Cheap Advice On Music

When we set up the PA system at yet another fabulous Rusty Strings gig, one of the main things I find myself doing as sound man for the band is running cables. I run cables from the instrument amps, microphones, and direct boxes to the snake’s stage box. I run cables between the mixer and the power amp and to and from the effects box (two separate channels). I run the main speaker cables. I run the monitor speaker cables. Lots of cables!

Some of the cables are short (three to six feet) and are used to interconnect components at the mixing position: mixer to PA, mixer to and from effects box, etc. These short cables are easy to run and present no problems, as they never leave the surface of the card table - er, mixing desk - that the gear is set up on. Other short cables are used onstage, from the instruments and microphones to the snake’s stage box. These cables aren’t a problem either. It’s the cables that run from the mixing position to the stage (or to an AC outlet) that can cause problems, especially if they have to cross a traveled walkway of any kind.

The main problem with cables that leave the stage or mixing area, whether or not they cross a walkway, is that people (including you) will trip over them! (I don’t say may, I say will - you’ve heard of Murphy’s Law.) This is bad in many ways, some involving injury and insurance (and lawyers), and some involving possible damage to your gear due to its being pulled clean off the table when “Clumsy Kyle” goes down. At the very least it’s likely to pull the daggone cable end right out of its connector. I’ve seen it!

The cables I am talking about, at least for Rusty Strings, are the AC power cord, the snake cable from the stage, and the main speaker cable to the stage. (See my article Mini-Tip: Send Monitor Signals On the Snake for ideas about eliminating an additional cable.) The approaches I use to deal with the trippage problem are: (1) tape or mats, and (2) knotted strain relief.

Read the rest…

If you are the sound man for a band, or a band member who has been recruited to store all of the group’s “sound stuff” and bring it to the gigs, you have probably had the experience of discovering at the last minute that some crucial (and usually obvious) item has been forgotten, left on the kitchen table or the studio floor and now desperately needed with 20 minutes left till showtime. “How could I have forgotten the power cable for the mixer?” is not a question you want to be asking yourself at a time like this!

As the sound man for Rusty Strings, I have committed one or two gaffes of this kind myself, usually leading to sad, desperate searches for workarounds. To avoid this problem, I have established two rules for myself:

(1) Always bring everything I have ever needed at any previous gig. Sure, this means a gradually increasing load as I add in small items that someone asked for but I didn’t have, but I think it’s worth it. (Wait till next time the guitarist forgets his capo - I’ve got one!)

(2) Use a packing checklist. How else can I be sure I have every last thing? Airline pilots use checklists; now I do too.

Read the rest…

Those of us who record and mix music in our home studios have become quite familiar with the use of effects like reverb and delay, usually applied during mixing, to enhance the sound of the basic recorded tracks and to help the pieces of the mix “fit together” properly. But what if the band is playing live, using a PA system, instead of laying down tracks in the studio? Do we really need to bring along our whole arsenal of studio effects?

A key difference between the live situation and the studio situation is that a PA system, where the live effects would be added, is generally used mostly or entirely for vocals (see my article Using Onstage Amps vs. Playing Through the PA for some thoughts about using the PA for instruments as well as vocals), whereas in the studio, every instrument and vocal, even the drums, can have effects added.

Another reason to focus primarily on vocal effects in a live situation is that the instruments typically have effects added to them before they get to the PA. I am thinking of the “stomp boxes” or multi-effect units that guitarists often insert between the guitar and the amp, and the built-in effects that most keyboards make available. All this means that when we talk about PA effects, we are basically talking about vocal effects.

Read the rest…

When you are setting up a PA system for use at live shows, an important general rule is to minimize the number of onstage microphones. There are two reasons for this, both having to do with feedback between the microphones and the main or monitor speakers.

The first reason to minimize the number of microphones is to avoid unnecessary sources of feedback. Every “live” microphone onstage has the potential to cause feedback, the scourge of the sound man. (The audience won’t notice if the vocal balance is a tad off. They will notice feedback.) If you can replace just one instrument microphone with some kind of direct connection, that will eliminate one more potential source of feedback!

The second reason that fewer microphones are better is that you can apply more gain to each one before feedback begins to occur. Every microphone onstage will feed back if you turn its gain up high enough. The gain applied to each microphone contributes its own small part to bringing the whole system closer to the inevitable feedback point. If fewer microphones are involved, more of the potential gain-before-feedback is available for each, allowing them to be louder.

