Monday, June 05, 2006
Sound Booth Tales - Strings - A Pakistani Band
The act of Sound engineering for a concert is a thankless job. If everything goes well nobody notices you but if something goes wrong you take all the hit. That's a lot stick with no carrot.
The standard retorts may range from "It was too loud or too low" to the more interesting "They played quite well but we just couldn't hear anything" or to the more sophisticated "I wish they could just fix that buzz on the bass guitar".
What does it take to crack the code and have a spectacular concert with no sound issues? Lets have a look.
Here are my memoirs from a concert on June 3rd '06 where I helped with the sounds.
No guarantees on whether anybody will learn anything from it but it was a fun experience and I wanted to share it with junta.
*******************Warning!! Long Post*********************
Strings is a famous Pakistani Sufi Rock Band recently received MTV awards and is on their US tour. Last Sunday they played in Oakland, CA at a symphony hall.
Farhan a good friend of mine invited me to help out with sounds. This was a concert in which he was doing the opening act as a part of the band called "Sofia's Brazil". It's kinda funny as a name and has to be said twice to avoid confusions. The band consisted of 2 guitarist, a bass guitarist and a drummer. Hanzel, the lead guitarist, a Stanford guy (forget his name) rhythm guitarist, Farhan on the bass and Nell, the drummer originally from Philippines. Lead singer was Anand who sings for Pallavi the famous light music band in the bay area.
The hall is very interesting tall cylindrical shape. Imagine the stage is a rectangular and sticks out tangential to the cylindrical hall. This hall would have been perfect for a symphony concert with no mics seating about 1100 people. Lots of natural reverb with long reverberation time (RT). Lots of high frequency presence all over but basically muddy in the low end. So I walked in with the strategy of using only plate reverb for the vocals with very short RT.
The sound gear was pretty good with lots of power, obviously overkill for the hall. Dual mixers with splitter snakes, standard for big gigs like this. Monitor mixer on side of the stage with separate effects. Main mixer in the middle of the cylindrical hall with nice RANE EQ and TC effects box. The main sounds guy was kind enough to let me handle the mixer from start.
Plan was to do the basic sounds on the opening act (4 songs) and then move on to Strings band once they arrive at 2:30. Sound check began at 2:00 PM as promised. Instrument set up took until 2:30 PM and we were told at that time that Strings band were running late and we had time till 3:30PM and we all heaved a sigh of relief.
Getting individual levels right just on the monitor mix took until 3:00PM. When we opened the main sounds, I was rather disappointed with the mix. Very muddy all over. Had to tweak EQ on all channels but had to be done without losing tonal quality. All this had to done assuming the audience walks in to absorb enough sound. Ofcourse, final tweaking happens with real audience.
Anand had a nice high-mid voice so all I had to do was cut the 250Hz and boost some sibilance to get his presence. Basically got around to getting definition on every instrument except bass. This had to be done by lowering the onstage amp levels and we barely got it set. Farhan and me walked out to get some McDee's drink and apple pie.
Strings band walked in late at 4:30 PM PST (Pakistan Standard Time I guess). The setup luckily was similar in instruments 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 drummer and a lead vocal. But we needed 2 extra mics since the three guitarists would sing parts as well. Little did I know how different the setup was until later.
The drummer was really tight we started with kick made sure he was happy with it with the oomph and he was. The kit was a live Tama kit with 2 toms, a floor tom and HH and overhead. A standard acoustic setup. The ringing on the snare with bass guitar was annoying but again we needed to cut the on stage bass volume to fix this.
The Strings band was really easy to work with. The lead guitarist was pretty good and the instrument had a lot of clarity right from the beginning. The distortion tone was the problem on the second guitarist but once he changed it he was able to enjoy his playing himself. The dude had a nice wireless pickup on the guitar. The bass guitar was again a problem to get clarity on. Had to cut 20dB at 50Hz avoid any clash with kick and boost just a tad at around 80 and notch a little at 400 and 4K and then cut the level way down. It was quite a task to get some rounding and definition but in the end we had a nice story to tell. The vocalist had a really deeeeep voice and hence the EQ I had for Anand on the mics didn't work. Had to boost some presence at 8K to make him warm along with the plate reverb.
It was 5:45 (show supposed to start at 5:30) we were still fine tuning with several songs. I was told suddenly that there was another act added before Sofia's Brazil. It was 2 karaoke rap songs by some young composer dude. 2 difft CDs but there was no way to hook it up so that he can sing over it because he needs to hear it in the monitors (probably doesn't matter that much for rap songs but then I'm digressing :) ). There was only one CD player and that was next to the main mixer. We luckily had enough room in the snake to accommodate the routing back and we could play the CD and he could hear it in the monitors.
Show started at 6:30 the 2 rap songs were uneventful. Sofia's Brazil lots of catastrophe. Suddenly all feedback problems in the world happens on the lead guitarist. Level too low and any boosting had high feedback. The 2nd guitarist was way too loud and cutting him too much would mean complete emptiness. Drums was okay but far from tight. Bass was muddy but got better once I got around to fighting the major fires. Anand's voice saved the band. I was feeling a lot of remorse since all the time spent on tuning the sounds to the opening act was wasted with the time spent to tune it to Strings band. There wasn't enough time to go back to opening act setting in while fighting fire.
Strings started with a bang. The sound was really just fine and was really tuned to the output from the instruments. The singer was really getting the audience involved making sure their time is worth it which brought everybody to the play ground. The first half was really fun riding the fader with the lead guitarist. I decided my job was over at the break and headed right back home to spend some quality family time. I hope the rest of the concert went okay.
