By Oscar Jordan

Anyone who performs in clubs knows all too well the trials and tribulations of getting a good live sound. The way you sound from venue to venue can change drastically and many artists feel powerless to do anything about it. From surly club soundmen to loud self-absorbed band members, there are many variables at work. A band can have the perfect onstage mix, but find out after the show that the house mix was weak. A singer can damage his voice because of poor stage monitors and later discover that the house mix was superb. It’s a never-ending struggle to be heard at your best.

With that in mind, Music Connection contacted both local and national performing artists from various corners of the music industry to pick their brains on this topic. We also chatted with soundmen from some of the coolest clubs in Los Angeles to get their side of the story. By the end of this article you’ll be armed with indispensable tips on how to improve the sound at your next gig.

Get Good Gear

Believe it or not the soundman isn’t a magician. Whether you’re a drummer, a vocalist, a horn player, whatever, musicians need good sounds to start with. You need good gear and you must know how to use it. Your rig should be tweaked properly in rehearsals to get a good sound. Tones and volume must work in the context of the band. The sounds you get in your mom’s garage will not work at stage volume in a club. You also need to know how to set up your rig quickly, dial in your tones at the drop of a hat and make smooth transitions between sounds. Most importantly, always be in tune. Even drums need to be tuned. Many times, lousy club sounds come from the band, not the soundman. That does not mean it’s necessary to have the most expensive gear in the world to sound good, but if you have crap going in, crap will come out.

Stanley Behrens is a virtuoso harp player, vocalist and sax player. As a former member of Canned Heat and a current member of the Chicago Blues Reunion and the L.A. Blues Alli-ance, Behrens offers a unique perspective in a career that has lasted over 30 years. “The most important thing to getting a good sound onstage is being able to get a good sound offstage,” says Behrens. “As far as harmonica players go, they rely so much on the equipment for their sound but they neglect the one main thing. If it doesn’t sound good coming out of your mouth, it’s not going to sound that great coming out of an amplifier.”

Have a Plan

Before arriving at your gig, plan ahead so there will be no problem articulating the band’s mix requirements to the soundman. Don’t bog him down with too much detail for every single song, but if you’re a three-guitar band with violin, keyboards, five backup singers and a kazoo, you might want to give him a heads-up. 

The same applies when performing solo with an acoustic guitar. Would you like a touch of reverb or a smidgeon of slapback? If you prefer a drier (non-affected) sound in the house mix, you should let him know that, as well. Bassists who use fuzz should inform the soundman so he won’t think something’s wrong with his monitors, and guitarists who use lots of time-based effects should tell the soundman so he won’t add more delay or reverb.

If you ever get the opportunity to perform at Safari Sam’s in Hollywood you’re more than likely going to meet soundman Michael Glines. He’s a former Capitol Records engineer and has been a soundman for clubs and festivals for nearly 15 years. Glines believes that the relationship between soundmen and performers should not be adversarial, but one of mutual respect and team work. 

“It’s always good to remember that your sound doesn’t work the same in every room,” says Glines. “That’s one thing that I can’t tell guys enough. They come in, they’ve dialed their sound in their bedroom and they think it’s going to sound exactly the same way in a room that’s completely different. They have to learn to adjust to the room. They can’t force the room to play to them. Listen to the sound guy. Let him adjust your volume and give you the best volume for the room. 

Glines knows that people like their sound and tone to be the way they want to hear it, “but sometimes it just hits the walls a little bit differently in the clubs. If a soundman gives suggestions like, ‘It’s a little painful on the highs or it’s a little muddy on the lows,’ you might want to listen to that advice.”

The Soundman is Your Buddy

The soundman is your connection to the audience. In fact, he needs to be your best buddy in the whole world. Do not get on his bad side. Even if he’s a jerk make sure that to greet him with a handshake and a smile. It won’t help you to get into an altercation with the guy who’s about to project your music to the public. Regardless of how much time you take to painstakingly craft your onstage sound, the soundmen have ultimate control over what the audience hears. If you make a friendly impression with him, he’s going to bring up the fader in the right places, instead of wandering outside to smoke a cigarette.

Jim Altman is the fret-burning lead guitarist for the bands the Sofa Kings and the Neil Young Tribute band the Neil Deal. He’s been interacting with L.A. club soundmen for many years and has more than his share of stories to tell. “As far as etiquette toward soundmen goes I try to kiss their ass because I realize they’re in charge,” admits Altman. “If you come at them with an attitude, you’re fucked.”

