Tech: Sound Engineers

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 03:57 PM

"the output must not go above 84dB with a top limit of 87dB (A weighted)"

Haha! Music - 87 dBA !!!! Haha!

Big Fundy Fest (imported US Christian Rock Stars!) Easter Noise maker in City Residential Center Park - max 60 dBA! - well with 10,000,000 (approx, just counting speaker boxes!) Watts Bass Boost, easily exceeds 120 dBC on site, 100 dBC at road outside 85 dBC nonstop all weekend at houses - still reads 60dBA! .... all over town - heard 5 miles away ... :-) hard sleeping/thinking before the Council switched measurement to C scale - ever seen VHS cassettes DANCE on shelves (inside house, of course!) and things fall off shelves?!!!, 300 metres away? Feel air in chest vibrate like heart attack, inside house? And how many hours 'set up' do you think they need?!!!

Facebook comment by potential attendee "If my ears ain't ringing, then I want my money back"

Previous thread here on this money making bonanza ...

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 05:21 PM

87dBA was the requirement as the surrounding open land contained a Judges residence amomgst some other Stockbroker dealers residences....Oh how the super rich get treated eh....

Gutarists with dead PP3 Batteries and no spares are my pet hate along with - have you got a gtr lead ???.

Cheers everyone life is good in the fast lane.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 06:19 PM

I always carry a TESCO bag filled to the brim with guitar leads, various lengths/colours etc.
None of them work. But it's great to see the musos trying...
Then they complain to me...My answer....
"You asked for guitar leads, I gave you guitar leads. You're obviously not a very good guitarist then, if you can't tell if a lead is working"
Oh Yes, and bags full of dud batteries.p..." Yes, no problem mate. Have a look in there, Should be one that works"
On the other hand. Go to the local shop and buy one!
(Oh and I've found a company that makes Gaffa tape....Looks the real deal...Doesn't stick to anything. Works every time)
As a gigging musician over 3 decades, The 2 groups of people at a gig who make all the difference are The Sound Crew, and the Security staff.
Befriend them, and all will be well.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 Jan 11 - 06:59 AM

Seeing the mention of weighting, if Wikipedia right on this?

he curves were originally defined for use at different average sound levels, but A-weighting, though originally intended only for the measurement of low-level sounds (around 40 phon), is now commonly used for the measurement of environmental noise and industrial noise, as well as when assessing potential hearing damage and other noise health effects at all sound levels; indeed, the use of A-frequency-weighting is now mandated for all these measurements, although it is badly suited for these purposes, being only applicable to low levels so that it tends to devalue the effects of low frequency noise in particular

?

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Jan 11 - 03:25 PM

"being only applicable to low levels so that it tends to devalue the effects of low frequency noise in particular"

Yep - which is WHY the Toowoomba Regional Council finally agreed after enormous pressure to accept dBC for music (with highly boosted bass eg 'Rock'). Of course it did require much faffing around like the mating of elephants, including having a State Attorney General resign shortly after having passed the buck to the State Environmental minister - she replied in a very condescending way that my 'concerns were needless as the dBA scale measured music of all frequencies, not just in the musical scale of C' ... !!!!!! I'm not making this shit up! That poor lady did seem to be a little politically accident prone though ...

There was the time I went to buy a 'weather gauge' gadget with combined temp, humidity and atmosphere pressure gadgets. Noticed that none of the readings on any of the items for sale were near each other - "those ones are still sealed in the plastic bags sir" .... open bags sealed with a bit of sticky tape - didn't buy one !!!!"

The sound info you have 'discovered' was not unhelpful during the battle ... :-) The Council 'chief sound engineer' did accept that dBA threw away a massive amount of the low frequency sound energy compared with dBC, the graphs were most helpful.

JiK was also of great assistance - it was interesting to know that pure 600 Hz at 40 dBA will ripple your coffee ..:-)

It was also interesting to find out that HF dissipates rapidly, whereas LF tends to 'flow along the ground' like an earthquake ... :-)

Trying to compare dBA with dBC especially for 'rock' with highly boosted bass is 'educational' ... :-)

The 'sound clowns' for this local event also do the 'carols by candlelight' with hysterical results. The sound for the prerecorded or live 'thumper musos' is enough to blast you out of your seats (why do you need a dozen mics on a drum kit?!!! - BALANCE!!!! the turn the bloody instrument amps down mate!!!), but when they then try to use a single long throw overhead mic to capture the 100+ voice choirs ... eh? what? can you you turn them up mate? can't hear them. what's that howling noise?

