Key Aspects of Playing in a Live Band

LIVE SETUP

In a relatively small venue a band can play well enough using individual amplifiers for guitars, key boards and bass and a PA or sound system to amplify signals from the microphone.

A typical setup

• 3-4 Musicians: 30 -100 watts each




• Vocals: PA sound system rated between 300 to 500 watts

Difference between guitar amplifier and good PA system:

• The guitar amplifiers are designed to give an added sound character




• A good PA system should amplify the signal fed to them without colouring or altering the sound. This is referred to as having a transparent sound.

Feed back:

Feed back is the loud and unusually unpleasant howl or whistle heard when the microphone or guitar pickups starts to unintentionally re-amplify the sound coming from its own loud speaker. (Physics students: Remember resonance!) Guitar pickups and microphones can cause unwanted feedback so ensure that your onstage equipment is set-up accordingly to avoid this.

Monitors

The thing about playing in a band live is that very often you will barely be able to hear each other play unless the monitors on stage are set right. The monitors allow the different musicians playing onstage the opportunity to actually hear each other.

If you are playing in a decent setup the monitor could be arranged as follows for the people on stage:

• Vocalist: Two monitors providing the same mix typically the sound of various musicians except the drummer. Two monitors also allow vocalist the ability to move about on stage.




• Drummer: Since drummers generate a lot of sound around him they are normally provided with two monitors.




• Musicians: The guitarist, bassist and keyboard player would hear from a combination of the mix coming from the monitor and their own amplifier.

Life without monitors!

There will be situations where you may be asked to play in a really bad setup. Your response as a professional band should be to refuse to play! As someone who has played in such setups the night mare is as follows:

• Guitarist and drummer cannot hear the bassist at all




• No one on stage can hear the vocalist




• Drummer can’t hear anything except himself

The only option if you have to play in such a screw up setting - Everyone follows the drummer blindly and prays a lot! Remember what you hear on stage and what the audience hears are two different experiences in this case … All bets are off!

PRACTICE SETUP:

Practice setup can be as great and as bad as you can afford. Since you already know the live setup that is the gold standard you can try to achieve. However I will try to put together the bare minimum you can have to get started.

Band 1 Guitar, 1 Bass Guitar, 1 Vocalist, 1 Drummer

DESIRED SETUP: 1 Guitar Amplifier, 1 Bass Amplifier, 1 PA/Sound System for Vocals, Plenty of Leads

BARE MINIMUM SETUP: 1 Amplifier to Guitar and Bass + Mixer, 1 PA/Sound System for Vocals, Plenty of Leads

If you have additional guitarist and a key board player, the ideal situation would be if you have separate amplifiers for each musician. However often that is not possible so there is the tendency to use a mixer and push all the inputs into a single amplifier. This is slightly dangerous to the extent, that amplifiers are known to have blow especially thanks to the bass guitar so you may want to keep this in mind, before cranking up the bass volume!