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#53726 by Crip2Nite
Tue Jan 20, 2009 8:27 am
Tue Jan 20, 2009 8:27 am
My classic rock band Decades owns their own sound system and let me tell you.... it blows away most of the house sound systems here on Long Island.... I love it as each member gets their own monitor and the drummer has the sound board near him so he controls everything... No more paying for a sound system and a sound man! My other band PanikAtack always uses the house sound system and some of them really blow plus we have to give a portion of our take to the sound guy!
Having a good p.a. can be a pain in the butt, all the knobs dials and investing into the gear can be expensive, not to mention it really takes about as much time to learn how to be a good sound man as it takes to learn how to be a good musician. It is in your best interest if you are the leader of your band or in my case have been a follower for a long time and always counted on someone else to handle the sound, but along the way I have been watching and learning because sooner or later if you plan on doing this long term it is something you are going to have to deal with at one level or another. You are going to be faced with a decision do we hire a sound man and pay him more than we make, do we recruit a friend to take on the responsibilty for little or no pay only for him or her to over do it thinking that they have to turn knobs all night to impress the crowd that they are PART OF THE BAND, or do you learn something about it put a little effort over time and run your sound from the stage or do a combination of set up the p.a. do the sound check and get someone you can trust and tell them most of it is already done and you don't need to make huge adjustments all night long just tweak the sound and keep the levels balanced, or remain status quo.
over the years I have had, as I am sure a lot of you have also had the good fortune of working with very talented musicians great leaders and some really tech savy people. I have over the last ten years had the good fortune of working with just one of these type of people
(an Engineer) at his day gig very tech savy just left the band and I have been thrust into the forfront to pick up his duty as sound guy and somehow try to maintain the good reputation as one of the top bands in our area, it is not that we are the best musicians in our area although I have always strived to be the best I can be not that I want to be better than Joe Blow I am in competition with myself (and I am my own worst critic), but one of the reasons that we can pack them in is due to our superior sound this is one of the things that can make or break your band. Your fellow musicians are going to come and go, you have to deal with club owners sometimes kiss their arse to get a Thurs. or Sun. gig these are things you have to due it's called paying your dues and you have no control over a lot of the obstacles that are going to get in your way. The one thing you do have control over if you are willing is to try to have a great sound live and do it consistantly, if you just play music for fun and go to the clubs set a small p.a. and put two speakers on a stick thats fine if it works for you but if you want to get a growing and extensive crowd following and be able to put more money in your pocket great sound is in your best interest.
So what a better time to start than now my advise from first hand experience is don't go in to a music store half cocked with (G)ear
(A)quisition (S)yndrome and start buying mismatched p.a. gear the music store salesmen just love it when you do that. Do your homework start with the basics a good mixer that you can expand on by that I mean a good 16 channel minumum channel mixer Not a bunch of stereo channels with inserts on every channel and six sends minumum good speakers with high wattage drivers, poweramps with at least 2 to 3 times the wattage your speakers can handle. a good front of house signal processor (I highly recomend a DBX Driverack) now adays technology is really taking off a lot of the newer speakers have poweramps and processors built in Yorkville has some that just kick but learn about signal chain and learn as much as you can I know it is a pain and very expensive but as the old saying goes it takes money to make money that is one of the reasons I have chosen to keep a day job and still pursue my aspirations as a serious musician it keeps me very busy and there is not much time to sit around watching t.v. but it is what I enjoy and so do my bandmates they benefit off of it just the same. I happen to live in an area where the music and entertainment biz has remained fairly strong untill Ike came along but I still have hope for the coming season because of thwe reputation that we have built over the years of consistantly having a good crowd and I equate most of this to good sound and playing what people want to hear for the most part I know a lot of you are tirwed of Play That Funky Music, Sweet Home Alabama, Mustang Sally, and Freebird, but that is what the partyers want to hear. Since we have lost our forth member we have started to reinvent ourselfs and playing alot of Van Halen, Peter Framton, and April Wine you can call these songs tired but we played them last Friday at a gig and we had one of the best most responsive crowds that stayed from the beginning untill the end and got a lot of commplaments from the crowd as well as the owner he was very happy (lots of money) and it is all because of GOOD SOUND!
