music hall

When I’m not awesomeing it up all over the Internet, I’m mixing live bands for money.  I have what’s referred to as a “house gig.”  I don’t tour.  I work in one venue, and bands come to me.  Sometimes they’re well-known national acts, other times, they’re smaller regional acts.  The bigger bands usually come with their own crew, and I just tell them where they can plug in and how to use the sound board.  The smaller acts, I usually have to mix them.  The following lists happens in both instances, but with the larger acts, I’m not the one who has to deal with it.  On the smaller acts, it effects my job directly.

The Person Who Plays the Tambourine

There are two people who play the tambourine:  The guy who has nothing to do during this song, and the girlfriend of the lead singer who wants to join him on tour, so she knows he’s not sleeping with the groupies.  (Trust me – if I’m mixing you, you have no groupies.)  Either way, you’re not helping the song.  You’re just shaking the shit out of a bunch of metal plates near a microphone.  That becomes the loudest, and most grating part of the song.  And then, right afterwards, you step up to the mic to say something, so if I take the mic out so I don’t have to hear the tambourine, it’s still out when you speak, and now you know I wasn’t putting the tambourine through the P.A.  And now you’re pissed, because nobody could hear the complex rhythms you were playing that like, totally made the middle eight of the song.  If I’m lucky, you’ll mention this on mic so everyone can hear, which brings us to number 2:

The Band that Calls the Mix from the Stage

Don’t stand on stage and tell me how it could sound better.  The speakers I use aren’t pointing at you.  You really have no idea how it sounds.  You’re getting the low end from the back of the cabinets, and then the reflection off the back of the venue.  Of course you think it sounds like crap.  Don’t start telling me how to fix it, because you are going to be wrong.  Then we’re going to get into an argument and I’m going to look like a stubborn dickhead house sound guy who doesn’t know how to do his job.  And, for the love of God, if you decide to poll the audience on the sound, I will shut you off.  No audience has ever collectively decided that the reverb time is too long or anything else that might be slightly helpful.  All they want is LOUDER.  And if you take that to mean that I should turn it up, and tell me to do so on mic in front of everyone, you’re not going to get what you want.  Barring some freak of physics, you’re loud enough.  Probably too loud.  And I have to do this shit for a living.  If it becomes too loud, I will walk away.  I have to listen to loud volumes for extended periods of time, and unlike the douches who are hanging out right next to the subs, I care about my ears.  I put a lot of time and money into educating them.  They are how I pay my rent.  If I break them, I have to find something else to do for money.  Four hundred drunk guys on the dance floor yelling “LOUDER!” are not worth my livelihood.

Keep Your Fucking Family Members Away from Me

That’s your brother playing guitar?  Great.  I’m not turning him up.  I can hear him fine.  I don’t need the whole night to be about him picking around on some chords.  There’s also some guy singing.  That part of the song is pretty important, too.  If you keep coming up to me and telling me you can’t hear him, and each time I don’t turn him up, guess what?  I’m not fucking turning him up.  Nine times out of ten, this results in family member getting pissed, and then telling the guitar player it sounded like shit and they couldn’t hear him.  Then I’m the jackass.

People Who “Do the Sound” at their Church

Please don’t come up to me with mix notes, or want to talk about gear.  I haven’t been to your church, but I’m guessing you’re back in the corner with a tiny console, and you mix by telling the band that plays those super-awesome Jesus Rock songs to turn up their amps.  You also probably read Mix Magazine and pour through Guitar Center catalogs searching for new gear.  First off, Guitar Center sells crap.  They’re the Best Buy of music.  Second, my work buys my shit, and unless it breaks and can’t be repaired, it’s not getting replaced.  I don’t keep up on the latest models of effects units because I ain’t getting one.  When it’s time to buy a new one, I’ll spend the two hours it takes to research them, and then buy the one I want.  I don’t need to study up on that stuff monthly.  Also, unless your church is run by Rick Warren, what I do is on a completely different level than what you do.   You have one guy speaking, I have five or more guys all doing loud shit.  It’s very different.

The Audience

You see this big, expensive-looking thing with a bunch of lights and knobs on it?  IT”S NOT A FUCKING COASTER.  If your drink gets anywhere near it, I will send that Malibu pineapple off in the opposite direction.  And, no, I’m not buying you a new one.  Also, don’t stand right in front of me.  I have to see when the guitar player decides to play an acoustic guitar on this song.

Tone Freak Guitar Players

My venue isn’t that big.  We seat around eight hundred maximum.  When I get a guitar player who needs to have his amp up all the way to get his tone, and can’t live with it facing away, or in another room with a mic in front of it, that means the show is going to suck.  It’s going to be the an evening of trying to get everything up to the same level as your amp, until I just give up because, like I said earlier, I need my hearing.  Then, I’m going to get a bunch of people telling me the guitar is too loud, and they’re going to be right.  But I won’t be able to do anything about it.  I hate these nights.

Bands that Screw Around During Sound Check

I’m good at my job.  Really fucking good.  I see a lot of acts and listen to a lot of mixes, and 80% of the time, I can put together a better mix.  I don’t tell them that, because it’s not nice. (You know who has a great sound guy?  Asleep At The Wheel.  That guy doesn’t do sound check, and within the first half of the first song, has put together one of the better mixes I have heard.)  I will make your band sound good.  But I can’t just pull it out of my ass.  I need like four songs, and I need you to play all your instruments.  I also need you to play at something close to show volume.  Most of the time, everyone walks through soundcheck, half-assing everything, and then come showtime, everything is different.  The guitars are all louder, and the drummer is beating his kit like it owes him money.  That means soundcheck was a complete waste of time.  It’s always fun to un-mute the console and find out your mix isn’t working at all.

Most of the time, I love my job.  Once in a while, I have to deal with these people.  Then,  I don’t love my job.  Whatever.  At least I’m not touring.