Soundchecks

[Twigman]

2 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

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

It's not really a waste of time at all.

On the stages I play, i am stage right, the guitar is stage left, perhaps 5 or more metres away..we have a mic'd drum kit in between. the keyboard player is on my side of the stage and is DI'd into the desk, only monitoring on the stage wedges. Much of our music's tempo is dictated by the guitar delay so it's imperative that we can all hear it. Without wedges I wouldn't hear it at all. We all take cues from various instruments at various times throughout the set - it's very important to strike the right balance or you lose a lot of feel and stop working together as a band.....we're not a collection of individuals, doing our own thing, we're a band, we feed each other.

[Lozz196]

Being a 3 piece our needs are pretty simple - me & the drummer both need to hear the lead guitarist/singer as most of our songs are started by him. I need to hear my own vox so I don’t go off key, and we never have on-stage sound louder than the sound of the kit unamplified, so I can always hear the drums. A soundcheck for us can take as long as playing two whole songs but that’s if we’re particularly picky that day.......

 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Lozz196

[chris_b]

IMO the way to get the best FOH sound is to start with a good sound, one that the sound guy can easily deal with. After that, fingers crossed, you have an engineer that knows and cares.

I don't do multi band gigs so when I have FOH the sound guy has time to get it right for us. I don't use any pedals, give the sound man post-EQ and 8 in the bar ZZ Top pumping bass on G or C for about 6 bars. So far that's kept them happy. 

[Lozz196]

That’s a very good point Chris, and probably why it’s so easy to soundcheck us - the soundman probably swiftly realises there’s little point in polishing a trud. 

[chris_b]

Just now, Lozz196 said:

That’s a very good point Chris, and probably why it’s so easy to soundcheck us - the soundman probably swiftly realises there’s little point in polishing a trud. 

I've tried to polish truds too. It never works!

But you're right, give the guy a sound that needs a phd in sound management and he's not being paid enough to bother.

[Monkey Steve]

31 minutes ago, Twigman said:

It's not really a waste of time at all.

On the stages I play, i am stage right, the guitar is stage left, perhaps 5 or more metres away..we have a mic'd drum kit in between. the keyboard player is on my side of the stage and is DI'd into the desk, only monitoring on the stage wedges. Much of our music's tempo is dictated by the guitar delay so it's imperative that we can all hear it. Without wedges I wouldn't hear it at all. We all take cues from various instruments at various times throughout the set - it's very important to strike the right balance or you lose a lot of feel and stop working together as a band.....we're not a collection of individuals, doing our own thing, we're a band, we feed each other.

I think we'll agree to disagree on this one

[dmccombe7]

Normally we set up as a band and have a reasonable balance on stage. Sound Eng usually starts with drums then bass. I like when a SE asks me if i'm happy with FOH sound. The good ones will listen to my on stage tone and set up as close to it as poss. They'll ask me to play something and they go between on-stage and FOH sound to compare. That works really well for me. I tend to keep it very simple bass runs across the strings.

Like the idea of MONEY as one of my fav tracks from DSOTM. Might try that next rehearsal. 

Once all band members have done their individual checks we will play one or two songs that cover most of what we do. I also use sound effects thru an MB200 DI'd to FOH but that is usually set up last

Dave

Edited June 6, 2019 by dmccombe7

[cheddatom]

I've been in bands where it didn't really matter if the stage sound was crap. We were so tight and well rehearsed we couldn't go wrong. My current main band likes to play loose with the arrangements somewhat, so it's really important that we can all hear each other. 

[dmccombe7]

Used to play in a few 3 piece bands and we very rarely did a proper soundcheck. Was a case of set up on stage balance and then thru PA. Was our own PA's and  channels were same so didn't need to change much other than volume for most gigs. All so simple in them days.

Any tewaks were done during the gig.

Dave