Gay Gab episode 539 for Monday June 22nd National Chocolate Eclair Day 2026,
Greetings, folks, and welcome to GigGab, the show by, for, and about working
musicians. Our sponsor today is oneskin.co slash giggab, where you can get 15%
off of oneskin when using code giggab.
And we'll talk about oneskin in a little bit. For now, here in Durham,
New Hampshire, I've Dave Hamilton. I've been Dave Hamilton. I will continue to be Dave Hamilton.
I am Dave Hamilton. And I do have a guest co-host today, but I wanted to go
through a couple of things first, including some mail from all of you,
and then talk about some gigs that I've had.
It's been a crazy week. I had five gigs in seven days, I think.
Yeah, I had Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday.
With the day off in that middle first stretch was a four-hour rehearsal.
So saturday's gig the first saturday uh,
was a uh it was a uh sub gig that i was doing for a friend's band,
it was with johnny d and jim from monkey fist and i was playing with blaming
abby their full band because their drummer had,
some commitment i don't know what it was i think he wedding or something like
that you know tis the season and uh.
And when i took the gig you know six months ago it all seemed like a great idea and then,
but you know sub gigs mean you got to learn 30 songs uh many of which you might
not know we play a lot of these songs in monkey fist which is an acoustic thing,
but i've always said in acoustic outfits the,
Guitar player is the drummer, right? Like the guitar, the acoustic guitar drives
the bus and I am there as, you know, accoutrement, right? You know, eye candy and ear candy.
But I'm not necessarily the one driving the bus.
And so it meant learning a lot of these songs kind of from scratch.
Like I knew forms, I knew harmonies, thank goodness, right? You know,
so I could step into that role.
But uh learning drum parts was well,
quite candidly saved by ultimate guitars drum charts which now,
if you go and download and it's not just drum charts that they've added this to there are lyrics
on the drum charts that you can download if they have a pro version of the thing
so an ultimate guitar membership for 10 bucks a year it turns out to be,
some of the best money i've ever spent in my life uh,
because man like you know.
Otherwise i don't know how i would have done it because i had,
uh leading up to it i was in los angeles because my son and i were saying rush
as we talked about last week and i got home on,
thursday or i guess wednesday night and then you know i had like work to do
and stuff and then we had this gig on saturday so the the best prep that I could do a lot of these songs.
I'm not necessarily proud to say this, but I mean, I made it through,
so maybe a little proud, but not the way I would have liked to do it.
But a lot of these songs, I've now played one time on a drum set and it was
on stage in front of people.
But it all went well and there was that. And then this past week has been what
they call bike week in Laconia, New Hampshire, which is about an hour and change for me.
And it's a big deal. And so casual gravity is kind of a perfect band for that
bike week crowd, motorcycle week.
And and so we played on Sunday at the one of the big outdoor venues and then
on Saturday night at the other big outdoor venue at that bike week.
And both of those gigs went phenomenally well.
You know, there was an interesting thing with last night. So with both of them,
because it's the same sound engineer, they have one. There's three clubs that
I think are owned by the same person or, you know, entity, whatever it is.
And they're all right next to each other. There's an indoor club in the middle.
We played there last year.
And then there's the two outdoor clubs kind of on either side of those.
And the front of house engineer, Tim, does a great job.
He's able to kind of manage all of it at once. Well, or just by moving in between.
And it works. It's great. Everything sounds good. It's all that.
Casual is a band that uses a split snake because we're all on in-ear monitors.
And we found years ago, as I've talked about on the show, that having a split
snake means what we can do is send.
With a split snake, what happens is every mic channel, we have a 16 channel
split snake. So we can do this for 16 channels.
Every channel that comes in, like, say, take a vocal microphone,
goes into the split snake. And then there's two tails on the back.
One tail goes out to the front of house mixer, and so they can do whatever they want with it.
And then the other tail goes to our mixer, and we can do whatever we want with
it. And that means gains can be different, all of the things, right?
And what's really nice, kind of the net effect of that is front of house doesn't
have to worry about anything they do impacting our monitors.
And we have the same mix that we had at the end of the prior gig,
right? So it makes setup really efficient.
But with a festival gig engineers are often hesitant especially if they've never
done this before they're often really hesitant to you know to,
to let a band come in and do this now i know tim we've worked with him before
but when we got there he's like oh no no no it's the beginning of this festival
i'm not unplugging anything from my snake and that was last weekend that was
the first the first of the two you know kind of we kind of bookended bike week.
And so I was like, OK. And so, you know, it took an extra 20 minutes,
maybe maybe 15 to, you know, have him dial in everybody's in-ear mixes.
And, you know, it wasn't the same, obviously.
We got through the gig, but it was a three set gig, right? It wasn't just yes,
it's a festival, but it's a three set gig. You know, it's a full four hour show.
And so to do that in kind of a, you know, throw together, non-optimal setting
is not optimal. Again, we made it through it.
We entertained, did the job, always performed, yada, yada.
But when we were on our way there for uh the final gig on the on the final saturday night you know big.
Bigger crowd and it was a much bigger crowd we all talked about it and it was
like okay we're gonna we're gonna,
tell tim that we're gonna use our splitter snake and it will make and it was
a tight changeover we started at eight we played eight to midnight the last band,
ended at eight that's how the schedule was built yep schedules when they're
built by people who are not in production uh don't think about the fact that
there's like a changeover and we were using entirely new like every new back
like there was no back line they provided front of house that was it,
and so we decided all right we're going to use our splitter snake for this we
have to like it's the only way we're going to be able to like turn this over
quick i staged my drums like i got there early enough then i was able to set
up my drums kind of off the stage and we were able to kind I'm going to pull them all on.
When we talked to, when we saw Tim, he's like, all right, yeah,
it's going to be a quick changeover. So no in-ears today, just like go with
wedges. And we were like, no, Tim, I took the lead on it. I was like,
no, no, we're actually going to use in-ears, but trust me on this.
You got to trust me. It's going to be better.
And I said, we're going to just insert our splitter snake in your chain and
it will, I know it's going to take like five minutes to do that,
but then everything's just done.
You are the monitors are completely covered and you can do whatever you want
to front of house and you could change gains all night long if that serves you
and it won't mess with us. And he's like, OK, like he started to see the light.
And by the end of the gig, he's like, I never want to mix anyone's monitors
again. I always want to do it this way. I'm like, yes, now you see.
I knew he just needed to do it once and see the light.
Right. And do it with a band that was prepared to do it the right way because
we've been doing this for a while. So it's just like, it's in our,
like it's in our setup. And it was just like, he's like, you guys are like,
we got front of house, you know, we did line checks or whatever.
And he's like, do you guys need anything from me? We're like,
no, we're a hundred percent good. And we were a hundred percent good.
So again, the benefits of using a splitter snake and really understanding how
it works and how to integrate it.
And my guess is that next year, Tim will have a splitter snake in his system
so that if someone like us shows up
with our own mixer we don't even have to insert our snake in in our splitter
in there we'll just take his tails and plug in and go.
And that also works great like that you know there's many ways of doing this so um.
Yeah yeah just bear that bear that in mind as we're all out there kind of doing
what we're doing we get a couple of questions from all of you i know uh let's
see where are we on time okay yeah we got a little bit of time we have a great uh a really great,
guest today and dug into a lot of kind of this kind of stuff so it's good to
set this up but mark had a question he says uh newer listener to gig gab and
figured i would bring a question to the table a god mic switch,
or a md mic switch is probably a music director mic switch is probably better to for for this he says uh,
which one would work best for a headset setup
also what has been the experience with using a god mic or an md mic on stage
when you have some musicians without in ear monitors he says my horn section
hates the in skull vibration feeling my drummer would need to use over the ears
due to smaller ear canals that just can't fit in ears um,
and he says uh thank you for sharing your knowledge and you're welcome i'd love
i love getting to do what i do here so it's it's absolutely my pleasure so for
these god mic switches or an md mic switch and i and And,
what I'm understanding here, and I think I'm getting it right,
but I'll just kind of articulate the question.
Mark doesn't want his music director, Mike.
The idea of a music director, Mike, is something where he can talk sort of only
to the musicians on stage without it going into front of house to guide things
through. And this is a very common thing in especially in the theater world and the worship world.
But it's also a really common thing in your larger touring productions you know
when you go see i remember when you know i mean it's certainly not the only
been we were on you know front of house,
watching kenny chesney we that we could hear because it was in a near field
monitor at front of house
we could hear what the music director was saying and it wasn't very much because
it was the end of the tour it was literally the last show of the tour so they
kind of had things dialed in by then you know as you would expect,
there were things that you could hear like every now and then.
And there was, you know, the kind of the whole, that whole back channel thing,
that we've talked about here.