over the years I have had, as I am sure a lot of you have also had the good fortune of working with very talented musicians great leaders and some really tech savy people. I have over the last ten years had the good fortune of working with just one of these type of people
(an Engineer) at his day gig very tech savy just left the band and I have been thrust into the forfront to pick up his duty as sound guy and somehow try to maintain the good reputation as one of the top bands in our area, it is not that we are the best musicians in our area although I have always strived to be the best I can be not that I want to be better than Joe Blow I am in competition with myself (and I am my own worst critic), but one of the reasons that we can pack them in is due to our superior sound this is one of the things that can make or break your band. Your fellow musicians are going to come and go, you have to deal with club owners sometimes kiss their arse to get a Thurs. or Sun. gig these are things you have to due it's called paying your dues and you have no control over a lot of the obstacles that are going to get in your way. The one thing you do have control over if you are willing is to try to have a great sound live and do it consistantly, if you just play music for fun and go to the clubs set a small p.a. and put two speakers on a stick thats fine if it works for you but if you want to get a growing and extensive crowd following and be able to put more money in your pocket great sound is in your best interest.
So what a better time to start than now my advise from first hand experience is don't go in to a music store half cocked with (G)ear
(A)quisition (S)yndrome and start buying mismatched p.a. gear the music store salesmen just love it when you do that. Do your homework start with the basics a good mixer that you can expand on by that I mean a good 16 channel minumum channel mixer Not a bunch of stereo channels with inserts on every channel and six sends minumum good speakers with high wattage drivers, poweramps with at least 2 to 3 times the wattage your speakers can handle. a good front of house signal processor (I highly recomend a DBX Driverack) now adays technology is really taking off a lot of the newer speakers have poweramps and processors built in Yorkville has some that just kick but learn about signal chain and learn as much as you can I know it is a pain and very expensive but as the old saying goes it takes money to make money that is one of the reasons I have chosen to keep a day job and still pursue my aspirations as a serious musician it keeps me very busy and there is not much time to sit around watching t.v. but it is what I enjoy and so do my bandmates they benefit off of it just the same. I happen to live in an area where the music and entertainment biz has remained fairly strong untill Ike came along but I still have hope for the coming season because of thwe reputation that we have built over the years of consistantly having a good crowd and I equate most of this to good sound and playing what people want to hear for the most part I know a lot of you are tirwed of Play That Funky Music, Sweet Home Alabama, Mustang Sally, and Freebird, but that is what the partyers want to hear. Since we have lost our forth member we have started to reinvent ourselfs and playing alot of Van Halen, Peter Framton, and April Wine you can call these songs tired but we played them last Friday at a gig and we had one of the best most responsive crowds that stayed from the beginning untill the end and got a lot of commplaments from the crowd as well as the owner he was very happy (lots of money) and it is all because of GOOD SOUND!
I made a mistake, there should have been a period at the end of not a bunch of stereo channels. you do want inserts on every channel 16 full mono channels minumum. with compression on vocals, guitars, base and drums if you can swing it but you can add those later thats what I mean something you can expand on add the things you will need as you can afford them over time!
Haley
Ive been using the D curve to set our rooms. As I said we tried the flat setting and it was just too crisp, my guitars were cutting way too much almost spikey.
Im going to look next time at the highs. We did have kind of a high pitched problem. I was blaming it on my POD. SOme of my guitar settings just set that sucker off and it was real high end, maybe I need to roll off some of that 10K and up area. I like leaving the lows, we wont it to thump on the bottom. And like to hear the crack of the kick drum.
I will add if you are putting together a PA system go out to venues that you may be playing and see what working bands are doing. As Haley said dont listen to the local shop guy, most work off commision and will tell you you need the best theyve got, go out and see what is working for bands first. It could save you a fortune in the end. If you are just going to do the occasional gig, say every couple of monthes. My recomendation would be to hire a competent sound company and let them handle it. At last count, we have around $23,000 dollars in pa, lighting, and pyro gear. Most of this has been accumulated over a number of years and we have some smaller PA speakers and an older set of monitors and some old power amps that could come out of the trailer as spares. PA equipment gets real expensive fast. Like I said see what folks are using and try to do this as simple as possible. It takes us an hour and a half to set up and about 50 minutes to tear down, our pa rack has the mixer, effects, amps drive rack all in one. All we have to do is hook speakers and mics to the box, but its still a lot. Since last summer weve done 31 gigs at an average of $640 a gig, lower than I once thought we would do, so weve generated $19,840 in that period of time. So in that period we havent yet covered what we have in the pa gear.