Altman says that if you’re making money on the gig, then it’s a great idea to tip the soundman. “They’ll love you if you tip them. The more they love you, the more they’ll do for you.” The musician says he usually doesn’t have trouble with soundmen. “If they tell me to turn down I turn down a little bit. I try to compromise without completely giving it all away.” 

Altman has had experiences, however, where he just couldn’t roll with the soundman’s flow. “There’s been a couple of times where I’ve gotten up onstage and they looked at my amp and said, ‘Hey, you gotta play really, really quiet!’ This is without them even hearing anything yet. I can’t play so quiet where the soundman has complete control over how loud I’m going to play. He doesn’t know my set and he doesn’t know my material. You gotta keep a little bit of bump (volume) for yourself. When they ask to hear your stage volume, don’t give them everything. Save a little for yourself.”

Volume

If there’s a single topic that will get a soundman and a performer in a hissy fit, it’s the subject of stage volume. Guitarists will tell you they need to get a good guitar volume so they can “Feel it,” and soundmen will tell you they need the onstage volume to be low so they can control it in the house. 

Balance is the key. If your stage volume is so loud that the soundman has to turn off the mic in front of your amp to balance the levels, then he has lost control of your band’s sound. Although soundmen are notorious for not boosting guitar solos or for allowing vocalists to be buried beneath bass frequencies, it’s imperative that performers focus on getting the best overall stage volume so the soundman can mix all the instruments as best he can.

In clubs that amplify all the gear, you and your band are usually the only ones who hear it. The audience hears your gear through the P.A. so there’s no need to push the volume to extremes. If you’re a guitarist and need to hear yourself better, try tilting your amp toward your head. If the sound of your amp is being pushed past the back of your knees, you won’t hear it as well. ask the soundman to put some guitar in the onstage monitors when you need to hear even more guitar.

Soundman Richard Herrera has worked at The Key Club on the Sunset Strip for the past three years. In that time he has mixed boatloads of bands and goes out of his way to create a win-win situation for everybody.

“Typically I tell the band that you don’t need to have your guitar or bass loud enough to fill up the room, because we have a P.A. to do that,” advises Herrera. “If they want more in the monitors we can crank the crap out of the monitors. When their guitar is so loud the people in the front row get blasted, they don’t hear anything else. Then it gets back to the sound guy that the sound sucked because all they heard was guitar the whole time. But it’s not our fault –– you’re standing in front of the guitar player who’s playing too loud.”

If you’ve played the Southern California blues circuit it goes without saying that Cozy’s Blues Club in Sherman Oaks needs no introduction. It’s a top-of-the-line club and soundman Tommy Wright has been helping performers shine in L.A. venues for over 30 years. 

“Musicians should have an idea about what to do as far as cranking up their amps,” says Wright. “Treble and reverb are very hard in a small room. For bassists, the low mid area can bury vocals something fierce, then the vocals have to get turned up over it. That’s when the distortion really starts to come into play”. 

Wright advises bands to go out to other shows and discover what they don’t like about certain sounds and apply that knowledge to their own situation. “My best suggestion to a lot of bands is ‘play to the room.’ If you’ve got a skinny room play skinny; if you’ve got a fat room, play fat. Musicians should just be involved in playing the music and delivering a good show. If they see the audience getting up and leaving in horror, then obviously something is wrong. But don’t be so concerned with what’s going on in the room. Be a lot concerned about how you’re playing your part.”

Communication

While you’re onstage performing there’s only so much you can control. Unfortunately for the performer, what the audience hears is a separate universe than what is heard onstage.

Your focus should be on your performance. Hearing a good onstage mix will assist you in putting on a great show. If you don’t hear what you need through the monitors, ask the soundman for it. Because soundmen aren’t psychic and have human emotions, you must communicate what you need without being an insensitive pain in the butt. Make the soundman your buddy. Do you need more vocals in the monitors? Would you like less reverb on the bass? You can get that. Just be cool.

“When asking for things during your show, whisper in the mic in a nice way,” suggests Michael Glines. “Don’t say over the microphone in front of 500 people, “The drums sound like shit!  Can you fucking turn ‘em up!” Whisper and be nice about it. Don’t be a crybaby and say, ‘I can’t hear myself!’ Don’t ask the crowd how it sounds. Don’t ask the guy standing right in front of the guitar amp what it sounds like. He can’t hear the vocals and it may sound fine 30 feet behind him. The sound guy is your best bet on what’s going to sound good. Don’t ask drunk people standing 10 feet away what it sounds like, either.”

