Endurance with Rock Bands

[PW-Factor]

I've been playing in bands recently that have a few things difficult to contend with.

I play with a lot of amplified keys, rock drumming, guitar and bass with effects / boost, etc. I use a Samson Airline wireless mic, or an SM57 or MD421. Sometimes turning the monitor too hot causes feedback issues easily. I find I wear myself out too quickly sometimes based on what I can hear / how I think I'm being heard in the house.

What do you do to focus on producing good tone and maintaining technique when you actually have to compete to be heard? Sometimes we get told for so long that we're the loudest instrument in the group, until all of a sudden we aren't. In-ear monitors seem to make me hear too much of my own buzz, but I'm not opposed to playing with one ear open either.
_________________
Ska/Reggae - The Selectones
New Orleans Funk - The Big Lagniappe

Raw Brass HB2 - Hammond PW
Gen II ACB Doubler Flugel - Curry 5FL

[Don Herman rev2]

Don't compete. Adjust the monitor, or get in-ears, so you can hear yourself and focus on playing at your normal volume or a little below. Let the soundman handle the mix (or whomever is balancing the band). Trying to compete with amplifiers is folly. The trick is to learn to (force yourself to) play "naturally" without overblowing trying to compete with them.
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"After silence, that which best expresses the inexpressible, is music" - Aldous Huxley

[gchun01]

Have you tried having your soundman add a bit of reverb in your headphone mix, or adding a mic for ambient pickup? It will let you feel less "plugged up" or "dry" and let you hear things a bit more naturally. Wearing 1 in-ear works until the stage volume get too loud.

If you know how to operate a mixer, sometimes its better for you to control your own mix, as you know what you want, even if it's just adjusting the levels.

[Pete]

When I have to, I just wear earplugs. I know it isn't natural to do this, but it is what it is. Even in some big bands that should know better, the volume is too loud. I subbed for a big band last week and the entire trumpet section had earplugs.

I stopped fighting with people who run sound that is beyond my control. Survival is the key. Most often the groups that play too loud have done so for years and their hearing is also going. It doesn't sound loud to them.

When there is a sound check done on a drum set with six mics on it for 20 minutes and your check is 5 seconds you know that it ain't about you. Is this a form of musical prostitution in my case: yes. I take the money. Then at the end of the gig you get the obligatory compliment, but I always wonder how they can even hear the horns, but what do I know?

If I were to do it on a regular basis, I would probably invest in some sophisticated equipment, but fortunately, I don't have to do it that often anymore.

Pete

[Speed]

Lots of issues. First, realize that while having a good sound man is great, there is a different skill set involved in mixing the front of house (FOH) and mixing monitors. Unless you are playing at a commercial level that will justify two sound engineers - one front of house and one for monitors - then we have to figure out how to make do. I'm going to proceed on the assumption that most of us here don't have the luxury of having separate FOH and monitor engineers.

First, let's talk about the monitors. In ears (IEMs) versus wedges. As a multi instrumentalist, I will tell you that I love IEMs when I'm playing bass and hate them when I'm playing trumpet. It is a personal preference thing.

Whether you use IEMs or wedges, each musician needs his own monitor mix. That means you need a sound board with the capability to generate a lot of monitor mixes. While I don't understand the technology sufficiently to get down in the weeds about it, many of the modern boards let each musician control his own monitor mix with an iPhone or iPad. Mount your device on your mic stand, call up the app, and you can set your own mix and adjust it through out the gig.

That sort of set up lets the sound engineer focus on the front of house mix, which is likely his strong suit anyway, and lets each musician make his mix whatever he wants it to be. This works particularly well with IEMs. With wedges, there is naturally going to be some bleed from the monitor of the guy next to you.

If the band owns the sound board, it ought to have one with those capabilities. If you're using a sound company, find one with that sort of gear.

The elephant in the room is stage volume of the instruments other than the horns, over which we have little control other than trying to appeal to the other musicians through logic and diplomacy.

If you don't have a separate monitor engineer; nor a board (and related gear) with the capability to allow each musician to set his own mix; you don't have a lot of options but to try to convince your bandmates to turn down their stage volume.

If you are running everything on stage through the sound board, you don't need any higher volume on stage than is necessary to hear yourself. I'm talking to the non-horn players here. If the drummer is mic'd up, why does he need to beat the hell out of the drums? If the bass player has a DI taking his signal to the board, why does he need to play loud enough on stage to fill up the room? Answer: they don't.

