Category Archives: Best Practices for Musicians

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

The Splendid Magic Of The Set-List

It’s basically rune-paper of future-sight.

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.

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Some of the best bands I work with have never, and probably will never hand me a set-list. This is important for me to say, because I otherwise might give the impression that bands who don’t hand set-lists to audio-humans are falling short of being professional. That’s not what I’m trying to get at.

What I AM trying to say is that providing a PA driver with a set-list, especially an annotated one, can be a very good thing for everybody. When well done, a document such as the one pictured is actually very powerful. When you get right down to it, what you’re providing a sound craftsperson is something that you might only expect to find in the fantasy worlds of JRR Tolkien or D&D:

A set-list is, for all practical purposes, a low-level, magic scroll of foreknowledge and telepathy. It grants people like me a bit of prescient vision into what you’re going to do next, and this can be a nice enhancement to your show.

If an audio operator knows what’s going to happen, they can anticipate the event and be “right there” when it’s time, instead of having to catch up. There’s less chance of an awkward delay between something needing to be addressed and the appropriate action taking place, because the audio-human can address the issue (or be ready to do so) without the issue having happened first. “Scrambling” can be greatly reduced by the application of a well-formed set-list.

Examples

The set-list pictured above is clean and organized, and it also packs an enormous amount of “procedural information” into a small space. All that’s required is for me to interpret it correctly for the specific situation. For instance…

“Megaphone” – This is going to be loud, band-limited, and the loop gain through the megaphone may contribute to feedback problems. Be ready to deal with that.

“VD” – Vincent D, who’s sitting in with us, is going to have prominent vocals on this tune. If you’ve pulled him down to save loop-gain for other things, you’ll need to be prepared to push him back up and otherwise adjust.

“Harp” – There are prominent harmonica bits in this tune. Be thinking about where to put the fader for those.

“Banjo” – This instrument is not going to sound the same as the guitar that’s normally plugged into that amplifier. You might need to pull some fast work with your channel EQ if things are really out of whack, and you might also need to “get on the gas” with the fader.

“Acoustic Guitar” – This is plugged into that direct box which you’ve connected to a channel that is currently muted. You’re going to need to unmute that channel, or things will be awkward for a minute.

The other thing about that little piece of paper is that it tells me an expected start and end time. This is great, because I don’t have to wildly guess at when the band will go on, nor do I have to speculate about how long they’re planning to go on. They’ve told me. (This is also an indicator of Hectic Hobo’s professionalism. They have a plan regarding their spot in the lineup, and they’re going to try to stick with that plan so that Tycoon Machete gets to utilize their slot to the fullest.)

Making Your Own

If you decide that you want to provide your friendly, neighborhood noise wrangler with a set-list, I can give you a few pointers as to what works best:

  • Maximize your simplicity. Try to find the most basic way possible to convey the information you want to convey. Color coding, for instance, IS neat, but if I need to consult a “map key” to remember what all 20 of your colors mean, you may be getting in your own way. (Also, some folks are colorblind, and colors are harder to discern in low-light. See below.)
  • Make things highly readable in low-light. Big, blocky, and simple fonts, plenty of “whitespace,” and generally high-contrast help with this in a big way.
  • Avoid skimping. If you think something’s important, include it. If that means printing out several sheets in order to play nicely with the first two points, so be it.
  • Don’t take offense. Some audio-humans won’t seem to care about your show, or your set-list. Give them the opportunity to care. Maybe they will. If they don’t, at least YOU tried.

For those of us who do care, and do read set-lists, I can tell you that being able to partially read your mind and see a little ways into the future is a super-spiffy power to have. A little bit of paper from you can grant that power.


Keeping Your Publishing – 21st Century Style

A guest-post 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.

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“…If the record company owned both the sound recording AND the rights to the underlying song, you really had nothing except whatever fame you had managed to scrape up. All the money involved in anything to do with your tunes would first go to the record company, and then they would cut you in later – likely for as little as they could get away with.

Keeping your publishing meant keeping some control. Having a say somewhere. Owning your intellectual property instead of just being allowed to represent it.

That’s why you should have your own website. Having a web presence that you own and pay for is a 21st-century, internet-enabled version of keeping your publishing…”

The whole article is available (for free!) at Schwilly Family Musicians.


How To Spend A Ton Of Money

Really loading up your credit cards is easily done. Just keep trying to solve problems by modifying variables unrelated to those problems.

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.

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The room was an acoustically hostile firestorm of reflections and standing waves.

The band’s backline was barely functional.

The guitar amps had all the midrange dialed out.

