first gig soon!

ZoSo58LP

ZoSo58LP

rock guy
so in my 10 years of playing, i've never played live before...wild huh? lol

so i'm the bassist in my 3 piece band, and we're playing a club/bar down here in feb as our first gig. it's gonna be great....and i'm not really nervous, but i'm just worried about how well i'll be heard? haha

i'm going to use my G&L L2000, along with my Gallien Krueger Backline 600 300 watt solid state head running through my Sunn 4x15 cab. now, everythings gonna be mic'ed up, i know that for a fact...but when we jam at my buddys house, i play through his eden traveler head through a fender 4x10 cab. i ALWAYS have my boss OD pedal on when i play, with very very very low gain, but with the tone knob, i boost my mids/highs a bit, and it drops out the muddiness of the lows. even on my head, it does the same. playing by itself, it sounds like utter shit, but in the mix of everything it cuts through great and really gets my aggressive hard hitting, hard slapping style down.

so i'm wondering, when we play live and i'm miced, are they gonna keep me nice and loud? i've never dealt with sound mixing people or anything, but all i know is half the bands i saw, the bass is always mixed so low with all low end and NO mids/highs because they're not doing anything special but holding root notes. a lot of my lines are melodic, so i'd REALLY love for the people to hear them as they're intended. many of them do use the OD pedal with a low tone to get a nice honky sound, but i'm wondering, should i just play the whole show with an OD pedal? or will i cut through well enough without it, just using the head with a clean sound?

thanks for any input!
 
If it is the club's sound guy, you need to let him know what the sound of your band is supposed to be like. If you have a CD he can listen to before hand, it would help. Otherwise, get a friend who knows your sound to advise during the soundcheck. Without knowing your band's music/sound, we can't really advise about using the pedal all the time. For most live sounds these days the bass is a low-focused sound so that it does not muddy up the guitar mids.
 
You get the club's sound guy? Great. You're screwed. Good chance he's a legend in his spare time wannabe who thinks he's running FOH for Springsteen - don't they all? Make him irrelevant - rent 600 watts.


lou
 
Jesus, Lou, LIGHTEN UP. Your sweeping generalizations are WAY off the mark. The kind of guy who "makes the sound guy irrelevant" by blasting HIS shit loud and screw everybody else is the enemy of EVERYONE- sound man, other band members, and the ENTIRE FREAKIN' AUDIENCE. THAT kind of shit gets your band uninvited to come back, quick.

The sound man, talented or noob, good or bad, can make or break your performance. PISS HIM OFF AT YOUR OWN PERIL (I suspect that what's REALLY happening with Lou.) If you are truly worried about him or the mix, hire and train your own sound man, let the club's sound man know you "roll your own" well in advance, and instruct your guy to work WITH the club man. Most venue sound men are so overworked, they welcome someone else to sit in the big chair for a while so they can relax a bit for a little while.
 
ZoSo58LP said:
so in my 10 years of playing, i've never played live before...wild huh? lol

so i'm the bassist in my 3 piece band, and we're playing a club/bar down here in feb as our first gig. it's gonna be great....and i'm not really nervous, but i'm just worried about how well i'll be heard? haha

i'm going to use my G&L L2000, along with my Gallien Krueger Backline 600 300 watt solid state head running through my Sunn 4x15 cab. now, everythings gonna be mic'ed up, i know that for a fact...but when we jam at my buddys house, i play through his eden traveler head through a fender 4x10 cab. i ALWAYS have my boss OD pedal on when i play, with very very very low gain, but with the tone knob, i boost my mids/highs a bit, and it drops out the muddiness of the lows. even on my head, it does the same. playing by itself, it sounds like utter shit, but in the mix of everything it cuts through great and really gets my aggressive hard hitting, hard slapping style down.

so i'm wondering, when we play live and i'm miced, are they gonna keep me nice and loud? i've never dealt with sound mixing people or anything, but all i know is half the bands i saw, the bass is always mixed so low with all low end and NO mids/highs because they're not doing anything special but holding root notes. a lot of my lines are melodic, so i'd REALLY love for the people to hear them as they're intended. many of them do use the OD pedal with a low tone to get a nice honky sound, but i'm wondering, should i just play the whole show with an OD pedal? or will i cut through well enough without it, just using the head with a clean sound?

thanks for any input!
Click to expand...
I gig nightly and have for 40+ years.

