| Way too loud
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I love the bass. It's my instrument by choice. However, I was embarrassed by what I heard in church yesterday. Here's the story. I play bass in a church band. We come in early Sunday mornings to set up and go through the songs were going to perform. This Sunday, a guest band was there to perform a special concert for the 6:00 pm service. They came in early to set up their gear and do a sound check. All of the instruments and vocals were ran through our PA system. They had their own sound man to adjust the board to their liking. I stood in the back of the church and listened to them. They sounded great. When they finished up we then took over the platform to prepare for our regular Sunday morning services (one at 9:00 am and one at 11:00 am).
If you go to church you would be familiar with the usual order of events that most churches follow. They usually open each service with the music portion (praise and worship team), followed by offering collection, announcements, and then the main message given by the church pastor.
So at the 9:00 am service, when the time came for announcements, the guest band was introduced and asked to come up on the platform to play a couple of songs to show what was in store for the concert that evening. I was standing in the back of the church next to the sound booth. They came up, turned on their gear and played. The bass player had his own amp and cab on the stage. It was a Ampeg B4R running into an Ampeg 410 cab. It was also run through the PA via DI. Apparently he turned his amp up way too much and the bass sound literally drowned out every instrument on stage. The sound man turned him off from the board but the bass was still overpowering from just his cab alone. There was nothing wrong with the notes he was playing or his technique. He was a fine bass player. The problem was that the bass was way to loud compared to the other instruments and vocals. As a bass player I found it embarrassing. The bass is such an important instrument to make music sound great but in this situation it had the opposite effect. The problem was corrected for the 11:00 am service and they sounded great. The bass player had simply set his volume way too high on the onstage rig. The house could not turn him down from the board.
So, my point is that bass can be too much in the mix. I know all us bass players want to have rigs that can drown out drummers and guitarists. We want to be heard. We have egos to. Just be aware that if our sound is too loud it can take away from the music, not enhance it. This was the first time I had ever heard the bass as being too loud in a setting. It did not sound good even though I love the bass. Be heard but don't overpower.
No, if you are wondering, I did not attend the 6:00 pm concert. I had a commitment elsewhere that evening. | 
