onstage VS FOH...Whats the point?

[will33]

I can understand where some soundguys would become pretty jaded and cynical after years of mixing a lot of different bands, some with inexperienced or less mature members who just want to blast without regard for sound quality or a balanced onstage sound. After a while, they probably wish everyone would just kill their amps and let them handle it.

But, there are also plenty of good musicians out there with good ears and you really can't just make some blanket statement that says "little to no stage volume and let the engineer create the tone". In my view, a PA isn't a tone creator, just take what the band is doing and make it louder. If they're good, it will sound good. If they suck, they'll just suck louder.

[Downunderwonder]

I know what you're saying but I don't agree with your premises Will. My take on reinforcement is coloured by mixing bands with talent and tones but no idea of the mess they are creating out front. I wouldn't call them hacks, they just don't appreciate what a PA can and can't do for them.

In a few hours all over USA, in less than massive clubs, there will be good bands blowing each other off the stage, rocking out massively. All power to all of them.

In the smaller places with only vocal PA it worked, they got some rep and then they moved up the food chain. They may have never heard LOUD done at a practicable volume onstage. Everything mic'd and mixed, dynamic, drums singing.

In the bigger joints they are doing the same they've always done and so are the other bands in their circuit. They fully expect "the miracle" with all the extra gear. They expect "our loud, louder"! It doesn't happen.

Everywhere they go they blame crappy monitoring and soundguys for making it difficult to sound good. If they just pulled their heads out of their proverbial and tried dialing down a bit. It makes me sad hearing talented bands sound bad.

"Our loud, just louder" is a pipedream until you get to seriously big venues or outdoors. If you can't carry the room without the PA or you want to spread the awesome tones around the place, USE the PA. That guy behind the desk maybe really can help you if you make him use your mic'd or speaker DI sound instead of turning you OFF.

I get that some guys mess with tones far too much. There's a lot of baby in the bathwater of having someone out front who might know how to get you sounding better if you let him tweak things for you. Long lead or wireless at soundcheck goes a long long way to seeing what you're dealing with behind the desk.

[georgestrings]

Originally Posted by Downunderwonder

Long lead or wireless at soundcheck goes a long long way to seeing what you're dealing with behind the desk.

Yeah, I haven't done a gig without wireless in over 4 years - I always see what things sound like while dialing in the bass and soundcheck... One of our guitarists and I will wander out into the crowd during the night once or twice - things sound WAY different in an empty club than they do with 300 people in there...


- georgestrings

[Downunderwonder]

Originally Posted by georgestrings

wander out into the crowd during the night once or twice - things sound WAY different in an empty club than they do with 300 people in there...


- georgestrings

That too. If it's sounding good when it's empty you have a chance to fill it up but all those waterbags soak up a lot of your bass spectrum which was bouncing around the room at soundcheck.

[fokof]

IMHO you have to start with the concept that it is impossible to reproduce your sound exactly.

Like it is impossible to reproduce a grand piano through a PA. And name all instruments here.

Sound reinforcement (PA) is always and will always be compromises.

You can have the best mike , the best FOH , the best PA , it will NEVER sound the same, particularly if everything is flat on the board.

The only way to have your sound to be reproduced exactly , use your amp as PA or play ampless.

[seamonkey]

Not much faith in good FOH around here. It's come a long way. Even before electronics

http://randyspeck.blogspot.com/2012/...s-angeles.html

"... Then the lights flashed on again. The audience gasped - rubbed its eyes.

Morrisey had left the stage. Only the phonograph was standing there. While the lights were out, the New Edison had taken up her song and no one in the audience had detected the substitution. ..."

Elsewhere you can find double blind tests with results that nobody could tell live from the Edison phonograph.


Alas, it was some trickery. Participants were told to hold their noses

[BassmanPaul]

WOW!!!! I want a New Edison to play my bass through!

