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Dealing with sound person conflicts

#61
Communication works wonders....
I usually buy the slider munky a beer...

While I think there was some dimwittery at work in the situation, I will add the following ponderings...

If one starts off expecting confrontation, one will get it...
Having been on both sides of the coin countless times, some do expect it...and usually get it...
It's in both entities best interest for a smooth happy happy show...

At go time, it is what it is. Just is.
When it's over, it's over. Move forward...

Could very well be that slider munky was a Klewbie. Let it fade away...
 
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#62
Imo, part of performing is dealing with sometimes less than stellar stage sound. Whining about monitor mixes is a great way to alienate FOH, and prove you're an amateur. Yes, it is realistic to have quality monitor support and ask for what you need, but if you aren't paying the sound guy, you sometimes get what you get. My recommendation to every performer is to be prepared enough to perform with bad stage sound, because it's a trial you will inevitably face at some point. FOH is typically working to the best of their ability, and sometimes you have to help them at the expense of your stage sound for the sake of the show.
 
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#63
Hey OP, sorry you had a bad experience. Did the booking agent tell you that you were specifically out from another gig at this venue, or are you just making that guess? How was your tone with all of this?

If you just slowly rebuild your relationship with that booking agent and/or club owner, I bet you could get back in - unless your tone/emotions were out of control.

Please keep us posted.
 
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#64
Bartpop said:
Hi Pete, I guess I left out a lot of details from this story on purpose. I didn't want the story is about technical details as much as dealing with personality conflicts, people that blow you off or muck things up through incompetence, and how to deal with it. I think the thing I've come away with is that if you're going to gig, you're going to have to suck-it-up and smile through all sorts of things going wrong... no matter what. Kind of like life.

It's interesting to get people's takes and it's allowed me to get all sorts of perspectives, which will be helpful in the future. As for my example, I'm pretty sure that the promoter who paid me peanuts to open the show likely hired said sound gal (a fact that I deliberately left out) and paid her peanuts to run the board. Whether she knew what she was doing or not, she definitely wasn't paying attention to me or the board during my set. Looking at the email I wrote the promoter a year ago, it mentions that she left the kick drum on MUTE for the first 20 minutes. (FYI, I'm a bit of an unusual act. I've play electric guitar, vocals, harmonica overtop kick drum and snare that I play standing up with my heels. Sometimes I add low end using a Boss OC3 on poly mode, laying down a bass line with my thumb. I didn't do that at this gig.) As I'm only one guy putting out a lot of sound, muting the kick for 20 minutes would be on par with muting a DI'd bass for twenty minutes in a regular band... completely killed the low end.

Part of this is technical for sure. The other part was that the sound person didn't really care about their contribution, at least not for my portion of the show (that's definitely the vibe I got). They put in a minimal effort, didn't really have time to communicate, and seemed more interested in other things than running the board. Once again, their pay was likely minimal like mine. For what it's worth, I tried to do most of the things that people have mentioned to make things idiot-proof. I offered to use my rack mixer as a stage box and my own mics that were already gain-staged to my setup so the FOH could just connect to the DI outputs and still have control over every channel and I could monitor with my IEMs... but I think that idea seemed like quantum physics to them.

Always a learning experience. Feels like I learned a lot by getting responses on this forum as well.
Click to expand...

Unless you're touring a production with your own crew, you pretty much have to embrace the idea that you're basically going on a blind date, having been dressed and styled by a total stranger.
 
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#65
Best thing is to not sweat the small stuff after the fact... We live in pretty damn good times tech wise...

Those of us wearing old fart hats remember:

- NO floors and just a couple of black/blue/red/champagne/silver sparkly assed columns out front...with matching gtr/bass rigs...

- If you were lucky, a Shure Vocalmaster... It was da cheeze...had colored switches and metal strips on the front...

- Seeing bands with vocals through an amp...guitar amp.... Inputs even said Microphone Instrument.

- House systems, including mics, that said Radio Shack...

- We didn't care what brand name was on anything. We were just happy to play/hear music...

Local concerts usually included a flat bed trailer, armory, and whatever PA crap could be scrounged up...and we loved every minute of it...

We got it pretty good now....
 
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#66
moogieotter said:
Hey OP, sorry you had a bad experience. Did the booking agent tell you that you were specifically out from another gig at this venue, or are you just making that guess? How was your tone with all of this?

