General Music Chat

Bob, I dont understand in this day and age why anyone playing live with out a sound man would not have a wireless, as I said all three of my mobile members are wireless and in the first set we all make it a point to walk the room and check it out from different angles.

Our bassists has a studio and he has a keen ear for frequency issues, but we have that DBX unit in our rack that we eq the room with and we never have any real issues unless we kick the gain on a mic too high. In fact that sucker is so clean that our singer can stand in front of the mains and it never rings.

Weve gotten into the habit of just leaving the board set from the last gig and ussually all we have to do is get the vocals on top of everything, being three piece it aint rocker science and one thing about threee piece is since there isnt another guitar, Im not competeing with another player for space, we all have our own sonic areas to work in.

Our singer pushes real hard most of the night, and i have found that on the last set I may need to set the gain a little higher on his mic, but there again we have so much headroom in our system that even when I do that it still doesnt distort or go into feedback.

Sorry I hi jacked this and got into guitars so much, this is mainly about vocals, one of the old tricks with a singer is to use a compressor limiter to keep his signal even in the board, that is if you have a vocalist that goes from whisper to screaming you can limit his or her dynamic range so it sits in the mix better. In my band we dont do this anymore, we just choke back our string instruments if he goes to whisper, of course to do this you have to be able to hear the vocals clear at any volume.

Guess Im rambling again.

Good thread subject Bob, many people need to hear this from active players, if you are in your garage band and go out and play for an audience, you need to be very aware of what they are hearing, sure that screaming ass guitar or earth shattering bass is cool to you, but it may make your group sound like crap from an audience stand point. And if you are expecting to get paid on a regular basis playing live music, what they audience thinks of you is all that matters.

Wireless?

Ech I avoid them like the plague because it feels like it changes the overall sound or tone quality.

If you have success with them, that's great but I don't like them.




"Sam, Sam I am, I don't like the wireless with green eggs, I don't like them with green eggs and ham."

Capt if you ever got to see us live you would understand why I have to have a wireless, and yeah you are right they do take something away tone wise, along with all m pedals, but hey its only rock n roll, we arent trying to launch a space ship!

I cant stand playing live with cords anymore, just the mobility and not getting tangled up with each other, I guess if we just sat there it would be one thing, but we would all be tied up in a knot,a nd as far as checking your sound its the only way to go.

Capt if you ever got to see us live you would understand why I have to have a wireless, and yeah you are right they do take something away tone wise, along with all m pedals, but hey its only rock n roll, we arent trying to launch a space ship!

I cant stand playing live with cords anymore, just the mobility and not getting tangled up with each other, I guess if we just sat there it would be one thing, but we would all be tied up in a knot,a nd as far as checking your sound its the only way to go.

It's all good, JW.

If your sound comes from this and you like it, you are golden.

I, personally, can't take it.
Everything is subjective.. Use it if you can or lose it if you can't.. lol

PS: Spaceship is this way >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bob, I dont understand in this day and age why anyone playing live with out a sound man would not have a wireless, as I said all three of my mobile members are wireless and in the first set we all make it a point to walk the room and check it out from different angles.

Our bassists has a studio and he has a keen ear for frequency issues, but we have that DBX unit in our rack that we eq the room with and we never have any real issues unless we kick the gain on a mic too high. In fact that sucker is so clean that our singer can stand in front of the mains and it never rings.

Weve gotten into the habit of just leaving the board set from the last gig and ussually all we have to do is get the vocals on top of everything, being three piece it aint rocker science and one thing about threee piece is since there isnt another guitar, Im not competeing with another player for space, we all have our own sonic areas to work in.

Our singer pushes real hard most of the night, and i have found that on the last set I may need to set the gain a little higher on his mic, but there again we have so much headroom in our system that even when I do that it still doesnt distort or go into feedback.

Sorry I hi jacked this and got into guitars so much, this is mainly about vocals, one of the old tricks with a singer is to use a compressor limiter to keep his signal even in the board, that is if you have a vocalist that goes from whisper to screaming you can limit his or her dynamic range so it sits in the mix better. In my band we dont do this anymore, we just choke back our string instruments if he goes to whisper, of course to do this you have to be able to hear the vocals clear at any volume.

Guess Im rambling again.

Good thread subject Bob, many people need to hear this from active players, if you are in your garage band and go out and play for an audience, you need to be very aware of what they are hearing, sure that screaming ass guitar or earth shattering bass is cool to you, but it may make your group sound like crap from an audience stand point. And if you are expecting to get paid on a regular basis playing live music, what they audience thinks of you is all that matters.

. Hi-jack away. This particular post is GOLDEN. You should go up on Mt. Ararat and have God emblazen this post on stone for all aspiring rockers to worship....(perhaps with a better explanation of "headroom" and "compressor limiter")

Lets see BOB, headroom, where to start.

Actually my bassist plays with another group who have a lot less equipment than our group, a few weeks ago he asked would it be all right to hook 4 monitors up to one amp. Most amps are rated at 8 ohms and most speakers are rated at 8 ohms, in our pa we run one side of a power amp into two monitors daisy chained together, so 2 8 ohms cabs together lowers the ohm load to 4 ohms on the speaker cab. Not really that bad, but they were going to run 4 8 ohm cabs on a 8 ohm power amp, so in effect they were lowering the amp to 2 ohms. Thru my years of sound, this isnt good. An amp at 2 ohms has no extra headroom, if you were to run say the kick or snare thru the monitors when you smack the drum too hard you push the amp to its limits, in short meaning the amp has no give at 2 ohms, so if you push it too hard into overload you are going to damage either the speaker or the amp. I hope that makes sense.

