Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

Well, we played it. I met up with Hayden, we had a couple beers, hung out for a bit.

The gig had it's quirks. Not our best. First 30-seconds into the set, our drummer kicked a hole in the kick drum. We found out later that the head was about 3-years old and had been payed 2-3 nights a week. So it was due.

Sound guy had no clue how to run monitors. He seemed like a nice guy, but he just couldn't work it right period. On stage or in the crowd. You know.. I was just talking to Hayden about how I've been curbing my rants here on Bandmix. But it's hard for me to understand how this dude has a job doing this kind of work. The experience on stage was torture. It was a freakin mess, and it spilled through into the performance. I couldn't hear my guitar one bit, the vocals were very faint, but I heard the keyboard at jet engine decibles.

You know what... I've run my own gigs before. It's really not hard to run a monitor system correctly. I personally was highly dissapointed with the lack of professionalism of their sound man. I swear to God I thought I was just playing air guitar for half of the show. And it doesn't help in the guitar lead department either. I'm fairly sure my leads suffered as well. I guess Hayden would be able to chime in on that. 'Cause I have no clue. I couldn't hear ANY of it.

Hayden and I were talking about his "fund in the sun" festival experience before the show, and he was telling me how bad he had it there, and how pissed he was at the end of it. And lo and behold, I have a similar experience and he's watching our train wreck. Hahahaha..

I guess I'm just going to have to chalk it up as a mediocre show. My apologies to Hayden, he really didn't get to check us out on one of our better nights. That bums me out. Our whole band was really excited to play this gig. It just turned out to be kind of a mess..

I've had things like that happen occasionally. We used to play a gig in Hot Springs, AR where the club had a killer PA, but you never knew if the soundman was going to be good or not, so we took our mixer and got our own mix onstage and just sent the outputs to the snake so that he could control the volume of the mains and we got the mix and the monitor mixes the way we wanted. Another option would be to get a short splitter snake and use your own mixer on stage just for monitors, if you trust the sound guy for the front mix. Unless the sound company has an onstage monitor board and someone running it, even good soundmen have trouble getting you a good mix from just out front. If you have plenty of time for a good sound check and you can keep at him until you get a good monitor mix, things will go alright, but it's hard to get an up front soundman to adjust the monitors once the show starts.

You should had HAYDEN oversee the board, just for safety reasons..

AS in to safely make sure that the sound man wasn't on crack/asleep/a moron.

Even in the worst situations, your friend, your girl, your mother could have done better on the board..

And to think they paid that guy for his "work".

Gives credence to the term, "promoted to the level of incompetence".

HAYDEN where were you, man? How come you didn't help them???!!!!?!?!?!?

The only time I let bands suffer is if I don't like them (really/really-really don't like them). Otherwise if the guy assigned to the task is stroking out/heart attack etc, I'll actually go back and harass the sound guy until he either fixes it or lets someone competent do the job at hand.

Didn't you at least get a sound check? I take it that's a no.

I am sorry you and yours had to endure that, Shred.

Chalk it up to a learning experience, as in you now have learned to second guess the sound guy. The next show will be much better, I am quite sure..

Sorry to rear about your show. You always want things to be perfect when your friends and family are ther eto hear you. But, it is nice that 2 of our members were able to connect. I go to Vegas a lot. Wish I could have been there as well.

Yea Capt. We got a quick sound-check. But even then the guy wouldn't listen to us. At one point I said " I can't hear the other singer in my monitor". His response? "Yea you can, I have his setting the same as yours." The guy was just lazy.

I did sing one song last night. But I couldn't hear my own voice through the monitor. So I just focused on the listening to my voice bouncing off the back of the room. I used the room as my monitor. But my guitar was basically non-existent to me. I thought maybe I had a dead battery or bad cord or something like that. And since we do have a certain level of improvisation, it had me tripped up at times. The whole band had confusing moments where we didn't know where we were in a couple of songs. Bad monitoring can stump your mojo.

The guy who put on the show, Michael Soli, is one of my favorite people in Las Vegas. He was excited to have us there. We were excited to be there. I have no problems with him at all. We'll be back to do it right. It was just a shame to have so many technical difficulties and so much confusion. Our practice was awesome the night before.

ratsass wrote:I've had things like that happen occasionally. We used to play a gig in Hot Springs, AR where the club had a killer PA, but you never knew if the soundman was going to be good or not, so we took our mixer and got our own mix onstage and just sent the outputs to the snake so that he could control the volume of the mains and we got the mix and the monitor mixes the way we wanted. Another option would be to get a short splitter snake and use your own mixer on stage just for monitors, if you trust the sound guy for the front mix. Unless the sound company has an onstage monitor board and someone running it, even good soundmen have trouble getting you a good mix from just out front. If you have plenty of time for a good sound check and you can keep at him until you get a good monitor mix, things will go alright, but it's hard to get an up front soundman to adjust the monitors once the show starts.

