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[Peter Kowalczyk]

I've volunteered to host a Live Sound Tutorial and Q&A session for our thriving community of local musicians (help me god!).  Many bring their own PA to gigs at local bars and eateries, wedding gigs, etc, or they are tasked with using a 'self-serve' house system on their own, without an engineer (see earlier thread here: http://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,164047.msg1511231.html#msg1511231).

What is the most important thing that you would want to teach Musicians about running sound for themselves?  The most pervasive misconceptions and knowledge gaps?

Here's a rough outline of what I planned to discuss; I welcome your comments!

Sound systems can be thought of in three parts:
 - Inputs
 - Processing
 - Outputs

Inputs:  Mics and DIs, Mic level vs. Line Level, Microphone directionality
Processing: Preamps, EQ, Busses (Aux vs. Group), Effects (Series vs. Parallel)
Outputs: Amplifiers, Line level vs. Speaker level, Speakers & Space & Output EQ

Monitors and Feedback: Loop gain as a function of frequency and polar response of mic & speaker; EQing monitors.

[Al Torrance]

The first thing that comes to mind is... The more alcohol that is consumed, the louder your PA has to be.

Have one of the members of the band on a wireless and at least go out into the space and listen to the mix. Keep your vocals louder then the band. If you can’t do that then the band has to quiet down.

[Dave Pluke]

The most pervasive misconceptions and knowledge gaps?

No small task, Peter - best of luck!

Two things that come to mind in terms of Live Sound are:

1)  with very few exceptions, HPF should be deployed on all channels

2)  Live EQ should be more subtractive than additive

Oh, and speaker placement (both FOH and Monitors) should be addressed, too.

Dave

[Hugh Brock]

I write as a musician who had to learn how to do sound from scratch, who still experiences problems from time to time, who lacks any sophisticated understanding of physics, and who has a tough time getting band members to understand that poor technique on their part makes life hard for me, them and the audience.

My initial reaction is that your outline assumes that they will want to start with and understand the principles, and that with these understood they can figure out what to do.  As a professor, that's what I would do too.  But given my first paragraph, I wonder if you should make it more practical/rule based, and slip in the theory after the practical only if someone asks? 

To exaggerate somewhat, I find if there is no feedback, musos can hear themselves, and there's no distortion, most musos are pretty happy.  I am embarrassed how long I did sound with no complaints from anyone in the bands, audience, or venue with everything dry, careful adjustment of the pre-amp, no EQ, no FX, no groups, some HPF and cutting of higher frequencies, and careful attention to position of mics and stands vs monitors relative to polar patterns, and keeping it quiet.  So if it were me, I would keep it basic, ask them what they most want to know, and let the participants drive what you do.

Here's a short list of things that I find musos don't get/do wrong:

-They don't know or care about active vs passive inputs, and are perpetually surprised that batteries go dead.
-They don't understand "loudest sound wins" because they don't understand inverse square law.  So they wander from the mic, play or sing louder, and think the problem is that the monitors/FOH need to be turned up or down
-I commonly find that folks can't hear themselves in the monitor because their brain doesn't associate a sound at their feet with them, so they don't hear anything.  They are the ones asking for "more me", even when other band members are wincing with how much "them" there is already
-They don't understand what causes feedback, GBF, or what can be done to prevent it, so they wander around the stage, let their hand-held mic drop below their waist after then have wandered up to the monitors, they move their mic stand at the last minute so their GF can see them, etc.
-They don't understand how different mics work, their patterns,  how close they should be when singing
-Most of them get ins, outs, and connecting the bits and pieces, but never remember which things get turned on in which order (let alone why)
-Most can't use technical terms to say what they want to be different "the sound sucks man..."
-They don't see that quiet stages make most of the common problems go away (closely related to not understanding that cutting is better than boosting)
-They don't understand EQ in general, PE in particular, the virtue of HPF and judicious cutting of higher frequencies in the monitors.
-They don't understand the FOH and monitors have different functions, and thus it isn't really necessary to have everyone in the monitor
-They have no concept of gain or gain structure

Hugh
 

[Lyle Williams]

Be safe.  Manage hazards.  Don't kill, injure, or scare anyone in the name of music.  No you can't cut the ground pin off anything.

Gain before feedback is like oxygen.  Nobody cares about it until there isn't enough, and then it is the only thing that matters.  Speaker placement is key.

Murk will build up.  Try and give each instrument some space by subtractive eq.

Care for your hearing, and the audience's hearing.  There is loud and too &&&&ing loud.

The priorities in live sound are: 1. Make sound.  2. Keep making sound.  3. Make it sound good.   If you lack familiarity with the gear, keep things simple. 

[Patrick Cognitore]

What is the most important thing that you would want to teach Musicians about running sound for themselves?  The most pervasive misconceptions and knowledge gaps?

I'd start by making sure they understand basic signal flow. I've stopped taking for granted that other musicians have an understanding of the path of how their guitar/voice/drum get to the audiences ear through the PA. This is particularly helpful when showing how a troublshoot (Ex."why isn't my vocal in the monitor?" "Well, let's follow the signal path from the source...")

[Steve Eudaly]

No small task, Peter - best of luck!

