Hi Rick -

It sounds to me like you need a solid sound engineer who knows your music, style and sound. Of course, everyone who has played in a band needs that too - I've found that solo or duo acts have got a bit more leeway than bands do when it comes to mix. It is one thing to set the room up and have a "perfect" mix, right up until the room fills. Then the rules change, right? In summer, heat and humidity will vary - particularly in an air conditioned venue - blowers kick in and watch the weather sensitive instruments freak out. Intonation is not the only thing to suffer - relative sound projection will also suffer.

It is a luxury to have someone who can hear what the house sounds like do all the tweaks for you AND keep the relative mix for the guys on stage - personally, I prefer hearing the house mix instead of a "specialized" monitor mix. It is possible to run the board from the stage - but normally, it is a set and forget mix - where you get an "ok" sound and try and set the balance for the night. After all, most bands playing the bar or club scene face exactly that, right? The small amount you make for the show gets even smaller if you throw in an extra cut for a sound tech. When my band is playing small venues, that is exactly how we work - set and forget. If we are playing much other than a club or a bar - we have a couple of sound guys we can rely on.

Why? Let's face it - someone with ears in the audience can bring up a soft voiced instrument for a solo, then back it down a bit when the solo is over. If you're playing with mic'd instruments instead of using DI's, the banjo player with a habbit of shifting his body "a little" and bringing his banjo 4 inches closer to the mic than when levels were set during the sound check (and giving a GREAT banjo chording solo at the same time) can be backed down, until he shifts back to where he normally stands (not that the banjo player in my band EVER does that...)