On sound checks
Last night I played a show at my favourite live music venue in my hometown, Cape Town. My band mates and I ran into some traffic on the way in and as we only had 60 minutes to sound check, we were cutting into (what I believe to be) valuable time.
We arrived with 30 minutes to spare and quickly unpacked the car. I grabbed my bass guitar case, my multi-effects pedal, my double adapter and phone charger (damn this battery life), and bass amp and quickly rushed into the venue. The sound guy is somebody I've had the pleasure of working with on multiple occasions and is fast becoming a preferred engineer of mine. I greeted him and apologised for our late arrival, jumped on stage and put everything down.
I plugged in my phone, pedal, and amp then unpacked my axe and hooked up the DI and through to the amp from my pedal. Done. Simple. Easy. I tuned my guitar and put it on the stand and walked off to the bar to get a beer and wait for the rest of the band to set up. I always love sound checks because it is time where you get to feel the stage and the venue, and as the setting up can always be more efficient, I try my best to improve on my etiquette with every gig I play.
I want to make a quick post to deliver some information on how to use the allocated time effectively.
Don't be late!
But if you are, apologise and set up as quickly as you can.Make sure you have all your gear.
Instruments, cables, plectrums, reeds, jack/RCA converters, everything!Work on your tone to improve the quality of audio your engineer can work with.
Be professional, get professional gear. Ground those single-coil pups, tune your vellums and warm up that voice!Don't play until the sound engineer tells you to play.
And then, play through all your tones and dynamics so that they can adjust gain, compression, and EQ appropriately.When it's time for the next performer to play, stop.
Or you're really just being annoying.When the sound guy wants to check the whole band, play a snippet of a song where all the instruments are playing and at their loudest, then play your softer dynamics.
Do this until the sound guy is happy with the front of house mix.Don't wait until after the show to complain about your monitor mix!
If you aren't happy with your monitoring, you only have yourself to blame. One by one, communicate exactly what you need to hear from each monitor to your engineer and they will happily oblige.
And the most important point of all:
- Thank your sound engineer, stage hands, promoters, organizers and hosts for making you sound great and having you all there, then thank your gracious audience for supporting live music!
Like, re-steem, follow :)
-- dokkodo out!