Now, does anybody care what the sound guy thinks?
The act of Sound engineering for a concert is a thankless job. If everything goes well nobody notices you but if something goes wrong you take all the hit. That's a lot stick with no carrot.
The standard retorts may range from "It was too loud or too low" to the more interesting "They played quite well but we just couldn't hear anything" or to the more sophisticated "I wish they could just fix that buzz on the bass guitar".
What does it take to crack the code and have a spectacular concert with no sound issues? Lets have a look.
Here are my memoirs from a concert on June 3rd '06 where I helped with the sounds.
No guarantees on whether anybody will learn anything from it but it was a fun experience and I wanted to share it with junta.
*******************Warning!! Long Post*********************
Strings is a famous Pakistani Sufi Rock Band recently received MTV awards and is on their US tour. Last Sunday they played in Oakland, CA at a symphony hall.
Farhan a good friend of mine invited me to help out with sounds. This was a concert in which he was doing the opening act as a part of the band called "Sofia's Brazil". It's kinda funny as a name and has to be said twice to avoid confusions. The band consisted of 2 guitarist, a bass guitarist and a drummer. Hanzel, the lead guitarist, a Stanford guy (forget his name) rhythm guitarist, Farhan on the bass and Nell, the drummer originally from Philippines. Lead singer was Anand who sings for Pallavi the famous light music band in the bay area.
The hall is very interesting tall cylindrical shape. Imagine the stage is a rectangular and sticks out tangential to the cylindrical hall. This hall would have been perfect for a symphony concert with no mics seating about 1100 people. Lots of natural reverb with long reverberation time (RT). Lots of high frequency presence all over but basically muddy in the low end. So I walked in with the strategy of using only plate reverb for the vocals with very short RT.
The sound gear was pretty good with lots of power, obviously overkill for the hall. Dual mixers with splitter snakes, standard for big gigs like this. Monitor mixer on side of the stage with separate effects. Main mixer in the middle of the cylindrical hall with nice RANE EQ and TC effects box. The main sounds guy was kind enough to let me handle the mixer from start.
Plan was to do the basic sounds on the opening act (4 songs) and then move on to Strings band once they arrive at 2:30. Sound check began at 2:00 PM as promised. Instrument set up took until 2:30 PM and we were told at that time that Strings band were running late and we had time till 3:30PM and we all heaved a sigh of relief.
Getting individual levels right just on the monitor mix took until 3:00PM. When we opened the main sounds, I was rather disappointed with the mix. Very muddy all over. Had to tweak EQ on all channels but had to be done without losing tonal quality. All this had to done assuming the audience walks in to absorb enough sound. Ofcourse, final tweaking happens with real audience.
Anand had a nice high-mid voice so all I had to do was cut the 250Hz and boost some sibilance to get his presence. Basically got around to getting definition on every instrument except bass. This had to be done by lowering the onstage amp levels and we barely got it set. Farhan and me walked out to get some McDee's drink and apple pie.
Strings band walked in late at 4:30 PM PST (Pakistan Standard Time I guess). The setup luckily was similar in instruments 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 drummer and a lead vocal. But we needed 2 extra mics since the three guitarists would sing parts as well. Little did I know how different the setup was until later.
The drummer was really tight we started with kick made sure he was happy with it with the oomph and he was. The kit was a live Tama kit with 2 toms, a floor tom and HH and overhead. A standard acoustic setup. The ringing on the snare with bass guitar was annoying but again we needed to cut the on stage bass volume to fix this.
The Strings band was really easy to work with. The lead guitarist was pretty good and the instrument had a lot of clarity right from the beginning. The distortion tone was the problem on the second guitarist but once he changed it he was able to enjoy his playing himself. The dude had a nice wireless pickup on the guitar. The bass guitar was again a problem to get clarity on. Had to cut 20dB at 50Hz avoid any clash with kick and boost just a tad at around 80 and notch a little at 400 and 4K and then cut the level way down. It was quite a task to get some rounding and definition but in the end we had a nice story to tell. The vocalist had a really deeeeep voice and hence the EQ I had for Anand on the mics didn't work. Had to boost some presence at 8K to make him warm along with the plate reverb.
It was 5:45 (show supposed to start at 5:30) we were still fine tuning with several songs. I was told suddenly that there was another act added before Sofia's Brazil. It was 2 karaoke rap songs by some young composer dude. 2 difft CDs but there was no way to hook it up so that he can sing over it because he needs to hear it in the monitors (probably doesn't matter that much for rap songs but then I'm digressing :) ). There was only one CD player and that was next to the main mixer. We luckily had enough room in the snake to accommodate the routing back and we could play the CD and he could hear it in the monitors.
Show started at 6:30 the 2 rap songs were uneventful. Sofia's Brazil lots of catastrophe. Suddenly all feedback problems in the world happens on the lead guitarist. Level too low and any boosting had high feedback. The 2nd guitarist was way too loud and cutting him too much would mean complete emptiness. Drums was okay but far from tight. Bass was muddy but got better once I got around to fighting the major fires. Anand's voice saved the band. I was feeling a lot of remorse since all the time spent on tuning the sounds to the opening act was wasted with the time spent to tune it to Strings band. There wasn't enough time to go back to opening act setting in while fighting fire.
Strings started with a bang. The sound was really just fine and was really tuned to the output from the instruments. The singer was really getting the audience involved making sure their time is worth it which brought everybody to the play ground. The first half was really fun riding the fader with the lead guitarist. I decided my job was over at the break and headed right back home to spend some quality family time. I hope the rest of the concert went okay.
Now, does anybody care what the sound guy thinks?