So the idea is how to manage that when.
Let's split the question in two. What's the best way to control this?
Because you don't want that mic live in everyone's ears all of the time.
That is very true. It makes, it can just create a lot of noise and you can get
weird phasing and all of those things, depending on where everybody is on stage.
And so there are a couple and it depends on how you're doing it if you're using
a separate mic then you can simply use an on off switch for that microphone
and you're good and we'll talk about those
but if you're using a if you want your microphone to split between the two well
then that's different right so you need a different type of switch so uh,
i have used and and this can be used for a lot of different things i've used
the daddario infrared mic mute which is an inline thing that goes um,
you plug your microphone into it and then you plug it into uh.
Your your like the the mic cable comes in so it goes inline you essentially
if you have a mic plugged in already unplug the mic from the cable put the mic mute in in line,
between the two and and now you've got this thing right there and it is quiet it's fast
and it is proximity based and there's a little dial a little knob on top where
you can control the proximity and when you are with outside of the range of it it just turns off,
and there's no noise and when you get up closer to it it turns on now that obviously
can be used for an md mic if you want to use it that way it can also just be
used for your primary vocal mic so that you're not getting you know drum bleed
behind you when you're not there in front of the microphone.
It's got a lot of purposes but that could absolutely that could do it.
Uh then and there's an in in that realm there is also something called the opto gate which is,
very very similar in function where it goes in line it sees what how far away
you are and it decides you know what it's doing so i'll put links to both of
those the i'm not sure exactly how much the optic gate is while i'm recording here it's
the optic gate is 249 the daddario mic mute the IR make mute is 99.
So there you go. That's that, that's those two.
I'm sure someone at OptiGate is going to tell me why the OptiGate is better
than the D'Addario or why it, why it costs so much more than the D'Addario.
But for now it doesn't seem like I can tell. So we will find out on that.
And then there are the physical switches, right? so uh.
And I'm going to talk about three. They're at radialengineeringatradialeng.com.
And again, links in the show notes at giggeppodcast.com.
Has the Hotshot DM1, which is a, it is a mic toggle, right?
So you plug your microphone into it, and then you have two different outputs, right?
One of the outputs, and the two outputs go to different channels.
And because they go to two different channels, you can send the,
on the mixer, you can send those channels wherever you want.
So let's say you send output one to front of house, that's your vocal mic,
that's what the crowd hears, and you all hear it in your ears,
of course, you mix that in.
And then output two maybe doesn't go to front of house and only goes to your
ears, you mix it differently, and you can even gain it differently, it's all totally fine.
And then the output defaults to one, and when you toggle the switch,
it goes to output two, and now you can
you can just use the same microphone and you hit your little toggle and boom
now you're only talking to the bands in ears and i realize we haven't answered the second question
uh so that's the hotshot dm1,
and near as i can tell let's see what the price is on this i don't know what
the price is on this why don't they tell me what the price is on this uh,
we'll get there standby and and then there is the hotshot md.
Which uh has as i understand it three outputs on it a b and c and so you've got a and b,
work kind of the same as what i just described right that you you press the
button and it toggles you between a and b and then there's a separate button for c,
and where where that would work and this is why they call it md is if you know
you have say output a is your vocal going to front of house output b,
is doesn't go to front of house and only goes to the musicians in ears and then
say output c doesn't go to front of house but only goes to the tech crew
in ears lighting you know sound whatever it is because in a theater world uh
and sometimes in a worship world and sometimes
in a band world that md needs to communicate and coordinate with the you know different,
different groups of people and so that one's there that and and there you go right so that's the.
Those are the physical buttons. And I guess this next one is also a physical button.
It's called the Lily Pad. Well, P4D is what it is.
That's how it's spelled, L-I-L-Y-P-4-D. And the P4D stands for Pad for Ducking.
And this is literally a pressure-sensitive pad that you put on the floor.
I was able to test this at NAMM 2025.
And it's amazing how well it works and again all of these things are very quiet
you're not getting pops in front of house or pops in your ears but it's this
pressure sensitive foot pad you can set different pressure levels,
and it is just a true bypass switch
that works very very well and again depending on the function of your setup
it can be really nice you just sort of
as you walk up to your vocal mic you have this pad there and you're good to
go you don't have to worry about touching a switch you don't need to worry about
the proximity sensor of a,
you know the the optigate or the uh infrared mic switch from dadaria so lots
of different options links in the show notes for all of them,
and hopefully one of them works now as far as how you deal with having a music
director mic when you're using wedges right when there's not in ears.
I mean it's kind of the obvious answer you put it in the wedges and,
this is not new we have all seen bands on stage or many of us anyway i certainly
have where you you know someone talks and you can kind of hear it when you're
in the house but it's not aimed at you it's in the monitors only,
and as long as it's all kind of,
set right and everybody knows how to use it, it can work totally fine.
Between songs if you need to communicate in the middle of a song i i'm not sure
that using it in wedges is going to to help uh as much so i know uh,
tranastasio and fish before they moved to in ears he had a a mic that would
just go to everybody's monitors and i think he hid it in like a like a water,
bottle or something so he could just kind of like look down into it and talk
i don't know why they hit it like but whatever it was what it was but uh but
yeah you can do this and it it works fine it's great for like announcing what
the next song is especially as you start playing on
larger and larger stages where everybody's you know a little more spread out,
so uh great question mark thank you for uh sending that in mark of course sent
that into feedback at gig gab podcast.com and you can send your questions in there too um um.
Well, let's see, do I have, I have a question from another Mark and,
and then, and then we'll get to our, our interview here.
But, but the, the other question from a different Mark says,
what do I do with a fan that's always shooting video of a band of my band's
entire set and then posting all the video, everything all at once?
He says I realize that exposure that the exposure it can create,
is good but if videos of every summer concert series and art and wine fest from
the entire year are posted
the same songs get posted and we as a band have no content control I wonder
if it's doing more harm than good it might be.
You're right that all exposure is good exposure,
having the entire video there most people are probably not going to watch an
entire video of of your band or any band we we don't have that kind of attention span these days man
uh and i know it's terrible to say right but it's true so uh.
It would be better and and maybe this is the,
the ask right of if it sounds like you know you're not going to have you know
50 or 100 fans doing this you might have one to five of fans doing this most
people are just going to hold up their phone for a clip of a song not even a whole song
and you know wind up posting that and that kind of thing i think even with phone
video quality and phone sound quality is great right it if it captures a good little moment,
absolutely and i would i would you know reshare that as the band these full
show videos i really don't think people are going to invest the time to sit
and watch a phone shot video uh.
For the you know two hours or whatever it is i don't think it's going to hurt
you uh but what could help you,
more than that is if those videos were chopped up so maybe reach out to this person and say hey,
uh i would love to share clips from your video if you've got any that you've
chopped up please share them and we as a band will reshare them and promote
them and if you don't have time,
would you please send me the raw video we
as a band will chop those up and and share the clips and kind of you know control
the highlights and we'll give you credit for them of course right But,
you know, and, you know, that's usually when someone's doing that, it's because they,
feel ownership of your band.
Not like hopefully not in a weird way, but like this is a band they like and
they want to, you know, your band is a band they like.
They want to share it with their friends. They think it's important.
They feel some kind of ownership over helping promote this band that they love.
And so if you reach out and and you got to be careful here because you don't
want to dilute their experience of being a fan of your band i would very very
and we learned this the hard way when we ran mac observer um.
Because we had fans of that website of course you know i mean it's how things
work uh don't jump straight into,
hiring this person for your band let them do what they're doing and remain a
fan and just give them a little more access, a little more support.
Right. But but leave it there for now.
The time may come where you need to hire somebody to do your social media or
need to hire somebody to sell your T-shirts or, you know, do your sound or all those things.
And and then, you know, look from within. Right. Who who makes sense to promote that?
Sometimes the best fans are good at being the best fans and nothing more.
So think about that.
Tread carefully here. But, you know, giving that person a little bit of access,
engaging with them a little bit, guiding them while still letting them kind
of be that fan that they enjoy being can be great for your band and,
of course, for your fan base, too.
So that's my advice. Questions from the two marks.
Thank you for sending those in. Again, feedback at giggabpodcast.com.
We'll leave it there because we do have a great interview.
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My guest co-host started playing in punk bands, and when nobody was going to
record them, he picked up the gear and figured it out himself.
That decision rolled through dive bars into monitor work at a Live Nation venue
and eventually onto the road where he now travels doing audio for a touring tribute band.
He's done it on entirely self-taught on budget gear, and he's here to tell us
what actually works in the real world versus what just looks good on a spec sheet.
Jesus Hernandez, thank you, and welcome to Gig Gab.