IF, and that's a really big "if," you can get your electrified bandmates to keep their stage volume down, you, as a horn player, will have accomplished two things. First, you'll be more likely to be able to hear yourself through your monitor without overblowing. Next, and perhaps even more important for the overall sound of the band, you'll allow the front of house sound engineer to do his job and make the mix sound good.

I have fought the battle of "stage volume" ever since we first started using monitors. It never stops. There may, however, be a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Most keyboard players have gotten accustomed to running directly into the PA and not using a stage amp at all. Their stage sound is coming through the monitors. I'm seeing more and more bass players doing the same thing, using either a DI box to go straight into the PA and using no amp on stage, or using a MUCH smaller and less powerful stage amp than in the past.

Now, if we can just get the drummers and the guitar players to bring their stage levels down a bit, our lives as horn players will be much easier.

In the case of a band I play with regularly, which runs everything through the board, I was having a conversation with the sound engineer. I noticed that the slider on the channel for the guitar player was all the way down. I asked him about it, and he said that the guitar player was so loud from the stage that he had him completely out of the FOH mix, and that he had to set the other instruments' levels around the guitar player's volume. I called the guitar player over and asked the sound engineer to repeat what he'd just told me. The sound guy convinced the guitar player to bump himself up in his IEM mix (we each had the capability to set our own monitor mix) and turn his amp down. If you can get the electric musicians to understand how problematic excess stage volume is, you've won most of the battle.

[Lawler Bb]

This is all spot on. Agree 100%.

[Turkle]

I stopped trying to compete with excess stage volume years ago. You will never, ever convince a guitar player, keyboard player, or drummer to play at a reasonable volume. Even if you sound check at a decent volume, by the third tune they will have turned up to atomic warfare sound levels.

I just play with earplugs in. It doesn't take too much time to get used to it. I just use the cheap ones you get at the drugstore. Then I make sure I'm only ever playing at 80% of my max volume.

You can't control the sound guy or the mix out front with a loud band. All you can do is protect your own hearing and chops.

The benefit of earplugs is that it makes it really easy to hear yourself on stage and you'll protect your own hearing. Then you can just focus on making sure you're only ever giving 80% of your max and you'll be able to sail through those gigs.

Good luck!
_________________
Yamaha 8310Z trumpet
Yamaha 8310Z flugel
Curry 3.

[boog]

It's not just "electric" musicians that apparently do not understand the problems caused by playing too loud. My big band tends to "blow their brains out", if not restrained. I have to constantly "ride herd" on them to maintain balance and blend. Playing at excessive volume leads to intonation and tone quality issues, as well. ALL musicians need to read W. Francis McBeth's treatise on how to balance an ensemble (I think this is out of print now, strangely enough). Even the younger band directors in the group have not, apparently, been exposed to this knowledge!

Back in my gigging days, in the late '60's and early '70's, we did not have the luxury of a separate sound "engineer". the vocalist(s) in the group had their own p.a. system, and the horns had their own p.a. system, and the "electric" guys had their individual amps, along with a Hammond b3 organ with a Leslie rotary speaker, and an actual spinet piano, miked (yep, we had "roadies" for set-up!). All of these were "mixed", as it were, by the individual players/singers on-stage. No "monitors"... Naturally, this led to all sorts of problems. Depending on the venue, the acoustics involved were constantly changing, from night to night. I have played trumpet/sax for an entire dance and not heard a note I played! This problem was exacerbated by the fact that we were a "cover" band, playing a wide variety of styles of the day, from fusion (we called this "jazz-rock") , heavy metal , "bubble gum" pop, Bop, to Blues. Disco had not yet been invented, fortunately! Horn players routinely wore cotton in the ears and ear plugs back then. But, boy, did we ever have chops! You did what you had to do. Unfortunately, most of us that were gigging players from that time period have "crickets" in our ears nowadays. You young players beware of this, it can be a real problem when you get older.

[mm55]

An individual monitor mix and speaker for each band member, each mix controlled separately by the individual musician, is a recipe for sound disaster. It can make it impossible for the FOH engineer to present quality sound to the audience, and of course, impossible for the engineer to prevent ringing (squealing feedback). Individual band-controlled mixes should only be used with in-ear monitors if you are interested in presenting a quality sound and music product to your listeners.
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'75 Bach Strad 180ML/37
'79 King Silver Flair
'07 Flip Oakes Wild Thing
'42 Selmer US
'90 Yamaha YTR6450S(C)
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'10 Carol CPT-300LR pkt
'89 Yamaha YCR2330S crnt
'13 CarolBrass CFL-6200-GSS-BG flg

[cheiden]

[Speed]

On response to mm55, in general I would agree with you, but I have worked extensively with a band where the horn players and one (of two) keyboard use wedges, and all the electric musicians and vocalists use IEMs. All control their individual mixes. I'm not going to say that there are no issues with the stage volume, but those issues fall at the feet of the drummer and the guitar player, not the wedges used by the horn players.

