Soundchecks

[scoot]

It’s apparent that some of you guys on here have experience as sound engineers. I have a question - what do you guys want to hear from me at a soundcheck - I have heard players doing things like “Donna Lee or a blisteringly fast version of Rhythm Stick but is that really useful to you?  What can the player do to make your job easier (apart from buying you a pint!) 

Cheers!

[BreadBin]

Play exactly as you would during the set, make sure they see what your loudest bit will sound like.

That's it really.

[Teebs]

12 minutes ago, scoot said:

What can the player do to make your job easier (apart from buying you a pint!)

Not sound engineered for a gig in years, but from memory:

Band listens to what they're being told (near impossibility from previous experience);

Band does what they're told, when they're told (again, virtually unheard of);

Dont play over your band mates individual line check - wait your turn;

While you're waiting for your level check, stand where the audience will be and give some feedback to the SE / musician;

When sound check is finished, DO NOT change levels / EQ on pedals / amp etc. (guitarists I'm particularly looking at you!) ;

Buy SE pint - he/she can make you sound awful (worse than you can even manage yourself!).

 

 

[Steve Browning]

As above.

Not been a sound man but experienced plenty of soundchecks. Simple rules, do exactly as the sound man asks and play a line from a song you're going to play.

When you're not actively soundchecking yourself, stay out of the way (physically and sonically).

Edited June 3, 2019 by Steve Browning

[casapete]

Our sound check always follows the same routine.

1. All instruments line checked in turn (sometimes string section together to get a good balance ), followed by each microphone.

2. Four songs played - first is for overall instrument balance / lead vocal, second for same (but is louder than the first), third for backing vocal balance and the fourth for solo instrument levels (violin and guitar).

We don’t necessarily play all of each song, but tend to when it’s a large room where the sound guy wants to listen in all areas. This is often the case in theatres with multiple tiers where his job is so much more difficult. It’s also the first band I’ve been in for years where we are pretty disciplined, as I can’t stand people playing over other people’s individual check. Widdly guitarists nearly always.

[Rich]

I play a simple slow-ish riff over and over agan, mostly lows but with a few dusty end notes and a couple of snaps, and a long low note between repititions. Covers the whole freq range.

[casapete]

23 minutes ago, Rich said:

I play a simple slow-ish riff over and over agan, mostly lows but with a few dusty end notes and a couple of snaps, and a long low note between repititions. Covers the whole freq range.

Yup, I do the same, emphasising any notes that may be overly loud in the room which need attention from the desk to rectify. 

Think it’s worth mentioning what a sometimes seemingly futile job soundchecking in an empty room can be for the band and engineer. When you get the audience ( or as he calls them ‘meat baffles’ ) in, it must be so hard if the settings need altering a lot from the sound check.

[mcnach]

With regards to listening to the sound person:

 

In smaller venues, they may sometimes ask the bass player to turn down a bit. It can be a drag as it can compromise your own monitoring (often your amplifier onstage IS your monitor). I found that generally it's not the overall volume but the amount of low end that becomes bothersome. Offering to turn down the low end instead to see if that works generally does the trick. Onstage I don't need masses of low end to hear myself. Since I got the D800+ with its built-in adjustable HPF I can turn up the HPF until the sound person gives me the thumbs up and I still hear myself plenty.

It doesn't happen often, but worth remembering that. 

On Saturday I had that very situation. My girlfriend was in the audience and has seen us many times in many venues, and she said we had the best sound she's heard in years, in any venue by any band: Trust the sound engineer and work with them, not against them.

 

edit: the HPF only affected my onstage sound

Edited June 3, 2019 by mcnach

[la bam]

For our line check (just bass) I always just do a slow 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4.l and repeat, as follows:

G on E string

A on E string

C on A string

D on A string

F on D string

G on D string

A# on G string

C on G string

Just a simple steady run, but always gives the sound guy chance to balance the lows and highs and takes just a few seconds.

[Skinnyman]

I've never done it professionally, but I've done the sounds for a good few amateur productions and band gigs over the years.

You ask people to play at "normal" and then "peak" volume so you can get their input gain set properly.

You then carefully balance all the instruments against each other so that everything is audible, boosting and lowering specific frequencies as needed to stop feedback and allow each instrument to be heard.

Once all that's been done I can guarantee that the guitarist will sidle over to his amp and turn the flipping thing up.

Or you discover that between the soundcheck and the performance he's found another inch of travel on his volume pedal.

It doesn't help that drummers only work properly with adrenalin buzzing through their system so their volume and speed goes up accordingly when the gig starts. That's the point that volume wars break out.

I think I've just persuaded myself that soundchecks are basically pointless. The levels we all agree then are not the levels at which the band will actually play.

 

[Lozz196]

All good comments so far, for me using a DI/preamp pedal means that if I need to make any onstage adjustments - which if using an unfamiliar rig is possible and invariably means lowering the volume - I can without affecting the sound out front. Most sound men seem to like working with a Sansamp as well, which helps.  Some sound men we’ve worked with have wanted a really low onstage volume yet having heard the sound of the other bands it’s been clear they know exactly what they’re doing. At this point being well rehearsed comes into its own, to me bands that aren’t well rehearsed can suffer but if you know what you’re doing this is easy to overcome. 

[Dan Dare]

2 hours ago, casapete said:

Think it’s worth mentioning what a sometimes seemingly futile job soundchecking in an empty room can be for the band and engineer. When you get the audience ( or as he calls them ‘meat baffles’ ) in, it must be so hard if the settings need altering a lot from the sound check.

