Practicing volume and performance volume

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jndietz

The Way It Moves
I was just wondering, what is good grounds for practice volume and performance volume?

We have two guitarists, one with a 150W solid-state and a 4 x 12" cabinet, and another guitarist with a 120W solid-state and a 4 x 12" cabinet. Our bassist plays through a 100W Crate combo, and the drummer is loud, as usual. The vocalist plays through like an 800W PA system.

I was just wondering, how do we know what good "volumes" are?
 
If your ears aren't bleeding, turn it up. :)


Kidding. You are kind of at the mercy of the drummer, unfortunately. If he is a hard hitter, you need to practice loud.
 
And if he's a hard hitter, consider some ear protection. Just ask Pete Townsend. You'll have to ask him twice though, the first time he'll just say "what?"
 
How loud do you play at most gigs? How large are the places you play those gigs? Now consider the size of your practice room and adjust your volume(s) so that you have the same relative affect. Practice is for more than just learning new songs, it's where everyone works on and developes controle and technique. Small rooms and high volume can do lots of dammage to everyone's hearing. My basic idea on practice volume is... never play louder than you really need to. If you can't hear the vocals, then you are too loud. If the drums are too loud, you need a bigger room so you can turn everything else up to match his/her volume. There probably aren't any set rules, you just have to find a volume level which is comfortable to everyone and allows everyone to clearly hear everyone else without blowing your ears in the process.
 
In regard to performance volume; I take a db meter to most gigs. Our lead singer has the typical lead singer "turn-my-mic-up" disease, so I have to keep measure on our level to keep him in check. If we start to push past 105db (C) then I start bringing the master down.
 
At practice I go up to about 10, but for gigging I go to 11 every time.
When I go deaf Ill just buy new ears.

Eck
 
Its ALL about the room, i am learning about recording, but KNOW about playing live and practice.

Just as an example, my band recently started in a new space for practice, and because of the rooms size, shape and the materials it was made of, the guitars we usualy had at 9 or ten in our old space suddenly need no more than about six with the same drummer and the same songs.

Also it depends of course if you have a decent pa or ANY pa when playing live (the word GIG irritates the shit out of me) if your playing live with no pa and no monitors, the voume usually has to go UP on the guitars cuz your projecting a ton of uni-directional sound at the audiance and its fighting with the omni bass and drums. Plus your gonna have touble hearing yourself and the drummers REALLY gonna have a hard time.

A good trick is to set up practice like your on stage, instead of in a circle, you get used to the way it sounds coming form behind you, and you get the added benifit of learning to LISTEN to your drummer and bass player as apossed to watching them, witch can be a bad habit in my opinion.
 
Robert D said:
And if he's a hard hitter, consider some ear protection. Just ask Pete Townsend.
Click to expand...

Especially if he adds explosives into the equation.
 
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