If you just slowly rebuild your relationship with that booking agent and/or club owner, I bet you could get back in - unless your tone/emotions were out of control.

Please keep us posted.
Click to expand...
The tone was more on the apologetic side for things not going well during the show. I explained that the sound person seemed to be having problems getting things set-up during soundcheck and never got it worked out during the show so the stage sound was off. I also mentioned that they left some of the mics on MUTE for the first half of the show (kick drum) so the sound in the venue was off as well.

In retrospect, if I had to take a guess it'd be that the woman running sound was a personal friend of the booking guy, and any comment I was going to make was kinda doomed. Hard not to say something in a case like that, but live and learn.

The promoter usually sends out emails to a group of local musicians at a certain time of year to line things up opening acts for the summer season. I didn't get an email this year so I figured I was on the out. Considering everything that happened for me there (played there twice, both bad experiences) I think I'm ok with it. The venue gets a good crowd but honestly, that's not because of who's playing... it's more because there are lots of people, outside, summertime, middle of town, drinking. I was admittedly stoked to get a opening gig where I knew there would be a good crowd but the rest of the situation made for one of the least-fun gigs of the year.
 
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#67
two fingers said:
Are you a sound guy? I am.

The gear DOES matter.

I once had a guy try to use a kick drum mic for vocals. He said he wanted his voice to sound deeper.

I once had a guy play guiyar through an old tube radio with a 3" speaker because he thought it was hipster. And he wondered why I couldn't fix his tone.

I've had a guy get on stage with a busted snare head. He couldn't afford to buy another one so he duct taped it. Literally the whole head was covered in duct tape. You know what he thought? He thought the SOUND GUY could "EQ it to sound like a regular snare drum".

I've been hired to run sound for an outdoor festival and showed up to two 10" mains on a stick!


I'm so stinking tired of the attitude around here that "If a sound guy knows what he's doing, he can work with whatever we give him".

Tell you what. Next time you get ready to build a deck, how bout I hand you a frozen fish to drive nails with and a butter knife to cut lumber with. Come one now! If you reeeeeeeeally know what you're doing, you could make it work!
Click to expand...


You're misunderstanding my post. What I was trying to convey is that if the sound tech has no clue what he is doing, it doesn't matter if he has a digital mixer, a conventional analog board, or a powered mixer.

An RE20 is highly regarded as a broadcast vocal mic, and is also an excellent kick drum mic. Works well for either, with the appropriate EQ.

I was at an event once where the main act was fraught with low frequency feedback, and the overall level was very low.
The promoter recognized me in the audience and rushed over to my side and asked if I could do something about the situation. I followed him back to the FOH mix position, and after a terse talk with the sound man, they stepped back from the board and waved me in. First thing I noticed is not even one high pass filter was engaged, and on most of the strips, there was at least 6 to 9 db of boost at 80Hz; The drum kit OH condensers had even more. After rolling all that off and bringing up the levels and a little bit of graph tweaking, there was lots of level, the band was nodding their heads in gratitude, and the sound man looked baffled over what changed in a minute or two, compared to what he was wrestling with for 45 minutes. This was clearly a case of the guy not knowing what he was doing.

It's knowing what to do with what you have. Now, if the musician brings a bunch of crap equipment and insists upon using it, I can only set him up so it sounds like a faithful reproduction of whatever noise he's creating.
 
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#69
Typical real life example: a singer who has developed her voice and vocal technique for decades, having worked on her craft just like any other musician in the big band she was fronting, was handed a busted SM58 by the sound team after they had set up all the horns and drums with studio condensers (Neumann TLM 103 etc).

When she provided them with with her own Neumann KMS105 (a proper stage mic, mind you) they gave her lip about it on the grounds that "everybody uses a SM58".

You have every right to sing through your own mic, especially if they cant provide you with what works for YOUR voice. And it may bring you trouble unfortunately if you insist, as this kind of singer discrimination is pretty rampant.
 
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#70
I used to do sound, back when dinosaurs still walked the earth, and I could make anybody sound good - that was a point of pride with me! One time I got stuck doing sound for a C&W club and they were Godawful at best but with some tricks I even made them sound at least OK and even good in places (thank you Roland Space Echo) and these were usually minimal to no sound check gigs. So if this 'sound person' can't get a solo act sounding great with a 20 minute check then he/she/it should be taken outside and shot (as a service to musical society). Obviously he/she/it has no clue and no desire to get one.
 
