Tag Archives: Subjectivity

Get Out Of The Effing Way!

Do what’s actually helpful, and then stop “do-ing.” The show will be just fine.

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.

I’m told that live-audio is a thankless job. This is news to me, because I’m fortunate enough to be thanked – often – for the work I do.

The problem is that when I receive the most effusive praise, I feel like a fraud. When somebody says, “you made it sound SO GOOD,” I’m pretty sure that credit isn’t really going where it’s due. I can’t clearly remember the last time I took something that sounded bad, and through force of will, turned it into an amazing sonic experience. Mostly, I take bands that already sound good, and then help the couple of things that can’t help themselves to be in quite the right place.

The more time I spend working in small rooms, the more it seems to me that at least 50% – 75% of my job is staying out of the way of the band. Functionally, what this means is that a lot of my faders sit at either the actual “negative infinity” point, or at a functional negative infinity (that is, the fader is set at a level where the contribution from the PA is not readily perceptible).

Because of the popular perception of what an audio human is supposed to do, the desirability of having a number of channels “doing nothing” is counter-intuitive. I’m pretty comfortable with it as a concept, and even I will go through periods where I get out of discipline.

But it works beautifully.

If You Don’t Need To Be On Deck, Don’t Be On Deck

That heading up there is one of the phrases that stage crews learn. It’s also pretty easy to grasp at a physical level. At some point, it’s easy to see that chewing up space on stage while contributing nothing to the show is a bad idea. You’re very likely to impede the progress of someone who actually needs to, you know, get stuff done. If you’re impeding the progress of someone with a job to do, you’re very likely to hear the words “Get out of the !@#$ing way!”

The issue for the audio human standing behind the console is that the line between “helpful contribution” and “just taking up space” isn’t clearly marked. Audio is a really subjective sort of business, and a lot of what audio humans do involves end results that aren’t easily measured in an objective way. The overall problem is exacerbated because of the mistaken belief that the most important work in audio engineering for entertainment is done with mixing consoles and rack gear. It isn’t – but that’s probably a whole other article.

With work at show control being the object of worship, the audio human can feel a lot of pressure to “make magic happen” with the tools that are seen as being most important. Especially because live-audio is an additive affair – where the sound of the PA combines with the sound from the stage – this need to appear productive can lead to three, generalized, “bad sound” scenarios:

1) The band’s sound is tossed out in favor of the engineer getting his or her sound, with questionable results.

2) The show is very, very loud, with questionable tolerability.

3) A combination of both.

Trying To Fix Everything

There’s a hilarious Xtranormal video floating around that illustrates scenario #1. In it, a jazz drummer is up against an audio dude. In complete deadpan, dialogue in this overall vein is uttered:

“We need to cut a hole in your kick drum.”

“This is a jazz kit. It uses special, very expensive heads. We are not cutting a hole in anything.”

“But, dude, how will I get my sound if we don’t cut a hole in the front of the kick?”

The third line is the crux of the whole thing. Getting what is perceived to be the most impressive kick sound – from the tech’s perspective – has become such a priority that the audio human is blind to what they’re actually dealing with. The need to be looked upon as a wizard with a console and outboard processing is so great that the tech is ready to turn a jazz act into a rock band, and to do so by wrecking an instrument.

When this need to fix everything generalizes into a whole-band situation, you can very quickly cross into the territory where the band no longer sounds like itself. Instead, you get the tech’s best effort at a huge snare, massive kick, elephantine toms, roaringly thick guitars, thundering bass, and “radio announcer” vocals…all blended into a result that sounds like a completely different band playing another band’s songs. Usually, the overall sound is that of the audio human’s favorite genre, and so the tech gets away with this behavior as long as the band is in that general area of music. When the band is significantly different, though, people walk away saying, “It just didn’t sound right,” without necessarily knowing why. If something about the band prevents the tech from achieving “the right sound,” the audio human is apt to complain that the band was hard to work with.

