Players' Sound: What you Hear vs. What is Heard

[Keith DeLong]

I can't count how many times I've gone to concerts where you couldn't hear the steel at all--usually gets lost under the bass and drums. There are a lot of sound techs that have no idea what a pedal steel is, let alone what they sound like. Same problem with lead guitars.

[Tom Bradshaw]

OK my friends Barry & Joe: I understand your point and appreciate that you are "in pursuit of happiness". But I don't subscribe to it. I also hope there isn't some "prophetic poetry" in your claims about the inability to make money playing nowadays, with bankruptcy as your potential “reward”. What if you were to discover that those who are working regularly happen to sound great to their audiences and support themselves handsomely as steel-playing entertainers? Joke, joke; don't come after me; I can't run fast any longer. ...Tom

[Herbie Meeks]

Best gigs I can remember, Will try to explain in my simple way, was when only the front man, and vocals used the PA /Mikes, with the PA speakers one on each side of the stage, set back against the back wall. and angled so the speaker's sound crossed about in the middle of the room,
We all have Amps. that will bulldoze land, or break windows,
We do not need the amps miked, that is where we goof up our sound
The Steel, and Lead Guitar players, carrying the show, sitting next together, Their Amps behind, also against the wall;
Don't worry about the Bass, you can not tell where it is coming from anyhow, What I am trying to say, The musicians do all the mixing behind the Vocals, Easy to hear when you are picking on top of another musician, or need to crank it up,
Your sound will then only change, with the size of the audience,
or maybe the accoustics of the building,

Simple , But True, 55 years, playing, and watching all the electronic experiments. go to a concert, some sound like a Freight Train running through the building with all the mikes
and a sound man trying to control , or change your sound

Herbie

[David Doggett]

I'm with you, Herbie. But don't PA speakers feedback if they are in the back line?

[Keith DeLong]

It's great when you can do without miking the amps, I worked in a 4-piece band playing lead guitar for years where er only used vocal mics and line inputs for fiddle etc., I had a Fender Super Reverb amp which really kicks butt turned up at 2, but unfortunately is very directional and pushes a lot of volume straight ahead with a lot less if you're sitting off axis. The common problem I have is that the sound tech hears a lot from my amp and won't bring me up in the PA and in some cased I have had to turn the amp around and face it towards me. Another problem is bad monitir mixes, too much bass and rhythm guitar in the monitor mix. Sometimes tilting the amp back helps but not always.

[Herbie Meeks]

Dave D
A few years ago , they came out with a PA,
that would not feed back, some kind of gadget in the PA
that stopped the feed back. The vocals could handle the Mike
within a couple feet, of the speaker, without any feed back,
cranked up loud.

This was sharp and clear, and with the speakers facing partly towards the Band, due to aiming them towards the sound crossing in the middle of the Hall, this also let the whole band
hear the Vocals good, without monitors , the monitors also will cause feed back, Don't need them, when the whole band can hear all that is going on , and work together,
I have seen many of these complicated set ups, with a sound man, and what the audience is hearing bears little resemblence
to what we were hearing on stage, Plus the monitors also messed us up.and feed back into your miked Amp
Old Fashioned,,,,Maybe,,,But we packed the audience in
and that set up, will work great in a large Hall.

Herbie

[Herbie Meeks]

KEITH
Plug an External Speaker into your Amp, most Amps have a input for this that does not affect the Amp Speaker,
And place the External Speaker on the opposite side of the Stage, I think you will find the Bass and Drummer, will be able to hear your Steel better, and makes picking a lot easier,

Herbie

[Simon Stephenson]

Hi guys,

As a professional acoustic engineer (as well as a musician), I feel it is my duty to defend my fellow professionals. (I'm talking about professional guys here and not the hobby sound men who seem to make up 90% of the sound men you come across.)

The duty of a sound man is simply to help the band get the sound they want. The job is not to go off on some quest to alter the sound of the band to some abstract thing that you've invented in your head!

For small venues (up to about 200 people) you normally don't need to mike up the band too much, unless the space they are playing in requires it so that you can get even coverage. For bigger venues, you do need to mic the band up. In general, you don't go around changing EQs on everything in sight. Sometimes you need to cut out certain frequencies that boom or feedback, but this is normally done across the board - i.e. for either the front of stage or the monitor system. (EQing the monitor system is particularly important for bands who want loud vocal foldback to hear the vocal harmonies because you can get loads of feedback.)

The only other tweaking is really for the acoustic instruments which are mic'ed up. For example, you can take out the bass on the hi hat mic because it doesnt make any sound in those frequencies. Cutting out frequencies where there is no sound means that you are less prone to feedback.

When it comes to mic'ing the PSG, there is very little tweaking required. The steel amp does the work of shaping the tone so the sound man doesn't have to.

Getting the balance is always hard, but I always used to ask bands how they want to sound. I remember one band saying - we don't want booming bass drums like rock bands before I even had the opportunity to ask them. I guess they'd had bad experiences in the past.

I don't do live sound anymore (not enough money in it) but I still work in acoustics and, amongst other things, design huge emergency sound systems for acoustic response (i.e. not worried about electronic aspects). My experience of hobby sound men is that they know all about the gadgets, and very little about the acoustics. What they do know about acoustics is, very often, wrong. Bearing this in mind, I can see why some of you guys have negative feelings about sound men.

[David L. Donald]

The duty of a sound man is simply to help the band get the sound they want. The job is not to go off on some quest to alter the sound of the band to some abstract thing that you've invented in your head!
...........
In general, you don't go around changing EQs on everything in sight. Sometimes you need to cut out certain frequencies that boom or feedback, but this is normally done across the board - i.e. for either the front of stage or the monitor system.
............
For example, you can take out the bass on the hi hat mic because it doesnt make any sound in those frequencies. Cutting out frequencies where there is no sound means that you are less prone to feedback.
.......
but I always used to ask bands how they want to sound.
I don't do live sound anymore (not enough money in it)
.......
My experience of hobby sound men is that they know all about the gadgets, and very little about the acoustics. What they do know about acoustics is, very often, wrong. Bearing this in mind, I can see why some of you guys have negative feelings about sound men.

Simon says... the truth.

I also normally don't do live mixing these days.
I'd rather save my ears for my own playing and studio work.
That said, I AM mixing a large 2 day blues/jazz festival next weekend.

Good money, I know most of the bands, 3,000-5,000 people expected,
and above all a good sound system. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.

I want the bands to sound as close as possible to their stage sound,
and with a monitor mix that gets them inspired.
I expect a floor monitor just like they have on stage,
back with me, so I can REALLY hear what they will hear,
not guess at it. This show is big enough that i CAN specify
what tools I want to use.