It’s become readily apparent to me the importance of a sound or mix engineer tonight. At a performance for a couple combined School of Rock schools. Every instrument and singer has their own amp/PA. Levels are all over the place and varying wildly from song to song and as musicians rotate in and out. I’ve been to one before with mostly the same people where they had a dedicated sound guy controlling everything and it was much better. This tonight isn’t putting the schools in a good light, unfortunately. Which is sad because I know how much work they put into learning the songs and practicing together.
All this is to say, maybe buy your sound guy a beer if they do a decent job making you sound good for the audience.
Don’t wanna say that most engineers are lazy and only want to mix P bass or Jazz bass but in general that’s what they are paid to do. We love our FOH, Front of the House, he’s the man! More than a few times now he’s getting 3 Espresso Frap because we didn’t coordinate ahead of time and just got him on the way in to sound check.
A couple years ago I saw Harry Connick, Jr at a venue. Absolutely fabulous show. 10/10 recommend. Sound was fantastic, he puts on an amazing show. The next week I went to see Jason Mraz at the same venue. Sounded like absolute garbage. It was all muffled. The best part of it was the person on keys. Testament of a good sound person.
I love both them guys. Harry Connick Jr is such a jack of all trades, I could listen to him on all of his genres. and Jason is such a great live performer.
Greetings! Last year the band did 15-18 performances and about 25% of them involved a sound technician/professional. We had only 1 where the audio technician was lost (clueless would be a better choice). We called him to the stage after 3 songs and again after 3 songs. He just couldn’t balance the audio (granted with 4 vocals) but he couldn’t figure the gain or anything else. On the other side, I’ve worked with a few audio technicians and most have been spot on. Guessing, one tough night is only expected.
We love our FOH, Front of the House, he’s the man! More than a few times now he’s getting 3 Espresso Frap because we didn’t coordinate ahead of time and just got him on the way in to sound check.