Luckily, the medicine for this condition is cheap, and easily available: Get out of the effing way! It’s amazing how adopting the attitude of “it’s about getting the band’s sound in the room, and not my own sound” can simplify your life. It’s amazing how much less agonizing you have to do when you don’t need to do microsurgery on every input’s frequency response and dynamic range. It’s amazing how fluid, simple, and enjoyable a show can be when every second of it doesn’t have to be managed.

It’s also amazing how, when you stop trying to fix everything, you don’t have to throw so much money at more and different gear.

The Show Sounds Huge, But Everybody Left

The #2 and #3 scenarios often result from trying to fix everything. As I mentioned earlier, this is because sound reinforcement is an additive exercise.

Live-sound engineer and gear retailer Mark Hellinger really nailed it when he stated a particular belief of his: Audio techs don’t feel like they’re really in control of the show until the PA is 10 dB ahead of everything else.

This anecdotally supported belief dovetails nicely with quantitative observations of SPL (Sound Pressure Level) addition. If you add the SPLs of two sound sources, where one source is observed to be 10 dB more intense than the other, the result will be the SPL of the louder source plus about 0.4 dB. The loud source pretty much wipes out the quieter sound.

So…

As the “I have to fix everything!” audio tech goes about getting their sound, they have to overcome the sound of the band in the room. The amount of SPL that a band can produce, even without a PA, can be rather surprising. (If you ever want a quick and unmerciful education in this, work with a band that switches from an acoustic drumkit to an electronic drumkit. You will be shocked at just how hard you have to drive the PA to make the e-kit fit in the same SPL “box” as the acoustic drums. I speak from experience.) A full-tilt band – even a fairly reasonable one – in a small venue can be a pretty loud experience. If the audio human just has to override the band’s sound with his or her own sound, “pretty loud” has probably just had anywhere from 6 – 12 dB of continuous SPL added on.

In a small space, this can mean that the engineer’s mad rush to fix everything creates a mad rush for the exits. A tech’s incorrect prioritization can clear a room just as much as a musician’s myopia can do the same thing.

As with trying to fix everything, getting out of the effing way can keep more people in the venue. When the goal becomes working WITH the sound of the band in the room, instead of against it, you have a much better shot at keeping within an audience’s reasonable SPL range. (No guarantees, of course. This is a subjective business.)

Going against the flow of a band’s sound is difficult, loud, and requires a ton of work. Getting out of the way and swimming with the current is much easier, much quieter, and a lot less tiring. It can be hard to discipline yourself to work this way (I still get things very wrong in certain situations), especially since not getting “your sound” fails to feed your ego (please refer to the previous parenthetical statement).

But I’ll be doggone if getting out of the effing way hasn’t proven itself to be very effective.


Mixing A Live Album: Drums

In a rock mix, you may find yourself “really turnin’ the knobs” when it comes to the drums.

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.


The EV N/D 767a

A highly competent mic for a reasonable price.

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.

This is what a 767a looks like with the “nose cone” removed.

Doug Wood (from the band Hostage and Woodshar Recording) tried to kill one of my 767a mics the other night.

Well, okay, he wasn’t doing it purposefully.

The mic stand had its boom almost fully extended, and the boom-angle was almost parallel to the floor. When you combine that situation with having the arm extended between two of the tripod legs (instead of along one of them), you’ve got a recipe for an unstable stand.

I think the whole shootin’ match went over about three times, with each occurrence sending a loud, dull “thop!” through the PA.

Hey, that’s what limiters are for. And reasonable powering.

I digress.

As he took action to very definitely secure the stand, Doug commented, “I haven’t dented your mic yet, but I’m working on it.”

So, yes, the N/D 767a can handle the inevitable accidents that occur on stage. That’s a point in its favor, but what else does the mic offer?

Sounds Good, Resists Feedback – If Used Properly

One of the first things I noticed about the N/D 767a is that it’s one of the few mics that sounds like the manufacturer got the “high end” right.

