, not as an optional extra. All the guy needs to do is listen to what comes out of the front of my amp and make it louder for the audience. How hard is that?

[Monkey Steve]

I'm resurrecting this one because I don't think my post needs a whole new thread but it's maybe off at an angle from this one. Another example of where the soundman that we keep blaming might not be at fault.

I was at a gig on Saturday and my mate's band were playing and everything sounded great - loud, powerful, clear...except for the bass, which was a dull thump very low in the mix. I asked my mate about it afterwards and they'd completely stitched up the bass player (with whom they are not at all happy and pondering a sacking because he isn't very good). They had a word with the soundman beforehand to make sure that the bass was plenty loud on stage, but only just noticeable out front, on the basis that in a quiet, muddy mix the audience won't be able to pick out when he's playing the wrong notes.

I think they owe the soundman a few beers - he's going to take the blame for this as doing as terrible job even though he was just obeying orders.

[blue]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1486104874' post='3229214']
You guys need to join a Jazz band. The audiences are never big enough for us to NEED a PA or soundman.
[/quote]

If I joined a local jazz band I'd be broke.

Local jazz band = no gigs

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='radiophonic' timestamp='1486120057' post='3229360']
I'm coming to the conclusion that total control is the only solution. Our sound is an odd mix and we know how to mic ourselves up and get the right amount of separation, control feedback issues from an amplified acoustic violin and keep the bass from setting off the Cajon (the drummer is usually in front of me and is mic'd from behind). With very few exceptions, club sound engineers have no idea how to handle this kind of set up. I suspect they panic a bit and get defensive, but my sound is [i]meant[/i] to be toppy. I play a Stingray on purpose. I use harmonics as part of an arrangement, not as an optional extra. All the guy needs to do is listen to what comes out of the front of my amp and make it louder for the audience. How hard is that?
[/quote]

You would think it be easy, however with big systems they can find a way to make your high end StingRay sound boomy, dull and muddy.

Blue

[stingrayPete1977]

I've seen so many bands with these specific bass tones trying to explain to the sound crew that it must be micd not di, at a push blended, rarely does that perfect tone work out front, as various pedals are bought in and out the bass goes from inaudible to overpowering and the poor sound guy is faced with trying to second guess what's happening, how does he (I'm saying he as I've never met a lady sound engineer!) know that you bring in the sub octave and phazer in the second verse for 4 bars?

A couple of patches can work but rarely is there time to level 25 patches, especially if it's operator won't budge on reducing the level on a patch because that's set for his amp regardless of it ruining the mix out front.

[Lozz196]

I suppose I`m quite lucky with my sound, I DI straight from my Sansamp Para Driver and my bass is much more top-end biased than low-end, so the sound-person doesn`t have to worry about too many lows rattling around and trying to eliminate over-boom. The only slight issue I`ve had is one chap telling me he`d reduce the highs and add in some lows for me. That brought a Paddington stare to the equation!