A really expensive console with different mic pres would have TOTALLY fixed all that.

Right?


Why Does That Bass Rig Sound So Much Better Than Mine?

It’s probably being operated in the service of music rather than “sound effects.”

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.

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One of the perks of my job is that I get to regularly hear great bass players. My saying that might surprise some folks, because I’m NOT in the camp that believes that kick and bass are the most important elements of a song. My priorities list is not, however, my “want” list. Believe me, I WANT great bass. It most certainly is part of the whole experience, and if it’s not in the right spot, the experience isn’t all it could be.

So, when I get great bass, I’m a happy guy. If I’m getting great bass, it’s because the player knows what they’re doing. Obviously, being able to actually manipulate the stringed instrument is key, but there’s another element. That element is the rig, and the effective use thereof.

The “effective use” bit is REALLY important by the way.

I’ve seen lots of bass-amp setups over the years. Just sitting on the deck without making noise, some of them were more impressive than others. What’s amazing is how little that actually tells you. I’ve heard relatively diminutive rigs that were a joy to work with, and giant setups that made me check a clock every two minutes: “This is painfully bad. Is it time to go home yet?” (Yes, I’ve also had impressive looking setups that sounded fantastic. Case in point – the rig pictured above, which belongs to Ray Opheikins. Ray IS Geddy Lee, as far as I can tell.)

Whether the “I love the sound of this bass-player!” experience was coming from a big or small setup, I’m pretty sure I can distill the root cause down to one thing: The bass rig was being used to perfectly fit into a musical part, rather than to create “sound effects.” That is, the player’s main goal was to produce actual notes that all matter, instead of just rumble and boom. The mental maturity required for this is significant, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. What I really want to talk about are some of the technical aspects of making this happen.

We Built A Hill, But We Wanted Flat Ground

All sorts of folks fall into the rumble-n-boom crowd, but one particularly troubled subgroup is the “bass knob all the way up” tribe. This is a well-intentioned crew. They want to have fun, and they want the crowd to have fun, but they think that the fun is contained primarily in the feel of deep bass. So…they gun the lowest frequency controls on their tone stacks. What they think is happening is that they’re grabbing the deep end only, but that has a good chance of not being the case. What’s really likely to happen is that they grab the subwoofer material AND a big pile of peaky, muddy, boomy, garble that lives above that…and is proportionally much louder.

Now, I can’t substantiate all of this directly, but I can put forth a model that I think fits into my experience.

The misconception that I think is occurring is that the player is assuming the overall response of their rig to be flat down to 0 Hz. However, my guess is that many bass setups look more like this:

basscurve1

It’s possible to flatten that response all the way down to 40 Hz (a hair below the normal tuning of a bass guitar’s E string), but it requires a couple of precisely placed and highly flexible parametric filters.

basscurve2

Precisely placed and highly flexible parametric filters aren’t usually what you find on a bass amp. If you’re talking about the low end, you probably have a shelving filter with a corner frequency of 100 Hz. Turn it all the way to the right and add it to the natural response of everything, and…

basscurve3

You get this huge “hill” between 75 Hz and 200 Hz, with a bit of a peak around 150 Hz. Depending on the instrument, the player, and the room, this can be a real recipe for mud, overwhelming resonance that’s nasty to listen to, and “one-note bass” (where a few tones really pop out, and everything else disappears). It’s entirely possible for the actual frequency response of a real rig in a real room to be far more extreme than what I’m depicting here. That means the addition from the low-frequency boost makes things even worse. Yes, the deeper tones did come up, but a lot of other material also rose in level…and in higher proportion. Plus, the higher frequencies, where the actual clarity of the bass comes through, are in danger of being drowned.

Irony: It’s Not Actually “All About Dat Bass”

The preceding fits into my next point, which is, surprisingly, that really effective bass isn’t necessarily “deep.” It can be, of course, which is seriously fun.

But really good bass, bass that can work beautifully in a song and sound as good as possible in lots of different venues, seems to rely far less on “deep” than “smooth.” Also, the “smooth” has to happen rather higher than might be intuitive.

First, there are lots of PA systems out there that I would personally consider to be “pro” that are very definitely NOT flat down to 40 Hz. At that point, they’re probably at least 6 – 10 dB down from the rest of their passband. In other words, the flat-tuned system might play at a certain sound pressure when driven with 1000 watts at, say, 1 kHz. If you wanted that same sound pressure at 40 Hz, you would need to be able to safely drive the system with 4000 to 10,000 (!) watts. A PA that can actually deliver 40 Hz or below at a comparable level to the midrange is a large, expensive creature with a voracious appetite for electricity.