In my time, I’ve come across plenty of mics that sound dull, and I’ve come across plenty of mics that sound “overhyped.” The dull mics end up giving you that annoying, midrangey bark that just screams “old, worn out PA system from 1982.” The overhyped mics sound great when you’re standing alone on stage, sighting-in the monitor rig, but all that studio-quality top end stops being really useful when there’s an actual rock band in play. (There’s nothing inherently wrong with “air” in a vocal, but at high volume the air does little more than draw attention to itself.)

In contrast, the high-frequency component of an N/D 767a seems nicely smooth and natural, without any “FD&C Yellow #5,” as it were. This is important, because it allows the mic to have a clear and pleasing tonality without added feedback problems or “ess” sounds that cause windburn as they go by.

As a matter of course, I build an EQ preset for all my mics which is meant to “sound right in the solo bus.” Comparing presets is a sloppy metric – no argument there – but I can say that the N/D 767a is one of the least EQ’ed mics in my arsenal. To me, that says a lot about the mic being built well and voiced correctly.

These mics are designed to have a supercardioid pattern overall, and the overall implementation seems to resist feedback as well as other tight patterned mics I’ve encountered. Mounted on a stand with the correct orientation, or handheld by a competent vocalist, the 767 seems to be as trouble free as any other mic I’ve used. As with anything, you’ll need to do a requisite amount of “homework” when setting up. If you’re going to need to run at high gain, you’re also going to need to ring your monitor rig – no matter what mic you choose.

In a sense, one of the best compliments I can give these mics is that they just do what they’re supposed to do without a lot of fuss. With that being the case, there isn’t a whole lot of writing to do when it comes to the major positives of the 767a. You plug ’em in, you point ’em at something, they sound like that something, and off you go. In sound reinforcement, that’s what a mic is supposed to do.

Your Mileage May Vary

Currently, I’m convinced that there’s no such thing as the perfect mic for all situations. The N/D 767a works well across a range of applications, but there are some aspects of the unit that aren’t always ideal. It’s ironic that what amount to nitpicky concerns with the mic are what I have the most to talk about, but here we go anyway:

On the sound side, the mic’s pop-and-blast filtering seems to be just a little too “light” for a mic that people are going to be very – shall we say – personal with. The plosives and breath noise aren’t horrific by any means, but they still surprised me a bit at first. (To be fair, an appropriate-for-your-situation high-pass appears to help with this issue quite a bit, and now that I have some presets built for the mic, I don’t notice the problem much anymore.)

Tight patterned mics (supercardioid and “above”) are more finicky than their cardioid counterparts. As I said above, the feedback resistance on these units is what I would consider fit for varsity-level work. At the same time, though, that feedback resistance requires that the mic be in the correct orientation, and held the correct way. It’s my experience that tight pattern mics aren’t the right choice for people who want to combine high-gain monitoring with:

Turning every which way in a chaotic and unpredictable fashion.

And/ or working the mic at an inconsistent distance.

And/ or cupping the mic every now and then.

…and, of course, extreme practitioners of the above can’t be helped by any mic, so there’s that.

This restriction on application is by no means a failing of the 767a or any other similar mic, but it’s something to be aware of.

The physical construction of the units is nicely engineered, with everything fitting tightly. The XLR connector is what I would call “slightly recessed,” which necessitates a notch in the mic body so that the cable end can latch. This is hardly an issue in itself, but it becomes one when the internal assembly is rotated away from the notch. The XLRF on your cable will still mate with the mic’s pins, but the cable won’t latch. A good pull on the cable can result in the corresponding channel going silent – and in this case, the highly engineered construction becomes a hindrance. It would be a simple matter to rotate the internal assembly to match the notch if I could figure out how to do so without breaking the mic, but there’s only so much teardown that I’m confident in doing. N/D 767a mics just aren’t as user-serviceable as other stage transducers, and so they’re a little intimidating when you expose what internals you can.

Yeah, yeah, I should just Google for a teardown guide. I know.

Anyway.