This same park hosts many other community events. Did you know that a dozen muskets doing 'rotating fire' drills (standing fire, kneel, reload, while the next wave walks thru, then fires, etc) can not be heard any where as far as the 'Easter amped up musos', and barely outside the park? A 'drug free event' - yet why are they loudly staggering all over town throwing up? Maybe they had too much 'Spirit of the Lord' ...

Did you know that when a symphony orchestra has to share the stage with 'rock thumpers', that the SO tech does the sound set up? (If we don't do it, we don't turn up!) And then the rockies say that they have never had better sound? :-)

Sigh ...

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 11:50 AM

Bet you can't beat the time we actually had a write up in the Telegraph for a soundcheck! I was trying to sort the drum sound in the opera theatre at the RNCM in Manchester whilst the BBC were broadcasting from the studio theatre next door. They came in to ask us to keep the noise down to which my reply was that they had hired us the theatre and if it was faulty that was their problem.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 03:20 PM

Ah well, I'm out on Friday for the first time in ages - I only do it for a bit of fun. It's a good opportunity to inventory the kit and retrieve the bits that have been on long term loan. I was lucky enough to get some classic Celestion horns a while back and this will be their first time out in anger. They are reputed to be very sweet and they certainly sound nice in my drawing room.


I normally carry a little HiFi amp to power some headphones so that I can listen to the foldback mixes and make sure that every instrument is in there at a sensible level. It gets a bit exciting on the eardrums doing above the FoH during performance.

One of the bands I lent a 300 watt driver (an Eminence pro series) to to replace the 100 watt one they had blown in a foldback wedge. They were driving it with a little old H/H. I did say "NO kick drum in the foldback". When I got it back they had succeeded in ripping it off the edge suspension all the way round! I'll be watching them this time.

The other band I lend stuff to I had a hell of a row with the drummer. He kept saying "Just stick an SM58 in the kick drum, it'll do the job". I had to get the WHOLE of the band out front and make them listen as I changed mics to persuade him.

I have, however, NEVER succeeded in getting anything the size of a BOSE 1800 into clipping on foldback.   A Hill DX700, yes, but that's a fair bit smaller.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: josepp
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 04:02 PM

@ Ralphie

This was for a jazz society whose musicians were union. They get paid whether the show goes on or not. When they begged me to do the sound after they hounded my predecessor out of the position, I was so thrilled that I offered to do them for free. They said no, I'll get paid the union wage which was nice of them but I realized shortly after that I was getting paid so that they could heap abuse on me--I'm getting paid so what am I complaining about?

What happened was a guy took the cover off his piano at one show making it impossible to mic and I told him so. The other musicians sided with him--if he wants to take it off then let him take it off, they said. I kept protesting that I can't mic a piano with the cover off but to no avail. Then, of course, no soundcheck. The show was a total disaster--horrible. Of course I was to blame. Of all the shows I did for them which were smashing successes, this one was the only bad one and they were the cause. But the band was pissed off and they told the director they never ever wanted to work with me again. A lady who overheard the whole thing told me all about it. She said the director, Bill, told them, "Ok, he's gone. But don't expect me to hire him back. I'm not a yo-yo."

Then Bill had to find a new soundman and was forced to go to a professional company. These guys were more expensive than me and wouldn't put up with anybody's shit. And they demanded a soundcheck a half-hour before the show began or they pack up and leave and they still have to be paid. This pissed off the musicians who refuse to do soundchecks. When people went up to them and said, "I can't hear the piano." They got, "Go sit down!" as a response. Something I would never do--but maybe I should have.

So now all the members of this society wanted these guys gone. What was wrong with Josepp? they asked.   Get him back, he was polite and everyone liked him and his sound was great. But Bill said no. Under no circumstances would he beg me to come back after the musicians demanded he get rid of me. And I wouldn't have gone back anyway without putting the same demands on them that these other guys did but, in truth, I wasn't interested in doing it anymore.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: Bernard
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 05:05 PM

Richard - just try a trumpet blown by the likes of Maynard Ferguson into an SM58 at VERY close range... EVERYTHING lights up!!

;o)

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: Bernard
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 05:09 PM

As for miking a piano - a PZM blu-tacked to the soundboard works a treat! Opposite side of the board to the strings, of course - underneath if it's a grand, or on the back of an upright.

