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Playing live in a room

#85
AdamR said:
If I go to see live music and the bands are using micro rigs and 112 combos Im leaving. Give stacks or give me death !

If you enjoy jazz music at a coffee house then yeah, please do play as quite as possible. Some of us dont want to hear that crap just like you dont want to hear ours.
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You do realize you don't have to have insane stage volume to be loud in the PA right. My buddy plays guitar in a rock band with a Vox Nigh Train into a 212 cab. He gets a great overdrive sound without ridiculous stage volume. The PA is doing all the work. Or is there some rule in Stoner/Doom where you are expected to carry the room with only stage volume?
 
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#88
dozicusmaximus said:
I love loud pickles!
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They have excellent crunch

Hopkins said:
You do realize you don't have to have insane stage volume to be loud in the PA right. My buddy plays guitar in a rock band with a Vox Nigh Train into a 212 cab. He gets a great overdrive sound without ridiculous stage volume. The PA is doing all the work. Or is there some rule in Stoner/Doom where you are expected to carry the room with only stage volume?
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Not every venue has a good PA, or a good sound guy
 
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#89
Hopkins said:
You do realize you don't have to have insane stage volume to be loud in the PA right. My buddy plays guitar in a rock band with a Vox Nigh Train into a 212 cab. He gets a great overdrive sound without ridiculous stage volume. The PA is doing all the work. Or is there some rule in Stoner/Doom where you are expected to carry the room with only stage volume?
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There are maybe 4-5 real venues here that have PA support for bass. The rest may have a vocal pa consisting of powered 12's. The vast majority expect you to bring your own. That's is a lot to ask for an hour set. My rig carry the venue 99% of the time I play.
 
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#91
CL400Peavey said:
There are maybe 4-5 real venues here that have PA support for bass. The rest may have a vocal pa consisting of powered 12's. The vast majority expect you to bring your own. That's is a lot to ask for an hour set. My rig carry the venue 99% of the time I play.
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As a Canadian who has been perplexed by all the talk here about how big everyone's rigs are (and all of the advice about how many mega-watts you should buy), this explains a lot. I've played back and forth across the country for nearly 20 years, and can only remember having to provide a PA on two occasions. Here, everything goes through the PA, and nearly every venue for music has a decent one. As a consequence, our amps are small, and our stage volume is (relatively) low. I suspect it would be very different if my amp was more than just my stage monitor.
 
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#93
toddbooster said:
As a Canadian who has been perplexed by all the talk here about how big everyone's rigs are (and all of the advice about how many mega-watts you should buy), this explains a lot. I've played back and forth across the country for nearly 20 years, and can only remember having to provide a PA on two occasions. Here, everything goes through the PA, and nearly every venue for music has a decent one. As a consequence, our amps are small, and our stage volume is (relatively) low. I suspect it would be very different if my amp was more than just my stage monitor.
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nope, it all depends on the scene you're in. All our venues have ok PAs but it doesn't prevent us from going big. The clubs we play cater to punk, hardcore, metal and underground rock in general. the sound guys get it and don't mind that we're loud. most encourage it and work with us to get a good sound.


there was a PA here, but the camera is only picking up the stage sound. it's a decent mix considering we recorded with a zoom q3.
 
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#95
bassboysam said:
nope, it all depends on the scene you're in. All our venues have ok PAs but it doesn't prevent us from going big. The clubs we play cater to punk, hardcore, metal and underground rock in general. the sound guys get it and don't mind that we're loud. most encourage it and work with us to get a good sound.
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Sorry, I didn't mean that our amps necessarily had to be small or quiet, just that we can get away with when it seems that others cannot. We're all old and infirm, and are far to lazy to help each other carry stuff.
 
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#98
Hopkins said:
You do realize you don't have to have insane stage volume to be loud in the PA right. My buddy plays guitar in a rock band with a Vox Nigh Train into a 212 cab. He gets a great overdrive sound without ridiculous stage volume. The PA is doing all the work. Or is there some rule in Stoner/Doom where you are expected to carry the room with only stage volume?
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Not exactly.

