Category Archives: Best Practices for Musicians

Advice for musicians on how to work well inside the small venue ecosystem.

Better Livestream Quality

Good light and audio interfaces are a big help.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

There’s a whole lot of livestreaming going on, even with COVID19 worries easing a bit, I’ve encountered some questions about it. Mostly, they come down to how to do it well without spending a million bucks. As with anything in show production, there are some pretty big wins to be had with strong basics. Sure, very elaborate setups can provide very impressive results – but you can get a lot of mileage out of a little money and homework.

Good Light

Livestreaming is so firmly entwined with video that any discussion of quality has to involve the visual aspects. Obviously, a decent capture device (camera) is helpful, but what’s less obvious is how you can use lighting to your advantage. Even relatively down-market phone cameras can get pretty decent pictures in strong light. If you remove the need for the sensor to be run at a high ISO value, image grain drops significantly.

Just hitting yourself with a lot of light isn’t enough, though. The color of the light matters, and so does the distribution.

I strongly recommend starting any lighting experiment with warm but desaturated tones. (Tons of saturation can cause you to quickly overload the image sensor in one color range.) The more your lighting reminds you of some flavor of afternoon sunlight, the better. Soft-white is a good place to look first. Start off by making yourself look natural, and then you can go off in wild directions later.

In terms of distribution, strive for very even light across everything you want to see. Avoid hotspots; Diffuse light through lampshades, or paper, or thin sheets if you’re having trouble. You can also try bouncing strong light off of walls. The reason for diffusion and even-ness is that most cameras have a pretty limited dynamic range. They aren’t as forgiving of large intensity ranges as your eyes are. Subjects hit by disproportionately strong light may “clip” into large blobs of white if darker areas are made visible, or the parts of the picture in shadow may be indiscernible if the exposure is dialed back to rein in the extra hot areas.

Direct Connections

Your best shot at good sound is to mix your stream directly to a line input. Sure, using a device’s built-in mic can work reasonably well, and I’m always going to tell you to get the show to sound good in the room. However, I’m also a vocal and fervent proponent of deleting the room from the equation whenever possible. That means going for direct coupling of signal, rather than via multiple transductions from electricity, to sound pressure waves, and back again.

Achieving a direct connection on a phone can be a little challenging. You can certainly get a breakout cable and connect something directly to the microphone input on the headset jack. It’s likely, though, that driving the input too hard will be very easy. Plus, the connections might not be the most robust…and let’s not even get started on automatic gain control doing weird things to your input audio. (It might be an issue, or it might not.)

It’s much better to spend a bit of money on an interface that allows for robust, pro-audio connections (like XLR), and delivers a digital audio stream to the phone over the USB port. There are many such devices available, a good crop of which are under $200 US. Armed with such a unit, you can send a mix straight to the phone with minimal fuss. (Try to find something with good input metering, if you can. Guessing at when you’ll hit a device’s clipping point is vexing. Seeing that point clearly is divine.)

When getting set up, make a test-recording that you can play back to hear your broadcast mix. Monitoring in headphones is okay, but unless the performance is very quiet you’ll get plenty of “leakage that lies to you.”

***

None of what I’ve presented is particularly earth-shattering. In fact, it may sound rather simple. That’s my point about strong basics, though. A huge number of streamers aren’t even getting to the level of intentional lighting choices and a direct audio-signal connection. Standing out from the pack does take a little work, more than a lot of other folks are doing, but it’s really not that bad.

Stageplot Aggravation

Sometimes no stageplot is better than the wrong one.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

 
Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Folks, may I please be brutally frank with you? I really want to have input lists and stage plots. They are monumentally valuable for readiness – they tell me what to expect and where to expect it, which gives all of us a huge head start on patching and setup.

Please send me the correct plot or list, though.

If the correct plot is, “We’ll have three vocalists, two guitars, a xylophone, and a drummer, and we always pick new places to stand for each show,” that’s completely fine. It tells me to patch my stage and layout my console with the expectation that your on-stage positions will be unknown until the last minute.

