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Clip from last week's gig: The Good, The Bad and The Whatever...


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Played an outdoor community event last weekend. The temperature on stage varied between "not too bad" and "freezing our asses off".

 

We forgot to bring the banner so our backdrop ends up being our trailer. Thank God for the drum-head. Maybe we should have moved the trailer before we started playing? Yeah, but that would take away from some of the easy load-in/load-out. (Gotta love being able to drive right up to the stage.)

 

No room for our risers on stage, so we set the drum-riser up in front for the girls to stand on. No lights/backdrop makes for easy set up, but I still much prefer playing under the cover-of-darkness most times... :lol:

 

About 200-300 people at this event but nobody wants to sit any closer than about 20 yards away. Last year we were set up further back, so this year we ask them to move the stage up closer. But everybody just sits further back still. OK. It's cool.

 

We're still pretty popular with the 12-and-under demographic though...

 

Don't know if I've ever posted anything of Amy singing lead, so I thought I'd post this one. We stole this version from a YouTube clip of Susannah Hoffs doing this song that Tlbonehead posted a few months back. Thanks, Tommy! :thu: Fun version.

 

Keys still aren't in the mix much....hmm....maybe the soundman is trying to tell me something?? :lol:

 

[video=youtube;8ObGbhTcvuk]

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lol @ the kids playing ring around the rosie. :thu:

 

Nice solid bass player and drummer. That singer has a good set of pipes. I am however not really a fan of that ultra metal zone crunchy guitar tone...:facepalm: Yes you are right I could not hear the keyboards. It would have been nice to have heard some organ in there. :thu:

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Yeah, I always dig the kids at daytime outdoor gigs in the park.

 

Yeah, the kids are always fun. There were about a dozen of them up on stage with us with the blow up guitars for the entire last set. Great photo ops for the parents. Kids want us all to autograph the guitars for them afterwards like we're actually somebody. :lol: Very cute.

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Kids like that are awesome at gigs. My all acoustic band played an outdoor city park gig last summer and the kids were obsessed with the stand-up bass. It was like they had never seen such a device in their lives...:lol: Of course our bass player let them twang the strings on it after we played...haha!

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Nice work on the song and I dug the guitar tone.

 

Thanks. Yeah, he gets some good tones. He uses a pretty big variety of sounds since we're all over the place with the material. That's the sound we wanted on that one.

 

What keys though? Totally non existent.

 

I know. Gotta talk to the guy. The organ-playing is spectacular on that song. Really outstanding. Trust me. :lol:

 

He has them front-and-center on the keys-oriented tunes but then buries them on a lot or guitar-oriented stuff. Not sure what's he thinking (or not thinking) on those.

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A few things from my experience:

 

Keys still aren't in the mix much....hmm....maybe the soundman is trying to tell me something??
:lol:

 

No, I'll tell you what the problem is and my band had a similar issue, which is related to the above. You are probably the ONLY member of your band making a real effort to play low and have a good stage volume, so you are getting buried in the mix. Yes, this is a little inexcusable on the part of your sound man, and you definitely need to have a little chat with him about not doing that anymore.

 

That said, the audio quality is pretty poor, though the video is decent. I am guessing you are recording that with a standard camcorder? I would suggest either getting a soundboard recording setup or replacing the camcorder with a ZoomQ3HD. Most cams have great video and terrible audio. The Zoom unit is just the opposite. It was made for musicians and has several nice condenser mics and you will get pretty nice audio...well nice with the caveat that it is just a little cell phone sized device placed in the room (or on the lawn in your case). Here is a video I took of my band way back about 8 months ago. Notice the video is absolute CRAP but the audio, considering it is just a device placed in the room is pretty clear?

 

You would be better off with something like this to show your band because it sounds like you guys are REALLY good! :)

 

[video=youtube;GRC6vtUzZr8]

 

I posted this before in this forum, but I think it illustrates what I am saying. While it is technically mediocre audio quality it is at least passable, again, even though the video is dog{censored} lol.

 

Edit: By the way, this video was made while we were still struggling a bit with volume. Notice you can hear the crowd but NOBODY is really hanging in front of the band?

