Turn Down that Goddam Guitar!!!
Aug. 19th, 2007 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
voxwomanSo I got to play sound guy on Sunday for my husband's band and another band, doing a "downed biker benefit" at a local rock club (a rather large venue). We have some very nice equipment, even though it weighs (literally) a ton.
My husband's band knows to keep their stage volume at a reasonable level and let the PA do all the work. It's really the only way to get a decent mix. For them, I basically needed to set the levels and then "forget it".
The other band, which was supposedly called Throwing Fitz (at least, that was what was printed on their kick drum), but is now called Luxury Yacht or Throat Warbler Mangrove or Black Dog Meshugginah - they said it a few times over the microphone, but you couldn't understand anything they said - well, they were another matter entirely. They were a five-piece, with 2 guitars, bass, drums and percussion (congas and timbales and some hand-held things like maracas and tambourines), with 3 singers. We (Rich and I) got everybody mic'ed up, but Rich forgot to mention to Lead Dog 1 to turn down his amp. Not only was it cranked up to 11, that guitar player suffered from what I call Will Coffey Disease (named after the guitar player in my first "real" band, Sonic Veil) - which is to have a plethora of pedals that basically remove all the bass and midrange from your guitar sound, so you are left with a piercing, nails-on-blackboard sound so that your leads can be heard on Jupiter. The guy was a decent player, but he was just SO LOUD, it was impossible to mix the band so that you could hear the other guitar player or the vocalists while Guitar 1 was playing anything.
By the end of the afternoon, Guitar 1 was out of the PA mix entirely, and he was STILL too loud. And the percussionist looked nice while he was playing the congas and the other things, but you couldn't hear him for shit. So I'm left to wonder why he bothers to schlep all that stuff around when you can't hear it at all anyway.
I mentioned the LOUD GUITAR after the gig while we were breaking down and the other band was thanking me for making them sound so wonderful (excuse me? I did what I could, but "wonderful" is not the word I'd use for how they sounded). And they said "yeah, we know, but what are you gonna do? All guitar players are like that." Um. OK. If you say so. I think if the 4 of you ganged up on him, you could get him to realize that he's affecting the sound of the band overall and maybe he'd turn down a bit.
But I do know that it has to do more with the players not being used to having a real sound system and only putting the vocals through the PA, and needing to rely on stage volume for the mix of the band. But that fucker really gave me a headache yesterday.
The other major annoyance was when my husband's band called up some blonde bimbo to sing a song. Now, I've been waiting for my "shot" to get up on stage with them and sing one fracking song, and I am sleeping with someone in the band (maybe I'm not sleeping with the right person in the band? Who knows), and they did 2 songs that I do in my band, and that I know cold, so they get this bimbo up there to shake her titties and toss her blonde hair and scream into the microphone and she didn't even know the song! My gentle readers, I just want you to know that I successfully resisted the temptation to cut off her microphone, even during her obligatory "visit my web site at www.imafuckingslut.com" speech after she murdered Communication Breakdown, and all I did was turn her microphone down enough so that you could barely hear her out of the PA. All the screwups in that song were completely her own. Oh, and she got a "do over". *rolls eyes*
The sound man is the person with the Power during a gig. Do not piss off the sound man.
My husband's band knows to keep their stage volume at a reasonable level and let the PA do all the work. It's really the only way to get a decent mix. For them, I basically needed to set the levels and then "forget it".
The other band, which was supposedly called Throwing Fitz (at least, that was what was printed on their kick drum), but is now called Luxury Yacht or Throat Warbler Mangrove or Black Dog Meshugginah - they said it a few times over the microphone, but you couldn't understand anything they said - well, they were another matter entirely. They were a five-piece, with 2 guitars, bass, drums and percussion (congas and timbales and some hand-held things like maracas and tambourines), with 3 singers. We (Rich and I) got everybody mic'ed up, but Rich forgot to mention to Lead Dog 1 to turn down his amp. Not only was it cranked up to 11, that guitar player suffered from what I call Will Coffey Disease (named after the guitar player in my first "real" band, Sonic Veil) - which is to have a plethora of pedals that basically remove all the bass and midrange from your guitar sound, so you are left with a piercing, nails-on-blackboard sound so that your leads can be heard on Jupiter. The guy was a decent player, but he was just SO LOUD, it was impossible to mix the band so that you could hear the other guitar player or the vocalists while Guitar 1 was playing anything.