Two things that come to mind in terms of Live Sound are:

1)  with very few exceptions, HPF should be deployed on all channels

2)  Live EQ should be more subtractive than additive

Oh, and speaker placement (both FOH and Monitors) should be addressed, too.

Dave

Add to that microphone pickup patterns and you'll definitely be blowing some minds. "No, a Beta58 isn't an SM58 that's $50 better, it's a completely different tool and here's why..."

I recently hosted a similar course geared toward gigging musos and it was a big hit. The "high pass everything" segment was a huge eye opener to most and really sparked some fun conversation.

[Tim McCulloch]

1) Loudest sound at the mic will be the loudest in the speakers; i.e. if the guitarists amp is as loud as the singer's voice at the singer's mic, turning up the singer in the monitors or mains will get you more guitar, too.  "Loudest sound at the mic, wins."

2) Even if it *looks* odd, position your on-stage amplifiers to enable the band to hear all the members.  Bands are ENSEMBLES, not collections of soloists.  Bands play SONGS, not notes.

3) Monitors are for players to get pitch and rhythm/timing to match the other players, not to be a "mini-FOH mix" (exceptions for some IEM mixes).  Less is frequently more, especially if #2 was advice taken...

4) Sound is an "additive" thing.  There is no "sound sponge" or "Less of this" knob on a console.  The loudest source of audible sound on stage (snare drum, guitar amp, bass rig, singer's wedge, etc) set the minimum volume everything else will need to be amplified to match or exceed, both in monitors and in most FOH mixes (thinking size of venue).  This is why it takes only 1 player with a significant stage SPL to pretty much make for a long and frustrating night.  See #1, above.

5) You are probably running your inputs too hot and your outputs compensatorily cold.  You should NEVER see a red light on an input, especially on a digital mixer.

6) If you "knew db's because of the big analog meter" on your old mixer, you'll need to understand why on digital mixers "-20DBFS is the new 0dBvu" or #5 will certainly be a problem.

Okay, my punch list out of the way...

What level of players are you trying to reach?  Folks without experience need fairly rudimentary instruction but do not come with pre-installed bad habits or years of doing it wrong to overcome.  You may need to do your class in 2 sessions, with session 1 aimed at n00bs and session 2 aimed at "old ways die hard" folks.

Talk "inputs to outputs, outputs to inputs."  You can draw a picture from lips to ears - mic to loudspeaker - from the OUTPUT of the voice to the input of a microphone (the diaphragm), from the output of the microphone to the input of a mixer channel... all the way through the chain until the loudspeaker output reaches the ears (input) of the listener.

Safety - electrical, physical (trip hazards of cables that don't lie flat/not taped down), blocking paths of egress, etc.  "Locate the exit nearest the stage and make sure the door is not blocked, chained or padlocked." 

More to come...

[George Herbert]

What a kind thing for you to do, thank you. I'm your target audience (sent you a PM): a musician who runs sound for my band with no formal education or training. #1 on my list would be troubleshooting "bad" sound. Rumbles, resonance, noisy rooms, stuff like that (as opposed to equipment failure).

[kel mcguire]

Concepts are great, especially anything to do with safety, feedback control, and simple across the board(no pun) fixes like HPF. After all the bands I've seen/heard doing their own sound, a lot of what I haven't enjoyed arises from a lack of critical listening combined with undisciplined band members. Sure(Shure!), people should know about mics, gain structure, preventing feedback, some electricity basics, how/where to put mains and monitors.

A few things that can always taint or ruin a band's performance for me:
unbalanced mix due to whacked out amp volumes, bashing drummers or too small of a rig that could be operated improperly. Rarely are the vocals way too out front if I was to estimate. Clipping/distorted vocals are common. Those can come from the band mismanaging their levels. Feedback, more than likely comes from not knowing how it happens, not having or knowing how to fix it with an EQ and the same mismanaged levels.

perhaps this is just me but I find most bands are too bright, guitar rigs that know your filling from your teeth, bright cymbal mics and vocals too. Especially classic rock or older cover music…. None of that stuff sounded anything like what many bands concept of HF is

Once in a while I see fully mic'd up drums in small venues…and often without proper rigs. Sometimes with bands that have more money than good sense, you see a decent rig where it seems like: "well, since we have it, we might as well use it" which can be lead kick drum or whacked out subs to tops ratios. That's a case of having a nice rig then figuring out how to use it, regardless if you need it all.

Feedback can and does ruin many a band performance.

Tim mentioned aiming stage rigs to be monitors. Bands get so hung up on how it is supposed to look. Nobody but other bands care really…and other bands make up the smallest, least interested percentage of a band's audience.

I think a band should sound pretty balanced without a PA, save for vocals or DI'd instruments. Trying to rebalance a band vis mics and PA volumes can often send you down the volume wars street.

The bottom line for me? Listening, rehearsing, evaluating, moderation, compromising. Those are are relatively free. Often those aesthetic decisions need to be made by someone in the band and others may not like the decisions. Sticking a zoom recorder out at gigs will tell you a lot. If you need earplugs to rehearse, something is wrong for a majority of bands not doing metal  .

If you cannot perform without 5 monitor mixes, something may be wrong.

A lot of bands listen and then figure out what has to come up, rather than what has to go down.

[ProSoundWeb Community]