Sue wrote: > Is there anyone who says they like it that loud? Being an > old grump person it is one (ok a minor one) reason for not > going to the National.
Amongst others no doubt :-) I suspect there were probably one or two "nutters" who liked it that loud (there's always the odd one) but not many. But there are plenty of people at the festival who like a bit of rock 'n roll and if you have live rock bands (or similar) with drum kits it's gonna be fairly loud and probably too loud by old grump person standards :-) (I'm not unsympathetic BTW, I find it totally impossible to converse in a noisy environment and have to resort to lip reading. For several years I assumed that a mispent youth at gigs where it was very very VERY loud had led to hearing loss but it turns out I've got hypersensitive hearing (very useful for a sound engineer!) and just get overloaded) For sure, at Burton on Trent and especially Preston Brook the bar was packed to the rafters most nights and especially so at PB on the Monday night when the Beat Beatles were on which was, and it's no coincidence, the 'loudest' we ran the PA system at any of the three events we did. At Beale Park, main bar audience numbers took a knock due to over zealous stewarding (stewards having been introduced following PB after which we'd said we would not do the main bar PA at BP unless there were stewards 'cos it got crazy in there!). The stewarding regime seemed to have got sorted out to just the right sort of level at St. Ives but as I wasn't on site all weekend and spent very little time in the bar I've no idea whether more people were in there this year than last. I personally think the loss of the quiet bar (apparently for financial reasons) is a backward step but money doesn't grow on trees and the pressure is always on to minimise costs. The question isn't really whether there should be *loud* music at the festival, the question is what *type* of music should there be (if any perhaps?). You can't have quiet live music with drum kits* (well, that's not *strictly* true, in the right genre a good drummer can play with brushes rather than sticks and keep the noise down but it doesn't work universally and not all drummers have the ability to do it). There'll doubtless be some people who'd prefer to have no music at all, others who'd be happy with a bit of quiet 'musak' (ugh!) and then there'll be others still who like it loud. Bru * OK, I'll explain this one even though nobody asked :-) A drum kit is a noisy beast without any help from a PA system. Unfortunately, in a large marquee, it'll sound bl**dy awful unamplified - the bass drum will thump through everything as will the tom toms but the snare drum will sound thin and the cymbals and high hats will just get lost in the general hub-bub of noise. So the sound engineer has to add at least enough amplifaction to the various elements of the drum kit to balance up the sound. That sets the sound level floor - everything else (guitars, keyboards, vocals etc.) is then dialed in to balance with the drums. Try to run things any quieter than that and it'll sound crap. And that's an over-simplification anyway as it doesn't take into account EQ (fancy tone control) or effects (reverb etc.). Now somebody is quite likely going to say "why do you need them?". Well EQ is like sound levels, it's used to balance up the sound across the frequency spectrum. Different frequencies are absorbed and reflected in different ways by the environment in which the performance is taking place. For instance, low (bass) frequencies go straight through most things including people whilst high (treble) frequencies are rapidly attenuated by bodies. That's why all you hear of that annoying rave three miles away is 'thump thump thump'. Perversley, low frequencies tend not to be reflected by solid objects whilst high frequencies are. So the bod on the mixing desk is twiddling lots of knobs to try and bring everything into a nice sounding balance. Oh and he's probably also (if he's really good) trying to make dodgy vocalists sound good and to knit 'holes' into the frequency spectrum so that the vocals are more audible by tweaking EQ settings on different bits of the mix. All of that is all very well but it only works if it's the amplified and 'tweaked' sound that people are hearing rather than the direct sound from the stage itself. So the basic volume level of the PA has to be sufficient to 'drown out' the unamplified sound from the stage. With a quiet acoustic folk or similar act that's no problem to achieve. With a rock band you need to give it a bit of welly! And then effects ... We're used to, and expect to hear, reverberation. It's a normal part of our everyday lives. Every space other than the great outdoors reflects sound so that we not only hear the sound directly from the source but from reflections of walls, windows, floors and ceilings. In an acoustically dead (ie; non-reflective) environment, music (and to a lesser extent speech) sounds flat, dull and lifeless. A marquee is fairly dead acoustically (the walls and roof reflect very little sound - most of it, unfortunately, goes straight through!) so in that type of venue, the sound engineer needs to add artificial reverb. Whatever volume level was needed to get a good mix, it now goes louder 'cos the reverb is added to it. Hence the oft used phrase at Burton, PB and BP ... "If you book loud bands, you GET loud bands!" It really isn't as simple as just turning it down. Honest!