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A few things from my experience:




This is a problem and I will tell you why: To be quite honest, when I first started my current band I had the same issue. People loved us and we started building a nice following right off, but we were playing bars with either two rooms (you know the type, there is a main band room like a living room and then the bar where everyone is drinking) or just had a long kind of shape to them. After a few shows, I noticed that people were complimenting our sound and jams profusely but that the vast majority of people clapping and getting really into us were all way back from the stage, often in the bar section far away from us. Many people said that they felt the mix was better and the band sounded better from back there. I quickly realized that this was because the stage volume was a bit out of control! Now, mind you, my band plays with lots of dynamics, but we were just getting way too loud when we were in our peaks. once I made a real effort to take the stage volume way down I noticed that our fans were coming right up to the stage. Now, from what I heard on your video, you guys are playing that old Bad Company song (great tune, by the way and you performed it well) with a little bit of a metal edge to it. this leads me to believe that it is a little too loud for your audience and you might want to try taking it down a notch or five. lol

 

Actually, no. We have virtually no stage volume at all as we're running IEMs. Drums and a bit of guitar is all. And he wasn't running it very loud at front. It was just the type of gig it was: a family event with some food and wine tasting and everybody just sets up lawn chairs in a semi-circle about 20 yards from the stage and watches the band. A few people get up and dance here and there and that's about it. Normally we play dance events where people are cramming a dance-floor in front of us. If anything, it's a bit uncomfortable for us to be playing in broad daylight with everyone just sitting and watching like a concert event. If anything, we run the volume a bit lower than usual because we know they aren't going to be dancing and want to be able to converse over the music and such.

 

No, I'll tell you what the problem is and my band had a similar issue, which is related to the above. You are probably the ONLY member of your band making a real effort to play low and have a good stage volume, so you are getting buried in the mix. Yes, this is a little inexcusable on the part of your sound man, and you definitely need to have a little chat with him about not doing that anymore.

 

Yeah, I sent him the footage a few days ago and will have a chat with him. But it isn't a stage volume issue. I have none. The bass player was running direct as well.

 

That said, the audio quality is pretty poor, though the video is decent. I am guessing you are recording that with a standard camcorder? I would suggest either getting a soundboard recording setup or replacing the camcorder with a ZoomQ3HD.

 

Yeah, it's just a cheapy camcorder on a tripod and the audio is just what the little mic picks up. You can hear quite a bit of wind in it. I shoot most of these live videos for no purpose except for our own reference and maybe show to you guys once in awhile. They aren't meant to be demo quality at all. Just so we can hear mistakes and the girls can work on their stage moves and such. I thought this one was funny because how often do you see a band playing while kids are playing ring-around-the-rosie? :lol:

 

I've been talking to the soundman about recording a couple of gigs in multi-track off the Presonus so I can mix them later and maybe get some demo quality stuff out of that. Or just have fun with it if nothing else.

 

You would be better off with something like this to show your band because it sounds like you guys are REALLY good! :)

 

While it is technically mediocre audio quality it is at least passable, again, even though the video is dog{censored} lol.

 

Yeah, tough to get both working well in a full-live situation unless you've got some real pros operating really pro gear. What we show people is our official demo video (viewable at the link in my sig) which was recording in the studio with the video being a mix of live and lip-synced footage.

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This is a problem and I will tell you why: To be quite honest, when I first started my current band I had the same issue. People loved us and we started building a nice following right off, but we were playing bars with either two rooms (you know the type, there is a main band room like a living room and then the bar where everyone is drinking) or just had a long kind of shape to them. After a few shows, I noticed that people were complimenting our sound and jams profusely but that the vast majority of people clapping and getting really into us were all way back from the stage, often in the bar section far away from us. Many people said that they felt the mix was better and the band sounded better from back there. I quickly realized that this was because the stage volume was a bit out of control! Now, mind you, my band plays with lots of dynamics, but we were just getting way too loud when we were in our peaks. once I made a real effort to take the stage volume way down I noticed that our fans were coming right up to the stage. Now, from what I heard on your video, you guys are playing that old Bad Company song (great tune, by the way and you performed it well) with a little bit of a metal edge to it. this leads me to believe that it is a little too loud for your audience and you might want to try taking it down a notch or five. lol

 

 

You're WAY overthinking this! We see the same thing at outdoor gigs (and we do a bunch of 'em.) While we never see the camera pan the audience in the video - my bet is that if we did - we'd be looking at families along with their blankets, foldup sports chairs, wagons and strollers - the typical municipal "concert in the park crowd". If you're lucky - the town allows alcohol at the event - and there will be more than a few coolers! Either way - it's NOT the type of crowd that came to immerse themselves in music.

 

My bet is that Guido's band was just finishing setting up as the crowd started to fill in - and that the crowd had no idea where what the volume was going to be like (good, bad or indifferent). My experience is that in these types of gigs - the crowd naturally starts sitting in a semi-circle that's 15-20 yards back from the edge of the stage ... happy to be able to see and hear the band - but certainly not wanting a "concert" experience.