The flipside of that is when I get a plot that meticulously details exactly where everybody is going to stand, where all the instruments are going to be, and even gives me clues on how to construct monitor mixes…and is wrong. Or someone’s mind changes at the last second. For me, that’s almost worse than simply getting a few basics and having to “wing it” on everything else.

This has happened to me in festival situations – with headliners! I recall one instance where everything was mapped out in great detail, as I mentioned before, and when the band took the stage it all went out the window. One person was deleted, another person was added, and they picked almost completely different stage locations for everyone. I had taken the time to label, patch, and even premix as per their instructions, and now all of that was undermined in the space of 30 seconds.

“But, Danny,” you say, “isn’t part of your job to deal with the unexpected?”

Yes.

“And aren’t digital consoles capable of soft-patching everything so that you can get around that kind of thing.”

Also yes.

My retort, though, is that the entire point of a good input list and plot is to not be doing things on a “panic” basis at all. Even with having soft-patching at my disposal, the induced chaos consumed our changeover time such that it was more practical to simply pull up the festival reset scene and rebuild in the moment. We did pull it off, and everyone was happy, yet I still couldn’t understand the whys and wherefores – what was the point of having all that detail if 90% of it was going to be useless in the moment?

Please, then, I ask you: Send me the correct list and plot. If a real part of your plot is that you don’t know what’s going to happen, or you’re probably going to change your mind on some things, please include that. The show advance tells me what to expect, and it’s unhelpful if the wrong expectation lands in my mind. If your info tells me to gear up for a very ordered and pre-planned gig, then that’s what I’m going to build. If the reality is the opposite, then the plot didn’t help. The point is never simply to have the paperwork; The RIGHT paperwork is what’s necessary, even if that’s less extensive information.

Take The Monitor Engineer

If you’re going to leave someone behind, leave the FOH engineer. Take your monitor operator.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

 
Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone once suggested that, when touring, take the FOH engineer if:

  1. Your FOH and monitor engineer are separate people, and
  2. You can only take one on the road.

I can NOT disagree with this more. Do the opposite. If you must choose, leave FOH at home and take a monitor engineer with you.

Why?

Because consistently good monitors are much more key to a great gig than consistently good FOH audio.

Think about your most favorite live band. Imagine them on tour with a truly enormous, beautifully tuned, FOH PA system. Imagine that this PA system is made of unicorns. These unicorns use the magical power of love and non-hydrogenated vegetable oil to create a bubble universe that causes all acoustical problems to vanish in the vicinity of the band.

Now imagine that the unicorns carry a curse. The FOH PA will be perfect, but the sound on stage will be bad. The band won’t be able to hear each other or themselves very well. The sound on deck will always be a muddy roar. Requests for “more or less this or that” will always be ignored.

Do you want to go to that show? Would you spend top dollar on a ticket for that show? Do you think that show will feature an amazing performance by that band that you love?

My feeling is that the answer is “not really.”

A band that can fully engage and enjoy the show on deck has a much, much better chance of delivering the kind of blistering performance that satisfies old friends and makes new ones. If they can’t do that, then who cares if the FOH mix is absolutely spot on? It’s irrelevant.

…and I can tell you why I feel very confident about my position: People go to, and often manage to greatly enjoy, performances in acoustically hostile spaces. Rooms where even very seasoned FOH engineers end up with results that aren’t particularly satisfying. Places where the sound for the audience isn’t so great, but where monitor world managed to give the band a good solution.

The performance. The spectacle. The emotion. That comes from the band, and is translated through the PA. That’s what has to be achieved, and the sound on deck is the root. If the root is lost, the tree dies.

It’s not that FOH isn’t important, or that we shouldn’t worry about it. We should. It’s a big component in crafting a memorable show. But start at the beginning. The stage is where a great FOH mix starts. It’s best not to have to choose, but if you do have to choose, prioritize the sound on stage.