Thank you for having me, Dave.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love the kindred spirit, self-taught with the
sound stuff, and I love that you took it and actually brought it to this level. It's amazing.
And drummers, too.
You know, so this is the second episode in a row where I have,
unwittingly, unwittingly unknowingly unwittingly is probably better uh brought
on a guest who's a drummer last summer the same thing happened and i called
it drummer summer and maybe drummer summer is just a gig gab thing now i think.
I think it's gonna be a thing
It's a thing i mean it clearly is a thing we're not actually at summer now yet so like we're close it.
Feels like it over here so
Same here it's.
Up in the 90s i think
So yeah i think it'll hit 90s here in new hampshire today too and where is here for you. You're in...
I am in... I'm outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Okay. But basically in Nashville.
Yeah, Nashville. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So I am...
I have all kinds of questions and things and I want to hear your stories and
all of that. But, you know, that whole idea of,
You're learning sound out of necessity. I love this because it's how I learned sound.
I had, I was the drummer in the band and the PA was set up at my house.
And so I learned how to use it because I didn't like hearing feedback during
practice, you know, and, and boy, does the snowball go from there.
So, so how did, how did your snowball start? Like what, what was, what was that?
This is going to be a really serious throwback.
You probably would remember this other people might not um you know in lady
and the tramp yeah weird weird way to start um they have the siamese cats yeah
that are the same voice there's like a
uh like kind of a behind the scenes of this is how you can record two of your
own voice and it's i think the voice actors with two tape recorders and she
sings the song she plays it back and then
hits record on another tape recorder while singing it back so i
you know had just started playing guitar and i had two tape recorders little
cassette decks and i just would record the song and then play it on the tape
recorder hit record on the other one and so i started recording stuff like that and then uh
Long story short, I ended up getting a Tascam Porta Studio. I'm not sure if you remember those.
Oh, I did. A four-track cassette. Yeah, the Tascam Porta Studio was like,
that was the thing that allowed bands to self-record. It really was the beginning
of the home recording trend.
Trend is probably the wrong word, but yeah.
I'd say industry shift away from the major studio.
But I ended up getting one of those and I tried to record with two mics,
a whole band, had no idea what I was doing.
And I eventually got one of those larger, the digital version.
I actually have one right here. Hold on.
And I will do the one thing that I neglected to do. Our audience is primarily audio.
This video will be out, of course. Folks, you can see it at giggapodcast.com and on YouTube.
So we will describe what we're about to show you here, of course.
And I'll take a lead on that.
This is an ancient relic.
Okay.
Porta studio.
Oh, the big digital Porta studio. Oh man, that's pretty cool.
So I got, uh, I got one of those and I was joining as had just started going
to like, uh, local shows with a friend of mine from middle school.
Okay. And you know, we started trying to join bands and they would never happen,
but eventually, you know, got into a band and we would record just put that thing up.
I know you could record 24 tracks, but we'd put one mic in the middle of the
room, record the band, and then have the singer go after.
Okay, so you were using it for overdubs in that sense. Sure.
And then eventually people would be like, oh, you guys recorded your own stuff?
Can you record our band? And the drummer in that band got one of those Audix
Fusion mic kits, and we were like, you've got to learn how to put mics on stuff. Yeah.
Surprisingly not knowing what we were doing it so a lot of it came out pretty
good okay I do have to correct a little bit and I am self-taught I did go to a
college for okay music production good but i didn't really learn anything
there everything i learned was kind of after sure sure leaving there and before so
but you know that's that's how it kind of started and then everybody would be
like hey can you like make my bass amp sound good can you make the pa sound
good whenever i was at a show and i just became the guy that everybody would
be like you know this is your problem you gotta
Fix it i i say every time i join a band And I'm not going to let them find out
that I know anything about sound.
Like I'm just Dave bang drum, right? I'm just going to enjoy this and let like,
they've already got sound figured out.
Far be it for me to need another job to do. But invariably when the problem
comes up at a gig, it's like, I can help fix that. And they're like, great.
Then you fix it. And then the snowball.
Yeah. And it actually became a thing where people would, I think they would
try to just like, Like, yeah, you know, we don't really like this guy.
We don't want him in the band, but we'll get stuff recorded for free.
So let's have him play guitar or whatever.
You know, it happens. It's fine. You know, we all have our different values. It's all good.
Yeah, you know, you just got to make it work with whatever you got.
But, you know, coming out of college for audio stuff, I was forced to do an
internship, which I got at a local theater. Okay. A two.
And it was mostly just like running cables and putting batteries and mics and
stuff like that and earn the wireless transmitters and making sure things were turned on.
Yep.
And the A1 went on vacation. So I had to take his place for a summer and did
a few, I guess they'd call them off-Broadway, kind of like rock opera pieces.
Okay.
And the director was like, I know you go to those rock shows over at Churchill's
Pub was the name of the place that we'd play shows in Miami.
He's like, can you bring that sound to the stage? And I couldn't because the
musicians were like professionals and it didn't sound the same.
But, you know, I did that. I love that.
Yeah, a lot of it is the performance. You know, if you want a raw,
edgy sound, the performance has to be a little bit like kind of.
Not perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, but you know, there, there's a charm in that. That's why people,
you know, like certain things and other people like really clean sounding stuff.
But from there, I eventually got a, a,
a gig mixing at a jazz club okay which was it was weird because it was
one overhead mic a vocal mic plug in the keyboard and like it was it was like
just whatever you really need like nothing sure no guitar mics no
Okay so you were truly doing sound for the jazz club it was sound reinforcement
yeah at a at a basic level right like.
At the most basic level yeah
That which wasn't projecting from the stage was all you were adding.
Yeah okay yeah exactly yeah and it took a long time to wrap my head around it because i was
you know cranking the the gain on things so that the meters were like you know
hitting a healthy level and it was just it would be way too loud yeah you know it's and i needed to
really just kind of like listen and what is it that i actually need
and kind of just feather in a little bit of it but
you know at my age with my experience level i was just like yeah i gotta turn
the the overhead mic all the way up and i didn't have to no
That's it but that's a really like my guess is that that lesson or the lessons learned,
there probably continue to serve you to this day like that what you just said,
i think it's worth repeating,
listen and then decide what to do right i mean you can yeah you i i,
mixing sound is part mixing with your eyes right like knowing like okay there's
there's no distortion happening there's like there are things you can use your eyes for
that that are more efficient than than using your ears right yeah.
But yeah definitely but
One must use their ears.
Yeah ultimately what you're trying to serve is the ears and you can use your eyes as an indicator of
to to confirm that what you think you're hearing is kind of the reality of what's
showing up in front of you so yep
but you know that
this is in south florida not the most uh music friendly place really that yeah
that jazz club closed down the theater didn't pay me too much.
So what I ended up doing was I got a job at Guitar Center so that I could buy
a bunch of recording gear with the employee discount.
I still have pretty much everything I bought from there, but I was using that
to kind of roll it into my,
it was like a mobile recording studio where I would just kind of like go to
where a band practices, set up a bunch of mics and like, you know,
record them there and just whatever I could make happen.
And yeah, a lot of it came out pretty rough and you know, it was what it was.
Yep. Yep.
It was...
The same idea as live sound, just recording it instead of, you know,
instead of doing like a whole production with a bunch of overdubs and like,
we're going to tune this and edit that.
Because I was recording again with that 24 track Porta Studio.
You can't really edit on that.
Okay. All right. I never used those. But, I mean, on the four-track Porta Studio,
the editing you could do was bouncing to make room for more tracks,
right? Yeah. You know, that was it. Yeah.
But, you know, there's no, like, slicing stuff and sliding it over and,
like, oh, let's just copy this chorus and just paste it, you know? Got it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which I try not to do that anyways if I help it.
No, it is. It is nice to have the option when you realize you're at a point
where you can't reassemble all the musicians to rerecord.
And it's like, OK, yeah, I think I'm just going to take the first chorus and
make it the third chorus and it's going to be OK, you know.
But yeah, I am, for most recordings,
I approach them of the mindset of we are capturing musicians,
playing and singing this song, not using the studio as an instrument,
which is a whole other thing and fun and cool and all that stuff.
My default is what would it be like if this band were live and playing this
song? And let's, let's try and, and, and return that to whoever presses play on this track.
Yeah. That's, that's always kind of been my approach as well.
And it's, you know, I'm a, I'm
a huge Beatles fan, especially that like Sergeant Pepper, Abby road era.
And I'm always thinking, what would it sound like if they just played these
songs live without all the studio magic just you know out of curiosity yes and you know it just
it might not hit the same they might have to get extra musicians but
Some things I feel like require that studio magic, if you will,
and other projects are better served to just down and dirty, hit it and go.
