Better Front Sound

… you might find this useful

How to get a better front sound with your band

Please note the following information only really applies for gigs where everything is mike’d up and not for gigs using just your backline.

Why is it  easier  for a DJ to sound good with just  two CD players? Why is it  that a DJ just gets away with playing in an echoy room but the band sounds dreadful?

Spillage, that’s really the only word I would like to talk about here. I think it’s probably the most important word if you want to sound good in a live band-situation. Then again only a few bands seem to know about the consequences of spillage.

Spillage basically means that sound goes where it doesn’t belong. Let’s say you sing through a microphone and somebody plays the drums behind you. Is it only your singing that will go through your microphone? Of course not! In the same way,  some of your singing will go through the monitors and spill into the drum microphones. That’s bad because the drum microphones are equalized for drumming and the singing microphone is equalized for your voice. This, added the fact that all the microphones are in different places on stage, can create a ‘sound disaster’ on all the microphone channels.  I don’t want to go into the specific technical details here. The important thing is that there is nothing that the sound engineer can do to prevent this happening without the co-operation of the band members. In a studio you would just  put everyone into separate rooms, but what would that look like on a stage?

Another problem! You play with your band in a live situation where everything is mike’d up. What happens if somebody switches off the front sound system? Will your band really be switched off completely too? Not at all! Your backline, your drum kit and your monitoring will still be heard more or less loud depending on the size of the room. Once you switch your pa back on? Guess what? Spillage! The sound on stage which is mixed and equalized for the musicians, will mix up with the front sound and the best sound man in the world can’t help you with this problem. It really can sound bad when this happens.

What’s the solution? The solution is your own attitude. You have to keep your stage volume down to minimize spillage. Everybody in your band needs to do this. Let the pa do the work for you. It really helps if the guitarist points his speaker where only he and the band can hear it and not the audience. Yes, you heard me right. Do not point it towards the front! Did you really think all the guitar speaker cabinets on stage are working when you see a big act playing somewhere on a big stage? In most cases they are dummies, just decoration. Often the real speaker is pointed towards the back of the stage somewhere in a corner and the musician can hear himself through his wedge monitor which is pointed towards him and not the audience. Last but not least the drums, they really can ruin a nice front sound. Sometimes you can see a plexyglass shield around the drums for that very reason at big concerts. Try to keep the volume of your drums down as much as you can while still feeling comfortable. You only play louder if everybody else plays louder and go down with your part as soon as the loud bit is over. Do all this and it will make a tremendous difference to your front sound. The sad thing is: You will never hear it yourself. Good luck!

Why is it always easier to sound good for a DJ with just two CD players? Because there is no spillage with a CD player.