Ignore all these responses as members fight among themselves over who knows the most.

The first thing I do on any gig where there's a sound guy is go and meet him ....... chat about whatever and be friendly and make sure he kinda knows you as a person. He'll be quite inclined to try his best for you since you're NOT coming up and being pushy when he sees that all the time and is tired of it.

Once you have that out of the way ....... simply tell him what you like in your sound. For example, I always tell the sound guy that I hate a bright sax and I want the treble cut by about 9db compared to where he typically puts the highs on a vocal. That gives him a specific sound to try for and let's him know what you would like.
There's always lots of different ways to mix something so you try and give him a target to shoot for.

So in your case simply make sure he knows that you prefer a bass sound with enough mids in it to give it some pitch specificity and definition.
As for bringing your own soundguy ...... ONLY if you have a GOOD one.
First ...... in clubs not all of them will let you. But more importantly .... a decent soundman is gonna know his system and the room far better than your guy unless he's top-notch. So often by the time your guy has everything figured out, the show's over.

Like I say, if you've got a really good one then fine ..... but simply having one of your buds do it isn't the way to go usually.
And since this is your first gig, I have to guess your band doesn't have a top notch soundguy.
And a 3-piece is usually pretty easy to mix ....... the bass will certainly be mixed where you can hear it since there's only two melodic instruments there ...... I'm betting it's gonna go smoothly.
Good luck on your gig and let us know how it went!
:)





oh, and uh, a 4x15" cab? Good lord! Must be young with a strong back!
:D
 
Last edited:
haha great post! thanks for the advice guys, and the chuckle lou ;)

i've never been to this place before, so i've never met this guy. i'll have to say hey before we start; hopefully we'll get the soundcheck if we're the first band on stage...that would be great!
and yeah bob, a 4x15...ugh believe me, it sucks to move. and it's been in my basement for the past 6 years, as i've not dared to bring it upstairs... thank god she's on wheels! haha

so during practice, we've recorded with a crappy mac laptop mic, but here's the tone i'm getting using the L2000 along with the boss OD pedal to boost the mids and not let it compress as much: (lots of messups, this is just from a practice..you can hear my slap tone in this song too, and it doesn't sound THAT bad with the OD on it)

http://soundcloud.com/jayochs/heatseeker

that song is tone fully open, volume up, active EQ on with the +10tb treble switch on, everything to get out those mids/highs...the guitar amp was too low and not facing the laptop on this day, so all you really hear is bass, but it's an idea of what tone i get when we play.

these next two recordings are the same setup, except i'm using only the neck humbucker with the tone at 0, which gives it this great honky sound,a nd when you use the OD pedal wtih it, it gives it a nice honk that i like to hear, ala rob deleo of STP's midrangey sound on some of their albums:

http://soundcloud.com/jayochs/truth-serum

http://soundcloud.com/jayochs/makin-day


so basically when i'm not using the low tone for those two songs, i really like that bass to PUNCH through and not be a mess of gobblygook lowend that doesn't showcase what you're playing at all, aka like every new band out there today, ugh...
 
Last edited:
It's supposed to be fun.
Don't be anticipating problems.
Congratulations on stepping out, by the way.
Goodonya!
It's only been 30 years for me (So I have to bow to Lt. Bob's seniority) but I can still remember the early days.
What a rush!
 
I guested for one song (on bass, no less, on a song I'd never played bass on) with a friend's band a few weeks ago - first time on stage since September, which was the first time since 25 years before. It's still magic to be up there!
Enjoy it!
 
Everybody missed the most important points:

- it doesn't matter where the bass is in the mix because no one is listening. Take John Paul Jones. You love him, I love him. The best bass line he ever played was the keyboards on "Trampled Underfoot", and I don't mean the left-hand part. So make sure you can hear your amp, let the sound guy do whatever he wants, and enjoy your melodic lines.

- schedule the drum solo as the last song in the first set, so you can beat the drummer to the bar to hit on the chicks he would otherwise score :p
 
any of them that I've played with sound systems do.
That's usually the 2nd thing they look at after the drums.
 
i heard that this place mic's the bass.

anyone ever been to NJ? it's the surf club in seaside (sigh, no jersey shore references; no we're not all like that.) i've never been because, well, i avoid guidos at all costs, so i'm not really sure how big it is inside. i just want to be heard, damnit. lol :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top