We kind of got that with Let It Be Naked, right?
Yeah.
Years later, of course, but we got that-ish.
Yeah i and for whatever reason
i feel like it doesn't the the naked version doesn't sound as good as the i
agree the other version no it's not but that's you know that's the production
choices and yeah i guess the the band didn't have a say in what was going on
that's but that's another
that's another thing i try to also like when i'm recording these bands i like
like what do you guys like want do you want to sound crazy and overproduced
or do you just want to like sound like yourself you know
So okay like and i'm okay yeah i i want to i want to explore that question in
a couple of different ways but but let's stay where we are here so you're like what,
what types of answers have you gotten from bands when you're when you're asking
that question in the recording context.
The one of the most interesting ones i i had a band uh that was kind of like
a noisy emo band and they were like their their approach was we want to
record the band live like take a picture of the band and then like color on
it paint on it yeah So get what the band sounds like and then
just go crazy adding stuff over it, which...
It didn't it didn't hit the same as just the raw recording, but I used it the way that they wanted it.
And that's that's one of the things is you're not always going to agree with what the band wants.
But your job is to give the band what they want. And, you know,
same thing in a live setting. They might be like, I don't want any reverb.
I don't want any slap back.
Like, you know, I don't want to hear any attack on the bass drum is one that
I get. That kind of drives me crazy. Yeah.
OK, because that was going to be the next question I ask is for live,
because I think we've had this there's sort of an ongoing conversation on GigGab
that pops up every now and then. And here's a then it perhaps a now.
And and it's, you know, you abandon a sound engineer meet as they are getting
set up to play a gig together that night. Right, like so no prior experience working together.
And my, and so like,
I think as both a musician and an engineer, the conversation about what do you,
what do you, what does your band sound like is an important one.
And communicating that information efficiently from band to engineer is perhaps
the most important part of that.
So like, how do you go about, what's your process when, you know,
if, if you and I met now, you were going to mix, we were going to work together
for the night, right? You know, what, what's that, what's that process like for you?
Well, it kind of depends on a couple of things. If it's an original band, I will
listen to as much of every era of the band as I possibly could and try to replicate
what they've got on an album because I feel like that's
what they want to sound like.
If it's a tribute band, which I do a ton of, it's the same thing.
I just listen to whatever artist they're covering, and I'll try to employ that
and get as close to that album sound as I can get.
With a bar band...
I'll kind of have to find, like, I go pretty raw.
Like, I do as little processing as possible, and I kind of let the song inform
me, like, are they playing, like, a Metallica song?
And the drum's got to have, like, a ton of attack and, like,
you know, some sustain and be real crisp, and the guitar's got to,
like, you know, crunch all the way through.
Or are they going to do something like...
Like Guns N' Roses, where you can sort of like dial back the aggression of the
drums, and it's really more about pushing the guitars, but the guitars don't
have as much of that sharp sound, you know?
And so I'll kind of adjust based on the song, almost as if I was trying to like
replicate the recording.
And that's what happens a lot is because everything these days gets recorded
before anybody hears it, which makes it a little bit easier.
But sometimes you get a band that does original stuff and it's not recorded
and you'll kind of, you'll either let the song inform you because you'll know
if it's like a thrash band, it's going to have to sound a certain way.
If it's like Nora Jones style stuff, you're going to have to dial it back.
But people have said things to me like,
Take all that 3k out of the bass drum, just only put it in the subs.
And, uh, you know, like for the bass, I don't want to be able to hear any of
the finger, just put it in the, like people really don't want their,
their low end instruments to be like heard. They just want them to be felt sometimes.
Okay. I mean, if that's your, if that's your band's vibe, I can.
And if you can do it in the room, because a lot of rooms don't, don't really allow for
they don't they don't offer that clarity on the way or they don't have the they
don't have the sub energy in that room like maybe they've only got one sub and
the band likes to crank it
and you just there's no way you're going to be able to yeah to keep it clear
like that yeah so you know
that's it's really the recordings really help
I can see.
That just you You know, knowing what you're going to, what sound you're going
for will make it a lot easier.
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's those festival gigs and things where
it's like, you know, the engineer will tell us, oh, yeah, we haven't,
I didn't listen to anything. You know, it's like, okay.
Most engineers do, to be fair. But, you know, sometimes it's like,
all right, I need to in 30 seconds or less, I need to tell you how are like
what are what the people that have heard our band before expect our band to sound like today.
Like that's, you know, that that's kind of the conversation is like,
like, yeah, we're going to work together on this. It's a partnership.
You know, you're it. You're a you're a fifth band member for tonight.
So, yeah, I do always kind of consider myself like whether I'm doing a show
or recording a band, I feel like I'm a fifth.
Because I feel like I'm playing the mixer board, or whatever you want to call
it, playing the console, playing the DAW.
Almost as an instrument because i'm kind of controlling the the arrangement
like what what stands out to people so yeah it does feel a little bit like i'm performing a piece
You are i mean i i think that's the best way i've heard it articulated and and
i think every sound engineer and every musician listening,
uh would do well to take that to heart like like that that's an important lesson
And if you if you come into the room approaching it that way,
realizing how much power you have and,
you know, how much control you have, you're the final filter between what's
happening on stage and what happens in the audience's ears.
And that can make or break a show for sure.
Absolutely. You know, and they're probably. Yeah.
Yeah. There's probably been two bands that I've ever worked with where I could
just set levels and leave them alone.
Sure.
And they sound really, really good. And one of them was because they would travel
with their own PA and just run vocals and kick out of it. So they knew how to
balance themselves on stage dynamically.
And when I got through the first two songs with them and I realized I didn't
have to move a single fader, I was like, I don't even know why I'm here. I'll collect, but
they're making it way too easy on me. But I've had bands that,
oh man, I'm not going to name the band because it's really bad.
But I was working at this upscale bar in McDonough, Georgia.
And they did a lot of the tribute thing and a lot of country and classic rock
type covers. and we had a band come in that was your standard drums, bass, two guitars and
a few vocals across the front.
Got it.
And, oh man, the,
the, it's, it's, it's really, it's cracking me up to think about.
The drummer had, you know, would get excited and hit things really hard and
then settle in and like kind of just, you couldn't tell when they were hitting any of the shells.
Wow. The guitars, one of them was blasting and there was no top end.
It was just like, it sounded like, it sounded like
Not a guitar. The other guitar had like a little line six amp,
and it was like, it sounded literally like static.
And I couldn't get them to change anything. The bass player was actually pretty
good, and he could sing well and loud. That's good.
That's important. Yeah.
But the lead singer would shoot. Oh, shoot, kind of zoom like this.
But for like, imagine that's supposed to be screaming for like an 80s kind of
hair metal song. Like she would like falsetto whisper it.
Oh, and it was, it was one of the most difficult mixes I've ever had in my life.
And they cleared out the bar. Nobody was there. They ended the show early.
They told them to go home after the first set. Wow.
But what I did for them was I recorded a multi-track of the set because the
bass player was like, Oh, can you like, you know, let me know how it sounds. We're a newer band.
I gave him the thumb drive. I was like, listen to this, put it in your DAW.
Balance out just the first song so you can hear what's going on you know up
through a first chorus and just hit play and listen to the entire set everything
that doesn't sound right
throughout the rest of the set that's stuff that you guys need to fix that's
you know like levels of the drummer being all over yeah
singer like you know kind of pushing and then like barely pushing the guitar
tone, like whatever you hear without processing, without automation,
that's what you guys have got to work with.
That's what you're delivering for your audience and for the engineer to work
with. And I'm, you know, I'll use air quotes like.
Yeah. Work with what you're given.
Work with what you get. No, that's a really...
What i i mean how kind of you to well i you know.
I wanted to
Help i yeah but you wanted to help like that i i i commend you for that because like,
on on on any given night like if i were in your shoes i might want to help but
i might also be like i can't wait till this ends and i don't i was on the fence right exactly.
I was a little bit of
Both right exactly but that what a great thing for that band but all of our
bands have the ability to do this these days yeah and if you haven't done this yet do it because,
you will learn things and these will be things that are going to be more valuable
than probably anything else you do in rehearsal um,
just taking the time to to and and it's you know your advice to him that the
coaching you gave him as to how to listen to this is the most important part.
Like you are listening to this as a learning exercise.
Don't, if you think, and what I would add to that is if you feel good about
the gig, wait two weeks to listen to this. Enjoy this feeling.
Like you earned the, you know, if you made yourself feel good, enjoy that.
I'm not going to burst your bubble today, but in two weeks you need to burst
your bubble so that you can be better, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, the part of it is as a musician and as a mix engineer,
you're going to have to be your hardest critic. Yes. Because other people...
Might, you know, oh, it's good or it's bad.
