Worst Acoustics At A Gig?

CBgaragebassist · #1 10-21-2009, 09:59 PM

A while ago my band played at a new-ish church and it had really, really, bad acoustics. It was essentially a warehouse/gym, no real ceiling(frame, a little insulation, and the roof), cement floors, etc. We had to put the drummer in the corner because there was no other place, and wound up putting some large wooden planks in front of him because we have no real drum sheild.

It wound up sounding pretty decent though so it was ok.

Worst acoustics for you?

southernrocker · #2 10-21-2009, 10:03 PM

At a local VFW club. It was a great and fun gig but the acoustics sucked. Everybody still loved us, though!

RobertPaulson · #3 10-21-2009, 10:12 PM

Played in chicago a few weeks ago. Long skinny room, they had the stage in the middle... 12 feet directly in front of a brick wall... It was absolutely terrible, given, most of the bands are old guy blues bands (no offense, i aspire to be in one some day

) so it certainly wasn't fitting for a loud ass rock n roll band.

lowregister · #4 10-21-2009, 10:18 PM

I went to a concert the other day of some new band that had a unique sound but the bass was just overpowering everything. We all love bass here but everyone knows where the bass is supposed to be--that is being the glue, not the tacky veneer finish.

The entire concert had this booming bass when every show before this was well balanced by the soundboard crew who is usually right on with EQ. This guy however was new.

So my friend, a fellow bass player, goes up to the sound guy to politely inquire what was wrong with him. He ended up getting some answer that "this is a japanese something inspired band that is very sub heavy, you've seriously never heard of this??"

As bassists, I'm sure we universally can't stand music snobs who hold this stuff over any one's head. So I went up to the band to ask firsthand about their supposed "style." I found the guitarist who was shy and noted that they played music like everyone else.

I neglected to mention the improperly balanced venue just because... and it is hard for someone who is behind the big stacks to notice if the bass is too potent.

Rattman · #5 10-21-2009, 10:26 PM

We were just kids.. all ready to go off to the military, college or trade school... we did a Battle of the Bands in a place called "Dorton Arena" on the N.C. State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, N.C. It was all hard surfaces, 90-degree angles and lots of concrete... yuk. The only way it sounded a little bit better was when it was full of people.

Straight from Wikipedia: "The J.S. Dorton Arena (known to its architect as the Paraboleum) is a 7,610-seat multi-purpose arena in Raleigh, North Carolina on the grounds of the North Carolina State Fair. It was opened in 1952..."

vin*tone · #6 10-21-2009, 11:16 PM

Worst acoustics EVER:
I played a festival gig in a large outdoor Marquee- Sound bounce off the back wall of the venue and back at us as a slap back echo. I was playing in a 10 piece world music dance band- half the band started playing along with the echo. Half didn't.

RustyAxe · #7 10-22-2009, 08:18 AM

A local pub/restaurant. It's a log cabin style and the entire interior is wood; floors, walls, ceiling. The ceiling is about 20 feet high, and the back of the room is a loft. The stage is in the corner downstairs. It's a nightmare to EQ and feedback suppression is a bitch! The reverberation never ends!

lofreek · #8 10-22-2009, 09:14 AM

A hall with legendary acoustics, the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis, is not so hospitable to amplified music. I did an acoustic Jazz trio gig there years ago and it was beautiful on stage. Last week, my Steely Dan tribute band played there, and the sound on stage was horrible. Hooray for in - ear monitors!

Another really bad place to play amplified music was the St. Louis Planetarium. It is nothing but a large parabolic reflector, amplifying and focusing a narrow frequency range right back at you. One more hooray for in - ear monitors.

scottbass · #9 10-22-2009, 09:38 AM

Bowling alley in southern MN. They were really proud of the "dance hall" they had just opened - a separate room specifically for bands & dancers. It must have been built by the lowest bidder. Two walls were sheetrock, one wall was about 80% windows (glass) and the fourth wall was a giant mirror. Floor was concrete, ceiling was open structural rafters (steel) showing the corrugated steel roofing. Pretty much a giant steel-roofed barn. The band riser (short stage) had us setting up with the mirror at our backs and facing the window wall. We couldn't use monitors at all due to the feedback, and we were still fighting feedback from the mains all night. Any amount of kick or bass in the mains resulted in a constant, resonant dull roar. Our sound that night was essentially vocals on top of lead guitar, cymbals and nothing else.

Our drummer (a fill-in) decided to deal with it by getting so drunk he couldn't even sit upright on his throne for the third set.

We were never asked to play there again, which is well and good because we would have declined.

Jason P Bass · #10 10-22-2009, 09:53 AM

A few years ago I played in a miserable bar with a couple of pool tables. The architecture was nothing out of the ordinary. We played with 2 monitors, 2 PA mains, and 1 PA sub.

