Cheap Advice On Music

So your band is playing three sets, with two 10- or 15-minute breaks to chat up the fans and visit the loo. What is coming through your PA during the breaks? Before you start playing? After? Probably nothing. This gives the club or restaurant owner (or party host) a chance to turn on their jukebox, or AM radio, or whatever they’ve got hooked to their in-house speakers, and play whatever tripe they want to. Their choice of interim music becomes part of your show.

So take control! Hook up a CD player to the PA and play what you want people to hear when you’re not onstage - stuff that goes with what your band plays - stuff that makes you sound good. (For example, don’t include any original versions of songs you are planning to mangle in your next set!)

There’s no need to drag along a regular CD player like you would use with your home stereo. Any portable unit (even the tiny ones) will be fine, as long as it has a headphone jack! Warning: you may have to devise a Rube Goldberg style set of adapters to get from 1/8″ stereo to TRS (or TS) mono, like I did. (Don’t forget to combine the stereo channels into mono at some point.) And use a fresh set of batteries every time!

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

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.

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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.]