In my bands pa system we run the top speakers at 8 ohm, its comfortable for the speakers, but in our subs in order to make them more efficient we use the total amp to push two subs daisy chained together and push the sub amp into the 4 ohm range. Not ideal I would rather have my amps running at 8 ohms, cause they have extra "headroom" for any spikes you get, but we only run our pa at around 65% on the tops and 80% of the sub amp. Meaning we only turn the volumes pots on those amps to that range, now on our monitors I turn them up 100%.

I hope this sheds some light into the term headroom. If you look at amps, most have a full power rating. If you have an amp that is rated at 1000 watts, this is pushed to the 2 ohm load, read your spec sheets. A 1000 watt amp pushed to 8 ohms has somewhere in the area of 350 to 500 watts total output, thus you have some headroom there, and it will work more effieciently. Amp manufactureres want to publish the highest wattage rating, but if you run your 1000 watt amp into a 8 ohm cab you really dont develop that much power.

Compressor/limiter is a good effect tool to use on vocals in particular. What does it do? The limit function basically clips the high signals back. Say a singer has a dynamic ranger of 6 db, by setting a limit on it you can lower his output so you stay in the sweet spot of your line level. Compression is kinda the opposite, it makes the more quier parts louder. So with good use of a compressor limiter you can alter the dynamic range of the a 6 db singer into a 2 db band, so when he whispers it reaises the audible level and when he pushes really hard it clips the peaks off of his audible level.

Back in the early 80s when I was in my heavy metal days, we would compress everything, so whether we as a band were playing quiet or loud the overall volume from the pa stayed the same. As I said in another post we dont do that anymore, we just choke off our instruments when the singer goes low and we may hammer harder when he is pushing hard.

For anyone interested in more scientific termonology Im sure there are articles online that will help you better understand that dynamics.

The down side of severe compression and limiting is that if you over doo it you will hear a swish noise as the device is doing its job, they have setting called over easy on most of the that take this away, but if you compress too hard you will still hear it.

Good Luck and I hope i didnt totall comfuse someone, I dont think of compressing or limiting as effects, some people do, I just think there to be used to level out the various things in your mix.

I often hear "I can hear the singer" but can you listen to the words? Hearing somebody and understanding somebody are two different things. I've heard classic rock cover bands where the vocals are just noise. Everybody knows the words so maybe it doesn't matter. But most of the tunes I sing aren't mainstream and I always sing a few originals. Few people know the words so I feel it's really important. I can't seem to make this point important enough to other band members and it's my #1 reason for quitting a band.

If you cant tell me ALL the words in Nazareth's Hair of the Dog album, I'd make it worth your while!

Now your messin wit a son of aaaa b.............


Great song, we get the gals to all scream sum bitch when we play it.

They eat it up!

What ever happened to Nazareth?

They had some great songs in the day.

I looked em up and they are still playing, with the original singer.

I saw em a couple of times in the late 70s, great live act in my opinion.

You can tell Im bored at work today, here is a definition of headroom.

In analog audio, headroom can mean low-level signal capabilities as well as the amount of extra power reserve available within the power amplifiers that drive the loudspeakers.

taken from Wikipedia

I know what headroom and compressor limiter mean. I'm sure a lot of people had no idea what you mean. Thanks for clearing it up for them.

there are other tricks for letting the vocals stand out in the mix more, we used to lower the eq on some things and boost them in in the vocal areas

Wireless?

Ech I avoid them like the plague because it feels like it changes the overall sound or tone quality.

If you have success with them, that's great but I don't like them.




"Sam, Sam I am, I don't like the wireless with green eggs, I don't like them with green eggs and ham."

Try the Line 6 offering. You'll be singing I'm a believer instead of quoting Dr Suese.

I have not had the privilege yet of a full course band with pro equip. but I suspect, a good sound man is key to successful room balance. Think about it... Each room is different(acoustically) so Signal response will differ. A sound man knows how to "zero out" the scale so to speak, and obtain proper baseline levels. From there, a good sound check for each member... and walla! Nobody out screaming the next guy and so on...

I would think most singers/vocalists (self included) forget the importance of diction, enunciation and articulation of lyrics. Assuming the mic levels are set correctly, the Lyrics can be a blur to the listener if the singer doesn't make an effort to word out the lyrics with clarity.

As I see it, putting on a good show, is as much about the refinements and polishing as it is about the body and gesture of the music. To simply plug in and produce rythym at loud Dbs (with an unintelligible vocal)... is at best, a poor alternative to a good Dj with an mp3 player and a huge PA.

Just my humble onion

Wireless?

Ech I avoid them like the plague because it feels like it changes the overall sound or tone quality.

If you have success with them, that's great but I don't like them.




"Sam, Sam I am, I don't like the wireless with green eggs, I don't like them with green eggs and ham."

Try the Line 6 offering. You'll be singing I'm a believer instead of quoting Dr Suese.

Are you kidding? If it isn't the creative dept. you are dialing, I may as well be Dr. Seuss as I am less useful then he is.