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"You're TOO LOUD !!!" "You guys are the GREATEST..."

#41
Too loud is too load. Period. Usually it's very difficult to tell from the stage, or in an empty room.
Someone mentioned that if the head bartender or club owner tell you to turning it down, you do it. He's right. These are the guys who make your payday.
Also, if bartenders can hear what the customer is ordering, it's a problem that can affect the very sales that make your check.
Remember, your are there to entertain, and make money for the owner. If customers are leaving because they can't here themselves think, you're not doing your job.

Over powering the room is the same as under powering it. Either way you're going to sound like crap. There is a happy medium, a sweet spot. Part of your job is to find it, and that "sweet spot" can change during the course of the evening, too. As the crown grows larger, or drunker, lol.

also, concerning the people who tall you how great you sound, just thank them, and tell them you're glad they enjoyed it. What's the big deal in that?
 
#42
Or, you could have a guiturd on his 15th double jack and coke midway through the first set, and he;s asking if he's too loud. When you say yes he turns up some more . You've long since been unable to hear your bass, the keyboard player is also too loud but you still can't hear him either, and once in awhile you can hear the crash cymbal that's 18" from your left ear. Other than that it's all guitar. What makes it all OK though, is when the guiturd leans over and tells you that for some reason he can't feel the 15 double jack and cokes and he thinks he'll switch to tequila in the second set.

When someone comes up and tells me we're too loud I smile and point at said guiturd and say "it's him".
 
#43
Smokin' Toaster said:
Or, you could have a guiturd on his 15th double jack and coke midway through the first set, and he;s asking if he's too loud. When you say yes he turns up some more . You've long since been unable to hear your bass, the keyboard player is also too loud but you still can't hear him either, and once in awhile you can hear the crash cymbal that's 18" from your left ear. Other than that it's all guitar. What makes it all OK though, is when the guiturd leans over and tells you that for some reason he can't feel the 15 double jack and cokes and he thinks he'll switch to tequila in the second set.

When someone comes up and tells me we're too loud I smile and point at said guiturd and say "it's him".
Click to expand...

That would be my last gig with that guiturd.
 
#46
Smokin' Toaster said:
Or, you could have a guiturd on his 15th double jack and coke midway through the first set, and he;s asking if he's too loud. When you say yes he turns up some more . You've long since been unable to hear your bass, the keyboard player is also too loud but you still can't hear him either, and once in awhile you can hear the crash cymbal that's 18" from your left ear. Other than that it's all guitar. What makes it all OK though, is when the guiturd leans over and tells you that for some reason he can't feel the 15 double jack and cokes and he thinks he'll switch to tequila in the second set.

When someone comes up and tells me we're too loud I smile and point at said guiturd and say "it's him".
Click to expand...

Come to think of it, that might be pretty funny if the rest of the band stopped playing and just stood there watching the guiturd make a fool of himself wanking away all alone. I have no doubt that he wouldn't notice the lack of other instruments playing.
 
#47
"too loud" - I respond with "what is too loud?" Usually they will say the guitar is too loud or the bass is too loud or the vocals are too loud, and nine times out of ten, they really mean too much treble or upper mids. On the bass, most of the time they mean too boomy, so I just turn down the bass EQ, like 40 to 80 hz, a bit. I've played a few venues where the room was so boomy I had almost all the lows rolled off...

It really is a good idea to learn what the room acoustics are like before you fire up the gear, so you can start off with a better EQ on your amps and PA. An room analyzer is a big help for this.

A lesson I learned for PA is to use more speakers in smaller rooms but turned down. This way there is less blaring of sound and the sound spreads out better. I hate to say it, but those Bose poles work great for a PA in most mid to small size venues.
 
#50
Sometimes it's not the band, but just one joker who's too loud.

Usually it's the guitar player, but this past Saturday night I went to a benefit and got the opportunity to hear the girl who is our prospective new singer babe.

The drummer had one volume: TOO FRIKKIN LOUD!
He's a pretty good drummer, yet has no sense of dynamics AT ALL.
He was overpowering everyone else in the band, the PA was cranked to just under the point of feedback to try to balance it all out, and his channels were ALL muted!

Please note that the soundman for this gig is our drummer, who does a good job as soundguy, and usually likes a good thumping mix with prominent (but not overpowering) bass and drums.
 
#51
I am in a too loud all the time band. We get away with it at large venues, but at small clubs it is terrible... Good thing we have a group of die hard fans that follow us, or the small clubs would clear out.

We have a gig at a new place next week, I am so worried we will bleed their ears and not get another booking.

Biggest problem is we have a poor guitarist that trys to play gigs with a 15w tube amp. He has the volume at 10 and it just turns into noise.

big test next week. Playing for the first time at a nicer place. I say win if we get re-booked.
 
#52
I was in a band once where the female singer featured herself an authority on everything. and she would show up
for a gig 5 minutes before stage time. . . and as soon as I'd play a note, she'd make her pronouncement
that the bass was too loud. . . even if I was playing at a whisper. I tried all kinds of tonal variations
Lo-Mids, Hi Mids, pulling out the bottom end, scooping, palm muting, pick & no-pick, you-name-it & I tried it.

The first thing she would say is "turn down - the bass is too loud". The drummer would be loud and the keys were loud
and the lead guitar could be screaming loud, but if she could even just
hear the bass at all, it was "the bass is too loud" in her world.

While I tried to educate her, all my efforts failed and eventually, I left the band. She'd spoil the whole night
for me with that one sentence every time.

She literally annoyed me out of the band.

When I quit, she denied everything and claimed to LOVE
the bass and 'didn't know what I was talking about'.

After that, when joining a group, the first thing I would ask is, "Do you LIKE the bass? because if you're looking for
an "Under-Thud" kind of bass player, then I'm not your man."

I never had a problem after that.

:bassist::bassist::bassist:
 
#54
There's something in cycling called "half-wheeling", that's when you're going easy and want to ride side by side with someone but they speed up a little to stay about a wheel in front of you. So you speed up to get even with them and they speed up again and on and on till you end up speeding down the road. Same thing in a band, guitarist is louder than me so I turn up a little then he turns up more so I...you get the picture.
 
#56
A few weeks ago I had an older gentleman ask me if I could turn the bass down. I said of course. The next set break he came back up and said " I thought you said you could turn the bass down". I said "I could turn the bass down. I didn't say I would". He was sitting in front of the PA stacks.
 
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#57
I understand the importance of turning down if you're too loud, and will always acquiesce if the owner/bar tender tells us to, but man, it doesn't change the fact that turning down is like the LEAST rock and roll thing ever...


I guess that the good thing about being college-age, for that crowd it can pretty much never be too loud.
 
#60
What really bugs me is that my quietest gigs (jazz gigs in restaurants) are the ones where I'm most often told that we're too loud. I have a little combo amp, the drummer has a little three piece kit and is using brushes, and they still think we're too loud. How much quieter can we get? There's a certain amount of air that has to be blown through a saxophone or it won't make a sound. Sometimes I think we should just bring in a little Bose table radio, put on "Kind of Blue", and pretend to play along.
 
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