Second, even dedicated bass cabs don’t go that low. The venerable and much coveted Ampeg 8X10 is advertised to be 3 dB down at 58 Hz, and 10 dB down at 40 Hz.

Now…

I’m not saying that a combination of playing style, EQ, and compression can’t compensate for that. You might be able to pull everything else down to match that 40 Hz level.

But do you see how that proves my point?

If you pull everything else down to match the really deep frequencies, you’ve created a very smooth response at the cost of total output. (This is not a bad tradeoff, unless you don’t have enough output, at which point the rest of the band needs to give you some space. Seriously, you don’t need new gear. They need to cooperate with YOU. Anyway…)

The smoothness is the key – and it’s especially key in the critical range of about 80 – 320 Hz. That’s a two-octave band which starts at the first harmonic of your low E string. As a sound operator, I’ve found that when the 80 – 320 Hz area is gotten right (both in and of itself and with any tweaks necessary to fit the band) the bass player’s contribution tends to be nicely audible at all times and in a wide variety of positions within the venue. That passband is reliably doable by a wide variety of bass amplifiers and PA systems. Keeping that range smooth, with gentle transitions to the rest of the audible frequency band, is also a great weapon against bad acoustics and poorly tuned PA systems. You’re far less likely to aggravate a nasty standing wave for the folks standing in the areas where the peaks form, and you’re also far less likely to aggravate a peak in the audio system’s response.

Also, if you start with a really smooth rig, you have the option of dialing in a peak or dip to fit the band’s sound. If the amp’s “starting point” response looks like the Himalayas, you’re stuck with that being stamped onto whatever else you’re trying to do.

Again, it’s not that deep bass isn’t cool. If that’s THE thing your sound stands or falls on, though, then you’ve put all your eggs into a small basket that’s easy to get wrong. Some of the best bass players I know have setups that will definitely go low – but that going low is in very careful and tasteful balance to other frequencies. The feel of the earth moving is a flavor enhancement to the basic and critical meal of all the notes being audible and properly proportioned to one another. If that fundamentally critical musical food wasn’t translated, I would no longer consider those players to be some of the best around.

There are other bass players that I know who I also consider to be top-shelf.

And their rigs don’t go very low.

But they are smooth and balanced, and fit perfectly into the equation of the band. That’s what really matters, and what really impresses me. Fourty Hz is rad for a minute, but there’s a universe of sound way above that neighborhood that’s necessary for being mind-blowing through a whole set.


So What About The Gross?

A guest post 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.

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Sorry for my lack of updates lately. I have a new day-gig, and it’s chewing up time like nobody’s business.

Anyway – from the article:

“Our business loves to talk about the highest grossing tours. Gossip about who had the biggest ticket revenue is everywhere, and treated as being very important.

And it makes sense.

The gross is a really decent way to measure things like audience interest and performer clout, especially when you bring other measurements into the equation…

…The thing is, there’s a question that seems to go unasked and unanswered with all of our hoopla over the gross:

What did the show net?”

The whole thing is available for free, right here.


On The Identification and Fixing of Live Show Arrangement Problems

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.

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From the article:

“…In other words, arrangement quality is INVERSELY proportional to the musical corrective action required of the sound tech. Great bands with great arrangements don’t require me to fix anything. I just have to translate the songs through the PA – and actually, that’s a pretty good analogy. With a bad arrangement, I have to go beyond just helping the “onstage language” interface with “audience language.” If I’m able, I also have to correct the original grammar, fact-check, rewrite for clarification, and THEN translate.”

Read the whole thing here, for free.


Simple Fixes For Simple Problems

Letting a person change lanes is easier than building them a faster car.

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.

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(I forgot to put this up last week. Whoops…)

On ProSoundWeb, a thread was started about harmonica feedback. The thread lasted for two pages, and one topic swerve. All kinds of suggestions were made.

But not a single suggestion was made that maybe, just maybe, the rest of the band might EASE UP A LITTLE and give the harp player some space.

The simple, free solution was drowned in a storm of trying to engineer a way out.

I have been guilty of this. I will probably be guilty of it in the future. Still…

Can we stop this, please?


A Public Decision

The public may or may not treat a place in accordance with what an establishment is called, or what that establishment looks like.

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.

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I’ve talked about this before. It’s a theme that I’ve returned to in various places. I’m covering it again because I think that it could do with having its own space. I find it to be especially relevant when the “periodic wave of blaming” comes back around to the idea that venues don’t promote live-music enough. I’ve covered that idea from different angles, with my current favorite approach being to point out that advertising is primarily for people who are already interested in something. (For instance, it makes sense to run broadcast-media ads for cars if you’re selling in the United States, because people in the USA are very likely to be car drivers.)

