[Dixielandjazz] Hey, Sounds Good To Me

[billsharp]

One experience that still prickles my skin to think about occurred 
during  a Sacramento Jazz Festival appearance of Pearl Django, a string 
group that, when they play in smaller venues, use their own 
amplification and know how to balance their sound perfectly.  They use 
just slight enough amplification to gently lift the sound into the 
room.

The "prickling" occurred when they played under a huge tent at Cal 
Expo.  They themselves had the volume adjusted perfectly onstage to 
fill up half of the tent, sounding as "acoustic' as possible.   But 
then the sound guy came aboard.  As he began turning up the volume our 
group moved from the front row to about the 10th, then to the 20th, 
then finally to standing outside the tent in the back, where it was 
still too loud. Not just  loud, but way too loud.

I said to myself, "This is ridiculous", I'm going to , in as nice a way 
as possible, ask him to reconsider his volume levels.   When I did so, 
his response was, "I like it."

  There you go--as far as the attitude of many sound men goes - - -as 
long as it suits them, the hell with rest of the world.  This seems to 
be the apparent rule for those "kings" of the sound boards.  Serfs back 
off!  Apparently they suffer from "little knob syndrome", and "my amp 
makes a bigger sound than yours."

One problem also comes, I think, from having such young people mixing 
sound who haven't heard OKOm , then that the very first thing they do 
is the pump up the drums and bass.  Especially the bass.

Also there's a lot of men running the action at the soundboard.  
Perhaps it's just a genetic thing - - - --Remember - -men never take or 
ask for directions once they're "behind the wheel".  (tongue-in-cheek 
for that last remark)

When Festivals can't hire enough truly qualified personnel to run each 
individual sound board, then I've always thought that they should 
perhaps have a coulple of "Sound Sheriffs" ( and deputies) who patrol 
the streets of Loredo, sticking their heads into various venues and 
having the over-riding authority to immediately make adjustments to any 
poorly balanced sound system.