Soundchecks and Live Gig Preparation

[bbass75]

Hey Janek,

I have a nice gig coming up for a crowd of about 1600 (these types of gigs don't come around too often for me haha) and I know there's going to be a professional crew with experienced engineers, techies, etc. I was wondering what you generally take into an account during a soundcheck as far as what your concious of right from the start and what you really try and accomplish with your sound and it's place in the ensemble during a soundcheck. I was also wondering what gear you find essential for playing live (i.e do you plug into a DI, if so which one? any other gear aside from your bass that you find essential to bring along to a live show?). Any insight you can give on performing on a professional live gig would be great. Thanks so much for everything so far!

James

[janekbass]

I normally focus on being comfortable with the stage size, monitor sound, and stage plot of the band I'm playing with. I'll spend as much time as I can acclimatizing to the new surroundings as much as I can, but without playing too much and getting in anyone's way. For a larger size venue I'll normally use a DI to go to the house, and then you have to trust the front of house engineer to do a good job with your sound and the overall mix and blend of that sound with the band. As far as monitors go it's different every time. I like to use in-ear molds for bigger gigs which are wireless and need a transmitter and receiver setup. There is less clutter on the stage that way as you don't have to have monitors on the floor. But for interactive situations for playing jazz gigs for instance I don't want any of the on-stage sound to get cut out so I'll always use a wedge for that. A tuner with a really clear and bright display is also good for a big stage or big venue. I use either a pedal on the floor in front of me or a strobe tuner in the rack behind me.

Knowing the process of a soundcheck helps too. You're pretty much going to start with the kick drum, the the rest of the drums in sequence, then bass, and then perhaps guitar or keyboards followed by a vocal or lead instrument. Don't be too busy at this stage of the situation. The time for practicing was many hours before hand at home or in the hotel, so shedding onstage isn't appreciated by those around you at all.

I really try and keep the soundchecking to a bare minimum whenever I'm in charge as a band leader or musical director. I hate being in the venue onstage for a long time before the show, and I want to either be in the hotel chilling until the last possible moment, or in the green room or backstage relaxing and keeping things pretty low key until I have to perform. There are total exceptions to that though as well when I remember running around a venue like a lunatic right up until we hit the stage...... but mainly I like to keep it pretty relaxed until we hit the stage.

Easy,

Janek

[Reverend_Dan]

Hi James,

I haven't done gigs anywhere near as big as Janek but I've done some pretty big venues so I may be able to help a little.

I personally try to keep as little coming through the monitors as possible, and also have everyone keeping a relatively low stage volume. Too much of everything blasting at you from one speaker is just mind-boggling.

I assume you'll have monitor wedges and I tend to just limit this to a small amount of my bass, maybe a bit of one of the guitarists if he's too far away from me to hear his amp, and a bit of kick and hat. A lot of people ask for kick and snare but I've found that you can normally hear someone hitting a snare from about 10 country miles away, and the hat is much more useful as it's normally subdividing the beat.

Janek also touched on being at the mercy of the engineers. Being DIed is a blessing and a curse really... in the end your amp is little more than another monitor so the sound coming out of your amp is of little importance. Unless you have a PRE/POST button - this can be quite handy, if you sneak it on without the engineer noticing.

Also, I have found it handy in the past having an active bass - I normally keep everything flat but there's been gigs before where the subs were onstage rather than ground-level so the bass sound was all mids and treble, so a tiny tiny tweak helped a lot.

Oh, and don't be too impressed by people just because they're wearing a polo shirt that says crew - I've done numerous gigs where the engineers don't know **** so don't just assume they all know what they're doing (but of course, always be polite and friendly! Being a diva helps no-one.)

One that springs to mind was a famous, now ex-venue in London where the sound guy told us he was going to "test the feedback of the room" so he could eliminate it and ended up blasting high-pitched squeals through a 15k PA at us....

[rythmicillusion]

Originally Posted by Reverend_Dan

Hi
Oh, and don't be too impressed by people just because they're wearing a polo shirt that says crew - I've done numerous gigs where the engineers don't know **** so don't just assume they all know what they're doing (but of course, always be polite and friendly! Being a diva helps no-one.)

One that springs to mind was a famous, now ex-venue in London where the sound guy told us he was going to "test the feedback of the room" so he could eliminate it and ended up blasting high-pitched squeals through a 15k PA at us....

Man, that must have been some major pain!

Just like any profession, there are sound people that are absolutely amazing at what they do, and others that will end up loaded and passed out on the console (a true story!). James is absoultely right, however...treat them all decently!

[Sorax]

Originally Posted by Reverend_Dan

One that springs to mind was a famous, now ex-venue in London where the sound guy told us he was going to "test the feedback of the room" so he could eliminate it and ended up blasting high-pitched squeals through a 15k PA at us....

You know tuning a graphic equalizer to a room actually involves finding the frequencies that feedback before you can EQ them out?

[JKT]

+1 I use that trick frequently. Although 15k screaming uncontrollably though the FOH is perhaps indicative of a lack of skill somewhere.

If I'm not sure of exactly which freq is the culprit, nudging them up one at a time usually works. Notice I said "nudge" and not "peg"

JKT

[bass349]

aye.. i assumed it was fairly common to be tuning the pa to the room with the graphic eq? mind you i've never noticed soundguys doing it at big gigs, usually smaller to mid sized venues.

when i'm running live sound i usually find the spot by riding the fader close to the point of feedback and find the offending frequencies. A while back i wrote out a freq/note chart because i thought it would be more effective to figure out the frequency "note" and eliminate it... it worked well, but after a while, like playing an instrument i guess, you just know where the note / frequency is going to be.. or at least close.

[Reverend_Dan]

Originally Posted by Sorax

You know tuning a graphic equalizer to a room actually involves finding the frequencies that feedback before you can EQ them out?

Yeah, definitely. But the other sound guy never had any trouble, and at least would have the decency to warn us....