I happened to have my bass cabinet set in the perfect location to create a standing wave with A1, 5th fret on the string or open A. As a result, this note was 5x louder than anything else I played, and the mics picked it up.

So every time I played an A, the monitors exploded into feedback, the PA exploded into feeback, liquor bottles at the bar rattled and moved around, etc. etc.

With a setlist like Johnny Be Good in A, Sweet Emotion, and every other cliche classic rock coverband song in A, it was a long night.

kcole4001 · #11 10-22-2009, 10:02 AM

The worst: At a local Legion hall, a small elevated hollow stage, about 18" high.
Every time I hit an E, the whole thing would start to bloom into a massive sonic earthquake, so I had to immediately mute the E notes and play just those notes much softer.
Terrible room.

Jefenator · #12 10-22-2009, 10:33 AM

Linoleum (or concrete) + cinder blocks = headache.

At least you don't have to finagle with reverb settings. (How about: OFF!!

)

Jefenator · #13 10-22-2009, 10:47 AM

This may not be acoustics per se but it sure left an impression.

For some reason, a sound crew once set us up with a 15 second delay in my monitor. Now, I'm not one of those picky "princess" types when it comes to monitor mixes, but when suddenly you've got the previous verse blaring at you (out of sync) from the floor wedge... we need to stop and fix this!!

And at first the sound guy didn't believe me! He said maybe it was "bouncing off the back wall" or something. Then the guitarist backed me up and finally the guy admitted, oh yeah, there is a delay patched in there... Not sure why anyone would ever do that, except to royally screw with a band.

stylonpilson · #14 10-22-2009, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason P Bass

A few years ago I played in a miserable bar with a couple of pool tables. The architecture was nothing out of the ordinary. We played with 2 monitors, 2 PA mains, and 1 PA sub.

I happened to have my bass cabinet set in the perfect location to create a standing wave with A1, 5th fret on the string or open A. As a result, this note was 5x louder than anything else I played, and the mics picked it up.

So every time I played an A, the monitors exploded into feedback, the PA exploded into feeback, liquor bottles at the bar rattled and moved around, etc. etc.

With a setlist like Johnny Be Good in A, Sweet Emotion, and every other cliche classic rock coverband song in A, it was a long night.

Until you moved the bass cabinet, of course.

S.P.

denhou1974 · #15 10-22-2009, 06:03 PM

Outdoor gig. The floor and stage was wood decking raised about 3' off the ground. Every note played seemed to just vanish into thin air. We couldn't hear each other unless we crank up real loud - then we couldn't hear the drums.

Jason P Bass · #16 10-22-2009, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stylonpilson

Until you moved the bass cabinet, of course.

S.P.

There was no moving the bass cabinet. This 3-piece band brought 1 van, 1 SUV, 1 trailer, and 1 sedan packed full of equipment to the gigs. It was retarded. Putting the stuff on stage was like playing Tetris. Once it was onstage, there was no rearranging it.

Quitting that band was a smart move on my part.

sonic assassin · #17 10-22-2009, 10:44 PM

a gym.. that was lovely.

school auditorium wasnt that much better. natural amphitheaters are great for acoustic sources.. but drums in there.. uck.

L-A · #18 10-22-2009, 11:07 PM

It has to be that venue with two different slapback echoes. The room was shaped like a L with the stage on the outside of the corner.

bambambass · #19 10-25-2009, 06:56 PM

Played at a friends 30th. It was our first gig ever. The party was held at a golf course in their main room. We were put into a little pocket (almost like a big closet with no doors) on the side of the room, just enough room for the drums so our amps had to go on the out side. When we played we could only hear the drums and also the mamger of the club did not get a late liquor licence so we had to turn down even more (he was afraid of the police fining him), except for the drummer because he did not listen, lol. On the last song of our set turned up real loud, played then got drunk.

::Saint:: · #20 10-26-2009, 03:08 PM

Just played a gig on Friday night at a local place that is admittedly known for having terrible acoustics.. but it was really bad. Everything was just feeding back the whole time and I could hear very little aside from myself - I swear I was REALLY loud, but the sound guy claimed I wasn't.

Combined with the fact that we were headlining and the venue cut our set short because they insist on squeezing 3 bands into 3 hours, including setup and tear-down and the second band was just sitting around and hadn't started setting up 10 minutes after they were supposed to be playing.

Then the technical issues.. there was something weird happening on the P.A. that messed with our synth sounds so we had to skip a song halfway through the intro because it just sounded horrible. And to top it off we were really having an off-night, no doubt due to knowing before we started that we had to start cutting songs and just being frustrated about the whole thing in general.

Despite all that, we still got compliments from the 10 people in the room who didn't come with us. And we made $3.15 to boot!