Hi there!
We just had our second gig, it went really well and we hope we've won some new fans ;D
However, our singer wants some help with his voice. Basically, his voice sounds great, but he just feels that it might not be very strong (ie. loud!). This is especially true when performing live, where it can get lost in the mix.
Does anyone have any tips/ideas? I know sound mixing is very hard to get right! He was interested in somehow using equipment to "boost" his voice and wondered if a a vocal booster of some kind would be useful, whether "preamps" are best or signal boosters or even if an overdrive pedal would work?
Thanks all!
Stella
x
Here is a friend of mine named Tim Padrick. He has owned his own sound company for over 30 years. I am sure he  will not mind me showing you his site. Look at the pictures of some of the gigs he's run sound for. He knows what he's doing.
Anyway, he once said "A 40,000 Watt PA system can easily be drowned out by 100 Watt guitar amps"
Your stage sound is too loud. Turn those amps down a little. Loud is not good. Loud is loud. If you can discipline yourselves to come down, then you will get QUALITY sound and you will be able to hear the vocals clearly.
Here's Tim's site. He has some pointers and tips about getting a good sound that may help your band. He is a great guy who is glad to answer questions. Make sure to read a few of his Rants.
And while I am no expert, I have my own band and PA. We get compliments for our great sound all the time. We are very careful to get a good mix.
What kind of PA do you have (Mixer, Amps, Speakers)? You may just have a very underpowered system. But more likely, you're playing too loud. And there's no fix for that.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
How about EQ, Wes? Don't you have to make some space for the vocals to live in? I've been doing some basic recording and find this to help when trying to separate the guitars, but I haven't worked with vocals yet.
Slothrob
That is an excellent question.
I know almost nothing about recording. The little I know about live sound is from study, and playing hundreds of gigs with my own PA. I am far from an expert.
In live situations, the ideal settings on a EQ are flat. You do not want to boost or cut frequencies. For the voice you want to get the most natural sound possible. But it doesn't work like that in the real world. Every venue has it's own sound characteristics. The size, shape, materials all affect the sound.
When we set up at a club we "ring" out the system. This allows us to get maximum volume without feedback. It is not really difficult. We start with the monitors, they feedback much more easily than the front of house speakers (aiming back at a wall normally). We set the monitor EQ flat and slowly turn up the volume until we hear the beginnings of feedback. A great trick I learned from Tim Padrick was to cup and put your open hands about 2 inches from the microphones. This will induce feedback. We try to identify the particular frequency that is feeding-back. We cut this frequency slightly and turn up the volume a little more. We go through this several times until we can get sufficient volume without feedback. Then we go through the same process with the front of house speakers. You do not have near as much problem with feedback on these.
At this point I like to play a good CD through the system. Dark Side of the Moon is a favorite with soundpeople. It is a very well recorded album that covers the full range of sound. Many soundpeople swear by Steely Dan albums. Then I will walk all around the club and listen. If I think it needs more Bass, I might boost the bass a little on the EQ. This also gives me a good idea how loud our vocals are going to be.
We then play a song or soundcheck. We carefully adjust the volume of our instruments and make sure the vocals can be clearly heard on top. We always start out quiet. As the night goes by you always go up on the sound. It just happens everytime. So we might have to tweak the PA a few times.
As for the seperation you talked about, you are correct. We don't have much problem there. It is just guitar, bass, and drums. We have been playing together a long time and have worked that out. I pretty much use the same tone settings on my amp all the time. I will tweak it for certain songs. I pretty much have every song memorized. I know my amp settings, and which pickup and tone settings I use on guitar. My bass player has all his stuff memorized too. We don't really talk about it, we have just figured it out over time.
One last thing and my novel is over. I used to wonder why they called it an Equalizer. What is meant is that you want all the frequencies to feedback at the same volume. You do not want one frequency to feedback before all the others. The sliders on an EQ are really just volume controls. So when a certain frequency wants to feedback before the others, you cut that frequency a little. Now, they're all equal.
Whew, I made myself tired. :P
Wes
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
I agree with the previous posts....I do sound engineering for my band and live gigs are a challenge...especially with our girl singer...some songs she has to sing pretty low and gets soft in volume.
I have a book set up with each song and my different sound system settings for each song...you'll want to work out the level adjust in practice. I'll set the lead singer to a comfortable level and then gradually bring in the guitars... you definitely don't want the guitars drowning out the singers (unless its a guitar solo). Then I write all the settings down so I can quickly adjust them when we're live. A couple of the really soft songs ( like the Beatles' Something) the two guitarists have to adjust their volume pedals down.
