Grinds My Gears

[uk_lefty]

Guitarists father?? Says it all. 

 

[Skybone]

Grinds my gears...

Non synchromesh gearboxes.

[mcnach]

4 hours ago, BreadBin said:

If he was stood right near the back he may have been getting a standing wave of bass making it twice as loud. Maybe next time suggest they move about a bit?

 

Past the door usually helps...

[Twigman]

On 17/08/2019 at 22:09, stewblack said:

Currently in the middle of a gig where no one can hear me. 

Might that be because you're posting on your phone rather than playing?

[Teebs]

Time for the DFA button?

[Skinnyman]

20 minutes ago, Teebs said:

Time for the DFA button?

Deterministic Finite Automaton?

You have a button for that? Mine's a slider.....

 

Back on topic, often, when I've encountered an issue with an "over-dominant" bass sound it's generally been down to a resonance at a specific frequency - often worse in just one area of the room. To the layman, it sounds like the bass is too loud - the reality is that one frequency is causing sympathetic resonance with a partition or a window or a cabinet or something in the room. Kill that frequency and you kill the resonance. 

So, tweaking the eq (aka just rolling off the bass a bit) might sort it.

[stewblack]

2 hours ago, Twigman said:

Might that be because you're posting on your phone rather than playing?

🤦🏼‍♂️

[Blink]

If you sound check in an empty room it will sound different to a crowed room due to the absorption of higher frequencies by the crowd. Also if the guitar cab does not have PA support the sound will be very directional and will sound much quieter off axis and, assuming the cab is at a normal height, will suffer from sound absorption.

It will sound like the bass  is too loud.

[Monkey Steve]

Had it a few times, and my reaction varies depending on the circumstances.

Most of the time the bass is going through the PA so I don't lose any sleep - I won't have been in control of how loud the bass is, and if the soundman thinks it's just fine then that's OK with me.  And if anyone disagrees then I'll point them towards the mixing desk.

I did a couple of gigs with an old band where everybody thought the bass levels were fine at the soundcheck, no complaints during or immediately after the gig, then on dissecting what could have gone better/had gone wrong afterwards (what had gone wrong always being the lead guitarist making mistakes and then doing his best to blame everybody else) the lead guitarist picked on the level of the bass, always reporting back what people in the crowd (usually his wife) had said to him afterwards.  This being a guitarist who would routinely stand in front of the bass amp and complain that he couldn't hear his guitar properly. 

After one multi band gig where we went through the same amps as everybody else and the bass DI'd into the PA, when challenged about his wife's comments that the bass was too loud he backed down when it was pointed out that I had no control over the bass levels that the audience was hearing, and given that the bass was fine for all the other bands it seemed unlikely that my bass would have been any different. But he insisted that while it may not have been too loud after all, it had been too loud (as reported by his wife) at a previous gig so clearly it's a problem that I needed to address.  By then the band was noticing a pattern of everybody else getting the blame when he'd done a poor gig.

Last big gig I played there weren't enough monitors on stage so rather than share with the keyboard player I volunteered to use the backline as my monitor - the DI being taken before the signal hits the amp.  I'd left the amp at the same settings as the gig the previous night, but that was on a much bigger stage.  Mid gig I switch basses and it gets noticeably louder, so the singer politely requested that I turn down a bit.  he had a point, and the singer is the one person who gets to complain about the on stage sound

 

[uk_lefty]

3 hours ago, Monkey Steve said:

Mid gig I switch basses and it gets noticeably louder, so the singer politely requested that I turn down a bit.  he had a point, and the singer is the one person who gets to complain about the on stage sound

My singer also hates being smashed in the back by loudness, he really needs to be able to hear himself I order to give a good performance. 

Sometimes boomy bass noises aren't always coming from the bass. One of my guitarists had a new amp and hadn't EQ'd it very well so it sounded like a big woolly badly EQ'd bass, and as our other guitarist who runs the PA said to him "stop playing the f'ing bass!" So it's not just the bassists responsibility, the other musos need to stay out of our sonic space. 

[Teebs]

6 hours ago, Skinnyman said:

Deterministic Finite Automaton?

You have a button for that? Mine's a slider.....

DFA button:

- If talking to someone who has complained about volume / eq / effects = Direct Frequency Attenuation Button;

- If talking to another bass player, or someone sensible = Does Fu*k All Button!

 

[FinnDave]

I've described my DFA button/knob/slider as a digital frequency attenuator in the past. Does exactly the same thing, though!

[Monkey Steve]

15 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

My singer also hates being smashed in the back by loudness, he really needs to be able to hear himself I order to give a good performance. 

Sometimes boomy bass noises aren't always coming from the bass. One of my guitarists had a new amp and hadn't EQ'd it very well so it sounded like a big woolly badly EQ'd bass, and as our other guitarist who runs the PA said to him "stop playing the f'ing bass!" So it's not just the bassists responsibility, the other musos need to stay out of our sonic space. 

true, and I do think that guitarists are very guilty of "well this is my sound and I can't possibly change it or turn down so if there's a problem it must be someone else's fault"

But at the gig in question the two guitarists were actually DI'ing from their Kempers, and their 4 x 12s were purely decorational.  Basically it was me and the drummer who were making the only noise that wasn't coming through the monitors.

[mikel]

It could be that too much technology allows too many people to mess with the sound. Any experienced musician/band knows how to get the sound they want. Set up and soundcheck, get the volume and balance right, job done. May need a slight tweak when the venue is full. Put everything through a PA, especially in a pub gig situation, and it simply adds more complexity. A "Sound engineer", usually a mate or someone with little or no experience of using the complex equipment, can and probably will continue to play with the equipment for the whole gig. They are also a prime target for punters who think they know better about how it "Should sound".  Keep it simple. If the gig is big enough to require sound reinforcement then use it, If not backline and a vocal PA will be fine, cost less to hire and less time to load in and out.  We have never had an issue with punters at a small to medium gig.