Take the monitor engineer. Don’t leave a foundational element of a killer gig to somebody you’ve never met before. To do so is nonsensical.

That Pariah, The Electric Guitar

The electric guitar is blamed for volume issues when it deserves it…and when it doesn’t.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

 
Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

I know that Joe Bonamassa’s opinion piece for Guitar.com, When Did The Electric Guitar Become Such A Pariah? has a rhetorical question for a title. I also know that Mr. Bonamassa sits astride the world of music as would a god, whereas I…definitely don’t do that. I’m going to answer anyway, though, because I’m opinionated as fondue and I have a website.

So there.

Electric guitar became a pariah with audio engineers for a whole raft of reasons, but here are two that stand out to me right now:

  1. A significant number of players haven’t literally or metaphorically read the final paragraph of Joe’s op-ed, where playing appropriately for the gig is mentioned.
  2. A large number of audio humans have never figured out that their job is to work with the noise in the room, rather than trying to totally reshape the noise in the room.

I’m going to start with #2, because those are “my people” in the most direct sense.

Many of my people come from a studio background. In a modern setting, a studio engineer is often expected and encouraged to use a dizzying array of tools for the purpose of changing things. “I want to get that sound,” says a musician, and the engineer sets about a process of converting one noise into a different noise. Either that, or it’s “I want to get that sound” on the part of the engineer – but what happens is the same. Sculpting. Tweaks. Their very favorite EQ plugin. Dynamics tricks. Precise level setting so that the guitar pulls into a parking place within the mix that is “just so.” This is made feasible by the broken loop of the studio setting. The original acoustical event ends very quickly, and stops being a contributor to what the engineer has to work with. Instead, they work with reproductions of that event, reproductions where the control over their intensity is absolute for every practical purpose.

And then, this fastidious, picky molder of aural clay finds themselves behind a live-audio mixing desk. They’ve been put in that position because they are a “killer sound engineer,” and to get “killer sound” at a live gig you want to have a “killer sound engineer!” They got a “killer sound” on the record. It was a great mix. So, of course, they just need to do the same things at the gig, and the result will be the same, right? RIGHT?

But, of course, this overlooks the problem that mixing a real band, in a real room, in real time, for a real audience is a different sub-discipline of audio engineering. The vocabulary and tools are essentially the same; The process is different.

The problem being overlooked, then, precipitates a new problem. The engineer wants to get control over what’s going on in the room. To do that, the thing they have direct management of – the PA – has to be much, much louder than the acoustical contribution of the band. So, if the guitar player(s) are already loud, then the PA has to be really loud…and if the guitar players start at !@#$%^ LOUD, then the PA has to be REALLY !@#$%^ LOUD. This often does not go over well with audiences and venue managers, so a new solution was devised by the engineer:

Make the band quieter.

And it’s much easier to make guitarists quieter than drummers (who are often culprits in the too loud spectrum), due to how the guitarist’s production of sonic energy is generally contained within a singular piece of technology that is divorced from the player’s own physical being, a thing known as a guitar amplifier. In any case, the discipline of working with – and in extreme cases, around – the noise of the band is not on the radar, so the electric guitar becomes the focus of the “get control over this thing” efforts.

The last paragraph above feeds into the first thoughts regarding the players. Guitar players have a focus on the technology of their instrument that I think is actually comparable to other serious musicians, but with one differentiating caveat: Mysticism.

What I mean is that I have yet to meet a percussionist who demonstrates a mentality where – say – maple shells are an intrinsic factor in rock and roll “being right”. They may be important, even critically important at a practical level, but they aren’t intrinsic to the soul of the music. With guitar players, there’s a quite common (though not universal) sense of near-religious reverence towards the technology stack that produces the sounds. It goes beyond practicality and crosses into the sacred.