My point here is that even to be a simple bar band like mine it takes a lot of money in equipment. Our group works hard to sound as good as we can. We have a sound man who is a 5th member. I can set up and do it myself but that would take away from the performance side if Im constantly worrying with the sound. We use a lot of effects on our vocals that changes all night so we need a dedicated person. It costs out of our pockets, but in the end we want to be better than the average band. Whenever we quit, we want to be remembered as kicking ass and taking names on all fronts. Sound, Lights, Music, Performance the total package.
Once agian I would rent or hire gear before you assemble some huge soundsystem. We still have some of that old Project One Peavey gear floating around, to me its nothing more than fire wood now. For practice a good powered board and a couple of nice speakers and mics is all you need and will suffice for most people for a gig or two.
Ive been using the D curve to set our rooms. As I said we tried the flat setting and it was just too crisp, my guitars were cutting way too much almost spikey.
Im going to look next time at the highs. We did have kind of a high pitched problem. I was blaming it on my POD. SOme of my guitar settings just set that sucker off and it was real high end, maybe I need to roll off some of that 10K and up area. I like leaving the lows, we wont it to thump on the bottom. And like to hear the crack of the kick drum.
I will add if you are putting together a PA system go out to venues that you may be playing and see what working bands are doing. As Haley said dont listen to the local shop guy, most work off commision and will tell you you need the best theyve got, go out and see what is working for bands first. It could save you a fortune in the end. If you are just going to do the occasional gig, say every couple of monthes. My recomendation would be to hire a competent sound company and let them handle it. At last count, we have around $23,000 dollars in pa, lighting, and pyro gear. Most of this has been accumulated over a number of years and we have some smaller PA speakers and an older set of monitors and some old power amps that could come out of the trailer as spares. PA equipment gets real expensive fast. Like I said see what folks are using and try to do this as simple as possible. It takes us an hour and a half to set up and about 50 minutes to tear down, our pa rack has the mixer, effects, amps drive rack all in one. All we have to do is hook speakers and mics to the box, but its still a lot. Since last summer weve done 31 gigs at an average of $640 a gig, lower than I once thought we would do, so weve generated $19,840 in that period of time. So in that period we havent yet covered what we have in the pa gear.
My point here is that even to be a simple bar band like mine it takes a lot of money in equipment. Our group works hard to sound as good as we can. We have a sound man who is a 5th member. I can set up and do it myself but that would take away from the performance side if Im constantly worrying with the sound. We use a lot of effects on our vocals that changes all night so we need a dedicated person. It costs out of our pockets, but in the end we want to be better than the average band. Whenever we quit, we want to be remembered as kicking ass and taking names on all fronts. Sound, Lights, Music, Performance the total package.
Once agian I would rent or hire gear before you assemble some huge soundsystem. We still have some of that old Project One Peavey gear floating around, to me its nothing more than fire wood now. For practice a good powered board and a couple of nice speakers and mics is all you need and will suffice for most people for a gig or two.
"A winks as good as nod to a blind man"
Haley, This past weekend the folks that came were requesting the hard stuff, Bulls On Parade, Them Bones, Dam That River, Suck My Kiss, you just never know what will pop up as far as request. If we dont know something I tell the requester you should have been here earlier, we played that in the first set. Of course then they say Ive been here all night!
"A winks as good as nod to a blind man"
Hey jw, our bass player who by the way is 6'-8" tall and has this amazing speaking voice and has an amazing singing voice too tells people all night long we do request just write your request on the back of a hundred dollar bill and bring it on up and we'll be glad to play it, thats how we started playing Freebird again a guy actually did it LOL. I swore 20 years ago I would never play that song again but with this new fangled video game Guitar Hero the popularity of those old songs are back!
