Re: [Harp-L] passive agressive sound guys

["Tim Moyer" <wmharps@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

fjm wrote:
> So who's the customer here?  The band and the 
> venue or the sound person? 

I recently played a gig as a sideman with a professional gigging act 
in a medium sized venue (~1000) with its own sound reinforcement and 
sound man (who doubles as the DJ during breaks).  We arrived and set 
up, and the only one running "live" sound on stage was the 
guitarist, who plays through a Blues DeVille 2x12.  The rest of us --
 acoustic guitar, bass, and myself -- ran straight to the board 
without amplification on stage, and the drummer's kit has built-in 
mics.  This is a really nice setup because the stage volume is low, 
and we were all using in-ear monitors so the mix was the same no 
matter where you went on stage, and you could control it yourself 
from a monitor mixer on stage.  All the sound guy had to do was 
watch the show and keep the sound balanced in the room.  

I was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that I could 
hear everything I was doing.  I played well at a relatively low 
level of "exertion" so I didn't choke notes from trying to play loud 
enough to hear myself.  I ran my microtrack recorder right next to 
the sound board, so it heard what the sound man heard.  

And it was a disaster.  Throughout most of the recording you can't 
even tell there's a harmonica on stage, though I was basically 
filling the keyboard players spot with fills and lots of accordion-
type stuff through a harmonizer and chorus).  This is a fairly set 
act, and there are only a few places throughout the night where I 
get solos, usually trading fours or eights with the guitar.  The 
only time you could hear me at all were during these solos, where I 
swell to ear-splitting volume over the top of everything else, 
usually a bar or two into my solo.  The guitar is mixed similarly, 
though this is a very guitar-centric band.  Most of the time, all 
you can hear is the main vocal (rarely the harmonies), bass and kick 
drum.  

The only good thing about all this is that the guys I was playing 
with heard me through their monitors, and were very happy with what 
I did.  They didn't know until they were on their way home, 
listening to their DAT recordings, how bad things sounded.  I'm glad 
nothing spoiled the good time while we were having it.  

I think it was Shakespeare who wrote, 'The first thing we do, let's 
kill all the sound men...'

-tim