More to the point is pushing back against the idea that a place which hosts live-music can just decide to be a place where there’s a ton of “walk up” traffic. What I mean by “walk up traffic” is the phenomenon of people going to a public establishment for the establishment itself, rather than because a particular event is taking place at the location. The former is the traditional model for a bar, and the latter is the traditional model for a live-music venue. The point of consternation is the unspoken assumption that the public is magically compelled to abide by whatever label that the establishment has chosen for itself. If the public must accept that label, then the business not experiencing patronage consistent with that label must mean that the business is doing something wrong. If the business is doing something wrong, then getting something different to happen is just a matter of fixing whatever has gone awry. (The attitude seems to be that a proprietor can just advertise their way out of a difficulty.)

But this is not what my experience suggests. Over the past several years, I have come to strongly believe that the establishment’s chosen label is irrelevant in the face of what the public decides. Obviously, a business that is very strongly geared in one way or another will tend to be perceived in accordance with the setup. However, the lines are not always sharp and bright. Especially when an establishment has mixed methods for generating income, it can be easy to misjudge the primary view that the public takes of the business.

Is This A Music Place With A Drinking Service?

In the case of a bar or club, there are two major categories that the public can assign:

1) A place for drinking and socialization that offers music as an additional service.

2) A place for music that offers drinking and socialization as an additional service.

Whatever ends up being the primary pull to get folks in the door is what the establishment becomes. If the public’s consciousness labels a place as being a hangout – a spot you go to because it’s just generally fun to go there – then that’s how the business will operate. People just show up, and so booking live music is an exercise in figuring out what will keep the “walk-ups” in the building for a longer time. Flip that around, and the ballgame is very different. If the public decides that the business is a music venue that just happens to serve refreshments, then booking live music becomes the process of figuring out which bands draw a crowd. After that gets settled, the food and drink equation is worked to maximize what the already-drawn crowd will buy.

Different bands thrive in different environments. Groups that are more about getting paid for musicianship tend to be better served by a “hangout” model, whereas groups that are built on nurturing their own specific audience are more suited to a straight-up music venue.

Research Beats Assumptions

Where this becomes hairy is when assumptions are made. There are plenty of bands out there who are content to accept the designation that was originally applied by the proprietors, or the label that the band thinks is applicable. This can be a kind of self-deception. There are musicians who look at a place with a prominent bar, and immediately assume that the place runs on a walk-up traffic model. Remember, though, that the public has the final say. If the public has decided that the business is a music venue that happens to offer tasty food and cool beverages, they are unlikely to just show up to see what’s going on. Rather, they will stay home (or go somewhere else) until their favored band is booked in the room. THEN they’ll show up.

I suppose that a natural question to answer is how to tell one business from another. One starting point is to try to determine the focus regarding the band. A place with lots of production support (and/ or a stage that makes the band the focal point of the room) has a high chance of being treated as a music venue. A place where everything except music seems to be the focal point has a good probability of being perceived as a hangout. You have to couple this with a business query, though, because it’s possible for an establishment to be set up one way while the public treats it the opposite way. If you ask how many folks show up regularly on a particular night of the week, and get a firm number, then you might just be dealing with a place for drinking and socialization that offers music as an extra. (Geography matters of course, as well as whether or not there’s some kind of “house band” involved.) If your question returns an answer with a lot of variance, or just a general lack of certainty, you probably have a “music venue” on your hands.

In the end, the trick is to know how the public treats the business, and what works for you.


Don’t Do It

These kinds of events don’t benefit you. They benefit someone else at your expense.

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.

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“Battles of the Bands” and “Pay to Play” are not the answer.

They are a question.

“No” is the answer.


An Audio Human’s Guide To Auditioning Pretty Much Everybody

My latest 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.

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“Now, why in blue-blazes would a live-sound engineer talk about auditioning people for your band?

Simple.

I deal with the fallout if you louse it up.

There have been many instances in my time where I’ve had to struggle with a band containing at least one member who was a terrible fit for actually playing shows. It usually makes for a frustrating and bad-sounding gig, in which a large amount (maybe all) of the available electro-acoustical headroom for the show is DEVOURED in trying to fix the problems. Nothing is left over to otherwise translate the show to the audience in a cool way. It’s all been spent on mere survival.”

Read the rest of this article (for free!) at Schwilly Family Musicians.