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What do you play at sound check?


oldslapper

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If you are afforded the luxury of a sound check, with a sound engineer flying a FOH PA....

What do you play?

Do you ask sound person what they want? 

Do you play lines from the set?

Slap solo?

Favourite Bass line evaaah?

Get so embarrassed that you barely put 2 notes together?

Usually still finding a parking space for the band van?

Usually still applying the spray on tan/trousers/hair/teeth/trouser sock?

....or what?

Apologies if this has been done before. Apologies if this hasn't been done. 😊

Edited by oldslapper
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I play the pieces of kit he asks for, with a regular beat, but with a representative range of strikes and tempos. When ready, I'll probably be asked for 'all together, please..?', and I'll do a few bars of various styles, improvised, mostly, giving an idea of what I'll be doing during the set. Then I'll stop and let the bassist do his  check. Once all are done, we'll do a 'general', usually a song that we've ejected from the set now, but has everyone in there somewhere. One of the band will be at the console all the time, to assist in getting the balance and sounds we use. It's very rare that we have problems (I can't remember the last time, but, then again, I'm old...).

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Any PA we haven't worked with before will get our tech spec so they know what gear we use. It's my job to liaise with them from a technical standpoint. I prefer to speak directly on the phone if I can't meet in person.

At the gig, for me on my own, firstly I give the engineer a line check. I'll tell them what my loudest sounds are and I will demonstrate them. I will give short sharp transients and longer sustained notes to begin with to set up channel gain. Then I will play a bunch of different lines in loops of say 4 bars or so with my core tone.  They hopefully will already know that I have a few effects that I use too and thus when the engineer is happy I'll give those a zoom through. Basically though, a good engineer will clearly communicate what they need from you. A bad one will grunt in to his foldback mic, or worse gesture at you from his darkened cell at the other end of the venue.

So far, I'm pleased to say that only minimal EQ tweaking and a small amount of compression gets added on the desk for my bass sound. Everything else is already on my effects board.

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We don't know what we are doing so just make it up as we go, by the time we have farted around getting everything set up and worked out how the desk works (again) it's normally as below.

Whole band - maybe something that was a bit dodge at the last band practice. 

Just me - This Place Hotel, we don't do it and I like it.

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2 minutes ago, grumpyguts said:

We don't know what we are doing so just make it up as we go, by the time we have farted around getting everything set up and worked out how the desk works (again) it's normally as below.

Whole band - maybe something that was a bit dodge at the last band practice. 

Just me - This Place Hotel, we don't do it and I like it.

dont really matter as long as you all play somthing

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1 hour ago, oldslapper said:

If you are afforded the luxury of a sound check, with a sound engineer flying a FOH PA....

What do you play?

Do you ask sound person what they want? 

Do you play lines from the set?

Slap solo?

Favourite Bass line evaaah?

Get so embarrassed that you barely put 2 notes together?

Usually still finding a parking space for the band van?

Usually still applying the spray on tan/trousers/hair/teeth/trouser sock?

....or what?

Apologies if this has been done before. Apologies if this hasn't been done. 😊

 

Some random bassline made up on the spot, ensuring I get very low as well as high notes, some slap if I'm going to use it, running through any FX that might be a bit extreme... envelope filters/octavers...

Then for band soundcheck, we just play a song or bits of songs that contain all elements needed.

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Great answers.

I've seen people freeze when doing sound checks, or fall apart, ..go all "fingers & thumbs".

My own approach is firstly I'll ask the "desk prefect" what they would like & if they're not bothered, I'll tend to do a few open string peddles and then some lines of songs from the set, on the fretted & then the fretless. They're both P basses with same bodies, necks, pups, wiring & strings. Tone rolled off 50%. The LMII is flat & pre eq.

I tend to think that as long as I'm happy with on stage volume and everyone else is, I'm not in control of FOH sound so I'll not worry about that. To be fair we have our own sound desk attendant, and they know what sound the BL wants, plus my set up is very basic. 

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9 hours ago, mcnach said:

 

Some random bassline made up on the spot, ensuring I get very low as well as high notes, some slap if I'm going to use it, running through any FX that might be a bit extreme... envelope filters/octavers...

Then for band soundcheck, we just play a song or bits of songs that contain all elements needed.

We do exactly this,minus the slap though...😄

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