Okay, not ideal for recording, but that's not what we're talking about.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: josepp
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 05:57 PM

I didn't have a piano pickup. I miked it with two mikes positioned over the soundboard inside the housing (it was a spinet). It's always worked great and it's how you would do it in the studio). But the pianist took the front cover off which completely exposes the soundboard to the player but all the sound flows out the big hole and misses the mics which now pickup everything outside--other instruments, monitors, everything. With a soundcheck, I could have showed them how it wasn't going to work and that I could turn up the piano in the monitors instead but those guys don't listen. They think the soundman is supposed accomodate them under any and all circumstances.

Now, I would like to say that MOST of the musicians in this society were cool and I enjoyed working with them. It was just a few that made trouble for me but they were by far the most influential. I wouldn't mind working with the other musicians outside the context of the society but I haven't seen any of them in years and some are, no doubt, dead. I hate it when you tell them that they're making it impossible to mic them properly and they say not to to worry about it like they understand your situation but they clearly don't as was evident by their complete dissatisfaction with the terrible sound they brought on themselves by not listening to the guy whose job it is to make them sound great. And instead of apologizing for not heeding him, blame the whole thing on him instead and get him canned.

Subject: RE: Tech: Sound Engineers
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:40 PM

Thank God I never got into that bag!

Most of the places where I've sung didn't require a sound system. "Pamir House," a coffeehouse, seated about forty people at most, and it was not much larger than many living rooms. "The Place Next Door" had a capacity of about seventy-five or eighty with no sound system necessary, although later, when Stan James bought it, he changed the name to "The Corroboree," and changed the internal layout. He also did put in a sound system, but it was hardly necessary. Since I was on the stage in front of the mic and he was in the back of the room, he knew what I sounded like and I didn't, so I left it to him. "El Matador," also no sound system necessary. A half-dozen other coffeehouses, no sound system needed.

The Seattle Center Playhouse, 800 seat capacity, great acoustics, no sound system needed, although there was one available. Didn't use it. Nor did Richard Dyer-Bennet when he sang there.

Singing at the Sunday afternoon concerts at United Nations Pavilion during the Seattle World's Fair in summer of 1962, there was a PA system, but with several hundred people sitting on the grass in a half-circle in front of the singers, it wasn't really necessary. A year later, during the Seattle Center Hootenannies during the summer, when the weather was gorpy, we sang in Center House, which was a huge space—the old National Guard Armory. The acoustics were very echoey and it did need some sound engineering, but there again, I left it to those who knew what they were doing. Outdoors during good weather, we drew crowds of up to 16,000 (police department estimate) into the amphitheater in front of the Horiuchi Mural, and there was a PA system there.

During the Northwest Folklife Festivals, there were PA systems everywhere, in both indoor and outdoor venues. All handled by pros, who knew more about sound systems that I did (do).

Never had a problem.

I saved a lot of money and general wear and tear by not getting bogged down in electronic gear. I play an acoustic classical (nylon-string) guitar. No pick-ups, no wires. Just a very good, resonant guitar. And I have a pretty big voice (don't sing opera, but other than sounding like a frog in a rain-barrel, I probably could).

One afternoon years ago, I was meeting a friend at a local tavern, and I got there way early. During the evenings, a small jazz combo played there. They'd left their instruments on the band stand. I knew the bartender-owner, and he asked me if I'd like to try out the guitar. Standard solid bodied electric guitar with about thirty pounds of pick-ups, switches, and knobs bolted to it. He assured me the guitar's owner wouldn't mind. I'd never played an electric before, so I said, "Sure!" He flipped the switch and I sat there for about a half-hour goofing around on it until my friend arrived.

My Gawd, all that power at the turn of a knob!

Travis picking, classic pieces, and flamenco (!!) take on a whole new dimension and magnitude on a gadget like that!

But like a potential drug addict being offered his first opportunity to main-line, I grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and pulled myself back from the brink! I realized that that way lies depravity and madness! And expense! All those amplifiers and other gear to buy! I was about to run screaming when my friend dropped in, we had a beer and some quite conversation, and my heart rate returned to normal.

I buy my classic guitar new strings regularly, but that's the only thing it requires of me. Except to be played a lot.

I've sung in a lot of different venues, but my favorite is the small, intimate and personal house concert. It harks back to the days of the minstrels and troubadours.

Don Firth

P. S. Speaking of minstrels and troubadours, I once sang at a benefit where a lot of other musicians were performing. One of them was a lutenist. Anachronistically enough, he had equipped the lute with a contact mic going to an amplifier and big speaker. Weird!!