Do you trust your local sound guy?
by Andrew Hoag–Owner of Colorado Audio Group & Special Event Expert
As a local band, your live show is always at the mercy of the venue’s house sound engineer. Every band has horror stories of constant feedback, muddy monitors, or missing instruments in the mix. Sometimes you’ll get lucky, but most of the time you will be working with an inexperienced engineer that doesn’t have the tools to make your band sound the best that it can.
So what can you do at your next gig when the venue’s new unpaid intern is behind the console?
Here are five ways to improve your next encounter with a house engineer:
1 ALWAYS bring a printed stage plot to give to the house engineer. If you don’t have one, stop reading this and do it now! As formal and tedious as this might seem, a stage plot is absolutely critical for a house engineer to create a good monitor and house mix. A handwritten paragraph on a napkin or a shouted conversation as you load in doesn’t count. Take the time to create a proper diagram with all of your instruments, mics, DI’s, monitors, and power drops included. The house engineer will thank you for your organization and your sound quality will improve as a result. TIP: Put your band mate’s names on the stage plot in front of their instruments so the house engineer can address you by name. This makes sound check much less painful!
2 Describe to the house engineer what your band is trying to achieve. A hair stylist doesn’t start cutting hair without asking what you want your head to look like! Make sure that the engineer knows you play death metal before you start playing your set! A standard five-piece band can play almost any genre of music. If the house engineer isn’t familiar with your band, describe your music and give him some time to adjust his equipment and his mix around your style. If you don’t, the house engineer will be totally unprepared when your drummer starts his double kick pedal and your singer peaks out the mic from the first note. Imagine how good that will sound…
3 Knowing the size restrictions of most of the local Denver venues, don’t bring an 8×10 bass rig or a double Marshall stack into the Hi-Dive. There is absolutely no reason to set up a 15-piece drum kit at the Larimer Lounge. These venues are too small and don’t have PA systems big enough to push your band’s mix over that kind of stage volume. WORK WITH your house engineer to balance the level of your stage volume with his house mix. With every instrument and vocal miked up, there is no need to crank your cabinets. If you turn down and allow the house engineer to do his job, he might actually surprise you and do it well! If you prevent him from mixing your show by turning up to 11, then you are guaranteeing terrible house sound, and probably a super pissed off sound guy. Good luck getting anything out of him after that.
4 Singers & Rappers: Eminem and Jay Z might sound “bad-ass” cupping their mic with both hands, but they have the privilege of using $2,000 customized wireless mic systems plugged into $60,000 digital mixing consoles. Less than 1% of musicians ever get that chance, so get smart! Cupping the mic makes your voice muffled and reduces clarity by not allowing the air from your voice to escape through the windscreen. The sound pressure level (SPL) inside the mic capsule becomes too high, and the low frequencies in your voice will overwhelm the signal and peak your mic channel. Do your house engineer a favor and choke down on the microphone a little bit. If you want a “bad-ass” low-end boost, ask the house engineer to lift the 80 Hz high pass filter and use a low end shelf instead. If they don’t know what this means, you have bigger problems…
5 Be respectful! House sound engineers are providing your band with a valuable service free of charge! Venue owners pay out of their pockets to hire someone to be responsible for your show. On top of that, house engineers are responsible for mixing the entire band line-up each night. This means that by the time they get to your band, they’ve probably had two or three sets blasted into their ears already. You have undoubtedly run into plenty of incompetent engineers who just want to get paid to drink and have sex in the booth. However, most engineers have your best interests at heart and take their job quite seriously. If you demonstrate respect and professionalism, the house engineer will make you sound as good as he can. With house engineers, that is all we can hope for.
Breathe deep, be prepared, and realize that you need to work with your house engineer to have a successful show. Learn from your bad experiences and walk into each venue with a fresh attitude towards the staff. Your fans will thank you when the house engineer actually mixes your set instead of hanging out back smoking a cigarette. Respect is a currency in the music industry, and the house sound engineer is definitely worth the investment.
Category: Shop Talk
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