The trouble comes from the genre-defining, mystical tones being a byproduct of solutions for conundrums that don’t exist anymore, or don’t exist for that particular player. Amps that could produce clean tones at high SPL to compete with big brass, and that were found to have very nifty distortion characteristics at even higher volumes. Walls of amplification necessary for the coverage of very large audiences when PA systems were meant almost exclusively for vocals.

The mysticism being built on both that kind of sound’s distortion components, and the overall experience of that sound’s absolute SPL creates an unbending desire to achieve that result. The player says, “if it doesn’t sound like this, it isn’t right,” and everybody else (including the audience) has to keep up. The concept of playing to the gig doesn’t register, or it doesn’t hold enough weight as a priority.

Now put the above two sections together, and you have the ingredients for electric guitar becoming a pariah. A problem-creature that must be fixed.

And with the technology existing to downsize and de-volume the electric guitar with relative ease, the pressure to do so is quite high. Some folks have had great results with doing so, and others (like Joe Bonamassa) have not enjoyed the ride. If you want a universal fix that will make everybody happy, you’re probably out of luck…at least until every audio engineer learns to work with the sound they’ve already got, and until every guitar player can re-jigger their expectations on a show-by-show basis.

 
 

The “Gather Round The Mic” Thing

It’s very, very different from what you’re probably used to, and also what everybody else is used to.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

 
Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

I recently had the opportunity to really, really, give the “Good Ol’ College Try” to that technique where musicians gather around a single mic. We did have some spot microphones for extra help and coverage, but the single condenser down-center was definitely the focal point.

The experience was very educational for yours truly. It was one of those times where a whole rush of concepts suddenly transition from the abstract to a concrete understanding. That being the case, here are those concepts (in no particular order):

You have to understand the equipment in play.

That is, you have to understand  because other folks might not – and you have to recognize why they might not. There is a conception (which did crop up during the show advance and other prep) that “large diaphragm condenser = omnidirectional mic.” This is, of course, mistaken. Even so, a directional mic like the one we had is handy when players still expect, and possibly are heavily reliant on, the audible support of monitor wedges.

That is somewhat beside the point. The real point is that, of course, an omni mic exhibits consistent tonality vs source-to-capsule distance. A directional unit, on the other hand, delivers far more low-frequency information when a source is close enough for that information’s amplitude to overwhelm the phase differences which produce directionality. You get close, and the bottom end response gets a boost.

The practical upshot for me was that the show’s tonality was heavily dominated by midrange and high-frequency information that I’m not used to hearing without low-frequency content in balance. In other words, it was “thin,” and I didn’t like it all that much. However, a good number of other listeners were quite pleased.

People recognize the concept, but may not be prepared to execute with it.

It’s my estimation, absent any value judgement, that a great many players simply don’t naturally conceive of a band having a polished blend without detailed intervention from production. The idea is lost, then, that everybody else has to drop their intensity to match that of the quietest player. It is simply culturally ingrained that somebody gets turned up to match the average, rather than the average being adjusted downward in some way.

This being the case, it was critical to any semblance of success that those spot mics were available. I had a bit, though only a small amount, of wiggle room to give certain players a push when they needed it.

To actually execute properly on the “one big mic” idea, players have to practice the specific techniques surrounding the strategy. It’s not something that is likely to be achieved on an in-the-moment basis.

Everyone, including you, has to adjust their relationship with audio engineering.

Following on from the previous section, it’s important that I recognize how the conceptions of musicians are often reflected by audio humans, including this one. My mental model of how a band sounds through a PA is that of everything being close-miced and able to be tweaked significantly. This is, of course, similar to what I described above about how a “produced” sound is what’s expected from many musicians.

What we all assume, in other words, is that we (the audio engineer) is there to mix the band; To glue them all together.