So how do you go about limiting the microphone count? Obviously, the main vocalist(s) will each need their own mikes, and there’s nothing you can do about that. If there happens to be a group of two or three backup singers, they might be able to share a mike instead of each having their own, but in general you are kind of stuck with “one microphone per vocal.”

If you are miking a drum set, which is somewhat uncommon in smallish venues, you could think about reducing the number of mikes here too, although the loudness of the drums means that the contribution of these mikes to overall system gain is likely to be relatively small anyway. (Overheads will probably end up contributing the most.)

Read the rest…

At a live show, there are three things that instantly brand a band as a group of newbies: (1) frequent feedback, (2) feeble vocal levels, and (3) talking to the sound man through the PA. All of these problems will be noticed by the audience, but to me problem (3) is perhaps the most egregious. Having a band member say “I need more of me in the monitors, Dude” at full voice through the main speakers is like, so totally unpro.

With a little planning, this scenario can be avoided. One way out is to develop a set of inconspicuous hand signals, like those used by sports teams. Ninety-five percent of the time, the message to be communicated has to do with the stage monitors. Someone, or something, is too quiet, or too loud. Signals are needed for which vocal or instrument to fix, and whether the level needs to go up or down.

A second possibility is to use one of the cables in the snake to run a signal from an otherwise unused microphone onstage to a small amplifier at the sound man’s position, creating a one-way intercom. (The band I work with uses one of these.) Finally, if the sound man happens to be monitoring the mix in headphones, a quiet whisper up close to a mic (perhaps during applause) will be heard clearly in the phones and not at all by the audience. (Weird, but it works!)

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice on Live Sound.]

Many new bands want to know, can we just run our vocals through a spare input in one of our instrument amps when we play out, instead of buying and setting up a whole fancy-schmancy PA system? Well, my answer to this question is no, yes, and kind of. (How’s that for razor-sharp clarity?)

1. No

Most of the time, when we think about a high-powered onstage amplifier, we think about the guitar player’s amp. The thing’s huge! Why don’t we just run the vocals through that along with the guitar?

The main problem with this is that guitar amplifiers are purposely designed to not have a flat frequency response. If they did, they’d all sound the same! And yet we know that there is a “Marshall sound,” a “Fender sound,” and so on. It stands to reason that your vocals would sound markedly different if run through different guitar amps, and that can’t be good.

The electric guitar and its amplifier are best thought of as a single instrument. After all, an electric guitar makes very little sound without an amp! The frequency response and other sonic characteristics of the amp combine with those of a specific guitar to create a sound unique to that combination. This makes guitar amps great for guitarists, but not so good for vocalists.

Read the rest…

There comes a time in the life of every band when someone wants them to actually play somewhere. (Somewhere that isn’t the drummer’s basement, I mean.) Up until now, the singers have been using a microphone plugged into the keyboard amp, but is that going to be enough when we play at a restaurant (or a barn, or a patio)? The truth dawns: we need a PA system of some kind for the vocals. But what kind?

There are several factors you need to consider and a number of pitfalls you must avoid. I’ll just hit the high points here, outlining the key decisions you and your band need to make to be sure you get the right system for your hard-earned cash. Since I’ve only worked extensively with a couple of systems myself, I won’t recommend specific brands or models here. But I’ll give you some points to ponder as you sort through the available systems.

Read the rest…

I started going out to see bands when I was about 16. The very first rock band I ever saw play right up close was an outfit called Kicks, Inc. They never made it big, but they’ll always be special to me! One thing that disappointed me was that I could barely hear the singing, even though I was near the front of the crowd. The instruments were good and loud but no vocals. I figured it was a fluke.

Imagine my further disappointment as I went to see other bands and came to realize the simple fact that when you watch a live band, you can’t make out the words. It was always that way! It was as sure as the show starting late. What shocks me is how often this still happens today, even after all these years of playing rock music live. What gives?

Maybe the gear is set up wrong and there would be feedback if they turned the vocals up to the right level. Maybe they don’t have a sound man and they just don’t realize how they sound. But if you are the sound man, do the audience a favor and follow a simple rule when setting the vocal levels: make sure you can understand the words. If you can’t, turn up the vocals a bit, or give them more “presence” EQ, turn down an instrument, move the speakers - do something until you (and the audience) can make out the lyrics! And keep checking this during the show.

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Live Sound.]