Working With The Sound System

by chris
(philippines)

Hi there, I've had a horrible experience with live sound.. I'm in a rock band..

We were practicing just fine in the studio.. but when we actually played a gig on this local bar.. we totally sucked, we played the song right, but the output was just unpleasing .. everything was unbalanced..

how do we fix our 'live' sound?..

like dealing with proper volumes.. and getting rid of feedback..


Answer

There are certainly many things to consider when playing live. How big was this bar? Were your instruments miked up and was there a sound engineer taking care of the sound at the gig?

If you didn't mike anything up you need to be careful with amplifier volume. It needs to be just loud enough to go over the drums, but still stay at a good level for the show. Have the singer or somebody knowledgeable walk around the bar to listen if any instrument is too loud. Then adjust the amplifiers accordingly.

That's the best way to adjust levels if you are not working with a decent p.a. system. I.e. if you only have a speaker system for the vocals, nothing else.

Feedback is caused when a microphone is too loud and feeds back into the speaker system, creating a continuous screeching feedback loop. If you are using monitors on stage, the best way to get rid of this is by lowering the level of the microphones in the monitors.

Also, try pointing all microphones away from the speakers and if you are you should stand behind the main stage speakers if possible to reduce feedback.

Also, if you have monitors on stage and you think you sucked because the stage sound was bad, that doesn't mean that the sound to the audience was bad.

Hope this helps. Make a comment on the page if you have any further questions.