They might have their opinion about it, but they might not be able to verbalize
or articulate what it is that sounds good or bad and justify whether,
you know, they still like it. Because, you know, I come from the whole punk scene thing. Sure.
And there are bands that, like, they sound bad, but it's so good.
But it's so good.
Because it sounds bad like that. But they're, you know, if you're doing,
like, Motley Crue and it just sounds really off, you know, it's not going to work.
No, you're not going to be able to level up if you can. And,
you know, I know you said it was rare and a wonderful surprise when a band would
walk in and essentially mix themselves on stage.
I think every band...
Needs to aim for that level of control because once you get there,
then your engineer can actually,
sculpt your sound to the room, which, which really is the job.
And, you know, and, and, and make choices about bringing, you can,
you get the, you, you change your engineer from, you know, problem solver to producer.
Yeah.
And there's a value there. Like that's when things really level up and they
can say, oh, man, well, on this song, you know, I'm going to mix the harmonies
this way or maybe add some reverb to the harmony. You guys are already mixing
your harmonies perfectly.
So let me add some reverb to them on this song differently than that song.
But they trust that what they're going to get out of you in a live setting is
going to be consistent so they can do more for you.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, my one of my I guess this is my signature approach
because I developed this after working the same room for like three years, I think. Yeah.
I would it was that same upscale bar. I would get the same bands in over a year.
I'd see the same band like three times, maybe four times.
And what I would start to do is I would have the band set up and you know throw
mics up you know that I know I was gonna need because you could get loud in
that room and I'd say before I start getting levels on stuff just play as a band
and then stand back by the bar listen to the band
take some notes and then I'd stop them. And I'd be like, your base needs to go way down.
Your guitars are out of balance. You either need to go up or you need to go down a little bit.
And also like, you need a little bit more high end on your guitar.
You need to back off, like, you know, just kind of balance them in, in a sense that like,
Before you're doing anything, before you're fixing it in the PA.
You're fixing it at the source. Yeah. And basically I would, sell it to them like
if the mixer goes down like if the power goes out and something happens with the mixer
but the stage still has power you guys will at least still kind of sound good
and i can just like get the vocal mic and plug it right into the back of one
of the monitors and flip it around or something you know
which i did actually have to do that it was my first my first show there
was uh it was my first show that they left me alone because i had to shadow somebody for a few gigs.
Of course. But the first one I had was actually, I think it was a Motley Crue
tribute from like Minnesota or something.
And they had, you know, the backing tracks. They had the guitars and bass and
a bunch of vocals across the front of the stage.
And I left right after soundcheck to get something to eat. I came back.
I was like, everything's good. You know, like soundcheck was great.
You already lime checked it, soundchecked it. Yeah, you're good.
And then we go to start the show at nine.
And there's no sound coming out of the mixer. And then there's also no sound coming into the mixer.
The drummer's telling me, like, I can't hear the backing tracks in my in-ears
and all this stuff. I'm like, what could have possibly happened?
I come to find out a few days later that the power went out.
Like, there was, like, a lightning strike, and the power went out in the building,
and it, like, reset the board.
Sure, yeah.
But what I had to do, because it had been an hour that I couldn't figure out
what was going on, because the board literally did a factory reset.
It was a pre-sona studio live with the AVB routing, which is a little bit complicated.
Yeah, right. Yeah. It's not as simple as just turn it on and reset the faders
and you're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. So I ended up just daisy-chaining the monitors across the front of
the stage, plugged the vocal mic in, and they just had to play it like that. That was the show. Yeah.
And it didn't sound good because I got levels for whatever they gave me.
But I took that as a lesson. I was like, let me make sure that if this ever
happens again, the band will at least sound pretty good before.
But that never happened to me again because what I did was I learned how to
route that board, how to configure everything. Yeah.
So that if I did get into that situation, I could fix it rapidly.
But it's one of those things. It's like now that I know how to fix it,
I never have to deal with it.
Of course not.
That's how it works. It's only going to happen if you don't know how to fix it.
That's Murphy's law, man. You got
it. But but I think the one of the most valuable things in that is the.
What you learned to tell bands, hey, look, the reason I'm doing this to kind
of soften the approach reason I'm doing this is if the power goes out,
I want you to sound good. So let's mix here first and then I'll mix you from out there.
Yeah. Right. But like coming, finding those ways because bands,
you know, there's I actually I was going to say, I don't know why this is.
I absolutely know why this is bands expect all sound engineers to be like grumpy
and and jaded and all that stuff.
And most engineers are not but there are those that are that live that stereotype
right and so you never but and you never know what you're going to get and i
you know i've talked on this show about my approach when i'm coming in you know as a musician,
you know softening the engineer up i always offer some help first before i ask
for anything you know the whole thing,
because it's a dance it's a negotiation uh getting to know somebody quickly
you know and uh yeah and from your side it's the same thing and i i like i love
i love that line i i might use that that's great.
Yeah yeah well yeah and this also comes from again playing those like local crappy punk shows where
you maybe had a pa you definitely didn't have monitors but what you had was
like the sound of the band there and like you probably plugged your mic into a like spare guitar
Amp or the second channel on the guitar amp sometimes.
Yeah yeah i've seen that as
Well i've done it yeah.
Yeah so you know it really like like
minimalism like whatever whatever i can do like to not have to do a bunch of
like compression and like drastic eq and like uh
matrixes and boxes and parallel compression, all that.
I avoid that stuff at all costs.
I feel like if you can get the band to sound decent on stage,
and then you just reinforce the things that are sort of missing,
and then fade or ride some vocals and some effects, you can usually get...
Like 90 of what you're actually looking for yeah so yeah
There's a lesson here uh you know if you've got a digital mixer uh,
even if if well even if you don't if you can you know borrow someone's learning,
and every digital mixer is different and this is in terms of routing learning how to route,
your mixer is a very important thing you know i see a lot of bands they're like
oh yeah we're We travel with our mixer.
You know, my friend Timmy, he set it all up for us and we're good to go.
And I'm like, well, okay, great. But like that would petrify me to be on stage,
and not know how, like if, if, if, if somehow I was responsible to not know
how to like rebuild it from scratch, if necessary would be a disaster.
And, and actually I'm going through that now, this theater that I,
I do a lot of these gigs at, there's always an engineer that.
We've done some gigs recently engineered,
she does a great job mixing it's actually my friend billy who is,
uh in one of my bands with me and billy is a fantastic engineer grew up in the
analog world didn't really spend a lot of time in the digital world,
and so we had a routing issue the other night and it's a board i've never used
before but also the room because it's a theater that does musicals has like
cavernous yes yeah routing all it's it's
very complex even for the simplest thing right you know you've got speaker matrix
matrices all over the room and then there's a band pit that's that's not even
in the theater or not in the in the you know in the performance space of the
theater and so there's things routed there and all like and i couldn't fix it
and so i told him i said okay before my next gig in there.
And i i said to the the the sort of the audio manager of the studio who i know
very well and i said to her i said look um,
i i would i don't want to step on your toes i would love to have you be the
one to show me this but i also know that your time is valuable i want to respect
your time so i am going to come into the theater,
and i'm going to break things and fix them so that i know how to fix them,
and i just want to let you know and if it's if i need to come in at midnight
one night and do this like that's fine,
I cannot do another gig there where there's no one in the room that understands
how to reroute this board. Yeah.
I can't be on stage for that again because we did one and it was – we did two
separate nights of this Boston Cream tribute thing that we put together, which was awesome.
And they were a week apart. First night was great. Everybody was there.
The A1 – the audio manager of the theater was there, got it all together.
The second night, a week later, it was just going to be essentially a throw and go, right?
You know we we got there we set up our gear and and then you know go and it's
like wait there's no sound coming out okay who in the who in the room knows
and they're like dave can you help like,
I would, I would love to, I happily will, but can I is a different question
than will I, you know, because I will, but I can't, I mean, I I'll try,
but I have no idea where, where to even start in this room.
And, and it's like, okay, there's a, there's a first and last time for everything.
And yeah yeah and you know i come from the analog world as well where i'm used
to like one is one 15 is 50 there's none of this like you know soft patching
is what they call it and i refuse to soft patch
like to change the soft patch inside of like an x32 or anything like that it's
just like why why make it more difficult for yourself and for everybody else but i you know i i started
working at that theater it was like a 56 or 58 channel allen and heath or something that's what
This is it's q6 yeah yeah.
Yeah well no this one was was an analog one oh so it was just oh
So truly one-to-one yeah yeah.
Yeah so it was truly one-to-one and it was still really complicated because
you had like your your front fills you had your mains you had a center you had the balcony, you
had basically a surround sound that you were manually editing,
which comes in handy once you understand how to do that.