If everybody used wedges, I agree with mm55 that it could be problematic.

Here's what a lot of musicians do not realize: if you turn your wedges up too loud on stage, all that sound bounces off the back wall and goes out into the hall. It is a very muffled sound (sort of like putting your hands over your mouth and talking), and it's not pretty at all, but it's louder than most musicians realize. It can EASILY be loud enough that the sound guy has to really crank up the volume on the FOH PA to a level that will overwhelm the awful sound of the wedges bouncing the sound off the back wall. That is truly an recipe for disaster.

I have had the good fortune of working with some really good live sound engineers, but one issue I have had with virtually all of them is that they do not tend to communicate with the musicians over things the musicians are doing on stage that make the sound guy's job difficult to impossible.

When the guitar player is so loud on stage that the FOH guy has him completely out of the mix, the sound guy needs to pull the guitar player aside and tell him what the problem is, and find out what the guitar player needs in order to hear himself better.

I'm friends with several guys who run live sound, and I constantly suggest to them to talk to the guys on stage. If somebody's too loud, tell them they need to turn down. I think sometimes the sound guys are a bit too diplomatic about the situation.

Sometimes it's as simple as a hearing test. I was once working with a really good sound engineer, and I was having trouble hearing anything but mush out of my wedge - this was before the days where IEMs were used by anybody playing less-than-arena gigs. The sound guy did a lot of EQing on my mix and ultimately got it fixed. He suggested two things: first, that I get a hearing test, print out the little graph that comes with it and take it with me to gigs to show to the sound guys; and second, that I always tell the sound guy to bump up the EQ of my monitor mix at 2.5K. I followed his advice and went to an audiologist, who informed me that my hearing in the 2.5K range was literally off the bottom of her charts. That's the "clarity" hearing range. In other words, my hearing was shot in the audio range we associate with "clarity." I could hear sound coming out of the monitor, but it just sounded like mush. Bump the EQ up at 2.5K and it was clear as a bell. That means that the overall VOLUME of the monitor does not have to come up, just the EQ at 2.5K.

[mm55]

[cheiden]

[Speed]

If you have somebody on stage with you who is making the band sound bad, and who will not change what he's doing, you've got limited options - decline to play with them anymore, replace the troublesome guy or suffer the indignity of knowing that the band does not sound as good as it should. If you choose the third option, you're well advised to protect your hearing and chops the best you can.

I've not played in a big band that did not have a director keeping the volume levels where they needed to be. That's a new one on me.

In a smaller group context, my absolute best situation has been where the drummer not only has a soft touch, but also is obsessive about dynamics. He does not hesitate for a second to ask one of the others to turn down. Perhaps because it's often the drummer who plays too loud, his direction seems to carry some authority and it is always effective when he tells somebody to turn down. So far, it has never failed. Needless to say, he's the drummer I enjoy playing with the most.

Take care,
Marc Speed

[PW-Factor]

Awesome discussion so far. Thanks everyone!

I might try the earplugs one more time just to see. But there are certainly shows where you can only hear me when I get above the staff, or you can't hear me at all. It's hard to balance saving your chops for the important spots with wanting to feel like you're contributing to the band sound for the whole show.
_________________
Ska/Reggae - The Selectones
New Orleans Funk - The Big Lagniappe

Raw Brass HB2 - Hammond PW
Gen II ACB Doubler Flugel - Curry 5FL

[Speed]

The comment about "you can't hear me at all" brings to mind an important fact: what you hear on stage, and what the audience hears are two very different things particularly if you are running all the instruments through the PA and monitors. I have had LOTS of gigs where the sound on stage - at least where I stood - was awful, but people whose ears I trust in the audience said it was great. And vice versa.

I have been playing with bands, on multiple instruments, since the days there were no monitors at all. I've also played with bands with separate FOH and monitor sound engineers, IEMS, wedges, the whole ball of wax. In other words, I've been from one extreme to the other. Sometimes we do things without thinking just because we've gotten accustomed to it.

