When something goes wrong at a gig and no one says anything....

[bluesfreek]

Originally Posted by 815C

One of my favorite (sarcasm) things to hear after hauling thousands of dollars of gear to gig, and having invested decades into my playing is, "We couldn't hear your guitar at all."

Seems we are all at the mercy of the sound man.

When I was in rock bands 35 years ago the first thing any sound person would tell me is to turn down. That is until I learned to place my amp not facing the audience or sound person but off to my left side on stage.

In a 5 piece classic rock band I never went out with less than 100 watts.

[hotroad]

I have gigged nearly full time for 35 years. I have been in large concert halls and small clubs. I now play acoustic solo but have been in a touring band a lot of those years. In my humble opinion, from my experience alone, the sound tech doing FOH is the second most important person in the band. The most important is the tech doing monitor mix.

If I don't sound good to me, I cannot get into it. But immediately after that, I have to sound good to my audience with no exceptions. How can that happen. I am practiced up. I get to the venue early, like three hours early. I take a good amount of time with the FOH tech at that desk and an equal amount of time with the person running monitor mix. Without good input from me, I cannot and will not expect the techs to know what I want and what I don't want. Taking the time for this 'training' for each gig is important when a tech is running sound.

[lkingston]

Here is a soundman‘ sure point of view:

The bane of my existence when I did sound was onstage amplifiers turned up too loud and overly loud acoustic drum kits! When you walk into a venue and the guitars are too loud and the singer is barely audible, the first place to look is at the guitar amps. Are they on the floor pointing straight forward without any sort of backwards lean? Yeah, usually. The guitar sound is whizzing by the guitarist’s feet, soft to him but deafeningly loud to the audience! Is the bass player’s amp too loud? When it is, it will interact with the PA system to form hot and cold spots throughout the house. Stand in one place and it will vibrate your skull, but move over four feet and you’ll barely hear it! Some keyboard players refuse to use monitors and insist on their own amplification. Once that happens the soundman has no control over them either. Then there are the drums: Jazz drummers use small kits that are balanced acoustically and appropriate for the size of the room. Rock drummers insist on beating really hard on oversized drums. Thus the soundman can’t really amplify them. When this happens, he can’t run the kick into the subs and it sounds puny out in the house compared to what could be done if the drummer wasn’t so freaking loud!

Yeah, blame the sound-guy, but with loud stage volume, his gig has gone from mixing the band to trying to balance the vocals against the stage amplification!

[pieterh]

This is what I live with too. Brass sections set a level to which everything else has to be balanced too (see my earlier post).

[Paddy1951]

Certainly, responsibility for the quality of sound and the volume can be shared between the musicians and sound techs.
Maybe things need to be made more simple.

Carnegie Hall. 1938. Benny Goodman Band. Iconic musicians. One microphone. An after thought.
One of the best recordings ever done.

[Paddy1951]

My mistake. 3 microphones, but still simple.

[Wistah]

The vocals must cut at all times. The vocals must cut! This requires restraint on the part of the guitar players. Restraint on the part of the drummer. Restraint in the arrangements. And a good sound system with enough headroom to keep things clean as the volume creeps up over the course of the night.

I play in a band where everyone uses in ear monitors and goes direct to the board. No amps on stage. No monitors. No stage volume except drums. Make the sound guys life easy.