By the end of the afternoon, Guitar 1 was out of the PA mix entirely, and he was STILL too loud. And the percussionist looked nice while he was playing the congas and the other things, but you couldn't hear him for shit. So I'm left to wonder why he bothers to schlep all that stuff around when you can't hear it at all anyway.
I mentioned the LOUD GUITAR after the gig while we were breaking down and the other band was thanking me for making them sound so wonderful (excuse me? I did what I could, but "wonderful" is not the word I'd use for how they sounded). And they said "yeah, we know, but what are you gonna do? All guitar players are like that." Um. OK. If you say so. I think if the 4 of you ganged up on him, you could get him to realize that he's affecting the sound of the band overall and maybe he'd turn down a bit.
But I do know that it has to do more with the players not being used to having a real sound system and only putting the vocals through the PA, and needing to rely on stage volume for the mix of the band. But that fucker really gave me a headache yesterday.
The other major annoyance was when my husband's band called up some blonde bimbo to sing a song. Now, I've been waiting for my "shot" to get up on stage with them and sing one fracking song, and I am sleeping with someone in the band (maybe I'm not sleeping with the right person in the band? Who knows), and they did 2 songs that I do in my band, and that I know cold, so they get this bimbo up there to shake her titties and toss her blonde hair and scream into the microphone and she didn't even know the song! My gentle readers, I just want you to know that I successfully resisted the temptation to cut off her microphone, even during her obligatory "visit my web site at www.imafuckingslut.com" speech after she murdered Communication Breakdown, and all I did was turn her microphone down enough so that you could barely hear her out of the PA. All the screwups in that song were completely her own. Oh, and she got a "do over". *rolls eyes*
The sound man is the person with the Power during a gig. Do not piss off the sound man.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 03:16 pm (UTC)Being the soundman is fun. :D
*snicker*
Date: 2007-08-20 06:26 pm (UTC)Hoe you didn't give R. too bad a time about it - I don't think it was his fault at all. He's just way too nice, I'm sure :-).
Maybe you should simply yell at "the right person in the band" - with that voice of yours :-P.
Re: *snicker*
Date: 2007-08-20 06:27 pm (UTC)BTDTGTCD
Date: 2007-08-21 04:17 am (UTC)The problem with the band I did sound for is that the drummer was a Keith Moon wannabe at the time (he's since calmed down quite a bit), and he would often play too loud for the venue without any amplification of any kind. So, in order to be heard, the bass player and guitar player would turn their amps up, and the vocalist would ask for her monitor to be turned up, and it just made everything a big loud mess.
I eventually got to the point where I had everybody going direct into the board from their pedals (the vocalist had effects pedals too) instead of through amps, so I could just blast the monitors back into their faces and still have a little control over what went out to the audience. It helped a little... until our last gig before the band broke up. That was in a venue with lots of hard reflecting surfaces. I could NOT get a decent mix going in that environment to save my life; the drums were just too overpowering in that acoustic space. By that point, even the vocalist, who was usually a very even-tempered person, was yelling at the drummer to PLAY EFFING SOFTER!
The band eventually broke up because the bass player ran off to Japan after being led to believe that he'd gotten the married singer pregnant, and everybody had just gotten completely tired of the drummer.
Re: BTDTGTCD
Date: 2007-08-21 12:10 pm (UTC)Re: BTDTGTCD
Date: 2007-08-22 02:10 pm (UTC)