The Steel Guitar Forum

It's too loud when your ol' lady leaves with the sound man.

Being a "veteran" in the ballroom band area, I have been educated on quite a few things as far as loudness. When we play our first set, I always watch the crowd dancing by the stage. If I see people wincing as they cros in front, we are too loud. On most stages, the amps are right at their ear level. The "older" people who are wearing hearing aids, I have learned, do not have much control over the "feedback" that comes in to their ears from the amplified system. I learned this from a former musician who began wearing hearing aids and came to a dance one night. He suddenly realized how offensive the feedback is in to his ear if the music is too loud. We have a 5 piece western swing ballroom band in Iowa and we use 2 trumpets, keyboard/bass, guitar-lead and rhythm, drums and steel. We do a lot of Bob Wills swing up-tempo stuff that really kicks butt. Dynamics are a huge part of a good presentation and as someone else said, too loud or too soft all the time detracts from dynamics of a song. Heard a Jamaican reggae band one time, and the leader started the night out while they were doing their opening vamp with, "Like my father always said, If it's too loud....back up!" We backed all the way out the door after 30 minutes. Kirk (Western Justice Band)

We used to hang a logging chain out by the sound board. When the chain stuck straight out we would lower the volume just a little. That is the only way we knew how to control the volume.

Mike was only kidding.But that's pretty much the way it's done in clubs here in the south.

Bobby, are you giggling about a guitar player we both know?

<SMALL> When is the band too loud? </SMALL>

...almost always in the last set of 5 on Saturday night with a bunch of rodwy drinkers present.

Stephen.Most guitar players I've worked with can shatter a log chain by the 3rd set. Why do guitar players want to play so loud??

If it's a big venue ,maybe you have to play loud. There's a differance between loud and noisey. I played with Roy Buchanan in DC at CrossRoads. Big room! You could hear Roy down the street but it didn't hurt your ears even on stage with him. He had a tremendous sense of dynamics,feeling and tone of anyone
I ever heard. I have seen new country acts that are using contract sound crews that are power hungry and have thier heads up thier asses. This is a big reason for our jams(MASGA) using r/ts The tracks get it right!