This week being spring break, and since I am enjoying the sunshine and nice weather, (no I am not on vacation, and no I did not go down south). I decided that rather than type away, I would like to work on my tan. What follows below is an excerpt from the recommendations I made to a church client following a visit to their Sunday morning service.
Stage Presence or Stage presents
1. The band sounded great, but it took time to get the monitors right.
a. There is always this tension that exists between tech and talent about stage volume. Thankfully with the entire band (except Jeremy who was also singing) using “ears” the stage volume was really at a minimum.
b. Structured monitor checking. When using ears it is very difficult for the soundman to know what the musicians are hearing. My suggestion would be to have the soundman (or someone who can assist him) ask each musician what they want in their mix before the rehearsal starts. After the soundman has roughed in those levels on the soundboard the band should play through one song (unless it is a total disaster, don’t stop). After the song each musician in an orderly fashion should give the soundman direction as to how they would like their mix changed. The band should then play through two-three more songs before the musicians can make any additional requests. This forces the musicians to be precise in their monitor requests and also gives the soundman an opportunity to work on the house mix. After the two-three songs, each musician can once again in an orderly fashion ask for adjustments in their monitor mix. After this adjustment the musicians will have to live with the mix allowing the soundman to forget about monitors and only be concerned with the house mix. An additional note, the soundman should not adjust the master gain on any channel (except for an emergency) after the completion of the first song. All adjustments need to be made using the faders (for house sound) and the aux sends (for monitors). Assuming a pre-fade auxiliary send the levels of the monitors will then not change when the channel faders are moved.
c. Shield or no shield. As you may have noticed I am not a big fan of drum shields (yes, sometimes they are necessary) as it has been my experience that when the shield is removed the drummer begins to play with more finesse and stage levels begin to decrease. In a room the size of your space I would say that a shield is not necessary. In the drum mics 90% of what was being picked up was cymbals. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to look at mic placement, so there might be some improvement there, but overall I would say take the shield away.
Again most of what a soundman does and thus how he is perceived comes from his attitude toward the musicians. As I always say “Tech and Talent is explosive” make sure that the attitudes from both sides of the stage make the explosion a positive one!