It's a great tool, for sure.
With learning routing in general, but it can already be complicated,
and sometimes the digital mixers make it a little more complicated.
But if you get something that you really understand, like an X32 is just the
simplest one, it still sounds good. after all these years I don't care what anybody says um
you know if you can get a deep understanding of how to route that thing and
how to operate it you can't go wrong with you know
with knowing the equipment you can always kind of fix it you could even save
your scene on a on a thumb drive stick it in there and load it back up which
is what i do in case of emergency i was gonna
Say in case of a factory reset right yeah drive to the rescue yeah.
Yeah yeah literally yeah but i mean
Oh, man. I'm also thinking about the downsides of strictly analog,
because when I started working monitors, it was at a place called Revolution
Live in Fort Lauderdale.
And it was a Midas Gold 48 channel, all analog.
Half of the channels had something wrong with them.
Yeah, channel one never worked.
Like the channel one was good oh that's like everything after it was everything
after 23 got kind of got kind of funky
and uh and you know i was running monitors so i had to ring out monitors with
like a rack graphic eq i'd like get on my hands and knees and like yep
you know push the sliders up and down and i'd have to have like a stage hand
like just point the mic straight down it the way it
Was calling out frequencies.
Yep yeah it would be a nightmare to do but the guy that you learn
A lot doing that though yeah that's the thing you learn how to hear frequencies right away.
Yeah yeah that's and that's one of my one of my strengths that people usually
really like about working with me is that they say that i get them a really
good monitor mix which if you can hear
everything you need to hear well you'll play the best you can play so i always
try to make sure that the monitoring is as good as I could possibly get it.
And then I'll do, I'll worry about front of house.
But the guy that got me that gig as a monitor engineer, he was brilliant.
He still is a brilliant audio engineer. And I learned a lot from this guy about,
you know, like if you're getting too much low end feedback, you could pop in and out
the polarity button and that will invert the signal and it'll cut that low.
That low hum which is just like crazy things about ringing out monitors that I've
I've never seen anybody else do, but this guy, this guy was brilliant.
Do you, do you want to, do you want to name check this person?
I mean, yeah, his name is.
His name is Rick Carmona. Okay. He's a Miami based audio engineer.
Really, really good dude. Really good sound guy.
Used to be in a killer band called No Peace At All.
Okay. And he was the guy that kind of like helped push me into a full-time audio
career. I was working as a, uh, as a knock. I don't know if you know,
it's a network observation center. Yeah.
I know about it. I'm a, I'm a nerd on the other side of things too.
So I, I, so yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I'd be watching like a hundred TV screens to see which one goes out and then
and have to like, you know, for, for like 10 bucks an hour or something like that.
Yeah. And I'd be up till four in the morning. And then this guy was like,
Hey, uh, are you looking for some audio gigs? It gave me like three gigs at one time.
And I was like, you know what? I'm making like a lot more just doing audio.
I think I'm going to quit this other job. And I like, I never went back.
I just, it was, it was kind of a serendipitous. Like I, I got that job,
moved into like a punk house kind of. Yeah. And he was hanging out.
He offered me these gigs and I did not like working where I was working. Sure.
And it just kind of it kind of all fell together really quickly and uh and i
i was like you know if i could just
hang on long enough you know figure out how to pay the bills and eat off of
this i'll be i'll be pretty good to go and
uh you know miami is not the easiest place to do that kind of stuff it's like
a lot of techno there's not a lot of
bands right there are bands sure it's not like it is out here in nashville or
i was recently i was living in atlanta okay you know there's a lot more stuff
for us rock guys if you want to call it that sure
Yeah i so you okay,
i'm glad you mentioned that you worked at that knock that network operation
center um because i've i've been the person at times who's had to call the knock
at in the morning because our server's down right and you might.
Have called me
I i i was just gonna say we might have spoken right and and it's you know i'm
the freaked out customer you know like we we for years we ran it for decades
even we ran a website called mac observer where
you know it was a pretty popular website we had millions of people a month coming
to read it and all this stuff we wound up selling it still exists but um,
and so when the site went down like that was a,
really important thing to fix or at least it felt that way right you know in
the grand scheme of things you know a couple hours of downtime whatever but
you didn't want that and so you know you've got this freaked out person at two
in the morning they were probably just woken up by some alarms you know and
now they're on the phone with you and you've been there staring at screens
for you know five hours and just you have to be chill.
I'm glad you understand
You have to be the voice of reason Well, there's a reason I understand this, but it's good training.
I have always said, maybe the right way to say this.
One of my favorite sayings is that every business is in the customer service
business, right? And if you can find me a business without customers,
please tell me I will drop everything I do and I will go do that,
right? As long as I can make money. Right.
But that's not the reality of the world, right? We're working,
doing something that other people want. We're always working for someone else,
even if we're in business for ourselves, right?
Uh and so with that mindset of every business is the customer service business,
like it's been clear over the last 40 minutes or so here that that you,
treat your engineering like as you it's the customer service business you you
want the musicians to be happy and comfortable and you want to work with them i mean i'm,
there are times i'm sure when it's been an adversarial thing and you know.
You can't it does
Happen if somebody wants to be an a-hole you can't stop them right You know,
but like otherwise, and I had my friend Davis Thurston, who is a sound engineer.
He is based locally here. He travels the country doing this actually with a
lot of like jam bands and jam tribute bands and things like that.
And he is a phenomenal engineer. It's I'm sad that he doesn't like.
He doesn't he's not local enough to like do sound for me all the time anymore.
Right. You know, but when he was on the show, he said, this is a would you like fries with that job?
And and it's like, yes, like, you know, everybody's working together.
It's not that that someone is it, you know, is a better like it's like there's
no class system here, but it's we're working together. And what can I do to
make your job easier? And, and the same thing folks comes from the stage.
It's a, would you like fries with that job from the stage too?
What can I do to make your job easier? You know, with the engineer,
it's all, it's a team effort.
Yeah. And, you know, you're not just serving the band, you're also serving the
audience and you're serving
the staff at the venue or the bar or whatever, because the people who actually,
in my experience, have the most
requests or demands is usually like the manager or the bartender saying like,
hey, this is way too loud.
Can you cut it down? And I'm like, let me show you what happens when I pull
all these faders down and the volume doesn't change.
Doesn't change. Yeah.
Because I'm like, I'm like drum sets are loud. That's just, that's how it is.
Yeah. There's not a whole lot I can do about it. Yeah. And you know, I've had.
Uh it was a it was a it was a what were these guys it was a creed and
god smack tribute band play and uh that's like supposed to be loud i mean at
least the god smack stuff i think is supposed to be loud you
Got to be able to feel that music yeah and don't worry about the extra noise
i'm adding here folks i i literally just spilled my tea onto my audio interface
so i'm cleaning that up while we're talking oh yeah well it's all.
Good i'll keep going while you clean and uh and you know fortunately the guitarists
and the bassists come through with the uh the amp sims so i have a fair amount
of control of their levels
Okay and that's good.
But but this is like a like a reunion party for like a tattoo motorcycle shop
or something like that yep and they're all like hanging out with people they
haven't seen in like months or years and they want to be able to
Talk they want to.
Chit chat in the bar
While never hire a band for a reunion gig yeah.
Hire a dj or something yeah yeah and they're for sure they're constantly asking
me like hey can you can you get the band quieter and quieter and i'm getting
them lower and lower but like
the cymbals are now like like just killing the room the only thing you hear you can hear
and they're like is there any way you could bring the level the drums down i'm
like no there's nothing else to bring down i don't even have a mic on the overheads
there's that's just what's in the room that's what's and the band is on stage
like what hey sound guy why are you making it so quiet why weren't we louder two songs like
yep and it's just it was it was a little bit of a a balance nightmare to the
point that I kind of had to just keep an eye on the door.
When this guy would leave, I'd put it back up so that the band could be happy.
And when he would walk back in, I'd have to like slowly drop it down.
So the band wouldn't really notice and he could like chat with his friends.
It was, you know, one of the weirder types of gigs that I've,
I've had to like accommodate everybody.
And it just didn't sound good.
You can't. No, it reminds me, and I'm almost done cleaning this up here.
It was much worse than I thought.
It reminds me of some gigs I played where it's, you know, the one that's coming
to mind was this party that this essentially this neighborhood,
this community would have every year in December, right? Holiday gathering or whatever.
And they were great people we played for them every year we would do other gigs
like if people had a party at their house they would hire us to play or whatever
and it was like everybody knew each other,
and we were hired to do this thing it was like a potluck in this like old grange
hall and we got set up we got there early obviously you know got set up before
there were people in the room and then
let's say doors you know people started getting there at like 6 30 or something
you know and they have dinner or whatever and we're supposed to start at 8.
