We had an eight hour seminar at our church this weekend about sound reinforcement. Two consultants from out of town came to help us out.
As expected, the technical information they presented was right-on, but some of us had a different philosophy concerning who is responsible for the sound quality. In fact they would probably object to my term “sound reinforcement.” Sound reinforcement implies helping the sound that is already there, not recreating all new sound. It all comes down to who is in control – the performers or the sound people.
I have been involved in music for over fifty years. I am sixty and I started playing when I was eight. Those fifty years have been has roughly divided in half as running sound and performing, a years of one and then a few years of the other, or mixed up, so I believe I have a balanced view. I believe that whoever is on stage is responsible for what they sound like. The sound people are there to help and advice. If your name is on the marquis and the ticket stubs, you are ultimately responsible for everything from the quality of the sound to whether the T-shirts shrink. Leading worship is not that much different. If you are up front, you are responsible for your sound.
The consultants we heard from strongly suggested that 1. the sound person is in a better place to hear (possibly) and 2. the musicians don’t know what they are doing anyway (not likely.)
They would want 100% of the control of the sound to be from the sound booth. This would involve eliminating all acoustic instruments such as drums and grand piano, and eliminating all amplifiers from the stage. The bass, guitars, keyboard, electronic drums would all go directly into the house mix and everything would be controlled from the back.
I would suggest that if the musicians have no control over the sound, the next step is to just play tracks. This would certainly make the sound person’s job easier.
I played for years with the mixer on the stage so the members of the band could reach it. (We seldom needed to.) I am thinking of going back to that system. If we play in a large venue, we could just give the sound tech one line out and we would keep all of the control on the stage. I have played at large festivals where every band sounded bad because of incompetent sound people, but nobody (musicians) was willing to do anything about it.
When my band plays a large venue (over 500 people) where a sound person might be necessary, I always tell them to set the stage monitors so we are hearing exactly what the audience is hearing. I then ask them to give us four microphones, all alike and set the same so that we can use them interchangeably. After a short sound check, leave everything alone so we can tell what we are doing. For smaller venues, we only mike the vocals. I know this is old school, but new ways aren’t always better.
I realize that this is a minority view and most sound techs would never give up the control they think they need.
One common mistake that artists make is giving up control of all sorts of stuff. They might hire a manger, get a record deal, hire a tech crew, etc. In each case, they are losing control of the product – the music, and themselves. Avoid this as much as possible.
Two different approaches to sound. Which is right and which is wrong? This is my opinion.
What do you think?
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2 comments:
Jim, I'm the new interim worship guy at Hillcrest. Planned on attending your Sky Blue concert at the church Sunday night, but had to tend to my daughter who wasn't feeling well.
I agree a thousand percent with your "Techies vs. Musicians" blog! More times than not our sound (and my voice!) has been ruined by well-meaning, but incopetent and/or misguided sound guys.
Glad to hear somebody else mixes themselves from the stage. I've been doing that on tour with our band for years.
Sorry I missed your gig...hope to hear you someday. Looking forward to meeting you soon.
--Daniel Brymer
Jim, I was the keyboardist for Uncommonsense. We played acoustic stuff at Homer's a few times.
I understand your perspective on this, and I agree that if the musicians are competent and have "good ears," they should be able to mostly mix themselves. But it is a fact that even if you set the monitors to just follow the house mix, it sounds different (sometimes vastly different, depending on the venue) in the house than it does in the monitors. We ran our mix from the stage quite often when on the road and in an uncertain venue. We always took our own equipment, and then decided when we got there if we thought the venue's system and engineer were trustworthy - a judgment call we got wrong as often as we got it right. Also, if the musicians are just so-so or worse (which unfortunately is frequently the case in many smaller churches), they're actually doing themselves a favor to turn as much control as possible over to a competent sound man. (COMPETENT being the operative term there.) I'm sure you've had lots of experience being the FOH guy for garage bands who thought they were multi-platinum-selling rock stars and ran their amps at full blast in a 50-seat venue. I'm sort of sure I've even been in one of those bands early on in our history. If it helps, later in our history we did a lot of providing sound for multi-band events, and I had many of those experiences myself. "Hey, dude, can you turn up my guitar? Yeah, I know my amp is all the way up. I learned these three awesome chords just for this show, though, and I really want my guitar loud."
On the other hand, sound guys who want to totally eliminate amps and acoustic drums are getting altogether too control-freak-ish. And too often, INcompetent sound guys with lousy ears are the ones who want to take the most control of everything. These guys always have a nifty new box with lots of knobs and lights on it, and they assure you that this thing will make you sound so good, it won't matter what you play. The fact that the nifty box says "Nady" on the front doesn't seem to bother them a bit.
Wow, this turned into quite a rant.
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