From mskremote@yahoo.com Sat Apr 14 06:42:56 2012
Subject:Re: FOH engineer ... was K10 and Mackie SRM 450 Shootout

I would agree with your sentiment, the ones we get these days are either keen but green or old and jaded.  As most of the bands the keen and green mix for don't have keys they lack experience with bands with KB.  They try their best for the first couple of songs and then cannot understand why the keys keep changing in volume and are trying to compensate. For example I back off a bit when playing the top octave as don't want to sound "screechy" through the pa and come back up again in the middle octaves. The guys tell me this does their head in trying to get the sound right.  I would leave it them to manage but as this is the first time they have mixed for us they have no idea of what is coming next. The younger guys also tend to want everything as loud as possible - altho here venues are now subject to random checks from the noise police.  For this reason more venues are now putting in their often really cheap p.a's and will not allow bands to bring
their own (or mic drums).

Many of the experienced ones are now so jaded and sick of being ignored by the fresh up and coming bands that they have given up trying - or they are now deaf. The house engineer at one venue we played at told me he had mixed FOH for big acts in stadiums in Europe in the 80's and knew it all. Couldn't understand with this background why we were sounding pretty bad till another muso friend in the audience told me he was now deaf.       

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From: tfosselm
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2012 10:37 PM
Subject: [CWSG] FOH engineer ... was K10 and Mackie SRM 450 Shootout


 
I've always felt that the most important member of any band is the sound engineer. More than anyone in the band, they have it in their power to either make the band sound great or like crap.

Is is just me (and/or the engineers in my area) or does there seem to be a growing lack of understanding about how an engineer should mix a band (especially when it comes to keys)? I can understand why someone would mix a loud guitar trio a certain way, but there's no excuse for making a band with three horns and keyboards sound like a loud guitar trio.

--- In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, Gary Brumm wrote:
>
> As a player of guitar and keyboards as well as a FOH engineer.....please forward it to every musician on the planet! :)
>