Agreed. Those who run sound are Sub happy.

I notice something similar at a Bela Fleck show.

At times the bass overpowered the banjo. Not sure if this was the bass guy's stage volume or just what coming into play. After a few seconds it seemed like the banjo volume would come up, but the bass always seemed to be the loudest, even louder than the drums.

I definately agree. Legends here in Fort Wayne, Ind. has great sound, and they should after supporting the local music scene forthe past 15 years. But anyplace else seems to act like a DJ with their levels making the music sound like re-mix versions of the songs.

It's nice to know I'm not alone on this observation. The discouraging thing is, with the rap / hip-hop that is in the vogue, this
"sub-happiness" Randy refered to will only get worse.

Hey Don,
My own experience has been this...many "Shows" I've seen, if the sound person is sitting there guzzlin beer and gnawin on pizza, the mix is out. Usually a person like that hasn't so much turned "up" the bass and drums as much as turned down the guitar because they don't know how to eq for feedback and such. Gig's like that I often hear the singer's mic squakin too if they happen to move around the stage a lot. The person running sound will usually just "roll off" the high frequencies and really has no idea how to do proper eq.

Now I've been at other shows where the sound person will literally be "riding" the board...they're actually listening to whats comin at them and making constant adjustments and those are the shows that "sound good".

Running sound is really an art unto itself. Every venue is different and I don't think I've really been in too many bars that were really "designed" for live sound. As such a good sound engineer really has to be on his/her game and really understand how acoustics and such work in order to get a really good sound...most people that work a mixing board for your average gigging band just don't have a clue.

Yes, I will admit that there are folks (especially younger "kids") that have some kind of annoying infatuation with bass, but more often then not if the sound is like that, it's usually more a matter of the sound person simply not knowing what he/she is doing and or simply doesn't really care. If you have someone running the mixers that is more concerned with the free beer, free food and the whole "I'm cool because I'm with the band" attitude, chances are the gig is going to sound like crap. Chances are that person is just a friend of the guitarist or drummer anyways with little or no mixing experience and someone slipped them $20 to run the mixer as apposed to forkin out some cash for a good "pro" sound engineer.

Just my $.02 worth,
Bright Blessings,
Jim

James
How about the smiley face eq that I see from time to time? I can hear some admirable qualities to this eq setting on some of the individual insturments but i always felt like this setting for everything that was coming through the PA was chopping the band's overall sound at the knees.What is the theory behind the smiley face setting?
Thanks

Hey Don,
Well usually where I see this is on home stereo systems really...my own included :-) There's an old practice in recording called "scooping the 800's" or something like that. Basically most of your bass frequencies are below 400 hz and most of your other instruments and vocals (with rock music at least) are 1000 hz and higher, so there's a tendancy to raise the frequencies that are most prominant (everyone likes to hear vocals, guitar and drums!) and reduce those that are "irrelivant" (although they really arn't). Since 800 hz is in about the middle of this, you end up with a "smiley face" on an eq.

Now I think the reason this gets used like this with live sound reinforcement goes back to simply an inexperienced person running the mix and eq...either it's because it sounds good on their home stereo eq or simply this is what someone told them to do so thats how they try to do it with live music...which of course is totally wrong. The one thing I've learned over the years is that every venue is different and as such the sound system needs to be set up different every time...no two bars are a like when it comes to running sound. I've played in a couple of places that really weren't "too" bad when it came to setting up the sound system, but I've also played in places that were very literally -barns-. We played a gig a couple of years back...The Earth Song Festival (kind of an alternative Woodstock thing really...3 days of mostly Pagan music). This is at the same place that our local Pagan community has their annual Solstice Festivals and Pagan Pride Day's. Now the building where they have the bands play....sshhhheeeeessshhhhhh. It's a small "hall" and all four walls are just painted cinder block with a tin roof! I mean we're talkin feedback city here! LOL!!! The -only- way to tackle a place like this (although this really applies to -any- venue) is you have to take the time to "wring out" the eq. I won't go into the details of how to do this, but needless to say, a lot of folks who run a mixing board for a friends band have -no idea- at all how to do this...or even that it should be done at all!. When you get folks that don't know what they're doing or a sound person who trys to use a basic eq setting for all instruments and venues, then yes, things are going to usually sound pretty bad.

Another thing that a lot of amature sound people don't take into consideration is that the "dynamics" of a bar change of the course of the night. While I'm not sure about the rest of the world, around here the band starts playin around 9 pm. At that time the bar isn't really full yet, but by the second set, the bar is usually pretty packed (if your a decent band! LOL). Now at this point you usually have the PA pretty cranked up, the band's a rockin, yadda, yadda, yadda. However by the third set, the bar is starting to clear out a little bit...this is usually the point where the bar owner walks over and ask's "hey...can you guys turn down a little?". There's simply not as many bodies in the venue to absorb the sound! LOL! I've seen a number of bands where by this point the sound guy will be stoned-ass drunk and tryin to find some woman who's desprite enough to go home with him and won't even notice the PA's too loud, let alone if the mix is off. It's pretty sad.

