Sound Engineering Declared Grumpiest Profession In The World

twocorgis

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Story here. This is not exactly news to me, and to support my claim I offer Exhibit A, seen at a recent gig:

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adorshki

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A sobering insight to the dirty underbelly of the business.
I myself was wondering just the other night if I should have pursued a career in sound engineering which fascinated me as a teenager, I feel so much better now knowing I avoided becoming a grouch..
so why the hell did you have to rub it in?
 

twocorgis

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A sobering insight to the dirty underbelly of the business.
I myself was wondering just the other night if I should have pursued a career in sound engineering which fascinated me as a teenager, I feel so much better now knowing I avoided becoming a grouch..
so why the hell did you have to rub it in?

True, but see how much nicer you turned out?
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davismanLV

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I seem to have the grumpy thing down.... now if I could master bitterness!! LMAO!! That's a great article Sandy. Made me chuckle!
 

twocorgis

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I seem to have the grumpy thing down.... now if I could master bitterness!! LMAO!! That's a great article Sandy. Made me chuckle!

They really are like that, too. I have a lot of respect for the good ones, but they can be real prima donnas...
 

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I heard the worst mixing at a bowling alley and said something to the old drunk behind the board. Made some comment about me being a over protective dad. I said to him that I wasn't related to anyone in the band, I was just listening to them. If you do this for a living, why does the band sound like it was mixed by a deaf person?
 

twocorgis

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I heard the worst mixing at a bowling alley and said something to the old drunk behind the board. Made some comment about me being a over protective dad. I said to him that I wasn't related to anyone in the band, I was just listening to them. If you do this for a living, why does the band sound like it was mixed by a deaf person?

It happens more than it should, no doubt.
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Zelja

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Ahh, I dunno. I'm far grumpier now than whenever I did sound! My Indian name at my last company was "Storm Cloud"...
 

gilded

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Most of the bad sound guys I know are Chemical Warriors. They love to watch all of the equipment lights go blinky-blink while they grind their teeth away.
As a general rule:

1) Wedding band sound guys are afraid to turn it up.

2) Rock band sound guys will turn it up when you ask them to turn it down.


The only thing worse than bad sound guys are guitar players who destroy the mix by playing too loud:

3) One 50 watt Marshall head and a good 2x12 cabinet can obliterate the mix at an 800 seat event for at least 600 people.

4) I've seen 'real bikers' (not dentists/accountants/lawyers with Harleys) get chased out of a 'real biker bar' by a Super Reverb on 5 and a humbucker guitar.

[slight veer but involves sound guys]

On gigs with a sound guy who will mic the amps, I usually take a small Fender amp, either a 22 watt Deluxe Reverb or a 12 watt Princeton Reverb. I will also show up with an Auralex Isolation Riser, a ClearSonic 1'x 2' high, six-panel plexiglass shield and a ClearSonic Absorbing panel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXPYGoZTeII

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GRAMMAII

I put the Auralex riser on the floor, put the amp on top of it, encircle the amp with the six plexi shield panels and put the sound absorbing panel on top. It radically reduces the sound of the amp, both onstage and at Front of House.

Then I get the sound guy up on stage and show him my rig. I will then say, "Here's the deal. I'm not going to mess with your mix, am I? But, if I can't hear the amp in the monitor, I'm going to remove the top panel and my amp sound will get picked up by the vocal and drum mics, right? Plus, if my friends in the audience tell me they can't hear my guitar in the front of house mix, I'm going to take the plexiglass shield down. If they still can't hear me, I'm going to get my Vox AC 30 (a very loud amp) out of the car at the Break and play through it for the rest of the gig..... Do you think we can work together?"

So far, no sound guy has ever said, "No."
 

wileypickett

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I heard the worst mixing at a bowling alley and said something to the old drunk behind the board. Made some comment about me being a over protective dad. I said to him that I wasn't related to anyone in the band, I was just listening to them. If you do this for a living, why does the band sound like it was mixed by a deaf person?

Anyone trying to make a band sound good in a bowling alley has my complete sympathy!
 

Westerly Wood

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My guess is often, sound guys feel like they are herding cats.
 

Default

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Anyone trying to make a band sound good in a bowling alley has my complete sympathy!

It was in a separate area, so it wasn't too bad. The guitars were almost non-existant. One guy got up to do a pretty decent slide solo, and it was like they dropped him down a mineshaft. He just vanished in the mix.
 

gilded

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The best sound guy I ever saw was the first sound guy I ever saw. He played the board like an instrument, moving several faders at once if he had, too, like bringing 4 drum mics up for a solo at the same time he was re-setting the compressor for the main singer. He'd tap out the amount of delay he wanted for a song when the drummer would hit his sticks together to set the rhythm, stuff like that.

He showed me the way to talk to someone else at a normal volume in the middle of a super loud rock concert: Put your outstretched hand over your mouth. You're not closing your mouth with your hand, you're leaving it open at about a 30 degree angle. Put your fingertips close to the ear of the person you want to talk to and, at a normal voice level (or just a little bit higher), 'bank shot' or 'angle' what you are saying into your hand and let it bounce into their ear. They'll hear you perfectly and you're not screaming into their eardrum.

He was a member of the band. They valued him highly. Later, he went on the road with a big country act running monitor sound, but he got tired of sleeping in a bunk on a bus and came home. He just wanted to see if he could do it.

The next guy I saw didn't know how to use a compressor very well and buried the lead singer in the mix, so she wouldn't distort the sound when she hit a loud passage. He got fired.
 

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As a player who has done a fair bit of live sound and runs a project studio where 99% of what you do is engineering let me try and balance the discussion a bit.While i can remember getting pissed off at our soundguy back in the 70s more than once Karma has gotten even w/me many times on the other side of the board.Some of my favorites are:everyone asking for "more me" in the monitors at the same time(and then complaining about the monitors being too loud seconds later.)The inevitable lead guitar player who refuses to trust that I will,in fact,turn him up for his solo even tho' he forgets where his solo begins 5 out of every 10 times.And of course no matter how many times some folks are reminded to bring and use fresh batteries......you guessed it!Having said all that,it's still a great rush to see a group of young kids rocking their asses off and getting an audience going while you sit at the board knowing you had a (very)small part in making it happen.The other side is once you've done sound a few times you will occasionally compliment a sound person when the band sounds good.
 

gilded

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There are plenty of reasons for the Sound to suck; physical limitations of the venue, PA equipment, Sound Guy, even the Band. I can forgive a lot of things if the sound guy pays attention to the entire performance and doesn't bury me in the mix.

About 3 months ago, I finally got around to listening to 3 recordings of my band, recorded from 'out front', where the audience was. The recordings were of performances that were engineered by our No. 1 sound guy over a couple of years. What did I hear? The keyboard player was buried in the mix and so was I (lead guitar player). On every recording, at three different gigs, from different places in the room, we were consistently buried in the mix.

What happened? The keyboard guy and I were either on mics or DI boxes and, when the band's sound level came up (inevitable), the only thing I can figure is that 'No. 1" wouldn't re-adjust the overall sound. He would spend his time talking to the facilities engineer instead of raising Keys and Lead Guitar up with the rest of the band.

If he'd left us low in the mix and kicked us up for the solos that would have been satisfactory. Didn't happen, though. It was almost like, "Hey Man, I just spent an hour and a half setting up my PA; time to relax!"

I feel bad, because he was and is a friend, but we don't use him anymore. We paid him about $2000.00 a year.
 
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