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Depressing sound guy situation


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Well we've got a gig next month that I should be looking forward to, but I found out we'll have the sound guy who we had at a different venue recently who spent half of our set ****ing up our monitor mixes and the other half ordering/eating takeaway pizza. I saw him do sound for four bands last night and only the first band on sounded like anything other than mud. One band I could hear the snare and nothing else, another had one good guitar sound and apparently no bass player (don't know what that joker with the bass guitar was doing on stage tbh!), another band I don't think he'd even turned the backing mics on and when I looked around to see if he was fixing it he wasn't even there.

Even the 3-piece had a practically inaudible bass player, all rumble and nothing else, he was reduced to a harmonic sitting underneath the guitar sound, or a tuning quirk of the bass drum.

I'm thinking about just not turning up, I won't be missed.

Edited by thisnameistaken
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Or alternatively you can contact the event organizers and request a different sound guy. We had similar problems at the pro panto last Xmas. The sax player & I ended up going up to the youngest engineer and telling her to "set up our sound at the start of the show and f*****g well leave it alone - Step away from the desk!!!", due to her constant messing with the system throughout numbers and the show - Even to the point of deafening us through the earphones & switching us off during numbers.

You can try and be diplomatic, but there are times where you'll encounter a moronic individual who needs a dose of common sense. :)

Edited by OutToPlayJazz
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tell the venue/gig promotor/whoevers paying for this guy about your problems!

if i was paying for a sound man and knew this is what people thought of him i'd be positively ashamed!

does no-one who puts on gigs listen to them? how is he still getting work?

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I feel your pain! There's nothing more frustrating than spending all that time and money on perfecting your technique and gear, only to have it all ruined by an incompetent engineer.

I had to go through something similar on Saturday past, where the soundguy was the singer's dad. He obviously knew nothing about the PA, and of course the band felt as if we couldn't criticise him for fear of offending the singer! I couldn't hear a single thing on stage apart from the vocals, which were even drowning out the drums (shocking considering the drummer uses a LOUD acoustic kit) Of course, we still got our money and left after the gig, but I would hate to think that having bad sound out front would affect my potential income in future when people start saying "I dunno if the band were good because I couldn't hear them! I'm not sure if you should book them for your wedding mate!"

What annoys me too is that there are any amount of young budding sound engineers, just graduated with BSc Music Tech degrees and the like, who would JUMP at the chance to get experience doing what they love. Certainly, when I studied it at uni, almost everyone in my class had at least some knowledge of how to make a PA sound good in a live situation. Such a shame that people who call themselves professional sound engineers are getting gigs ahead of people who know what they're doing, based largely on the fact that they have contacts.

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I think he's a part owner of the venue - that's apparently the situation at the other venue where we endured him last time. So I don't think telling him to get a mix we like and leave the effing desk alone would go down very well in this case.

I did speak to the "promoter" (I am getting tired of using that name for people who don't do any promoting) about it last night but he confirmed this guy will be doing the sound for us.

The last time we had him he managed to piss off our guitarist before we'd even started soundchecking (can't remember what he said to him) and also ranted at us about how drummers shouldn't be allowed to sing because it's too noisy to mic them (but you can put dynamic mics at the front of the stage with all the backline pointing at them and that's not a problem? Dickhead).

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we play a venue called MFN near eastwood in the midlands, and evry single band that goes there complains about the sound guy, to the point where people dont go because even the best bands sound crap! they have an awesome system, but to drum up local interest, we have to spread the word that we're taking our own engineer, but of course it takes our engineers a couple of hours to accimatise to the system cause the £50 a night engineer as mucked it all up!

shame really cause the owner was a member of a famous band, so has the awesome system, but refuses to pay for a decent engineer! weird

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[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='852753' date='May 31 2010, 04:43 PM']I did speak to the "promoter" (I am getting tired of using that name for people who don't do any promoting) about it last night but he confirmed this guy will be doing the sound for us.[/quote]

Most of them should be called "bookers" as they book the bands and then expect you to do all the work. It's a rant that I periodically dust down and vent.

But as for your OP, my thoughts are either you do the gig and it's awful or you don't play the show. If everyone sounds terrible there at least the audience will be sympathetic to you. If the soundguy is linked to the venue, you are going to have to bite the bullet with this one if you are to play there.

Personally we try to avoid duff venues like this unless we really have no choice i.e. part of a tour and we need a gig in a certain town. The buy off has to be good though

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[quote name='Gust0o' post='852767' date='May 31 2010, 05:12 PM']I'd love to know which venue this is. We do have some in York where the sound is mud most nights of the week.[/quote]

Fibbers.

The same guy also does sound at Stereo.

One silver lining is that Fibbers has been bought recently and is going to be redeveloped through August, the downside is that I think they'll be focussing on club nights instead of live bands in future.

[quote name='BurritoBass' post='852776' date='May 31 2010, 05:25 PM']But as for your OP, my thoughts are either you do the gig and it's awful or you don't play the show. If everyone sounds terrible there at least the audience will be sympathetic to you. If the soundguy is linked to the venue, you are going to have to bite the bullet with this one if you are to play there.[/quote]

The band we're opening for should bring in a crowd that will like our stuff and maybe haven't heard us before, so it seems like a good date to play on the face of it, it's just such a shame that we are almost guaranteed to sound like sh*t.

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We have a sound guy who has mixed for us since we started. He's great. My beef is with the in-house engineers that set the equipment up and are extremely patronising. At one well-established venue the engineer couldn't understand why I wanted the bass gear lifted up to ear height. I said it was because I can't hear top end very well. What I wanted to say was: 'What has it got to do with you? I'm doing the gig, not you.'

Why? :)

Edited by Pete Academy
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[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='852786' date='May 31 2010, 05:49 PM']Fibbers.

The same guy also does sound at Stereo.

One silver lining is that Fibbers has been bought recently and is going to be redeveloped through August, the downside is that I think they'll be focussing on club nights instead of live bands in future.



The band we're opening for should bring in a crowd that will like our stuff and maybe haven't heard us before, so it seems like a good date to play on the face of it, it's just such a shame that we are almost guaranteed to sound like sh*t.[/quote]

Fibbers. Aaaarggghhh!!!

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This has sadly been the situation at Fibbers for at least 10 years that I know of.

I played there on one occasion when none of the wedge monitors were functioning and their answer was to give us a discounted price for using the house PA and Engineer!!!

So far as MFN is concerned, this venue too has been a joke for years. Sadly, it seems that being owned by the former drummer with Showaddywaddy does not necessarily guarantee a venue's success!! :lol: :lol: Tragically, I have had more than one converstion with him about the shortcomings of his "Sound Engineer" (who, I assume, must work for next to nothing) and he continues to deny that there is a problem, so it is apparently he that is right and everyone else wrong. :) :rolleyes:

I suppose the most amazing thing is that these venues can continue to exist, particularly when times are generally so tough throughout the industry.

Edited by bassicinstinct
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[quote name='Gust0o' post='852820' date='May 31 2010, 06:39 PM']f*** yeah, I should have known it was Fibbers!

No surprise to find others nodding along to that one.[/quote]

Unfortunately it seems this guy is firmly entrenched at Fibbers and Stereo, leaving practically nowhere else for local bands to play (Basement - pointless, Duchess - too big). Hopefully when the new owners re-fit it they'll still put local bands on but get rid of him.

[quote name='Gust0o' post='852820' date='May 31 2010, 06:39 PM']When are you on? I'll wander down.[/quote]

Would rather not say - don't want to associate my band with my rant about this geezer and make things worse.

Edited by thisnameistaken
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