[Dixielandjazz] A Musician Sounds Off

[Robert S. Ringwald]

What are monitors for?  Of course they are so that the musicians can hear 
other musicians, and sometimes themselves while playing music on stage.

Why is it that so many sound men cannot grasp this simple fact?

For instance, when you are playing on a big stage, often you cannot hear the 
musician on the other end of the stage.  This is especially true for a 
rhythm player when the musicians (horn players) are facing away from you. 
If you hear them at all, you hear their sound bouncing back a split second 
later off of the back wall.  Thus, you need monitors so that you can hear 
them as they actually play the notes.

If you can't, you are reacting way too late to what they play because you 
are hearing them late, or maybe not hearing them at all.

So, often, what does a sound man do?  Say I am playing on one end of the 
stage and the trombone player is at the other end.  I want to hear the 
trombone player.

But, the sound man puts my piano into my mix.  I can already hear the piano. 
If not, I can hear it a little and need just a little reinforcement in the 
monitor.

But, hear the trombone at the other end of the stage?  No way.  That somehow 
is a no-no.

I cannot tell you how many sound men I have told this to and they just don't 
get it.

here is another one.  I am playing piano and have a separate vocal mic for 
singing and announcing.  There is no horn near by so there is no reason to 
turn down my mic.  But, knob-happy, power-hungry sound men cannot get the 
mics set and leave them alone.  He has to twiddle with all them pretty 
knobs.  I start to sing and my mic is off.  Either the sound man doesn't 
know which mic I am using, or someone comes up to talk to him at that moment 
and he is oblivious to the fact that the piano player is singing and his mic 
is turned off.

One of the bands I work in is A comedy/Jazz band.  All of us in the band 
deliver lines on the mic.  Any one of us can deliver a line at any time.  We 
tell the sound man, "Don't turn off anyone's mic during our performance."

What happens?  We are doing a comedy bit, someone delivers the punch line 
and his mic is off and the gag is lost.

Here is another one.  A sound man in a room that already is pretty live, 
turns on the reverb.  Why?  Because it is there and he wants to twiddle. 
Thus the music is too muddy because he is doubling the echo in the room.

What, got reverb on the system and not use it???

There is just a few things.  I have many more, as I'm sure do the other 
musicians on the List.

- --Bob Ringwald K6YBV
530/642-9551
916/806-9551 Cell
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band