The JPO Teaches A Lesson

The Joshua Payne Orchestra sounds like a band without help from the PA. Do you?

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 had a special project to work on today, so this post will be pretty brief.

If you watch the video above, you’ll see and hear The Joshua Payne Orchestra playing a couple of tunes. They brought a Bose live-sound rig with them to play some backing tracks. They did have a mic in front of the drumkit, but anything coming through the Bose system from that mic wasn’t audible to me.

So – what’s the point?

Did you notice how they sound like a coherent, enjoyable ensemble with no help from a PA?

The best use of a PA system is to take a band that already sounds like a cohesive whole, and make that already-good-sound a fantastic sonic experience for a large number of people. There are plenty of folks, though, who have been led to believe that PA systems are meant to fix problems with musical arrangements and wildly disproportionate volumes. A powerful PA with a competent operator can indeed help with those issues, but…

…the more of the PA that gets used to just make a band sound like an actual, well-built band, the less PA you have available to do what PA rigs are really best for.