Honestly, I've been running sound now for quite a few years, both for my own band(s) as well as for others. It's a skill just like anything else and really takes a little effort to learn how to do it "right". As I said before, so often a bands "sound man" will really be nothing more then somebody like the drummers best friend who really has no idea at all about what he's doing and is just there for the free beer.

Just my opinion, but I'll stand by it...free beer in hand! LOL!

Bright Blessings,
Jim

Well James, one thing's for certain,the barns that you have played in have given you some valuable knowledge about sound. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience.
don

Hi All
I am not a sound engineer but by constraint have had to learn all I can and that involed taking several 13 week courses on running sound.
One of the things that was taught by about everyone that I went to was constructiong a good mix by working on different levels. OCnstructing a kind of pyramid with the part that should be formost in the mix on top and working down. Without fail I was taught that the bass and drums are th foundation of a good mix, immediatel;y after them comes the lead/main instrument for that particualr song whether that is piano, keyboard or guitar. This was demonstrated to us onver and over by building different mixes of the same songs and then hearing the difference.
Some just don't bother to fine tune the pyramid but just stick the bass and drums way above everything else and then all else pretty even. Not good. What we hear is the lack of even out things.
A good sound man make the board his "instrument" and his should be playing every song.
Chet

Hi Chet,


Where did you take these courses?


Thanks for the advice, I'll keep that in mind...


Joshua

Hi Joshua
One was in Harisburg area and given by Crown(Crown Amps).
The other was at a local music school here and was pretty indepth. There were only 5 of us in the class and it ran for 13 weeks 1 1/2 hours a week. It concentrated on running sound for contemporary worship in churches also so that was cool. I think I have a copy of a video tape of the Crown class. I'll look around for it and make you a copy if I can
Chet
The layering basically goes
Bass
Drums
Lead instrument
Vocals
support instruments
specialty instruments (triangle, mariachis,etc)

Hi Chester,
As I look at the priority list that you received in your class I just have to scratch my head over this. Especially if they were teaching proper sound for a worship service. By the way that is what has prompted my original question in the first place. I have noticed the same bassy tendencies playing in church that I noticed when I to played secular venues in my younger days. It seems in a church service the class would have placed the vocals at least even with the bass and drums. Now when talk about these layers, are they telling you the levels between these insturments should be just slightly different or substantially different?
Don

Hi Don
The levels are not substantially different but change for each song depending on its composition and tempo etc.
Most church teams are mixed improperly with the vocals way far out in fromt of all else. It tends to make worse mistakes and just has no comparison to a proper mix of the same team doing the same song. The differences and how to tune the mix just cannot in my opinion but explained or effectively put inot owrds but a plain when demonstrated properly. The teacher who had the most impact on my actually recorded all the parts to a group of comtemporary worship song on a digital recorder and then demonstrated the differences between a proper mix and a vocals heavy mix found in many churches today. It was unreal. He then took each of us one at a time and had us mix several songs and criticed what we had done and made adjustments that he felt would improve the mix and told us why. In most case I have to agree that his changes improved the mix greatly. Mixing is however relevant to the listener and YOU may not like what many others call a good mix. I have dealt over the years with a few in the congregations that thought things should be much different but they were a small minority. Many more compliments came and much encouragement from the congregations due to the changes. The mix for our team changed so much that we went from being an alright praise team to having a sound that others wanted and even got invited to play several big shows due to the great "sound " we had.
Mixes come down to a matter of taste plain and simple but there are some ground rules that help to even things out.
Chet

Good deal bro,I'm glad the guy helped you. Thanks for your responses.
don

Hi Don--

Just a couple of other observations about mixing in a live environment.

At my old church, we lost our sound man, who moved out of state. There was no other real candidates, so I asked if I could take the job over. Having to play and mix at the same time is quite a job!! It ended up that I was playing every other week and running sound every other week. But even when I was playing, I'd run back and forth between the sound board (it's a good thing I was wireless. That helped when I stepped out to listen to the balance).

Anyway, what I found to be very helpful was that I had an eq session with each vocalist. Fortunately I was working on a digital console, so I was able to store the individual vocalist's eq curve into memory. This is very important to help with levels. It's mostly all about taking away unwanted/undesirable and unmusical sounds. Another reason why this is so important is that most times there will be rotating people on a worship team, and having individual eq curves will help the vocal blend.

The second thing that was very useful was something that James said: a good sound person will 'ride' the board throughout the song, adjusting instrument levels throughout the song.

I hope you got all your questions answered.

Steve

Very helpful.
Thanks

A good sound man make the board his "instrument" and his should be playing every song.

This is a concept that can't be taught easily. People who are musicians understand this right away, though.

Steve