In some situations, I think we "over monitor." A while back I played a gig were I did a lot of vocals and trumpet, which was the only horn. The band had two guitars, bass, keys, drums, with 3 vocalists out front. Nice budget private party, outside, but a small footprint for the band.

We decided not to do our usual contract with the sound company, which we had really come to depend on. The electric guys, including the keyboard player who normally runs straight to the PA, took small amps. The drummer was not mic'd at all.

We set up a powered head, and two 1-12/horn speakers, with two wedges. We ran nothing but vocals and trumpet through the PA and the two wedges. I was stunned with how good it sounded on stage.

I was one of the three out front performers. From my spot, one of the most interesting parts of the event was my hearing the spatial things going on. The band sets up with a guitar player on either side. They don't play a traditional lead/rhythm thing, but rather do a lot of interacting things. It was fascinating to hear the almost stereo effect of the two guitarists playing off each other. No way you hear that with everything running through wedges. Unless you're running stereo, you wouldn't hear that with IEMs.

I also noticed how the musicians would adjust their volume levels to each other - not constantly, but on several occasions throughout the night, I would detect a momentary imbalance. Then somebody would turn down, and all was well again.

A couple of semi-pro musicians were guests at the party. At the first break, I looked them up for a critique of the sound out front. They said it was superb.

I'm not sure what the lesson is there, but I suspect that all of us on stage realized we did not have our usual very talented sound guy to mix us out front. In talking about it after the gig, we all agreed that we were highly focused on listening to each other. I will add that all of these musicians are conscious of volume levels, and the drummer was the one I've mentioned previously who plays softly and with great dynamics.

From a standpoint of gear, that was as stripped down a set up as I have used in a really long time, but it really worked in those circumstances. We have repeated it with no problems, although we are considering adding a couple of more wedges just for better coverage. We still do not plan to run anything but vocals and trumpet through the PA and wedges.

Based on my experience, maybe we are overdoing monitors. At the very least, maybe we are overdoing what we are running through the PA. Food for thought.

[cbtj51]

[plp]

I've found for me the trick is getting away from the rest of the group and flanking them, so I'm not directly in the line of fire from their amps. Yes, you can't hear the mix as well, but you can at least hear yourself.

I use a Shure clip on mic and put it on the top of my stand, so I can adjust the distance as needed. I'll back away from it on the high stuff, or tilt it down behind the stand and play into the stand to get feedback if acoustics dictate.

Best move our band (15 piece rock cover band) ever made were these.

https://pro.bose.com/en_us/products/loudspeakers/portable/l1_model_ii.html

No more monitors, no more amps. We have 2 of these behind the band, so we hear what the audience hears. As they come with a noise canceling feature, even though they are looping into the mics, feedback is a thing of the past.

I do keep earplugs in my case and will put them in my pocket, just if I need them.
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Since all other motives—fame, money, power, even honor—are thrown out the window the moment I pick up that instrument..... I play because I love doing it, even when the results are disappointing. In short, I do it to do it.” Wayne Booth

[nowave]

[quote="cbtj51"
+1 Good advice boog!
My hearing was damaged more, I believe, playing with Latin Bands in small Clubs back in the 80s, lots of high sizzle and treble, many percussionists and small space. Crickets and a loud permanent high pitched whistle in left ear (percussionists side) since then. After all of this time, I tend not to notice the aggravation of the residual effect too much unless I think about it. Wish I had used earplugs![/quote]

Same here -- no rock bands but many years of salsa gigs in Boston and NYC where loud and "exciting" (not to mention "insanely overdriven and distorted") was the name of the game. I loved those days but standing next to the timbalero or campanero for 4 hours night after night does something to your ears... something permanent. Monitor mixes were usually either nonexistent so that you felt like you were trying to project through cotton candy and consequently played too hard, or so loud & with so much treble, and with so much useless info (NO, I don't need all of the out-of-tune singers in my monitor, thank you) that it was almost worse than no monitor at all.

For a while I used a plexiglas sound reflector around the mike stand, which helped. I know some sound guys hate these, but it was all about survival.

Whoever said to try to never play above 80% was spot on - this really is the key, but in my experience being able to do this depended on being able to somewhat hear yourself. A little bit of reverb in the monitor always helped too.

[Speed]

I've heard good things about the Bose (and competitors' similar) systems, but I've never worked with one. I'm curious as to how it defeats feedback, because obviously, your vocal and horn mics would be in front of the speakers.

Thanks,
Marc Speed