Impressive PA miracle

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For the first time since Dec 2019 my band played it’s first gig at the weekend at a local charity music festival.  There were 11 (quite different) bands on the main stage throughout the day/night.  

The sound/ PA guys must have had magic powers or something. Every single band sounded brilliant from the first note: great (appropriate) volume levels with excellent balance and clarity. The monitoring was really clear as well.  As far as I saw/experienced none of the bands even got the chance to do a line check before playing, let alone a proper sound check earlier in the day.

So how the bloody hell did they do it?  We all know that guitarists using very different equipment, playing very different styles at differing volumes can be wildly at odds with each other. I just can’t understand how they reigned us all in and made everyone sound so good. Some sort of volume limiting technology or just a shed load of experience?

I don’t really have any experience setting up PA stuff but it was very impressive.
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Comments

  • A proper sound engineer is worth their weight in unobtainium !
    This one goes to eleven

    Trading feedback here
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  • Perhaps they were actual musicians as well, listening instead of looking at the dials...
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  • maharg101 said:
    A proper sound engineer is worth their weight in unobtainium !
    True dat.

    I have a mate who engineers, he even did the last Snarky Puppy tour. What he can do is simply mind boggling to me. Every gig I've attended where he's been on the desk has been absolutely flawless.
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  • maltingsaudiomaltingsaudio Frets: 3098
    edited September 2021
    Sometimes the musicians are part of the solution sometimes part of the problem! Though a shared back line certainly helps. And experience. And knowing your kit and what it can do,inside out.

    www.maltingsaudio.co.uk
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  • Sometimes the musicians are part of the solution sometimes part of the problem! Though a shared back line certainly helps. And experience. And knowing your kit and what it can do,inside out.

    Well that was what shocked me, everyone switched over their gear in a frantic 15 minute turnaround window between bands. Marshall’s (covers/ me), fender twins (disco/funk), black star (punk) Cornell (blues) amps among many others, keyboards, acoustic guitars. They just handled everyone so well. Hats off to them. 

    And I still can’t understand how they guessed the volume levels without ever hearing the band play anything beforehand. Just experience I guess and the guys doing the sound were definitely musicians themselves.

    The only thing that seemed to be shared was the drum kit.
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  • It sounds like a standard festival to me, it’s down to experience and a good crew. The FOH engineer will know what’s coming up so will have an idea of how it should sound and adjust accordingly refining the mix as he/she goes. 

    The more you do it the more you get a feel for it,  
    www.maltingsaudio.co.uk
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  • Maybe it's always sounded good but you've only ever heard it from the band perspective behind the speakers. 
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  • I used to that sort of thing all the time. I remember a particularly busy Saturday at Leeds Poly, 12 inexperienced bands in 9 hours with a tray (24 cans) of Colt 45 as our rider. Those were the days.
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  • ESBlondeESBlonde Frets: 3576
    At festivals I tended to use mixer channels designated to each input for the whole show, so the kit might have 1-10 then bass x2, guitar x 4, keys x6 etc. That way once the basics are dialled in you can concentrate on whatever is new or problematic (violin/acoustic guitar?) while the remainder is sort of usable. Refinement then happens pretty quick. Experienced performers without ego helps enormously.
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    ESBlonde said:
    At festivals I tended to use mixer channels designated to each input for the whole show, so the kit might have 1-10 then bass x2, guitar x 4, keys x6 etc. That way once the basics are dialled in you can concentrate on whatever is new or problematic (violin/acoustic guitar?) while the remainder is sort of usable. Refinement then happens pretty quick. Experienced performers without ego helps enormously.
    I'm the same, Left to right it's Drums, then bass, then guitars, then keys , then anything like brass  / Bavarian nose flute etc then lastly vocals ... if the lead vox is on a radio mic  I devote 2 channels to it, one for the radio mic and one for a spare 58 set up for when the batteries die or there's too much interference to use it. 

    Then mix wise I'm working right to left, get the vocals up first because even people who know nothing about music know when they can't hear the vocal. So I get that up, then refine keys, guitars and bass before the drums. 
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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