Great band, rubbish sound

[grapevinebass]

Never thought I would get the opportunity to see Big Country live - but they are on the road again with a new, and very good, singer.

So off I went to Portsmouth last night to see them and carefully watch Tony Butler do his fantastic stuff.

Still a great band, with great riffs and stage presence. But the gig was ruined by terrible sound.

Even though I had my earplugs, I left before the end - before my ears bled.

The great bass runs were lost in a cacophany of bass and snare drums. Even the neat cymbal work was lost in the mix.

Did the sound man really not notice that turning everything up to 11 just resulted in mushy sound. The ample PA could not cope with the overload - it was clipped and distorted. The bass guitar was lost, and the mids and treble swamped by trouser flapping bass overload.

I reckon about 50% of the gigs I go to have poor sound mix, but some are just ruined by bad sound engineering.

So - if you are still with me, reader of this rant... when you strutt your stuff with your band, make sure your sound man keeps the sound under control. Otherwise all your hard work is lost on deafened listeners and your melodies overwhelmed by the mix.

If you are going to see Big Country, take good earplugs and keep out of the speaker axis.

[bassicinstinct]

[quote name='grapevinebass' post='1193600' date='Apr 9 2011, 10:37 AM']Never thought I would get the opportunity to see Big Country live - but they are on the road again with a new, and very good, singer.

So off I went to Portsmouth last night to see them and carefully watch Tony Butler do his fantastic stuff.

Still a great band, with great riffs and stage presence. But the gig was ruined by terrible sound.

Even though I had my earplugs, I left before the end - before my ears bled.

The great bass runs were lost in a cacophany of bass and snare drums. Even the neat cymbal work was lost in the mix.

Did the sound man really not notice that turning everything up to 11 just resulted in mushy sound. The ample PA could not cope with the overload - it was clipped and distorted. The bass guitar was lost, and the mids and treble swamped by trouser flapping bass overload.

I reckon about 50% of the gigs I go to have poor sound mix, but some are just ruined by bad sound engineering.

So - if you are still with me, reader of this rant... when you strutt your stuff with your band, make sure your sound man keeps the sound under control. Otherwise all your hard work is lost on deafened listeners and your melodies overwhelmed by the mix.

If you are going to see Big Country, take good earplugs and keep out of the speaker axis.[/quote]

Totally agree with you.

It's the apparent total inadequacy and/or deafness of the majority of Sound Engineers, even working with quite "big" bands, which tends to put me off actually going to,live gigs, unless I'm actually involved in the show!!