With the single mic approach, you really are NOT there to mix the band. You are, instead, on hand to be a steward of the amplification system. It’s your job to find the (possibly fiddly) balance of tonality, gain before feedback, and final, total volume enhancement, and then to be on hand if anything misbehaves. The band is the band, their blend is their blend, and you have very little ability to bend any of that around your desires. Everyone involved, then, has to have a certain level of comfort with that situation. For people used to modern sound reinforcement, this comfort level may not be immediately or easily reached.


The Other Problem With All Those Open Mics

It’s not just feedback – it’s sound quality in general.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Sound craftspersons commonly moan and groan about having a ton of open mics – especially vocal mics – on their stages. The biggest gripe, of course, is feedback. Every single sound-to-voltage transducer on deck increases the system’s “loop gain” when their channel is open. More loop gain makes things more unstable.

There’s another complaint to be had, though. It’s the composite problem where bleed causes “defocus,” headroom consumption, and poor overall mix tone.

To be both snarky AND up-front for a bit, let me say that I almost always offer up an enormous, mental eye-roll when someone says, “There are [x] of us, and we all sing.” My instant judgement is: “Actually, there are [x] of you, and maybe two of you can actually sing. The rest of you can carry a tune, but don’t really have the power or consistency to compete with a rock band.” And inevitably, it’s a situation where people only vocalize when the fancy takes them, so I have to leave all those channels open and CRANKED, just in case someone has a two second harmony part here or there.

So, why all the snarking and sighing?

It’s because, in a live-sound situation, signal-to-noise is a fraught topic. That is, the concept goes beyond the traditional measure of random electronic voltage versus the desired signal in the circuit, and ends up in artistic and acoustical territory. In an environment with a real band in a real room, the sound that corresponds to the channel label (Lead Vocal, for instance) is the signal, and absolutely everything else is noise.

Absolutely.

Everything.

Else.

…and there’s a lot of noise, noise which is also considered signal when you get to the channel that’s supposed to be carrying it.

Anyway, you’ve got all these vocal mics, and they’re all wound up hot, and a very large percentage of the time they are amplifying a bunch of information that isn’t vocals. That’s the bleed problem, and it leads to the other issues I mentioned:

1) “Defocus” – Where other sounds on stage, especially percussive ones, end up having multiple arrivals due to going through their close-up mics AND the other mics spread around. The problem gets worse in more acoustically live settings, because the other open mics also amplify the indirect sound that arrives at a different time than the direct sound which ALSO arrived at a different time. This transient-smearing can make a mix much harder to “parse” for musical information, because the boundaries between different musical elements are no longer as well defined.

2) Headroom Consumption – Have you ever driven a system to its limits with, say, drums…through the vocal mics? I have, on more occasions than I care to remember. All the noise flowing through those open channels uses up your power budget very quickly. You end up with no room to make those big, fun, transients, because you’ve soaked up all your headroom with a continuous wash of everything except what you actually want. A further side-effect of all this is that your mix feels uncomfortably loud, because everything is smashed together without enough contrast.

3) Poor Overall Mix Tone – All the bleed being amplified tends to cause a buildup of midrange and high-frequency energy that can make a mix teeth-clenchingly uncomfortable for audiences. Sure, you can slap an EQ on everything, but now you’ve messed with your vocal intelligibility, so…

Now, of course, there are things you can do. You can get a a set list with pointers on who’s doing what. You can aggressively run mutes, assuming good sight lines and a fair amount of rehearsal time. You can try to isolate your mics in various ways. You can use rehearsal time to figure out how to get the backline down to a level that works well with what the vocalists can deliver.

But in the end, the best approach has been (and will always continue to be) vocalists with excellent power and tone, and the giving of vocal mics only to those people.


A Simple Guideline For Recording Yourself

An article I wrote for Schwilly Family Musicians.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

“Don’t record anything you don’t want.”

The entire article can be read right here, for free.


Regarding Electronic Drums

Electronic drums can be great, if you take the time to make them great.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

A question I was asked recently was about electronic instruments – “E Drums” in particular. The query was about how to do them well in a live setup. I’ve worked with bands that make use of electronic percussion, sometimes as an add-on, and sometimes as a core instrument. In either situation, there are a number of particulars that come together to make the sonics an effective part of the ensemble, and a workable element in the sound reinforcement equation.

