Live Sound 101: 5 Tips to a Great Sounding Performance

Welcome to the first blog by The Tone Tech!

I have decades of experience in live performance, mainly within the loud rock settings and I have started this blog to help musicians and non- professional teams (such as Worship Teams and Community Groups) get a hot sound at performance. Feel free to comment and debate, I am not professing to be the final authority however these tips are the ones that have helped me over the years  to get that amazing live sound we all strive for.

Tip 1: Maintain Your Instruments

Ok, I know this sounds obvious, but even today I was in a performance where the guitarist complains about how his guitar sounds- but his strings are green!

Now, I'll have future posts on guitar, bass, keyboard and drum maintenance but in the meantime, by maintaining instruments I mean change those strings well before they are green and gummy, replace the delaminated drum head or fix that strap button on your bass that always falls out. If you don't have the cash to change parts right now you are better off borrowing someone else's gear than using half working gear as a good performance ultimately comes down to your confidence. Which leads me to my next point.....

Tip 2: Play Like Its Your Last Gig Ever

It was said about Midnight Oil that even from their first show they played like it was their last- but what does that even mean? It means CONFIDENCE. Expression and art is only heard when your voice is actually used- and a performance with passion carries a lot more value than one with barely any. We've all seen the kids in High School that are in a band because they've been pressured into it, or they just don't feel ready to be playing live- its memorable but only in a post traumatic stress disorder way!

For the guitarists, this means digging into every note and making it count, drummers actually hit the drums and singers sing like there's no one in the room. Whether your instrument is stringed, skinned or natural (ie, voice) the tone of the instrument differs considerable when used with some gusto- so make your instrument work for you and bring out those confident sounds! 

Some of the most popular singers and musicians in the world aren't technically the best at their at their craft, but because they've mastered the art of self-expression their ability to tell a story overwhelms their lack of musical ability.

Tip 3: Reduce Your Stage Noise

The biggest issue with "sound reinforcement" (the technical name for live sound engineering, or "what the sound guy does") is too much stage noise. I am the first to admit that there's nothing that sounds as good as a tube amp cranked up to its sweet spot (hey, I'm guilty of it!), but the problem with noisy amps and drums is they interfere with mikes that the sound guy does not necessarily want them in. Also depending on the staging material, you can end up with a real 'boom' occurring if those speaker cabs are too pumping (especially at the lower frequencies) and they end up resonating on the stage structure, turning the stage into part of the speaker.

There are a few ways you can reduce the stage noise. Firstly (and most obviously) you can turn the amps down. Not my favourite option, but it works none the less. 

You can direct speaker boxes so they are set up as fold backs but leave the mikes in place to let your sound guy run them through front of house. The easiest way to do this in a small venue is to tilt the speaker cabinets back on the side of stage. In the case of larger venues, pop them up on the drum riser (which also stops sound transmission into the staging structure). This does not have a total effect of reducing stage noise, but it does tend to force guitarists to turn down as the 130dB is no longer directed from their Marshall 1960A cab to the audience but directly to their own face! 

My preferred option (especially for houses of worship) is to have the guitarists setup their amps in another room off to the side of stage, crank them as much as they like and mike them up! Now this may result in a long cable run (more on that in other blogs) but you will notice a significant improvement in both individual guitar tone and overall mix down sound due to the amp running at its sweet spot but there being only as much stage sound as each musician can handle, depending on the number of fold back channels available.

The other option is to run all the guitars through amp simulators (such as Fractal's AxeFx 2), this will result in a massive reduction in stage noise and a lot more portability as the weight of the unit is offset by how much lighter your wallet will be (basic units start at $800, where professional grade units like the AxeFx2 is closer to the $2,700). I will discuss the issue of amp profilers, modellers and simulators in detail at later posts.

Tip 4: Learn a New Skill and Apply It

Our society technology is rapidly changing with new technologies always available for you to get one up on the next guy. Now while I think it's a satisfies the nerd in all of us, the problem with this is you won't have pockets deep enough to keep up, you'll always be outdone by somebody else and you probably won't have your gear long enough to become a master of it. The biggest issue I have found with a lot of brand new technology is quite often you are sacrificing tone for convenience. 

Like many things in life there becomes a whole lot of armchair experts who never actually apply anything that they seem to know an awful lot about: the problem being, often there's a big difference between the theoretical and the real world. What works in the studio or the lounge room doesn't always work on stage. 

So the best thing to do to utilise this tip? Get some advice or get some new gear and try it out for yourself! Be prepared to experiment with different microphones and positioning, and give it all a go during set-up or sound check, refining it a little each show.  See for yourself what difference a shorter cable run will make. Try your amp miked up at lower volume and see if you can actually hear a difference. Even modify how you play your instrument (such as trying a difference pick or playing position) and see if that will make a difference.  

The point of this tip is simple: if you can't hear a major difference quite often the average person won't either; but quite often a great tone is the sum of all the better-than-average parts. 

Basically get educated and put it into practice, but don't be in too much of hurry to part with your money. 

Tip 5: Train Your Sound Guy to be Loud and Good

As they say this is where the rubber hits the road. I'll have more on sound mixing in other blogs but this is where a little bit of theory can go along way. 

There's a concept in sound call the inverse square law. Basically it means the closer the sound source the louder it can appear. This is useful to the sound audio engineer because front of house speakers tend to always be closer to the audience than the stage foldbacks. 

Assuming first of all of the mix is done kind of okay, and the venue has its room rumbles eq'd out, it is possible to drown out any muddiness coming off the stage by having a comfortably loud front of house mix. 

Now this is when free apps come in handy. Grab a sound level meter app from the App Store, and check the sound level coming through from the front row. Someone with good normal hearing should be able to listen to music comfortably in the range of 96 to 98 DB without complaining that it's too loud. Pub or rock venues usually get away with pumping up the volume to about 105 dB.   When mixing at church I normally sit around the 92 dB measured at the desk. 

This bit needs to be understood though: if you have feed back or frequencies reverberating anything even over 85 DB will become very annoying for the audience! And if its too loud your sound guy or your band will either be target practice for beer missiles, or the venue will be empty! 

I'll discuss feedback and EQ in a further blog, at this stage is just important that you just learn how to roll out the frequencies that cause rumbles and feedback, any issues in the mix itself will be generally forgiven if it 'feels' good to listen to. Most novice sound guys do not need to be told to turn it up, but you'll be surprised how often I need to tell guys that have been mixing "for ages" that the muddiness will be fixed if they simply turn up the front of house!

So there you go- welcome to my blog you have just survived the first 5 tips on finding great tone live. Feel free to leave a comment, and let me know if there's anything you'd like discussed in future blogs. 

Thanks for reading and stay awesome!