“It all depends on if the soundman gives a s**t or not,” explains Tommy Wright. “I love what I do. It comes from the heart. What I do is a lot different than what a lot of mixing engineers do. I go off on a tangent to make sound its own entity. I want it to live on its own and grow another branch. Let the music breathe and do what it’s supposed to do.”  

Get Help

One of the best things a band or a performer can do is get some help while they’re onstage. Bands with larger budgets can afford to have someone listen to the house mix and give notes to the soundman. For bands on the lower end of the totem poll it’s always good to have a friend (who knows what the band should sound like) help the soundman out. Often the soundman is making creative choices about a band he has never heard. He’s making subjective decisions based on what he thinks will sound best at his venue. The soundman can use all the help he can get, even if he doesn’t think he does. Not only will your friend be able to tell the soundman that you don’t like the vocals so far up in the mix, he’ll also be able to help you load out. This is what friends are for.

“I really like it when bands have at least a friend or two who really know their sound,” explains Glines. “They should casually go over to the sound guy and say, ‘Hey, man, I really know these guys’ sound and they might like a little more of this and a little more of that.’  Do it in a casual way, because all sound guys have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. As a sound guy I get so many bands, I can only guess what will sound right. Once I get the basic blend up, it’s all comes down to my own personal preference. I might wet the vocals up more than they might like it. Unless someone tells me (in a non-hostile way), then I won’t know.”

The Key Club’s Richard Herrera has mixed feelings about a band’s friend’s input. “Sometimes it’s the most annoying thing ever and then sometimes it’s a good thing,” says Herrera. “It depends how they come across when they say it. A lot of times the first song during sound check is not going to sound the best, because I’m tweaking everything and trying to make it all come together. If I get a manager that comes up and tells me the guitar or keyboards are too loud, I say, ‘Dude!  I’m not even done yet!  Just wait!’” 

“But if they come in during the next song,” adds Herrera, “and they ask me to tweak something a little bit, that’s perfect. Typically when I do a band, I’ve never heard the band before. I don’t know what their sound is like. I just make them sound as good as I can. If you tip the sound guy a few bucks he’s going to wake up. If you’re doing sound for seven bands and a band comes by and gives me 20 bucks before they go on, I’m going to pay attention.”  

Focus on Your Performance

A soundman can sometimes make or break a show, but regardless of how inept your soundman is, the show must go on. As a performer you need to channel your energy to benefit the performance. It’s the one thing you have control over. Worrying about things you cannot control subtracts from your focus, performance and artistry. When all is said and done, audience members can forgive a bad house mix –– if the performance is inspired.      

“If you can get enough monitor to hear yourself sing, you can basically transcend all other aspects by performing for the people,” says Behrens. “I’ve seen situations where the sound was so bad and the singer was so good, they just stepped away from the microphone. They had the band be a little bit more dynamic and they sang that song straight to the people. Everybody in the room heard it perfectly. You gotta almost transcend the equipment. It’s gotta come out of your mouth first.”

Guitarist extraordinaire Joe Satriani is the industry leader in delivering maximum-strength instrumental rock guitar performances to the masses. With an amazing discography and as the founder of the highly successful G3 tours, he’s played on stages big and small all over the world.

“You can’t possibly know what’s going on in the house mix, admits Satriani. “That’s just one of those things that performers shouldn’t even think about. The audience will let you know. The sound guy who’s sitting in the perfect spot surrounded by two thousand people probably hears a great mix. The guy who’s yelling, ‘More guitar!’ bought the ticket that’s way off to the side and he can’t possibly hear everything.”

Satriani feels that “Concerts are rather archaic. You can’t possibly hear every instrument the right way. I don’t care if you’re going to the San Francisco Symphony or the Fillmore. Wherever you sit, that’s a unique mix. You can’t expect to hear every instrument in balance; it just doesn’t exist in the real world. The band has to forget about that and overcome those little things and keep their eye on the prize, which is to create a great evening for people.”

Be Appreciative 

After the show, always thank the soundman –– even if you think he’s retarded. Soundmen are people, too, and they like to hear they did a good job just as much as you do. If he did a truly great job, it’s cool to slip him a tip or buy him a beer. Even a “thank you” and a handshake will help him remember you the next time you play the venue. Hopefully he’ll have a positive memory and not think, “Oh no, here come the Ass Clowns.”