Your band needs a
soundman because everything sounds different in front
of the speakers. If you have a newly formed band,
you'll need to focus your efforts on stage to making
the music, not worrying about how it sounds out
front. It's true that many experienced bands play
without a soundman, but it's often found that they've
succeeded in sounding over-produced, flat, and
boring. If you're going to play a gig where you're
the centre of attention, you need to sound energetic,
and dynamic, and different from one song to the next.
Your soundman can make that happen.
The soundman is
responsible for making the band sound as good as
possible to the audience. He uses microphones, a
mixer, signal processing electronics, amplifiers,
speakers, and many yards of cables, to balance and
reinforce the music created on stage so that it
sounds like great music to the paying punters. There
are several basic skills that involve connecting up
all of the equipment and in addition, each piece has
it's own set of knobs and controls which need to be
learned. The last, but most important, is being able
to match the various pieces of the system to the
music that you hear. The trick is to know which knob
to turn to make it sound better. This is a classic
combination of art and technology.
Your soundman can be
anyone who you can convince to do the job. Often it's
a mate or roadie. The soundman should be considered a
member of the band and consequently should attend
rehearsals and get paid a share of the money. Just
like other musicians, there are good sound guys, bad
ones, and style issues. The main requirements are
having a good ear, a logical mind (at least mostly),
and an ability to explain to musicians with large
egos why they have to make a minor adjustment so that
they don't sound like crap. The rest is just learning
the cause-and-effect of all the knobs and sliders,
most of which are either ignored, or set-and-forget.
If you want the job
done right, and if you're lucky enough to be playing
a place big enough to have a house PA, be sure to
bring your own soundman. Let the place know that your
sound guy is expected to be at the mix board, and to
either run or direct it's operation. The house guy
may be cautious, because even an experienced engineer
can mess up a system he's not familiar with, but they
tend to understand about wanting it to sound good. In
fact, most house guys will be impressed that the band
has hired their own engineer.
These days, a modest
PA should be enough, because if you ever need a
bigger system, it will either be a house PA, or you
can rent it. Your own PA need only be big enough to
run your rehearsals. You'll need mics, cables, a
mixer, a stereo graphic EQ, a reverb unit, a 200 watt
per channel amplifier, and two medium size full range
speakers, and enough cables to hook it all up. Oh
yes, and get a snake (a bundled set of mic and line
cables). This single item will save you more time and
trouble than you'll ever know. For the smallest gigs,
use only one speaker for the audience, and use the
other as your side-fill monitor. For slightly bigger
gigs, use both speakers for the audience, and obtain
(buy, borrow, rent) two smaller monitor speakers.
Always run your system in a bi-mono arrangement,
never stereo, one channel of the amp should be for
the audience, and the other is for the monitor. For
bigger gigs, use your system for the monitors, and
rent a bigger amp and speakers (remember to add that
fee to your gig price) for the audience.
Get a mini-speaker and
set it on a stand behind the drummer. If it has it's
own volume control, great. Otherwise, he can control
the level by turning the speaker away as needed. If
the drummer sings, place the speaker lower (on a
chair) and behind, opposite from the vocal mic.
When setting up the PA
first of all, make sure that all the vocal and guitar
channels on the mix board have the low EQ turned down
as much as possible. If you have a particularly
sultry singer, remove as much of the low end as you
can without ruining the voice. Be sure that the
low-cut option is enabled (if available) on the mix
board. If you run the bass, piano, or kick drum,
through the PA, leave their low settings close to
flat, but remove the lows from any other drum mics.
The reason for all of this is that all low sounds are
omni-directional, that means that they travel in all
directions, including to the rear, equally. The
higher the frequency, the more directional it
becomes.
Thus the sound from
the bass guitar signal gets into every mic on stage,
no matter where you put his amp! If the place you're
playing has a house PA which normally plays
background or dance music, then you may be a victim
of the "smiling equalizer". Many times you
can look at a graphic equalizer and see that the
knobs are arranged like a smile, the lows and highs
are turned up, and the midsection is turned down. On
an EQ with lots of bands, the top-and bottom-most
band may also be down. This is done so that the music
can be turned up louder, but not interfere with
conversation.
The funky bass may be
rattling the windows, but the bartender can still
hear your beer order. However, this is YOUR music,
and you want it to be heard and listened too, so try
and convince the house sound guy to change it to
where it's mostly flat (at 0db change) until you get
to the far end, where it drops off. In most
medium-size places, having a flat EQ from 200-8KHz is
plenty. If you're running the bass guitar through the
board, then go down to 100Hz on the low end. Be
careful, because everything will be louder now.
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