Hey Homeless,

I think what you are doing is great. Helping out at contra dances is a great way to instill a feeling of community & ownership in oneself.

I help out at our local dance and here are a couple of things I have learned about doing sound.

1. If you use monitors, keep them BEHIND the main speakers, i.e. closer to the musicians. If the monitors get in front of the speakers, you can genereate feedback.

2. Feedback is what happens when a sound is fed into a soundboard or amplifier of some sort. Let me back up. A natural sound is made by a voice or instrument. That sound must be sort of squished and converted into a useful signal before it can be amplified. That is what mikes are for. So the sound travels into the microphone and into the amplifier. Sometimes it goes into a pre-amp before being sent to the amplifier. At any rate, the amplifier is what boosts the signal back to what the natural sound is s'posed to sound like. That modified signal is then sent out of the sound board to the speakers. If that modified sound is picked up by the original microphone, it then goes thru the whole process again. This is called feedback, and is to be avoided at all costs.

3. If feedback occurs, the proper thing to do is to drop the level on the offending mike, but that is hard to do quickly. Try to get all feedback problems out of the way during the sound check. Make sure all musicians are seated comfortably and that they each have a good sweetspot on their respective mikes. Each hall has it's own peculiarities, as does each voice and instrument. Sometimes fiddles need to have the treble cut back and the midrange boosted to give them a thicker sound. Lady callers sometimes need to have the same thing done, depending on the range of their calling voice.

4. Understand that you will most likely be doing the sound check in an empty hall. So what sound good during the sound check won't sound quite as good when their are bodies in the hall absorbing sound and generating noises of their own. So there will be some tweeking necessary during the dance proper, usually for the first dance or two.

5. There are mikes that are better for instruments and others better for the human voice. I am not sure which ones are which. Anybody out there know?

6. Communicate with the band and caller. It is helpful for all concerned to get a sense of rapport with them. Introduce yourself to them. Ask what they like in their mix. Don't be too shy about asking for their help. Probably, they have done this a lot. But once they start warming up and preparing, don't be too intrusive. Let them approach you.

7. Check your levels by walking around the hall during the sound check and the first couple of dances. Get a sense of how things sound to the dancers.

8. Posistion the speakers so that they are either pointing straight down the Hall parallel to each other, or slightly angled in so that their sound waves will intersect about 2/3 of the way down the Hall. If popssible elevate them securely. Some speaker stand allow you to angle the speakers slightly downwards. This is good, but only if it can be done safely. That's about all I can think of for now.

Best of luck,

BeauD