Tell The Sound People What’s Coming

As usual, homework and communication are key. I’ve always had decent experiences with electronic drums/ sample pads/ whatever when everybody did their advance work: People told me what was coming, how many inputs were needed, what kinds of sounds to look out for, and brought both working gear AND a working knowledge of that gear to the gig. More difficult situations have arisen when musicians have surprised me with extra needs: “Well, yeah, we need two lines for the trigger pads, but we’ve also got this other unit that needs two more DIs, so…” Particularly a multi-band or full-on festival situation, information about those additional inputs would have been really good to have before we were setting up. It’s also tough when a piece of equipment has chronic problems, but it’s brought along to a mission-critical situation anyway in hopes that “It’ll hold together.” (Often, it doesn’t hold together and we waste time scrambling. Or it fails at a critical moment and really embarrasses you.)

Carefully Integrate Your Proportions

I know I say this a lot, but I’m going to say it again. If it sounded right in rehearsal, it has a fighting chance of sounding right at the show. If not – who knows?

Especially when it comes to blending triggered sounds with acoustic drums, getting the balance correct during practice is crucial. Even more crucial is being sure that the balance can be recreated live. An important example is found in the case of bands that want to blend an earth-shattering synth kick with loud, traditional drums. That’s a very difficult thing to do, unless you have a truly enormous PA system available. Anybody who has heard real drums in a real room knows that they can make as much noise as an entire small-venue PA rig, given a little effort on the part of the drummer. Drowning that special accent in a tidal wave of other racket is very easy. The folks who learn to play so that the accent has the room to actually do something are the successful ones. The people who expect a normal-sized audio system to somehow make 130+ dB at 35 Hz are the disappointed ones.

Corollary: If you want your electronic drums to sound massive, you need to figure out how “big” they can reasonably be, and make everything else significantly “smaller” than that. Meditate upon this.

If It Won’t Work Without [x], Bring [x]

You should always be able to be fully self-contained with electronic percussion. That is, if a certain amount and character of sound is absolutely necessary for your e-drums to work out, you need to have the option of providing that support yourself. This is another important reason to carefully advance the show; If you don’t, you may get a nasty surprise when the provided PA can’t do the job.

If The Blend Is Mission-Critical, Do It Yourself

With e-drums, I do like to be able to get separate outputs for kick, snare, a submix of toms, and a submix of cymbals/ FX/ and other percussion sounds. Just like with regular drums, its handy to be able to make some decisions about what’s right for the room. At the same time, I’m 100% onboard with getting a premix of everything, especially if you need a very specific balance. In the case of a lot of diverse sounds, where they don’t necessarily come together to function as one large instrument, it’s far better for you to build your own mix and hand it off to me. With a complicated blend, it doesn’t make sense to input a ton of lines and then struggle to put it all back together.

None of this information is really world-changing, but that’s the reality: There’s no shortcut, and no mystical knob of mix perfecting. Good communication and “gettin’ it right at home” are what pay the dividends.


Livestreaming Is The New Taping – Here Are Some Helpful Hints For The Audio

An article for Schwilly Family Musicians.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

“The thing with taping or livestreaming is that the physics and logistics have not really changed. Sure, the delivery endpoints are different, especially with livestreaming being a whole bunch of intangible data being fired over the Internet, but how you get usable material is still the same. As such, here are some hints from the production-staff side for maximum effectiveness, at least as far as the sound is concerned…”

The rest is here. You can read it for free!


The Number The Knob’s Pointing Toward Doesn’t Matter

A “Schwilly” article on how too loud is too loud, no matter what number the amp is set to.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

“If the amplifier doesn’t sound good until most people think it’s too loud to sound good, then the amplifier doesn’t actually sound good.”

Read the whole thing here!