[wcriley]

I have an Edison, but I haven't tied playing bass through it:

[phillybass101]

One of the reasons I quit playing with one band is they kept playing this place where you were forbidden to bring a bass amp. It was all IEM. The damn things kept falling out my ears, my sound was sterile as hell and I could not feel anything. I hated playing that way. Bass should be heard and felt. If it's not then I'm stayng home. On the flip side I did play an outdoor concert for about 15,000 fans and the PA as kicking. On stage I had a 160 watt combo. The sound guys were excellent and I was rocking the house. Whenever I play and there's a PA with engineers and I don;t get the same feeling I'm like what's happening.

[will33]

Originally Posted by Downunderwonder

I know what you're saying but I don't agree with your premises Will. My take on reinforcement is coloured by mixing bands with talent and tones but no idea of the mess they are creating out front. I wouldn't call them hacks, they just don't appreciate what a PA can and can't do for them.

In a few hours all over USA, in less than massive clubs, there will be good bands blowing each other off the stage, rocking out massively. All power to all of them.

In the smaller places with only vocal PA it worked, they got some rep and then they moved up the food chain. They may have never heard LOUD done at a practicable volume onstage. Everything mic'd and mixed, dynamic, drums singing.

In the bigger joints they are doing the same they've always done and so are the other bands in their circuit. They fully expect "the miracle" with all the extra gear. They expect "our loud, louder"! It doesn't happen.

Everywhere they go they blame crappy monitoring and soundguys for making it difficult to sound good. If they just pulled their heads out of their proverbial and tried dialing down a bit. It makes me sad hearing talented bands sound bad.

"Our loud, just louder" is a pipedream until you get to seriously big venues or outdoors. If you can't carry the room without the PA or you want to spread the awesome tones around the place, USE the PA. That guy behind the desk maybe really can help you if you make him use your mic'd or speaker DI sound instead of turning you OFF.

I get that some guys mess with tones far too much. There's a lot of baby in the bathwater of having someone out front who might know how to get you sounding better if you let him tweak things for you. Long lead or wireless at soundcheck goes a long long way to seeing what you're dealing with behind the desk.

I don't know that we're disagreeing all that much when it comes to the real world. I am talking a bit in extremes here to sort of combat the opposite extreme that is "dead quiet stage", or as close to that as anyone can stand it.

This is all pretty easy when mixing my own band. Familiar with everything, we work well together, etc.

If I'm mixing somebody elses band, the most common problems I've run across are guitar, or some instrument being just plain too loud. Excessive LF rumble from the bass rig. Or a naturally loud snare being played by someone who won't hold back a little bit.

Now, I can suggest to them bringing these things down a bit in the interest of a higher quality sound out front. If they listen, it goes a long way towards getting a good result. If they don't, I'm not going to fight with them over it, I'll still do the best I can with what I've got, but the result won't be as good as it could've been had they listened.

Excessive stage volume almost always brings with it the "more, more, more me in the monitor" requests and that's when things go downhill fast. At some point I'll just tell them that's all I've got, if they still can't hear vocals, they're simoly going to have to turn down.


IME, setting stage levels to blend with the drumkit, much like one does in a rehearsal doesn't lead to excessive volume. We do this all the time with modest amplification levels and a couple of 110 vocal wedges, can hear vocals clearly, and the wedges still have a little more to give (headroom).


And lastly, no, a PA will never sound exactly like a backline amp, more like a giant stereo, or more properly "separated mono". But, one can get a reasonable approximation of it. At least be in a ballpark where the sound heard is identifiable as something similair to what the player is using and not having the FOH representation of it be something wildly different than what the source is. One of my big "let downs" if you will, is to watch a show and then talk to the vocalist afterward to discover their natural voice is nothing even close to what I just heard, not even recognizable as the same person in some cases. Same goes for the rest of the players. That's what I mean by taking what the band is already doing and making it louder.

