I'll take a stab here, my band also uses all pickups. This is a wordy post, though.
First off, I'm not sure if your issues were feedback or just a general bad sound at high volume. Your post seems like it was of the general bad sound variety. I'll offer a few tips. If you already know this stuff I trust you'll forgive the repitition. * The Room. What type of space are you playing in? When it's empty, does it have a lot of natural reverb or is it kinda dead? A reverby room should sound real nice with some bodies in it and you can tell from the stage. A dead room (or a dead stage) can be harder because you can't hear the PA as clearly. *Control. Who's in control of the PA? If it's one of you guys, then you can try different things. If it's somebody else, then hopefully they're open to suggestions. If it is one of you guys, whichever one it is needs to get a long cable so he can go out in front of the band and listen while playing. That's important, because it lets you adjust the overall sound of everybody and it keeps you in the mix so the rest of the band plays "right" while you're offstage listening. I'm not the main singer so it was easy for me to do (and also how I got the job of band sound guy in the first place). If the band sound guy is a main singer I don't have any good suggestions (take the mic onto the floor, maybe?) *House vs. stage. Did your gig sound good to the crowd? If it just sounded bad to you guys then you got the big issue dealt with. Amplifying yourself onstage, with pickups, especially if you rehearse acoustic, can be a confusing auditory experience. But if it didn't sound good to anyone then you indeed have to "take action." A good help here can be a musician buddy, somebody whose ears you trust. Buy him a beer and ask him to keep you appraised of what's happening out there. Most musicians hate to see their friends sounding bad and will gladly offer suggestions. * Gain. Is everyone's "gain" adjusted appropriately? You want the gain to be as high as it can get without clipping. Some PAs have a light that will blink when the sound clips, others you just have to listen for. If you're having trouble telling, turn the gain way up so you know it's clipping--it should sound electric guitarish--then ease the gain back until you know it isn't like that. You have to play your intrument HARD when you do this check. I don't even play chords, I just bang the open strings as hard as I can. My mandolin pickup (a fishman M-200) is really "hot" and I generally have my gain at around 10:00 (like on a clock) or 30%. My banjo player's pickup is about as hot and his gain is a little higher, the guitarist and bassist are a little lower and they're generally around 12 or 50%. * Instrument EQ. My experience is that a good plugged-in sound at a high volume will sound good at a low, but the opposite is not necessarily true. For example, my mando sounds really nice at volume level 2 or so eq'd flat, but even at a volume of 4, that eq setting sounds awful. For my mando I generally eq with 0% low end, 20% mid and 50% high end. The banjo is about the same. The guitar is around 30% low, 50%mid and 50% high and the bass is pretty flat with a bit of low end rolled off. * Vocals EQ. In the rock'n'roll medium, vocals need to have the midrange pushed to cut through the drums and distorted guitars. Because of this, many vocal mics have the midrange already boosted and sound tech advice is to boost the midrange on vocals. I don't think this sounds right w/o drums or loud guitars. I've found in the string band medium vocals sound pretty good with the mids and highs flat and the low end rolled off a little bit. Because everyone's voice is different, you do have tailor the eq settings. Especially at high volumes, I find myself rolling back mids and pushing up trebles. * Overall EQ. I eq the house in a "notched smile," which, assuming you have a graphic eq, has the shape of a smiley face with a little bit of the high-mids notched down a little lower. Sort of like a smile with a gap for a cigaratte or something. * Reverb. I don't like it and I don't use it. In my opinion you can't hurt anything by cutting it and if you're having troubles, adding it won't help. Having said that, I've heard some sound guys do some really sweet, subtle things with reverb so use it if you like it. * Volume. Soundcheck LOUD. It's intimidating to do in an empty room because it seems so awkward but it's what you gotta do. Following what I said about EQ, if you soundcheck loud and then don't get the crowd, you can turn down and it should sound pretty good. You've discovered what happens if you do the opposite. When you check, remember the crowd is going to "soak up" a lot of the "blare and bounce" of the empty room, particularly high-end instruments like mandolin and banjo. So have courage with your mandolin being LOUD--once there's some bodies in there it won't seem loud, it will seem BIG. My experience has been that really nice sounding gigs had soundchecks that didn't sound "really nice." I hate to bring up experience, but you do learn what to listen for in an empty, bouncey room so that it will sound right when it's full of people. * Adjustments. If it seems like merely turning up the volume isn't helping, I've done a couple different things. One is to turn up everybodys' individual volumes a lot and turn down the master. I've also done the opposite. It presents a different sonic picture. You can also boost mid and treble to help instruments cut. If you have a "presence" knob, that is an extremely useful tool. If your mando is just blaring out of the speaking painfully, turn the presence down. If it is audible but not clear, turn the presence up. It works for banjo and guitar too, but not really for bass. Are you guys using monitors? Try to avoid monitor wars, by which someone asks for more of themselves, and now you can't hear you so you get more of you and pretty soon everybody has turned up in the monitor and it sounds bad. * Good enough. Ideally your gig should sound great. But if it's not sounding great, my advice is to get it "good enough" and then deal with it for 15 minutes. After that, I've found that one's ears adjust to the sound and what at song #3 was maddening is, by song #8, good enough. Whew. That was long and probably too wordy. I hope this is helpful. Feel free to follow up with any questions and I hope this is timely enough to help you. Have a good show! erik On May 22, 4:18 pm, Robin Gravina <[email protected]> wrote: > I figure there are some experts out there so help please! We played last > night in a great artsy bar in the country with a music loving, tatooed, > hairy, middle aged audience and all went well, but we hit problems with the > sound - great sound check in the empty bar, but as people got in and started > talking, just turning the thing up did not do us any favours - any > suggestions? Should we lower the bass, boost the treble? Take off any > reverb? Frankly I have no idea, but the same thing is going to happen > tomorrow unless we take action. As tomorrow is a bar frequented by Spanish > folk illuminati such as Kepa Junquera, I'd like to give a good impression. > > We have our instruments through pickups, not microphones if that is > important to know. Also I proudly want to boast that one person (an English > speaker) started singing along with a song of mine that had its world > premiere that night. What a great feeling..yeeeeey! > > Thanks for any advice > Robin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Taterbugmando" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
