Jersey Ray
4th March 2007, 11.30 pm
Hey team,
this is slightly off topic, but I am sure that among you all I can get some interesting feedback. Actually it is on topic for anyone playing out live in a loud band.
As many of you know, I have made the transition to the accordion in the past 2 years. While I still LOVE my battle-worn ADG-10, I am really getting a lot of work on the chromatic accordion. It has a lot more than you think in common with these tapping instruments. But that is another discussion...
Up till now, most of my work has been in acoustic settings with singer-songwriters. Doing live sound with these acts is pretty straightforward. Recently I started working with a local band called Box Five, I love it, the music is great. But.. the band is really LOUD, louder than you would expect from a "pop group". Some of the problem is just that in a bar or club, if you are in a band with a drummer, they expect to make the front of house sound, as well as on stage monitors, really loud, because that is the norm these days.
So, I have two issues to discuss, I already have some solutions, but all feedback is welcome (except on-stage microphonic feedback)
1. Amplifying an acoustic instrument in an electric band - this would only be an issue to tappers if they are playing one of the latest acoustic tapping instruments. And even there, thanks to piezo pickups, I think that guitarists have it pretty easy! What I did was I got a set of three gooseneck mikes with a dedicated pre-amp. It has a great sound, but I still had feedback during the soundcheck. I repositioned the mikes a little and it seemed to fix it, but I am still suspicious that the sound guy just turned me down. He did say to me, that I should maximize the gain from my on-stage mike preamps, if I wanted to minimize feedback. I messed around a little with that today with my PA at home and it seems to be true. I am also boosting the gain now with a second stage, my old Line6 Pod, but more about that below...
I am avoiding the internal mikes that accordions often have because I had a bad experience with one of those in the pst, they sound very canned, and feedback worse than external mikes, in loud band situations. I know I am genralizing, and there probably is an internal mie solution that is perfect for me, but I have already spent the money on the externals, so it's a done deal. Regular microphones on mike stands are good for their sound quality, but they can't catch the left hand side of the accordion, which is moving around all the time. Again, I know there are high end systems out there...
2. Monitoring - now here I still have a lot in common with the tappers, especially if you use a rack mount pre-amp. Imagine this - you have your "Star Trek rack" of preamps and effects, and you just decide to go through the PA. You show up at the gig, and the guitarist has a Marshall stack, the bass player has an Ampeg stack, and the drummer is louder than both of them! This happenned to me as a tapper, and with the accordion, it is the same old routine. There is no way I can hear myself in the monitor mix, and even if they cranked that up, it would eventually start to feed back. So my solution is to get a good set of in-ear monitor headphones (expensive ear buds) and use that with the headphone pre-amp of my old Line 6 Pod (remember those?) which I just dusted off to use as a second preamp for the accordion. So I'll run the accordion signal through the mike pre-amp, then the Pod, send a signal to the house from there, and also monitor myself via heaphones that are plugged into the Pod. I am just monitoring myself here, I am not too concerned about being able to hear the drummer or the bass player! I'll hear them just fine:)
So, any thoughts about in-ear monitors? I think that they are the way to go, another guy in the band the great electric cello player Alfred James was using a wireless in-ear system, but that is a bit expensive for what I want to do right now.
Jersey Ray
this is slightly off topic, but I am sure that among you all I can get some interesting feedback. Actually it is on topic for anyone playing out live in a loud band.
As many of you know, I have made the transition to the accordion in the past 2 years. While I still LOVE my battle-worn ADG-10, I am really getting a lot of work on the chromatic accordion. It has a lot more than you think in common with these tapping instruments. But that is another discussion...
Up till now, most of my work has been in acoustic settings with singer-songwriters. Doing live sound with these acts is pretty straightforward. Recently I started working with a local band called Box Five, I love it, the music is great. But.. the band is really LOUD, louder than you would expect from a "pop group". Some of the problem is just that in a bar or club, if you are in a band with a drummer, they expect to make the front of house sound, as well as on stage monitors, really loud, because that is the norm these days.
So, I have two issues to discuss, I already have some solutions, but all feedback is welcome (except on-stage microphonic feedback)
1. Amplifying an acoustic instrument in an electric band - this would only be an issue to tappers if they are playing one of the latest acoustic tapping instruments. And even there, thanks to piezo pickups, I think that guitarists have it pretty easy! What I did was I got a set of three gooseneck mikes with a dedicated pre-amp. It has a great sound, but I still had feedback during the soundcheck. I repositioned the mikes a little and it seemed to fix it, but I am still suspicious that the sound guy just turned me down. He did say to me, that I should maximize the gain from my on-stage mike preamps, if I wanted to minimize feedback. I messed around a little with that today with my PA at home and it seems to be true. I am also boosting the gain now with a second stage, my old Line6 Pod, but more about that below...
I am avoiding the internal mikes that accordions often have because I had a bad experience with one of those in the pst, they sound very canned, and feedback worse than external mikes, in loud band situations. I know I am genralizing, and there probably is an internal mie solution that is perfect for me, but I have already spent the money on the externals, so it's a done deal. Regular microphones on mike stands are good for their sound quality, but they can't catch the left hand side of the accordion, which is moving around all the time. Again, I know there are high end systems out there...
2. Monitoring - now here I still have a lot in common with the tappers, especially if you use a rack mount pre-amp. Imagine this - you have your "Star Trek rack" of preamps and effects, and you just decide to go through the PA. You show up at the gig, and the guitarist has a Marshall stack, the bass player has an Ampeg stack, and the drummer is louder than both of them! This happenned to me as a tapper, and with the accordion, it is the same old routine. There is no way I can hear myself in the monitor mix, and even if they cranked that up, it would eventually start to feed back. So my solution is to get a good set of in-ear monitor headphones (expensive ear buds) and use that with the headphone pre-amp of my old Line 6 Pod (remember those?) which I just dusted off to use as a second preamp for the accordion. So I'll run the accordion signal through the mike pre-amp, then the Pod, send a signal to the house from there, and also monitor myself via heaphones that are plugged into the Pod. I am just monitoring myself here, I am not too concerned about being able to hear the drummer or the bass player! I'll hear them just fine:)
So, any thoughts about in-ear monitors? I think that they are the way to go, another guy in the band the great electric cello player Alfred James was using a wireless in-ear system, but that is a bit expensive for what I want to do right now.
Jersey Ray