My last nitpick is with the foam insert for the 767a’s grill. I can understand that there’s probably a good reason for it, but I also think that EV overcomplicated the whole thing. The actual insert is a small piece of foam that’s held in place by a tabbed, fabric ring. It doesn’t take very much to cause the ring to separate from the foam, and its easy to get the tabs bunched up. Getting the whole assembly back to factory stock is not a trivial thing. I’ve tried, and I can’t quite pull it off. This might not be a big issue for folks who rarely open their mic, but if you need to wash out your mic grills regularly, it’s a bit of a concern. The upside is that a “sorta fit” seems to work as well as an exact fit, but I just don’t see why over-engineering the pop-filter insert was so necessary.

Nitpicks Aside

The reason to go into detail about my little “dings” on these mics isn’t to discourage you from considering them. Rather, the point is to help you make an informed decision. I really like these mics, but I don’t want to give anybody the idea that they work miracles. No mic can do that, but you wouldn’t know it to read some of the reviews out there.

So…

I highly recommend the EV N/D 767a. They’ve earned a first-choice spot in my mic collection, and – in my opinion – they’re quite worth the small price premium over the industry standard. (You know, the thing with the model number of 58. I’m “Shure” you know what I mean.) To borrow the words of Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation, they aren’t perfect, but what is?

If you’re shopping for mics, put these on your short-list of contenders.


Between The Velvet Lies

The music business has a surprisingly low incidence of people being paid to be musicians. There are a good number of people being paid to “draw,” though.

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.

The big, red note is what musicians think they’re getting paid for. Actually, most musical acts are paid for their ability to bring out the people in the foreground.

If you were listening to rock radio in the late 80s and early 90s, you almost certainly heard “Holy Diver” by Dio. (I personally prefer “Rainbow In The Dark,” but what can you do?) “Holy Diver” has a line that – probably unintentionally – sums up the music business:

“Between the velvet lies/ There’s a truth as hard as steel”

There are a LOT of “velvet lies” in the industry.

“It’s one huge party, all day and all night!”

Actually, it’s a lot of work and heartache.

“It’s a sea of money!”

Actually, it’s more like a black hole that eats money. And time. Also souls, in some cases. A dark, howling vortex of – yeah, you get the idea.

“Everybody will love you!”

Actually, a lot of people will hate you, talk trash, snipe at every little thing you do and say, and be filled with vicious envy for any success that you have. Also, the hate grows proportionally to your level of success. Don’t forget to smile!

I could go on.

The point is that there’s the popular portrayal, and then there’s the real thing.

The “velvet lies” don’t just apply for the surface elements, though. The deep, critical concepts of music as a career are just as subject to falsehood. In fact, these falsehoods that touch “the innermost workings” are the most entrenched lies and half truths you’ll find in the biz.

You know why they’re so profoundly embedded? It’s because they’re the lies that we, as music industry people, tell ourselves and each other. Over and over. For years.

One of the biggest ones has to do with getting paid – or, more correctly, WHY musicians get paid.

The Velvet Lie: Bands are paid to play music.

The Truth As Hard As Steel: Some bands are paid to play music. Most bands are paid to bring a crowd.

I understand that what I just said is uncomfortable. It may even have made you steaming mad. Before you run off, though, please hear me out. This isn’t a judgmental thing at all. Heck, I’ve believed this lie myself. What I think, though, is that once we’re over the initial sting of the truth, ceasing to lie to ourselves actually makes us a lot happier.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe.

History

Decades ago, music clubs were media outlets. Before the Internet was a household appliance, before there were a million TV channels, and before consumer video playback, high-value entertainment (that wasn’t TV) meant going to a physical place. If you wanted to hear new music, that meant going to a record store or going to a bar/ club/ theater/ whatever. If you just plain wanted to be social, that meant going to a bar or club.

As such, the music venues had something of a captive audience.

Actually, it was only the good venues. I’m convinced that there were a bunch of craptastic music clubs back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and they’ve just been forgotten or glossed over.

Anyway.

