Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: PA balance
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 02:37:23 +0100

In <VA.000000c8.04c489e5 (@) cix.co.uk> on Thu, 03 Aug 2000 21:22:08 +0100, Chris Beeson <cbeeson (@) cix.co.uk> wrote:

>A particular example was a couple of sets by Dick Gaughan, where I found it difficult to hear the (vital) words above his guitar.

This is pretty worrying, Chris, thanks for raising it. On (presumably) another set, a couple of friends commented to me afterwards that the guitar was too quiet. I had no idea of either of these problems while I was playing :(

The difficulty for sound crews at festivals is that at most (like Cambridge) there is no time for sound checks and so much of the time the front-of-house engineer has no idea what the artist on stage should sound like and there is no time to consult. Most of them do a fine job under very difficult circumstances. But, as with any job, there are some who don't, and those of us who can't afford to have our own crew are at their mercy.

The artist on stage has no option but to trust the engineer and hope they have the experience to know what's required - all I have any control over is the monitor sound and only then when there is a separate sound board on the stage handling monitors and the monitor engineer is actually paying attention to what I need rather than reading the specs for whoever is on next.

Add to that the cruel fact that there are some people accusing themselves of being "sound engineers" who do not have the faintest idea of what to do with any instrument which does not have a built-in pickup and life for the poor old acoustic musician can become problematic. I don't think it unreasonable to expect that for events where acoustic music is likely to feature strongly the sound crews hired would have at least a nodding acquaintance with acoustic instruments and the aesthetics of acoustic music.

Incidentally, before anyone fires off the routine "why don't you?", the reason I do not have any internal pickups etc on my guitar is that I see no point in spending a vast sum of money on a fine instrument with a unique sound and then shoving a pickup into it thus making it sound like every other guitar with a pickup. Over the years I've tried almost every combination of guitar/ amplification and all of them colour the sound.

PA equipment these days is so good that a half-decent mic and a half-way experienced sound engineer with a half-decent pair of ears are well adequate for the job and I've worked with many such on all kinds of stages, from very large to very small, without problems.

And, so far as I'm aware, the reason people pay me money to play is because I sound like me; if they expect me to sound like someone else in order to accommodate the engineer, they're wasting their money on one of us.

Anyway, if I want to play something plugged in, I tend to go for the real thing, like a Strat and a large Marshall stack :)

--
Dick Gaughan

Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: PA balance (eg. Cambridge) and pickups (electric fiddles)
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 11:21:49 +0100

In <Yssi5.1035$82.64842 (@) news.dircon.co.uk> on Fri, 4 Aug 2000 06:25:10 +0100, "Ian & Hilda Dedic" <dedics (@) dircon.co.uk> wrote:

>And I do agree with Dick's comments about add-on pickups rarely giving sound as good as a fine acoustic instrument mic'd up properly -- so long as feedback doesn't rear its ugly head, which is somewhat less of a problem with a singer/guitarist than a ten-piece band.

Agreed. I'm not simply being awkward for the sake of it and whenever I play with bands etc, especially those with percussionists, I plug in. The fewer open mics with drummers around the better!

But for a solo performer, monitor feedback shouldn't be a problem at all unless it is someone who wants the monitors blasting at rock band level. Fortunately I don't; in spite of several prolonged escapades with rather loud lineups, my hearing is still pretty good :) And I know how to work mics so as to get maximum separation and signal levels.

Strange as it seems, most of the time I don't use monitors merely to hear myself. There is actually a good technical reason. Standing on stage, I am behind the main PA speakers and so what I'm hearing back from them tends to have greatly exaggerated bottom end, making for a very muddy sound on-stage, which I instinctively try to compensate for in singing and can seriously knacker my voice doing it. So I like to have the monitors with greatly reduced low frequencies on my vocal to counter this.

The bottom line is that PA is there to help us do our job properly for the people who have parted with hard-earned cash to hear us do it. Yes, we have to make adjustments to get the best out of it but if it gets in the way or demands too radical compensation from the musician then it is bad PA. Sound engineering is a highly skilled, specialised job and I have complete respect for those who have learned their craft. But I have worked with too many good sound crews who take their jobs seriously to make excuses for the bad ones who don't really have much clue about what they're doing and who don't know enough to care. Knowing how to twiddle knobs doth not an engineer make.

--
Dick Gaughan

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