Haley a few years ago we were playing this heavy metal club in Memphis and this guy came in and paid us $100 to let him sing Tutti Frutti with us. We slammed thru it. The club owner has never let me forget. Whenever she sees me she says I wish you hadnt done that, cause a lot of the bands came in playing the song after hearing the story. I was there a few weeks ago playing pool and I told her if we come in there agian and he shows up she can pay us $200 to not play it. She laughed but I was serious.
"A winks as good as nod to a blind man"
Just had to throw that up!
"A winks as good as nod to a blind man"
lol PLUG AND PLAY..!!!!!!!!!
My crappy KUSTOM 200W 4-channel PA, try to get through the first tune and tweak liberally. (Pray for good tone and only minor changes) (oh and the spring reverb to calm down once the head gets warm) lol
And sound guy? Tip the house guy or he'll get you. Ever see when the sound guys laugh for no apparent reason? The band looks nervous?
That's cause they didn't grease the sound man.
My crappy KUSTOM 200W 4-channel PA, try to get through the first tune and tweak liberally. (Pray for good tone and only minor changes) (oh and the spring reverb to calm down once the head gets warm) lol
And sound guy? Tip the house guy or he'll get you. Ever see when the sound guys laugh for no apparent reason? The band looks nervous?
That's cause they didn't grease the sound man.
Good Advice Capt
Take care of your soundguy, cause he can mess you up.
The flip side of this is most soundguys want to make you sound good, so they look good.
We did a metal show a couple of monthes ago, one of those multi-band kiddie show things on a dare by some younger bands. Basically they wanted to blow us away. I was running a stack for looks but had an attenuator on it so it was real low volume wise, something sound guys like. Anyway 3 songs in my monitor keeps cutting out. At first I thought I was blowing up an amp. I got very pissed to say the least, Im used to being in control of our own sound. I ranted and raved at the soundman from stage to the point he was almost crying, same thing happened to the band after us and they ranted and raved. This was a friday night. Sat Night they had some minor label band play the venue and the sound company didnt fix the problem so their manager and the band wore them out again. The club owner called and let us run sound for a couple of weekends. Some of those 4 band a night deals. We made good money but most of these bands were so awful I would have paid to go home. And having toput up with all their bullshit. Ive been on both sides of the coin. The club guy said I thought you guys sound would be magic, I basically said I cant make these bands sound any better than they sound. We decided it wasnt worth doing anymore sound gigs after that. Our sound guy was pissed cause he thought he was going to get to use the system on weekends off to run sound. I told him I didnt want to put the wear and tear on the system for what they were paying.
Take care of your soundguy, cause he can mess you up.
The flip side of this is most soundguys want to make you sound good, so they look good.
We did a metal show a couple of monthes ago, one of those multi-band kiddie show things on a dare by some younger bands. Basically they wanted to blow us away. I was running a stack for looks but had an attenuator on it so it was real low volume wise, something sound guys like. Anyway 3 songs in my monitor keeps cutting out. At first I thought I was blowing up an amp. I got very pissed to say the least, Im used to being in control of our own sound. I ranted and raved at the soundman from stage to the point he was almost crying, same thing happened to the band after us and they ranted and raved. This was a friday night. Sat Night they had some minor label band play the venue and the sound company didnt fix the problem so their manager and the band wore them out again. The club owner called and let us run sound for a couple of weekends. Some of those 4 band a night deals. We made good money but most of these bands were so awful I would have paid to go home. And having toput up with all their bullshit. Ive been on both sides of the coin. The club guy said I thought you guys sound would be magic, I basically said I cant make these bands sound any better than they sound. We decided it wasnt worth doing anymore sound gigs after that. Our sound guy was pissed cause he thought he was going to get to use the system on weekends off to run sound. I told him I didnt want to put the wear and tear on the system for what they were paying.
"A winks as good as nod to a blind man"
But what do you do when your wife runs sound? thank god my sweet little wife has the temperment of a saint. She jokeingly tells me all the time are you sure you want to go there, remember I run your sound. Needless to say I make sure she makes at least $50.00 a night plus I pick up her tab.
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