People went out to the clubs and bars because they wanted to be entertained in a way that they couldn’t be at home. The venue drew the crowd, and then paid bands to play music that entertained that crowd.

Yes – that’s correct. In that situation, the band WAS paid to play music. The bands that kept people happy and dancing, and that helped build the club’s reputation were booked more often and paid more coin. As far as I can tell, this is when the basic bar and club pay scales were formed.

What was also formed was the idea that bands in bars and clubs were paid to play music. At the time, this idea was true – or at least, true more often.

Now, though, fewer bars and clubs have a “capacity” captive audience. Just about every place has some regulars, but the “salad days” of your local venue being a media outlet are over. Still, there are situations where musicians are paid as providers of music. These situations are easy to identify. They occur…

…When Somebody Else Brings The Audience

If you want to boil this down to a universally applicable rule, this is about as close as I think you can get:

Musicians are paid as players of music when an event’s audience will be present for reasons independent of the music.

Okay. What does that mean?

Weddings. Birthday parties. Corporate events. Fashion shows. Festivals and conventions. Fireworks displays.

In all of these cases, the crowd’s primary interest is in something other than the provided music. Sure, the music may be an added sweetener – maybe even a very strong one – but the main purpose is something else. The event planner selects and books acts that they feel the event attendees will enjoy. Indeed, they may even choose an act that they hope will tip a “maybe” attendee towards being a “definite.” Even so, if there were no band there would still be an event. The implication, then, is another rule of thumb:

When the music provided is a secondary part of an event’s “draw,” a musician can rightly consider themselves a contractor who is entitled to guaranteed pay per hour or per appearance.

There are some music venues that CAN operate via this model. However, to the best of my knowledge they are a relative rarity. If you’re a musician who intends to play mostly in bars and clubs, then the assumption you should make is…

…YOU Are Expected To Bring The Audience

In these days of “superabundant” media, bars and clubs just aren’t THE destination anymore. To fight against this, bars and clubs bring in attractions.

The point of an attraction is that it attracts people. (Also, the first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.) If an attraction fails to bring patrons to the bar, club, or all-ages room, then it’s not much good as an attraction. That’s pretty obvious.

The thing is, though, that this change in the bar and club entertainment model was never explicitly communicated to the musicians. Heck, it was never explicitly communicated to the venue operators. I’ve been a venue operator, and I’ll tell you that a lot of things I did were essentially instinctual. It wasn’t until after the fact that I stopped to think about why things were the way they were.

So, anyway, the the no-longer-true idea that musicians in bars and clubs are paid to be musicians has hung around, caused misunderstandings, started fights, broken up friendships, and just generally made people unhappy. The “velvet lie” is so uncomfortable because it causes a mismatch between expectation and reality – the musician expects payment commensurate with their work as a musician, and the venue expects to pay in a manner commensurate with the act’s draw.

To avoid expectation mismatch with reality, I would thus propose the following:

When the music provided is the primary factor in an event’s “draw,” a musician can expect their pay to be proportionally scaled to their ability to attract attendees to a particular place.

Okay. Now you’re pissed at me, right?

Let me be clear.

I long for – THIRST for – a world where art has intrinsic value. I’ve made music myself. I make visual art myself. I believe that an artist’s time is valuable. I wish, and wish desperately, that any artistic work could be converted to a predictable amount of currency (or other buying power) at will. I hunger for a reality where the intrinsic value of human life is tangible at all times.

If I could build a venue where anyone could get booked, and everybody who was booked made enough money to live in luxury until they were booked again, I would do so without hesitation.

Unfortunately, all of us are stuck with the reality we have until that reality changes.

So, what can we do?

The main step is to stop cuddling up with velvet lies. For most of us, the hard truth is that the value of a musical act is based upon attractional power. This is a tough pill to swallow for folks in the small-venue world, but once the pill goes down it gets a bit easier to manage.

