I had a really bad sonic coupling experience last night. We played at a restaurant/club, and they set up the band on a raised floor area after they clear the seating from that space at about 9:30. Our downbeat is at 10, so we have to get through the setup rapidly, including setting up the bar's PA. Pretty much no soundcheck.
All night long I was hearing this boomy, blooming tone overwhelming my fundamentals. Although I sounded very loud (too loud) in the room, I could not hear any kind of good definition in my playing. Turning up the amp only made matters worse. Today, my right hand fingers are sore from digging in too hard trying to hear what I was doing. It couldn't have been a standing wave from the wall, because the back of the stage was open to the outside - there was no wall behind me at all.
I assumed it was the PA, since it belongs to the club, it's only the second time we've played there, we aren't familiar with it, and it has this monstrous 18" or 20" sub with it. Further, someone had destroyed the PA's two stage monitors, and they sounded so bad we had to turn them off. That made us have to rely on slapback from the back wall as our "monitoring" approach, which contributed to the sloppy stage sound.
Near the end of the night, we ended a tune with one of those long sustained washes on a single chord. At that point I realized how much the floor was vibrating sympathtically with my amp, and the whole problem became clear. Unfortunately it was 1 AM by then and we had only two songs left.
In any case, I will surely put my cabs up on a case or table if we play there again. I post this so that anyone reading it might be able to identify the circumstance more quickly than I did last night and have time to adjust before losing the night.
All night long I was hearing this boomy, blooming tone overwhelming my fundamentals. Although I sounded very loud (too loud) in the room, I could not hear any kind of good definition in my playing. Turning up the amp only made matters worse. Today, my right hand fingers are sore from digging in too hard trying to hear what I was doing. It couldn't have been a standing wave from the wall, because the back of the stage was open to the outside - there was no wall behind me at all.
I assumed it was the PA, since it belongs to the club, it's only the second time we've played there, we aren't familiar with it, and it has this monstrous 18" or 20" sub with it. Further, someone had destroyed the PA's two stage monitors, and they sounded so bad we had to turn them off. That made us have to rely on slapback from the back wall as our "monitoring" approach, which contributed to the sloppy stage sound.
Near the end of the night, we ended a tune with one of those long sustained washes on a single chord. At that point I realized how much the floor was vibrating sympathtically with my amp, and the whole problem became clear. Unfortunately it was 1 AM by then and we had only two songs left.
In any case, I will surely put my cabs up on a case or table if we play there again. I post this so that anyone reading it might be able to identify the circumstance more quickly than I did last night and have time to adjust before losing the night.