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#72
Medicine Man said:
Imo, part of performing is dealing with sometimes less than stellar stage sound. Whining about monitor mixes is a great way to alienate FOH, and prove you're an amateur. Yes, it is realistic to have quality monitor support and ask for what you need, but if you aren't paying the sound guy, you sometimes get what you get. My recommendation to every performer is to be prepared enough to perform with bad stage sound, because it's a trial you will inevitably face at some point. FOH is typically working to the best of their ability, and sometimes you have to help them at the expense of your stage sound for the sake of the show.
Click to expand...
So true!! It IS going to happen, inadvertent or not.
I recently did a gig about a 2hr drive from the house. Was ASSURED by the venue that they had a splitter snake, so we could map their inputs into our IEM mixer for the 2 of us (of 5) that used them. Therefore, we didn't bring ours.
We get there, and there's NO splitter snake. "Oh we thought you meant..." :crying:
Both of us on IEM had to do the gig without, and wedges in front of us.
Not really a big deal until it's put in perspective. We've been completely IEM for about 5 yrs.
Imagine being used to wedges and being given buds, handed a mix and have to do your gig like that.
MINDPHREAK !!

SO yeah.. SH*T HAPPENS.. be prepared! :)
 
#74
Bartpop said:
So I wanted to post an experience because I appear to have had a fallout with a local venue and wanted to see what others would have done. I know this is a bass forum but I play a bunch of different instruments, including guitar so here goes.

I was asked to perform as a solo opening act for a local venue that has a good crowd in the summertime. I showed up when asked to run through a quick soundcheck and ran into some behavior from the sound person that left me confused. First off, after placing a mic in front of my amp they wanted to set the channel levels by having me adjust the volume of my amp until their meters were happy, rather than adjusting the gain/level at the mixer... seriously?? Secondly, they were unable to provide a usable monitor mix due to feedback issues, which they blamed on the microphone that I had brought, even though the person running the board commented several times that they had recently upgraded their mixer and they didn't really know how to use it. Since I only had 20-30 minutes for load-in, set-up, soundcheck and they never got the issues worked out I was forced to play my entire set with virtually no monitors, which as everyone knows, sucks. After limping through a 45 minute set screaming at the top of my lungs to try to hear myself I was kind of embarrassed and pissed. (Large PA stacks way out to the sides and in front)

After my show I apologized to the guy that hired me, because I knew the performance and the sound suffered due to sound issues. I tried to politely explain that the sound person had struggled with equipment and wasn't able to work things out during sound check. I probably questioned wether they knew what they were doing.

Needless to say, I was never asked back to this one venue, which is only a bummer because it's popular and has a good crowd. I'm guessing it's probably because I made a point to say something to the booking guy. I still play plenty of other places and have never run into these kinds of issues... am I better off? Is it better not to say anything at all? How do you handle sound person problems?
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Never apologize to the club owner for anything! As far as he needs to know, everything was awesome and you had a great time and hope everyone enjoyed it. All you succeeded in doing is plant doubt in his head about you, not the sound tech.
 
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#77
Nick Danger said:
I'm the bassist and soundman for our band. Our solution is to provide the FOH with a stereo feed from our digital mixer so the only thing they have to control is volume. Just about every place we play loves this setup.
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That's what I'd think too... less work for them. I offered to provide that exact setup for this gig but it was a completely foreign concept to the sound person. They only seemed comfortable with using their exact setup as-is... they didn't even seem to know how to adjust the gain stage on an individual channel strip.

In hindsight, there's a lot that I did wrong here. Shoulda just used their gear. Shoulda just smiled through the bad sound/no monitors/no kick mic, Shouldn't have said anything to the booking guy. It's definitely a strange position to be in, to be at the mercy of a third-party and having to suck-it-up if they're not good at their job, but that's the deal sometimes.
 
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#78
Nick Danger said:
I'm the bassist and soundman for our band. Our solution is to provide the FOH with a stereo feed from our digital mixer so the only thing they have to control is volume. Just about every place we play loves this setup.
Click to expand...
As long as your setup is mixed right, then it's no problem. Might come across a sound guy who wants to mix it differently. Hoping you have the option available?
 
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