And I'm talking to the guy, you know, it's seven 45 and I'm looking around the
room and I'm like, these people are still like catching up.
They haven't seen each other. Like it's, it's winter ish, you know,
here in New Hampshire at that point, it's cold.
People don't like socialize as much. So now they're, or maybe they're seeing
people they haven't seen all year.
Like maybe the, you know, you're in the same community, but you don't have a reason to interact.
So I'm like, I went up to him and like, dude, these people, they do not want a band to play right now.
Like these people want to talk with each other and i love that for them i'm
like i've talked to the band
we're actually okay starting like shifting things and playing the same amount
of time but we'll start you know at nine or eight thirty or whatever you know
whenever we all decide that like it's the right time and he's like,
oh he's like you're totally right like thank you um.
You know And, and like, it's as a band,
you need to be, you need to read the room before you even start.
And if, if it's one of those, those reunion kind of things where it's,
if people are getting together and, and it's not the primary goal isn't to watch
you make sure you're serving whatever the primary goal is.
Right. I mean, that, that, I guess that's really the meta lesson is be aware
of what the gig, what the, what the event actually is.
Because you might just be a cog in the system and they might only want you to play for an hour,
like that they might have hired you for three but really the best thing is if
you play for one i've done i can't tell you how many weddings i've done where
we were booked for you know three hours of play time you know two sets with a break or whatever,
and i would say the majority of weddings that i played,
everything ran late and we would do one 90 minute set uh right up until venue curfew,
and then that would be the end of it and everybody was happy it was yeah that's
because that's what they wanted yeah we were there to serve a purpose that's it yeah.
Exactly. And even when I was playing in a cover band out here for a little minute, we used to play at,
I don't remember the name of the bar at this point, but they had an SPL meter
right in front of the stage, and they would say, you can't get any louder than 98 dB.
So we'd be watching that meter while we were playing, and you had to stay at 98.
98 average over a period of minutes or was this basically real time.
Like it was i think i think it would it would average every like three seconds
or something oh that's not
Okay then that so you're essentially measuring peaks that yeah yeah no.
Yeah so so if you like fortunately the the drummer that we had because you know
that really all comes down to the drummer with with your guitar and bass you
could just turn it down a little bit
but the the drummer is really the one kind of controlling the the level of the
room and stuff fortunately this guy had like like a gentle cymbal and like a decent you know
solid shell yep kind of dynamic going on and every time he would like hit like
102 or something he'd be like okay let me just like drop it back a little bit
and it's you know It's challenging because, as a drummer, you probably know
that if you have to lay back too much, you can lose the groove a little bit.
It is a trick to learn. I've done a lot,
of theater work with the band on stage, right?
Like the vocals must like you are the least important thing here in that.
Like the show's not about you. Maybe is the right way to say it. Right.
You know, you are there to serve the show and the, the, you know,
the, certainly the spoken parts, but if you're making noise during the spoken
parts, probably not going to get another kick.
But you know, when you're supposed to be playing still, the vocals need to be
almost shrill. Right. Like I don't like the way musical theater is usually mixed.
Cause it's like, neither do I, right.
And they make the cast recordings the same way. It's like, I can't listen to
this. It drives a nail into my brain. It's not blended enough.
It's not blended, right? But,
that is the way musical theater is. We could argue about it all day long.
Actually, you and I, it sounds like we would argue at all.
Sounds like a Morrissey record. Exactly. Where the vocals are just soaring.
Shrill and soaring. Yeah, exactly. But you cannot overpower things.
And I've had it, especially early on, but I mean, it would happen.
Where you know i'm in the theater where we were always on in-ears which is great uh i love in ears and,
uh and you know i would be like we would be maybe in the middle of songs or
something and i'd hear in my ear,
dave dave if you can hear me you know if you say like if you can hear me just
like raise your right hand and i would like kind of do this you know and raise
my right hand and he'd be like right okay uh i need like
uh maybe 20 less from you be like okay that's fine Got it. Yeah, right.
But I learned how to...
Because I had to, how to play with energy while maintaining the tempo,
while maintaining the intensity, and all of that stuff while not necessarily bashing.
And it can be, I learned a lot of tricks while I was actually learning how to do it.
But the tricks were lighter sticks, for sure, makes a difference.
And the shape of the bead of the stick, because oftentimes it's like the ride
cymbal is worse than the snare drum, because you're not thinking about the ride cymbal being a problem.
And then also putting some gel on the, especially on the ride symbol or even on the crashes.
Yeah, on cymbals.
Yeah, it makes, it can make a big difference.
Or like some tape even.
Tape works too, yeah. Put a little tape underneath even, yep.
And, but then over time I've learned how to, just how to kind of soften my approach,
without changing anything else about the way that I play.
And it, like the other night, we had this sound engineer, dude,
He used an analog board. He didn't have a snake.
It was a weird room. I don't, like he brought his own board and I'm like,
oh my God, you have an analog board. We've worked with him before where it's
a walk on and he's like mixed the house's digital mixer and he's been okay for
that. But he brought this huge mon, I don't even know what it was.
And he's like, do you guys have a snake that's long enough to get like out into
the room? I'm like, no, like that, no, no.
I don't like we can talk about why I don't, but you know, the answer is no.
Like we're in the middle of like, we're just going to work together.
We're not going to like yell at each other now.
And he's like, Oh, I guess I'm gonna have to like set up the mixer on side stage.
And of course it's a, it's an analog mixer. So there's no like iPad to take
and go like it. So he's got to keep walking back and forth and he didn't do that enough.
And for some reason he also set his mains up at like nipple height.
I call it i like to put mains at forehead height because yeah as soon.
As your level
Yeah because as soon as people were up and dancing you had,
a bunch of variable low-pass filters moving in front of the speakers and people
in the back were like it's weird the vocals kind of keep cutting in and out
and the guitars keep cutting in and out and it's like well it's not cutting
in and out you just have something in the way you can't hear it yeah yeah that.
Yeah that reminds me of a festival I work. Are you familiar with soca music?
Mm-mm.
Okay, it's like drum and bass from the Caribbean.
Okay.
But really sped up. If you've ever seen the infomercials where they have these
Caribbean music festivals and they have a girl on a ladder, she jumps off and
does a split landing on the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that's what it is.
That's so good music, okay.
And they have a bunch of DJs and they have a hundred of their friends just hanging
out on stage and putting drinks on the console or whatever.
And I had one guy that was like a funkadelic gig yeah yeah it was it was crazy
yeah and I did a bunch of these and they would always overplay until like three
in the morning instead of midnight but this one guy was like I can't hear what's
coming out of the side fills can you turn it up can you turn it up so I'd start turning it up
and then like he'd be like hey it's way too loud can you turn it down can you
turn it down and it was constant for his whole hour set until the point that
I started watching and what would happen is
somebody was standing in front of the side, Phil, like, like,
oh, just hanging out and back on it.
And then he would say it's too it's too quiet. And then the guy would move out
of the way and he'd be like, whoa, whoa, that's so loud.
And then I'd be like, hey, it's because your friend is literally covering the
speaker. And he's like, no, that's that's not how that works. I was like, watch.
That's literally how it works.
I was like, I'm going to leave it cranked.
Have him stand over there for 30 seconds, have him leave. He's like,
wow, I didn't know that. But if you're blocking the sound, you're blocking the sound, right?
The high-end sound anyway. Like low pass might get through, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's what he needs to hear on stage because he's standing on top of like 10 sub-words.
Yeah, he doesn't care about the low.
He could feel the bass, but he can't hear the articulation of what he's trying to mix there. Yeah.
And, and it's just, it's funny to me how people don't think about like,
you know, if you, if you have your, your earbuds and just, you know,
cover them, you're not going to really hear much out of it.
Right.
Talking and, you know, it's the same, it's the same concept.
It's literally the same concept.
Yeah. So, you know, there it's some people I feel like just need to be educated
about how these things work.
There is an education thing. I mean, like I my question the other night was
like, how did you how have you done sound for, you know, three decades?
And these are still the choices that you would make arriving at a venue that
it's it's like and I'm sure there's an answer to that that question.
But I'm fine leaving it at rhetorical. And OK, now I've just rearranged the
priority list of engineers that we will call. That's all. That's all.
Yeah.
It's like, it's fine. Lesson learned. All good. Yeah, definitely.
There, there are a few guys that I've, I've worked with or had cover for me where, um,
I, I've had the venue tell me and I've made the realization myself where they're
like, we are never calling this guy again.
It was, it sounded so bad, but I'm like, this guy's been doing it three times
as long as I have. He's got better equipment. He charges more than I do.
Like, there's no reason that this guy should be, maybe I need to raise my rates.