I hear whar you're saying man. We had specific instructions to bring our instruments only. We were just at the mercy of the venue. It was our first time playing there, so we had no idea what to expect.

I will say this though. We've had our share of good sound guys. They just know how to ask the right questions for a quick sound-check. We do need to have a band meeting about a couple of our guys playing out of turn during sound-checks. I'm not gonna say we're perfect. But the best quickie sound-checks we've had are when every member just controls themselves and patiently waits their turn.

That sucks Shredd6. I know you would have wanted to really put on the ritz with a fellow Bandmixer in the crowd. Besides, your a showman, you always want to put on a good gig.
But ya know sh*t happens.
You been riding kinda high for a while it seems. Take it stride my man.
Take it all in stride.

Yea, I know Sans.. I actually debated in my head whether I'd bring it up on Bandmix. I don't want to seem ungrateful for being invited to play the venue. I just hate it when someone does a lackluster job and it affects the performance. The people running the show actually brought in people to film our performance (I was told before the show). So you can imagine my frustrations.

In light of the mishaps, I talked to IZ today, and it turns out that my new song is a big hit with the band and the fans who saw the show. It was my first time performing it live, and we only practiced it one night a few times as a band before the show. But I'm being told it was the best song of the night. Not sure whether it's true or not, but it does make me feel good. Iz is a highly talented singer who grew up listening to Reggae and R&B, and for him to feel that way as well means a whole lot to me.

I had a great time talking to Hayden before the show. He's extremely down to earth. I sent my number to his e-mail, but I haven't heard from him since the show. I'm guessing he left before we were done. and I honestly wouldn't blame him.

Ouch! Very little would piss me off more than that, & yeah, it's happened to me, too. It's part & parcel of some of the hippie festivals (& a LOT of open mics!) when they aren't run right. About all you can do is move on, & avoid that sound guy in the future if you can.

I doubt that Hayden was left unimpressed. I'd be more impressed watching you overcome it & doing adequately in spite of the harm done to it all by the twit, myself, & I doubt he's that much different, esp since he's been there, too.

Good news, indeed, regarding your new tune, Shredd! I wanna hear it.

Man that sucks, I wish Hayden had been able to see the Lei Day show I saw, that one turned out well and the band sounded really good out front. Not my style of music, but done quite well and very good sound.

The only real problem I've had with a sound man was the opposite, our band leader walked in the door trying to tell the guy how to do his job, we ended up with my guitar barely audible out front and the sound guy was afraid I would be as much of a twit as the band leader and get mad if he told me I needed to turn up some. So I had no idea nobody could hear me well out front, the show otherwise went quite well, opening for 50's singer then playing as his back up band, and the newspaper was there taking pictures and doing an article for the blueberry festival. No problems with monitors or onstage sound, they just couldn't hear me well enough out front and band leader insisted we didn't need to be mic'd...it sucked...so the sound man couldn't just crank me up a little, I wasn't in the board. Just vocals and drums...great...

Glad you got to meet Hayden though, meeting online acquaintances is always cool, I've met you, JW123, The Kidd, a guy I know from years back on a computer tech support forum where we were moderators, and a couple of others along the way. Enjoyed every one of the meetings.

Hey Shredd sorry I never got back to you. I never could get internet access. to get your ph#.. BTW the show was pretty damn good form out front!!! Your band is excellent bro! And so is your song, and your singing; I liked you vocal approach and don't ever think that your over matched singing w/those guys. you sound great.. really. Go Jamaica!!!
Sorry bro but I was so beat I did leave right after your song. I wish I were there just for fun so we could've hung out more and I could've caught the whole set. Next time I'll make sure we get to hang!

Your a stand up cat and a talented artist for sure!

If I weren't so fogged I may have caught onto what was going on and threw in to help w/the sound.
Yes your guitar was way too low in the house mix as well. I have to say they didn't give you a great mix, but it still sounded good and the performance shined and made it an excellent show....

P.S. was the soundman friend's w/any of the other act's?:idea:


"it never rains in Vegas but you still get a lotta fog"

Thanks Hayden. Yea the fans seemed to still enjoy it. We even hung out with some of our lovely fans afterward 'till the wee hours.

Thanks for coming man. Hopefully we'll catch up again in the future.

Hayden King wrote:
P.S. was the soundman friend's w/any of the other act's?:idea:

Not that I know of. It might actually be his house equipment though. He was kinda pissed when the kick drum broke. But it was an old POS head anyway. If there was no duct tape in the house, they were going to tell him to stop drumming, but the show woulda still gone on.

I'm being told that our band is a little too hard-core for that particular acoustic night. I guess they were expecting something a little softer. Fine then.. Put us on the big stage next door.

Here's at least one pic of us from the gig. Looks like soundcheck.



That's me with my Ovation. Ryan's playing my Yamaha. And Juan's playing my Yamaha Bass. Damn man, I've got some cool sh*t.