Sure, it's convenient to blame the sound guy, the fucking cockwad drummer, your mom, or any number of people for why things went wrong at your last show. But that sort of misses the mark, doesn't it?

This post is dedicated to showing YOU (I mean you, Mr. Reader) how to analyze your own egomaniacal pitfalls when it comes to playing out live.

Guitar Players: Playing at a small/medium sized venue like Charm City Art Space does not call for a full 100 watt Marshall stack.  You crank that thing past 4 and you’re basically going to blow out everyone’s eardrums (including your own) and piss off the management, because 50% of the crowd is going to immediately walk out the door. 

Plus, dude, see that little black thing pointing at ONE of your 8 speakers?  That’s a microphone.  It takes the sound coming out of your amp and brings it to the mixing board.  Then, the sound guy/girl (the person paid by the venue specifically to make you sound good) EQs the signal from that microphone to get rid of your shrill ice-pick-to-the-brain tone, and sends the resulting, now moderately pleasant audio to speakers that are much bigger and more balanced than your little 12-inch Celestions.

But if your amp is so loud it’s overpowering everything else in the room, the sound person can’t do shit aside from scream at you the entire set to turn it down.  And the rest of your band (aside from the drummer, who we’ll get to in a second) is going to be pissed that nobody in the audience could hear anything they were singing/playing.

Drummers: Why do you need 6 toms and 8 cymbals for a show at The Windup Space?  It looks ridiculous, it’s impossible to mic, and it just annoys the bands before and after your set who have to wait 30 minutes for you to get that crap on and off the stage. 

Believe it or not, some people actually manage to play perfectly well (i.e., better than you) with one tom, one snare, and one cymbal:

Drummers (you get two): If you’re playing in a place the size of a coffee shop, why are you hitting your kit like you’re in a stadium?  

Play softer. 

If you can’t play softer, use brushes instead of sticks.  If you can’t do that then put some muffles on your drums and cymbals.  And if you can’t do that then you shouldn’t be playing the gig.  Go home.

Bass players: I understand that you need big speakers in order to get those low bass notes.  But with the shitty acoustics of most venues, nobody can hear the notes you’re playing, no matter how loud you turn up.  So don’t bother; you’re just adding to the mess.  Make it as loud as it needs to be for you to hear it, and call it a night.  99% of the time the sound person is going to take a DI line straight out of your amp into the board, and control the volume from there.  Trust the sound person.  They know their crappy space and how to get the bass to be semi-audible.  If you’re trying to overpower them with your amp, they’re just going to turn the DI down, and now all of your attack and clarity is gone and you sound like a big pile of muddy turds.

Vocalists: We all feel bad for you.  You’re the only “instrument” that most of the audience gives a shit about, but most of the time we can’t hear or understand a word you’re saying.  And if we can by chance hear you, in all likelihood you’re singing out of tune because your monitors won’t cut through the drummer, guitarist, and bassist without feeding back, so you can’t hear yourself.  Sucks to be you.  You should probably fire your band.

Key Takeaways: Once you've recognized the problems of your live setup, it's time for each band member to analyze what they can do individually to make the whole band sound better. Most of the time it involves losing the ego about your specific job and focusing on the big picture.

Your Big Amp Is Annoying is written by Ryan Graham, lead guitarist and producer for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. Next Week: The tried and true methods of downsizing your live set up or how The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad manages to do their best to sound great (even though we suck and everyone knows it.)



You sound like shit live.  No matter where you play, you sound like shit.  Big venues, small venues, it doesn’t matter.  You think you sound awesome?  You’re wrong.  You sound like shit.

The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad plays a lot of shows at a lot of venues with a lot of different bands.  Many of these bands are technically awesome and have amazing songs, but there’s no way to tell because they sound like a big pile of shit.

Some common symptoms of sounding like shit:

• Indistinguishable vocals. 
  
• Constant feedback
  
• "Buzz saw" guitar
  
• Snare sounds like you’re hitting a wet cardboard box
• Kick drum fights with the bass guitar for all the low frequencies, and they both lose.
  

It’s a mess, and everyone tunes out or leaves after 2 minutes.  Sorry, you’ve failed.

The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad have been playing live since 2005. We've been fortunate enough to have Jeff Mewbourn tape most of our performances.  His recordings don’t lie.  If we sounded like shit, we’ll know it the next day when he posts the audio.  So over the years we’ve been able to refine our stage setup to a point where we know we’ll sound as good as possible at any venue we play.  Because of lousy acoustics or a bad sound person, we might still sound terrible at any given gig, but we’ll still sound better than the rest of the bands on the bill.

Your Big Amp Is Annoying is written by Ryan Graham, lead guitarist and producer of The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. Next Week: Some of the major setup issues most crappy-sounding live bands have in common.