I don’t know exactly why it is, but I have a particular dislike for the folks I call “ball hogs.”

It’s highly ironic that I call them that, because I’m not much of a sports fan. I mean, I’m not against sports, because they’re a great vehicle for sitting on the couch and eating unhealthy snacks.

Anyway.

Ball hogs are the people who think it’s all about them, and grab all the attention for themselves. In the music world, this can take different forms. Some ball hogs operate by playing past the scheduled end of their set time, denying other performers their full slot. Other ball hogs do their thing by operating under the delusion that the sound of the whole show hinges on THEIR sound.

In the latter case, what you have is a prioritization problem – and it’s one of the worst, because it can do exactly what you don’t want:

Drive the audience away.

Audiences are driven away by prioritization problems because they tend to create volume problems. Either the whole experience is way too freakin’ loud, or the ball hog ends up obscuring some part of the song that actually has greater priority.

That Song Sure Had A Catchy Snare

You’ve never heard that, right? Sure, you’ve heard people say that a snare drum had a great sound, or fit in the mix perfectly, but I guarantee that nobody has ever been so captivated by the nuances of a snare tone that the actual song ceased to matter.

The harsh truth is that most audience-members are basically uninterested in the details of any particular instrument’s sound. Now, of course, the people in the seats don’t want any particular instrument’s timbre to be unenjoyable. Show goers are by no means indifferent to a guitar tone that’s outright awful, or a bass sound that’s all wrong, or a drumkit that could be mistaken for a whole bunch of wet cardboard. They do notice those things, and wonder why they aren’t fixed.

What most audience members don’t notice, though, is “that special way the air moves when I get that full-stack ROARING.” They’re essentially oblivious to “how the snare sounds so full and Zeppelin-esque when I’m REALLY hitting it.” They don’t give two hoots that “the bass just has this perfect rumble when I CRANK the master volume.”

They really don’t care.

What they do care about is how they can’t hear the chord progression – or worse – that the lyrics are getting drowned. What they do care about is that getting to the show cost them significant money, time, and effort, and they aren’t enjoying themselves because it’s SO LOUD. (That latter issue has a tendency to get people mad. Really mad. It’s a real downer, especially if they take their anger out on somebody who isn’t actually causing the problem.)

The Whole Thing’s Gotta Work

My personal experience is only one example, but still…the number of times I’ve ever been complimented on getting a great [insert instrument here] sound is so low that I can’t even remember the last time it happened. When I have been complimented, it’s been about the mix as a whole. When people walk up to FOH control and say “it sounds SO good,” the “it” refers to the complete sonic experience.

…and, of course, I’ve had plenty of complaints about shows being too loud.

Heck, I once did a show with a stupid-loud drummer where an audience member walked up, told me that all he could hear were the drums, and then declared that it was “the worst show ever.” There wasn’t much I could do, because overcoming the kit’s volume would have required that the whole show become unbearably intense.

I’m sure the kit sounded good to the drummer, though.

I’ve been at shows where bass or guitar players would crank up to their “signature sound’s” required volume, and people would just get up and leave. Whatever merch those folks were going to buy? That revenue was gone. The drinks and food those people were going to consume? That was now a non-issue. The encouragement they were going to give their friends to “check out that killer band?” It just turned into “don’t go to their shows, because it’s so loud that it hurts.”

Those players just wiped out a chunk of their audience, and all it took was one misplaced priority. In the music biz, things can really “spill over” in a hurry. Sound problems become business problems at an alarming speed, and the damage can be much bigger than anyone can easily realize.

Yes, of course we should strive to get great guitar tones. We should work on making the bass fun to listen to. We should try our best to make the drums exciting.

Yes.

But we also have to realize that getting any one thing “just so” at the cost of the whole experience isn’t worth it.

We’ve got to have our priorities in the right place.