Another bit of salve for the sting is that, at the highest levels of success and stardom, value based on power as an attraction is still the norm. Huge artists that get paid a flat rate from, say, Live Nation, are paid that guarantee because their proven draw is enormous. The risk to the promoter is relatively small in a situation like that, especially if the promoter has a lot of other big-name acts on the roster. Fundamentally, this is exactly the same at all show scales. This brings me to a closing thought for this article:

When the music is the main attraction, a musician’s pay is based solely upon the tangible value brought to the venue, minus the overall risk that a payout presents to the operator.

That’s the reality of the small-venue world. It isn’t velvet-soft, but it is the truth.


The Heck Do You Mean By “Small?”

When I say “small,” what I mean is “seating capacity for 200 or fewer,” amongst other things.

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.

I’m a fan of defining words clearly, no doubt about it. When it comes to subjective terms being used in technical contexts, my blood pressure can rise in a hurry. “Loud” means different things to different people. “Great monitor mix” means different things to different people.

I mean, even something as not-subjective-sounding as, “50% less lead guitar in this wedge” means different things to different people. Somebody might actually want the guitar down by 3 dB, which is actually half power. Somebody might think that 50% less is -6 dB. Some folks think it’s -9 dB. Geeze.

Subjectivity – it’s not as easy as it looks. Anyway…where was I?

If you’re U2, or Metallica, or Pink Floyd, or [insert ginormously popular act here], “small venue” could probably mean anything less than 20,000 seats. For other bands, filling a 1000 seat auditorium would be a huge show. The biggest. In the history of ever.

For the purposes of this site, my definition of “small venue” looks like this:

  • 200 patrons or fewer can be seated.
  • The square footage of the stage plus the audience area is 3500 square feet or smaller.
  • Backline producing x dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level) at the downstage edge – the place where the stage meets the rest of the venue – is perceived by someone sitting in the farthest seat as producing a minimum of x-12 dB SPL. This is assuming that the venue is otherwise empty and unobstructed.

(That last condition is pretty darn easy to accomplish in a 100′ long venue with a stage that’s 25′ deep. The distance from the downstage edge to the back wall is 75′. The farthest away that anyone can sit is only four times as far away from the backline as the downstage edge. The level decay at a fourfold increase in distance is 12 dB SPL, and that’s assuming that there are no acoustic reflections in the venue at all. It’s theoretically possible to build an indoor venue where the SPL contribution from acoustical reflections is negligible, but it would be really, really expensive.)

I should mention that each point is not necessarily dependent on any other point. You could build a venue where the longest dimension was only 30′, and then add a soundproof wall between the performers and the audience. The wall would break the x-12 dB SPL condition for the farthest seat, but the capacity and square footage points would hold up just fine.

Of course, I do have some subjective definitions of a small venue:

  • Anywhere that loading in an 8×10 bass cab causes someone (especially the audio tech) to think/ mutter/ say “Geeze,” or “Why?”
  • Anywhere that micing backline is optional for FOH (Front Of House) sound.
  • Anywhere that the settings on an amp from a previous gig or practice cause someone (especially the audio tech) to think/ mutter/ say/ exclaim “Geeze,” “Wow,” “Gosh,” “Whoa,” “Holy !@#$,” or  “That’s only on [number less than 5]?!”
  • Anywhere that somebody’s prized tone causes intestinal discomfort, bleeding, psychological problems, etc. (Also, sometimes where somebody’s prized tone is caused BY psychological problems, but that’s another issue).
  • Anywhere when a drummer is playing at a volume that seems easy and comfortable to him/ her/ it, and yet the SNARE HIT -ompletely drowns ou – TOM ROLL -verything els- KICK KICK KICK TOM ROLL KICK KICK CRASH CRASH CRASH SNARE HIT -hinks he’s John Bonha- SNARE FLAM SNARE FLAM KICK KICK CRASH -oo loud with earplugs.
  • Anywhere that the PA can be run at a continuous level that’s no more than 1/8 of its maximum continuous power, and still be considered “loud” by half the audience or more.

There’s the implication here that musicians and audio techs can make almost any venue too small, but that’s probably a topic for another time.