I've not been gigging long (Been in my band 6 months, done 6 gigs) so still learning the ropes so to speak. We've done 2 small festivals now and to be honest i'm rapidly going off them.. The first one we did we had a very quick levels check with the guitars but i didn't get a chance to check both clean and dirty channels,let alone tweak any of the eq, and the second (just this weekend) we didn't even get that. It was literally plug in and go. As a result we didn't play that well and i was fighting my nerves the whole time.
As i said this is all pretty new to me, so if anyone has any tips for next time to help things go a bit smoother please feel free.
I usually keep my amp setting's roughly the same but i do find i have to tweak them slightly depending on where we are playing and the volume we are at and i find it difficult to adjust them 'on the fly' but i'm guessing i'm just going to have conquer that and get better at it. The biggest problem we had this weekend was no one could hear anything apart from the drums.. Just sounded like a big mess to me up on stage.
This will probably sound like simple stuff to the veterans out there but any hints/tips gratefully received!
Comments
Its a lot eas We for a band that has done a ton of gigs.
Two things that are probably obvious:
- know the parts inside out so you aren't relying on cues from others.
- use very simple and quick to set up gear, the most basic rig that will do the gig so you have more time to adjust back line or talk to monitor engineers instead of wiring things up.
I learned this when I played a gig at the O2 in Birmingham. Talk about baptism of fire...we had loads of gigs behind us, but we were totally unprepared for an uncooperative monitor tech who basically abandoned his post and we had nowhere to go but down. In flames.
Don't worry too much about surgical EQ and things needing to be just so onstage, just remember where your 2 basic dirty \ clean sounds are on the amp, don't have too much of a volume difference between them, don't go crazy with effects, use much less than you would indoors and then put all your effort into the playing. It's gonna sound different out the front as the PA guy will put his own EQ on .... so just get some basic sounds for onstage and don't worry too much.
Monitor wise ask for "a bit of everything " in you monitor "but more of my guitar and vocal" please ........ Just that should get you hearing everything, if there is someone running monitors then you can signal him throughout the gig to turn up \ down certain things but if there's not at least you can more or less hear everything anyway
If you make sure that the last practice before the gig, you make certain you can get this, using the same gear that you will using, and mark or write down the settings, you have a better chance. If it's provided backline, do your best and pray .
As already said (if you're not already) then use the absolute minimum gear you can possibly get away with - one guitar (not counting a backup), simple pedals, one or two amp sounds. The more you change, the harder it will be to keep a consistent sound.
To be honest I've always enjoyed them, no matter how bad the sound or the provided amps - including having the one I soundchecked with blow up when another band was using it, and having to scratch around for anything else that worked. Just go with the atmosphere and enjoy it, even if you think it sounds terrible. The punters probably won't notice.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Feedback
Is it a good thing? A bad thing?
Feckin' young 'uns and their silly-speak...
Then smile, move around, act like you're having fun even if it's a living hell up there. Nobody in the audience knows or cares about your personal musical experience on stage. Just look at the kind of comments you get online when, say, a mic falls on the piano strings at an Adele gig. You get 50 different explanations and everyone judges somebody, so your best bet as a performer is just to power through.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Next time i'll crank my amp up and wait for them to ask me to turn it down, because we got no feedback from the soundguys and wacthing back a quick vid done on some someones phone my amp was drowned out by the other guitarist.
Thanks again guys, some good feedback there.
Not sure what the moral of that is other than everything already said - learn stuff, simplify your set up and focus on performance and trust it sounds OK out front.
Sometimes at festivals, we've been up, done our line check and then we just go on and do our thing. Sometimes asking the guy on monitor mix for a "house mix" can work, but often they don't have access to that, so "a bit of everything and just a little more of me" is the best solution.
My old comrade in arms and friend Mark Rubin once told a bass student of his who asked what he needed to do to become professional said this, "Learn to play everything you know in every key. Then learn to jam along with everything you hear in every key. Then understand that some days you will have a stinking cold or flu and you have to play. And some days you will be onstage and you won't be able to hear anything at all, not even yourself. When this happens, if you really know what you're playing and you can convince the audience that you're having the best time of your life, you'll be in with a chance of becoming a pro".