But there is a common sense rule that you should never expect to have PA support in this genre. Ever. So if you want your loudest parts to be bonejarringly loud, in this genre, you need to bring the firepower to do that yourself.

Though, honestly, it doesn't always take much. I mean, I play through a very large 2x15, but it is still only one 2x15.

A lot of the people with huge cab rigs, I'm guessing, have so many drivers partly so they don't have to worry about blowing them up with low end.

toddbooster said:
Also, someone up-thread mentioned singing. It can be very difficult to sing multi-part harmony if the stage volume is too loud.
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SubRosa managed to do it just fine when I saw them in Oakland. The guitarist's rig for that night consisted of two old Sunn Model T full stacks, turned up loud enough that she seemed to be mainly using the guitar's volume knob to switch from clean to overdriven.

Their vocal harmonies came out fine.

However, here, there is something you actually might be missing. It is actually very easy to hear your voice if you are wearing ear plugs, which most doom bands do when they play. I have actually had a much easier time staying on pitch in metal bands where I was wearing ear plugs than in my folk/rock band, which I generally don't wear ear plugs in.
 
#100
Korladis said:
That is, actually, completely untrue.

Several of the members use Greenboy-designed cabs.

None of us have issues of inaudible bass. We're loud, not stupid. We know how to EQ so that everyone in the band is heard.

Loud does not mean unintelligible.

I'm actually a bit disappointed to see this sort of judgmental nonsense coming from you.


Yep. Just because we're loud doesn't mean we've not put any thought into our sounds. I guess the instinct to go "I don't understand this! Therefore I hate it and am going to put it down!" is pretty strong in people.


Huge assumption on your part that we don't use dynamics. Completely incorrect.

My stoner/doom band's first album, which at most shows we've played in its entirety, is one 38 minute long song. Sometimes it's obscenely loud and there are tons of things going on. Sometimes it's very quiet, and there's almost nothing happening, very sparse. Much of the time, it's somewhere between the two. Just because we have the ability to be ridiculously loud doesn't mean that we play at that volume level during the entire set.


Yep. I've never seen a doom band that doesn't sometimes play quietly. Just saw Yob on saturday night, and they're excellent at the use of dynamics. Hell, even Sea of Bones, who we played with on sunday night, and who are absurdly loud, don't play at a constant volume.


This assumption that he doesn't gig is pretty hilarious. Maybe if playing loud would get your band fired, your band isn't very good.

Most of us do, in fact, gig. I just played a gig on sunday night, after one the previous saturday night. That one was at a place we've played three times. At the gig on sunday, we weren't even the loudest band.

People come to see our shows. On saturday night I went to see one of doom metal's more well known bands at the Oakland Metro, which is a fairly big room. The place was full.

The kind of music we play has an audience. It doesn't get us "fired," despite the fact that you, personally, don't like it. That audience would also be disappointed if they saw a doom metal band that wasn't very loud.


Nothing exceeds like excess.

Also, again, just because our maximum volume level is very, very high, doesn't mean that we don't have dynamics.

As for our hearing, we wear earplugs. Most of the classic rock covers band that everyone on talkbass seems to play in are also loud enough that really they should be wearing earplugs... just they don't tend to be aware of it as often as we in the doom metal community are. We know we play at volumes that are dangerous for unprotected ears. That's why we protect ours. Much of the audience does, too, most of the time.

Before you bother posting "so what's the point of the high volume if you just are going to wear ear plugs?", music feels different at really high volumes. Unfortunately, the volumes required to get to that point are dangerous. Earplugs are the answer.


Maybe you should stop using crappy earplugs then.

Also, you should check yourself for STDs if you have the same attitude when it comes to physical intimacy.
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Apparently I didn't do enough to separate the thinking S/D from the ones with walls of cabs and unintelligible everything. Sorry about that.
 

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