And yes, different rooms and the number of people in those rooms can mean some very different mixes. I usually focus more there on the whole system response and again not drastically altering the individual sound presented by the players. Sometimes that can result in eq schemes that on the surface may be something very different that what one would normally associate with those instruments, but they are to correct for how the room is altering the sound. After all is said and done, a Pbass through an svt should still sound like a Pbass through an svt and not just boom and click. Teles, Pauls, Fender and Marshall amps should still sound like themselves and not morph into some generic guitar sound. The trickiest can be with voices, trying to adjust things to be heard clearly while maintaining the tone and timbre of the singers natural voice.


And sometimes, you just have to go with whatever works, giving up some of those goals in order to just get some sort of intelligible sound.

[Buster Brown]

Originally Posted by Bassmec

Isn't the bass guitar in of its self an unnecessary encumbrance these days when a mandolin with a pickup and a digital down tune system + a bit of well thought out digital modelling should suffice.
Are you sure you lot are downsizing Rock and Roll enough with what's available in this brave new digital world.
On the other hand you could make the drummer play to a click or replace him with an Ipad, record all your parts and have animatronics versions of your selves set up by the road crew.
Then you could just stay at home.
In my day as a busy live engineer you listened to what the band sounded like on stage and especially how the musicians expertly interacted with their personal amplification, then set about doing the long lost art of sound reinforcement. to bring the bands sound to themselves in phase and cleanly via monitoring and to the audience via the front of house PA.
PA systems are not very good at creating sounds because that's not what they are actually designed for.
Back then before Rock and Roll shrank we were even rich enough to have expensive microphones and stands live, in a real attempt to accurately pick up the sound that was the musicians lives work.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winnah!!!

I think that in this day of digital this and digital that and micro this and that, we have forgotten how Rock And Roll works. R&R is about hearing and seeing. It's about experiencing the SOUND.

Our sound guy believes as you and I God bless him for it!!

The band plays on stage and the FOH people amplify that sound and, in essence, broadcast it to those farther from the stage but even at that, it usually isn't ANYTHING like being close to the stage. If it is left up to me, and believe me, it "most times" isn't due to venue restrictions, size of the venue and so on, but were it left to me, I wouldn't step on a stage without at least a 610. Why? Because I like it!!

I know, I know, I'm an old coot...but right now, as I have just finished sound checks for tonight, I have left the stage feeling a little...I dunno.....missing something......those damn arrays are nice, but I dunno...I'm a musician, not a theatre actor.


What the hell....MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Now, back to the bus for a nap.....

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by Lowactnsatsfctn

...Last time I ran a DI only, I ended up only ran through the sub... Nothing in the monitors, and nothing else in the mains. My lowest 6 notes were LOUD and nothing else was audible.

I played my last gig in a situation like this a couple of weeks ago, and it's a relief to know that I won't be going back. It was a church with good gear but a limited budget.

They took the bass and kick out of the tops, in order to deal with a lack of headroom at FOH. Even I have to admit that the overall mix benefitted, but it really stank to be the bass player in that environment.

The other bassists in the rotation stayed DI only, and their tone was really muddy after the change. I brought my amp, and used it to get my mids and highs back.

[RDUB]

For me, my sound on stage is for me and my fellow musicians. We need to hear each other, and feel the groove. If we're really cooking, FOH will have a great show to mix for the audience. As long as your sound man knows what you're going for, he can make sure everyone in your audience hears you the way you want to be heard.

I don't split hairs about my sound on stage, or even in the studio. Very often, my hip full sound won't sit properly in the mix, so the engineer will tailor it to fit. Perfectly fine with me.

I played with a classic rock cover band last week for a Christmas party. Two guitars, keys, drums, singer, and me. I used my little AER amp 3. It's ballsy enough to work with the live drums, and it cuts through nicely. We had a nice rockin' stage volume, and it felt more like a rehearsal with all of us in a circle. We were all hearing and feeling everything, and we had a great show. Audience comments were over the top.