It's still better than nothing. Generally, once individual instrument/vocal sounds and balance between the members of the band have been set, you can adjust for changes in the room via overall eq. There are always exceptions, but it works most of the time.

[cheddatom]

I played a festival yesterday and found the whole thing baffling. They'd set up two stages on each half of a double lorry type outdoor stage. There was a drum kit and monitors on each side, but only one set of mics. They asked each band to set up as the other was playing, but then spent 20 minutes micing the drum kit. They looked to have a digital desk (which can save settings etc) but they checked each individual drum, even though they'd not changed. Then once the band started the sound man left his position at the desk to go and hang out back stage, meaning that if someone turned up or down on stage, the mix out front was wrong. 

To be fair to them it sounded brilliant so maybe there was method to this madness?

[NoRhino]

I play  4/4 on F notes ascending from 1st to the dusty end.  Then I get a thumbs up from the SE.

At a festival recently I did that and asked how many bass player launch into a slap frenzy during their sound check. "Every effing one of them" he smiled. 

[Twigman]

10 hours ago, scoot said:

It’s apparent that some of you guys on here have experience as sound engineers. I have a question - what do you guys want to hear from me at a soundcheck - I have heard players doing things like “Donna Lee or a blisteringly fast version of Rhythm Stick but is that really useful to you?  What can the player do to make your job easier (apart from buying you a pint!) 

Cheers!

The soundcheck is as much, if not more,  about what you want as what the sound engineer wants.

We treat it purely as an exercise in getting our monitor mixes right so we do 90% of the soundcheck with the PA off.

[Lozz196]

48 minutes ago, Twigman said:

The soundcheck is as much, if not more,  about what you want as what the sound engineer wants.

We treat it purely as an exercise in getting our monitor mixes right so we do 90% of the soundcheck with the PA off.

You`d have loved one guy that was doing the sound at one of the gigs we did then Ian. For the main band, whenever they asked if he could turn something up/put something in the monitors the response was a dead-pan:

No.

Have to admit they sounded great out front, but how one of them didn`t take their guitar to the top of his head I don`t know. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Lozz196

[Jazzmaster62]

Mountain Song by Jane's always. 

[BigRedX]

For the band where I play "normal bass" two bass lines from songs I'm going to be playing in that night's set. One with a fairly standard bass sound and the other with the most "different" sound I'm going to be using from that standard.

For the band where I play the Bass VI, any song that has a "bass" part and a "guitar" part in it.

Form the PoV of getting an overall band mix, the best one I've seen was a rockabilly band with their own sound engineer who started with the vocals and then mixed all the other instruments around that. They had the perfect sound every night.

[Twigman]

14 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

You`d have loved one guy that was doing the sound at one of the gigs we did then Ian. For the main band, whenever they asked if he could turn something up/put something in the monitors the response was a dead-pan:

No.

Have to admit they sounded great out front, but how one of them didn`t take their guitar to the top of his head I don`t know. 

If we came across a sound ‘engineer’ with that attitude we’d refuse to play. If we can’t hear what we want to hear, we can’t perform to our best. We have to be in charge of our stage.

[Lozz196]

It was slightly bemusing to say the least. Am not sure but think he saw that they were a skinhead band and made his own incorrect assumptions, as many do with skinheads. 

[bazzbass]

Play as loudly as you will during the set

I chose to play Money, mainly because it uses notes on all 4 strings so the engineer got an idea of my bass's range

[mcnach]

15 hours ago, Twigman said:

If we came across a sound ‘engineer’ with that attitude we’d refuse to play. If we can’t hear what we want to hear, we can’t perform to our best. We have to be in charge of our stage.

 

I'd like to say the same.

The truth is... once we're there, we made the trip, brought the gear, and we want our fee, so we'd just play. I've played many gigs with less than ideal monitoring. This would just be one more.

[Monkey Steve]

14 hours ago, mcnach said:

 

I'd like to say the same.

The truth is... once we're there, we made the trip, brought the gear, and we want our fee, so we'd just play. I've played many gigs with less than ideal monitoring. This would just be one more.

agreed - as long as I can hear enough of myself to tell that I'm in tune and hitting the right notes, that's good enough.  Same for the rest of the band, with special dispensation for vocalists who are usually a bit more dependent on the quality of their monitors.  On stage sound doesn't matter in the slightest to me and I'd rather not craddock about over it as long as it sounds great out front

[Twigman]

5 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

as long as I can hear enough of myself ...........................On stage sound doesn't matter in the slightest to me and I'd rather not craddock about over it as long as it sounds great out front

I'm not bothered at all about hearing myself - I'm stood in front of my amp, it's never a problem -  it's hearing the others that's important - if you can't hear what the others are doing you're not going to sound any good, as a band, out front.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Twigman

[Monkey Steve]

8 minutes ago, Twigman said:

I'm not bothered at all about hearing myself - I'm stood in front of my amp, it's never a problem -  it's hearing the others that's important - if you can't hear what the others are doing you're not going to sound any good, as a band, out front.

well, depends what you mean by "sound" doesn't it.  Again, as long as I can hear enough of the rest of them to be able to play my bass parts correctly, that's fine.  The exact balance and the tone isn't important in the slightest, and it's a massive waste of time and effort getting upset about it during a soundcheck