Irrespective of the size of venue/stage always play together at a low volume and rehearse the same way. If needs be, stack your equipment close together on a huge stage to give some critical mass to the sound then do so, but monitors do that anyway. This way you always play and sound the same, the interaction is constant and the 'feel' doesn't vary much. Because you are physically mixing your volumes together it makes the sound engineers job a doddle and he just mics up and off you go with limited sound spill and feedback screach.
Mark your amp and pedal controls in default positions with coloured tape or a strip of masking tape stuck beside it or a chinagraph pencil or whatever. This way a quick glance tells you everything is about right without even turning it on. Sound chech can be just that, are you getting a sound and is the mixer/line check ok.
Setup like this you can go from a cafe gig to glastonbury main stage and back to the kings head with the only difference being the pay check and the size of the audience.
Be nice and polite to any stage crew, they appreciate it more than you know after a long day, and they are trying to make you sound good. Thank them afterwards before going to hang with your drop out mates, they will remember it next time.
You're welcome.
Also colour code you leads and simplify your connections, trouble shooting becomes simple if it even exists as a problem. Fix any gear issues after the gig way before the next one.
If you ask me for 'a bit of everything mate' I will assume you have no idea what you're doing, and will give you the mix I think you want. Now, for most inexperienced bands, that actually turns out to be bang on - after all that's the whole point of me being the monitor engineer, I'm good at it!
Because the long and short is you don't want, or need everything... For instance, if you are stood 6' from the drums - you do not need drums. If the lead vocalist wedge is spittingly loud, and it's 3' from your wedge.. you probably don't need much of that. If your bass player has been stupid and brought an 8x10.. You probably aint going to need that.
The more you have in your wedge, the worse it sounds, and the less loud important stuff will get. I actually get a lot of mileage from turning stuff down in people's mixes when they want the main instrument/voice turned up..
I know all this, and I know that anyone who has spent enough time on real stages with real monitors and engineers knows this.. So therefore, the assumption as earlier..
What is more helpful is to think about what you really need to hear.. If you take cues from the keyboard player - ask for lots of that. If the singer plays an acoustic but it's pretty much a fashion accessory - tell me you don't want it, it will make your mix better.. If you need to hear the other backing vocal because he's the middle part in the 3 part harmony you're singing in - tell me specifically, I can help! Give me some good clues to what you really need, and I can build you a good sounding mix.. Without all the junk that gums it up!
(Obviously having said all that, it applies to wedges only. IEM is a completely different game, and it's quite reasonable to ask for a general mix as you can't hear any of the stage wash/other wedges etc.. Mixing IEMs is like mixing FOH for every person onstage!)
If the band don't get a sound check (which happened last weekend) I've got options to adjust the volume on the fly until I get time to adjust the amp.
If I'm too loud I ride the volume pot on my guitar or back off the volume using my volume pedal in my pedal board.
If I'm too quiet I've got two levels of clean (post distortion) boost (3dB and 6dB) in my pedal board. The 3dB is to give a slight lift and the 6dB takes me from rhythm to lead level, or together as an insane 9dB boost. I can use the boosts as a temporary level adjust at the start if we don't get a sound check.
But, even with all that, I'm often riding the volume pot on my guitar.
The biggest problem I see and get (as a performer rather than an engineer) is no one is mixing monitors onstage. I've done 7 festival gigs as a guitarist \ keys player this summer and no one has been mixing monitors. The desks have mainly been X32's and that little Midas one plus some QU's ... they all support iPad aps for monitor mixing but no one is doing it. You get bugger all time between changeovers to set up any kind of usable monitor mix and the last thing you want to do is announce over the mic during the show that you need more of this or less of that but sometimes you have to cos no ones there for you
I could understand it if one man was running the PA but the bins and other stuff are always a 2 man lift so there's generally at least 2 of you there. My own company 2020 studios always has one of us mixing monitors the side of the stage and one FOH.
I'm doing another festival (as a guitarist ) on Sat afternoon .... I know who's doing the sound and I know they won't have anyone mixing monitors so I will split the mics myself