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Ah, okay, guido, I didn't realize you guys were using IEM's.

 

Yeah. well, the guitarist has a wedge with pretty much a full mix coming back at him, so we have that too, but even that's not terribly loud. I just have a sound man who doesn't like keyboards.. :cry:

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Like this version of the song. Very smooth. A bar band standard given a bit of an overhaul. The guitar tone was hit/miss with me. In the beginning, he was pretty rough. Obviously, couldn't hear the keys either, but the vocal harmonies were good. Overall, enjoyed it very much. I wonder what it is with some crowds, they just won't come near you, you know? I have to laugh, cause I get videos like that, and I ask the person who took it, "Why didn't you turn around and get a shot of the crowd?"

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Vocals kick ass, but your guitarist has the onstage personality of styrofoam.

 

Things stick better to styrofoam, actually. But yes. He's a statue. :facepalm: That's his one and only pose. We work around it best we can. Usually that means he's up on a riser next to the drummer with the rest of us out front. We make him part of the 'backline' as much as we can. You can only work with what you got, ya know?

 

The hope is everyone is watching the girls so much that they don't notice.

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Dave.... I love this arrangement! :thu: It's such a tired clunker of a song and the way you guys approached it is almost anthem-like. I missed the organ intro and at first I wasn't sure what the guitar was doing in the intro. But once it kicked in it's all good.

 

She's got a great pair of lungs! Just curious... why not both ladies on the mini stage. I really think having both ladies up from and center is more solid from a visual standpoint.

 

 

BTW... I see you got a small stand for your rack. What are you using for that stand? Also what do you have on the second Apex column stand?

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Dave.... I love this arrangement!
:thu:
It's such a tired clunker of a song and the way you guys approached it is almost anthem-like. I missed the organ intro and at first I wasn't sure what the guitar was doing in the intro. But once it kicked in it's all good.

 

Yeah, that's the way he insists on playing that intro--with it turning around backwards like that. One of those things where we all asked him to play it straight, and he didn't want to so---WTF. It his intro...let him what he wants....

 

She's got a great pair of lungs! Just curious... why not both ladies on the mini stage. I really think having both ladies up from and center is more solid from a visual standpoint.

 

They were both on it most of the gig. But once in awhile the other girl pulls back when it's more a "feature" vocal.

 

 

BTW... I see you got a small stand for your rack. What are you using for that stand? Also what do you have on the second Apex column stand?

 

It's just a standard amp stand, but I flip the arms around so it holds a rack easier. M-Audio Venom on the 2nd stand.

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Nice Dave.

 

And yes, day-time, outdoor family events tend to all be like that IME. There's a concert series every spring here called Live After 5, and they get bands to play from 5-8 every friday night. Tends to be a very similar atmosphere. Once the beer gets flowing, you'll get some people up and dancing, but for the most part, it's people in lawn chairs enjoying the evening with their family.

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Yeah, that's the way he insists on playing that intro--with it turning around backwards like that. One of those things where we all asked him to play it straight, and he didn't want to so---WTF. It his intro...let him what he wants....




They were both on it most of the gig. But once in awhile the other girl pulls back when it's more a "feature" vocal.





It's just a standard amp stand, but I flip the arms around so it holds a rack easier. M-Audio Venom on the 2nd stand.

 

Well the band sounds great! :thu:

 

Ohhhhh the Venom. How do you like it. What are you using it for? I looked at one and liked the noise and grit but nothing seemed polished enough to use live. So I'm springing for an Ultranova. Still the Venom has me intrigued!

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Well the band sounds great!
:thu:

Ohhhhh the Venom. How do you like it. What are you using it for? I looked at one and liked the noise and grit but nothing seemed polished enough to use live. So I'm springing for an Ultranova. Still the Venom has me intrigued!

 

I use it for noise and grit :D It gets "those" sounds easier and better than I get on either the Motif and the Kronos. I use it for stuff like the chromatic rise between the verses of "We Found Love" and for a couple of the Gaga tunes. The bass player comes over and plays it on "Sexy and I Know It". I'm thinking about getting him a little board to play bass on that kind of stuff over on his side of the stage. We just added a few e-drum pads over on the other side of the stage that the guitarist plays on a couple of dance songs where we don't really need guitar and electronic percussion fills in better.

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The hope is everyone is watching the girls so much that they don't notice.

 

:wave::wave: It's working, I failed to notice the guitarist's movement (or lack of) completely. I listened to the song and watched your lead singer, period. ;)

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