I was just going to say there's, okay. Yeah. I'm glad, I'm glad,
I'm glad you saw it. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's tough because I keep moving and trying to break it,
especially into a city like Nashville, where it's oversaturated with guys like me.
I'm not going to be going around asking top dollar and not getting any gigs.
I have to kind of build rapport with people and stuff like that.
So right now, I've been steadily working with only one band since I've moved out here.
And the rate is actually great. So it's, you know, that's not,
not an issue there, but I see, uh, other opportunities come up and I'm like,
man, that's just, that's too low.
I want the gig because I want to, you know, start getting to network a little
more, but it's just, that's not for me.
The band probably doesn't sound great. They're not going to make me sound great.
Yep. Wow.
Sorry.
That's all.
Some plumbing stuff happened.
I mean, same, but, but mine was self-inflicted.
So yeah, but you know, it's,
there's yeah you know i go to festivals out here sometimes
uh like down in the park you know they have those like community festivals i
have a few local bands and i went out with with my wife and my kids um and it
was a nice outdoor festival
and the setup was gigantic the guy was walking around with an ipad mixing everything
i could watch him i could i could literally stand next to him and just follow
him and hear what he's hearing
yeah and i was like man my ears are bleeding out here how did you get contracted
for this gig i didn't say that to sure sure
That's what you're thinking.
Yeah and and i pulled out you know everybody's phone can have that app that
tells you the you know the spl oh yeah the the db level or whatever you want to
Call it i keep it i keep it on the face of my apple watch i like it yeah it's great.
Yes i i and i i pull it out all the time and i I pulled it out,
and it was 80 from where I was standing. I was like, why does it hurt my ears so much?
It was really just the choice that he was making to have everything with a super high shelf on it.
I guess he didn't know how to carve stuff out, so he was adding a lot of that painful high-mid area.
I was like, at 80 dB,
That shouldn't hurt that much. 80 dB is, I mean, that's not,
that's why it shouldn't be.
It's very quiet. I mean, it's not very quiet. It's quiet, especially for using. It's pretty quiet.
Yeah. And being outside and being, being like maybe 10 to 15 yards away from
the, the line array, it just, that shouldn't hurt.
It shouldn't hurt. I've worked in smaller rooms.
Yeah. Super reflective everywhere and been hitting 110, even 120. And it didn't hurt.
It was a little bit like, Like, he couldn't talk over it or anything,
but it sounded good, it felt good, it didn't hurt.
Yeah, that's true. And it just makes me wonder how...
What, what was he hearing that he decided that it needed to be so shrill?
Yes. And I, I wanted to help him, but I was, you know, out with the family. It was not working.
No, no, no, it's not. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, not my rodeo, not my monkeys. Yeah.
But there, you know, like I said, there have been people that it's like,
I, I cannot call this guy back because he did such a bad job that the venue even was like,
Oh yeah.
Do not use this guy to cover for you ever again.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, I mean, and that's a, that's an issue with,
you know, musicians too, right? If, you know, if I, if I can't do a gig and
I have to, and it is a band that, you know, where subs are okay.
And I bring a sub in like, you know, there's always the risk on both sides,
right? If the sub sucks, then that's bad for me.
If the sub is so much better than me and they, they hire them instead of me.
Well you know that's also bad for me but i'd rather it be that like i'd rather
deliver something where i no one has to worry
and like this person's gonna gonna knock it out of the park and don't worry
like everybody's good and then it's like oh we can trust dave and it's like yeah that's right yeah.
Yeah you know and out here i did my my intention when we moved out here was
actually to try and see if i could get more uh session player type gigs and
so i was i did a few gigs subbing for bass, and I had one where
I like to think I'm a pretty competent bass player.
I can play well,
I guess.
And I can learn songs very quickly. I know the scales, all that kind of stuff.
I can figure a lot of stuff out by ear, but I had this one gig that I picked
up as a sub, and for whatever reason, just me and the drummer were not gelling, and And
I heard the singer during the break after the first set, like, man, this is terrible.
I felt really bad.
It was a little bit of a blow to my ego because I was like, dude,
it's just bass. It's not that hard.
But it was more of a feel thing. It was a feel thing.
Yeah. It can make a difference.
I'm a little bit of a before the beat kind of guy, and I think the drummer was
a little bit of an after the beat kind of guy.
Sometimes that can work. If you're playing a blues shuffle, it's great to have
the bass player dragging things forward and me dragging things backwards.
Sometimes it doesn't work. They were doing Kiss. They were doing some Tom Petty and Matchbox 20.
That stuff's got to be everybody kind of right on. If not, the drums have to
be a little bit forward. Except for that Tom Petty stuff.
That could be behind.
Stan Lynch was late. Yes. I love Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,
but when I listen to any of those recordings, I'm always like, man, if I could just...
Put the whole band except for the drums on a delay send and just delay it a
little bit. So it lines up with the drums a little better.
Yeah. Yeah.
Just cause I, I play drums ahead of the beat. I practice with a metronome.
I record to a click. I like, I, and I look at it to see like how close am I?
And I'm always just like right before, I don't know.
I just hear, just play that way. Yeah. That's, and that's just,
that's what I'm used to hearing. That's how I play bass.
Not enough ahead that it's like really off, but just for the click.
And I think this drummer was more of a like I practice to a click but I wait
for it to click and then I hit
it didn't gel, it made me look really bad and it made me feel like maybe I shouldn't
be subbing on bass let me go back to doing audio, make more money that
Way I've had other guests on the show who have moved to Nashville and done this
and every one of them has said Nashville is like a 10 year town.
Like it takes, you know, you gotta, it takes, I mean, but that's,
that's kind of true in a lot of things. Yeah. Overnight success usually takes,
you know, a decade, right. You know? Yeah.
Yeah. But you've got a gig. But before we, before we wrap up,
who are you mixing now? Who, who is this band?
So right now I am usually on the road with a band called face value.
It's a Phil Collins and Genesis tribute band. And I'm sure that you could you'd
probably appreciate that as a drummer.
Oh yeah.
It is a lot of fun. There's, you know, full horn section, congas sometimes,
you know, like, oops, two drum sets.
Yeah. Oh, really? Doing the whole thing?
Yeah, maxed out on channels. I'm, like, having to plug things into auxiliary inputs and stuff.
And it's a lot. It's a lot. Just the loading and setup can be,
like, an hour and a half sometimes.
Yeah, I bet.
They sound great. They're getting better every time that we play because I guess
the horn section is kind of newer and they're starting to really lock in.
And I'm a big fan of Phil Collins as well. So I have a really,
really good time. And we do a lot of these kind of cavernous theater-esque type venues.
So it makes me not have to use any reverb that is not real.
That's great. Yeah, right.
It's a lot of fun. huh and uh yeah i'm mostly working with them right now that's
great and uh that's a great
I mean it sounds like a great band yeah.
Yeah and i and i'll pick up you know other gigs here and there and uh and what
i'm what i'm also working on right now is
uh i have a home studio in the works because this is nashville everybody's got
a home studio that's right uh i i've been calling it the complaint department.
Okay.
I don't know. Because those kinds of bands that I record, like punk bands and
stuff, they're just all complaining about something. Yeah.
So it's basically kind of a...
A studio geared towards like a more budget friendly underground original music
record live if you can yep you know
kind of yeah kind of set up so so that's those are my two main things that i've been
kind of working with these days
Um if somebody wanted to find you maybe to record in your home studio to have
you to do sound form is there is there a website or a socials that that we can share.
There is my instagram account which is
uh at jesus and the complaint department or jesus and the complaint department
like whatever you're comfortable with sure and uh my website right now
i cannot remember off the top of my head all
Right well send it to me and i'll make sure it's in there.
Before it goes i'll send it to you it's it's like a wix site right now because
i'm not i'm not trying to shell out a ton of money on the wrong website right
they do a good job so So I will, I'll definitely shoot you the link for that.
And, uh, and yeah, you can check out some samples of my work and shoot me an email.
And, you know, I'm also interested in playing on people's stuff as well.
Not just recording, uh, other bands. So I'm kind of open to different things while I'm out here.
Amazing. Love it. I love it. Thank you for taking the time. What a blast this
conversation's been. And I think I know that there's a lot of stuff.
I learned stuff, so I know that everybody listening is going to learn something, too.
Yeah, thank you for having me on.
Absolutely. Before we say goodbye, there are three words that we like to send
people off with, and I could certainly say them, but it's better if you say them.
So I'll leave you with the three words, say them however you like,
and then we'll say goodbye.
All right.
With the consideration that life is a stage, always be performing.
Well said. I like it. Thank you for doing this, Jesus. What a blast.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
GigGabPodcast.com or feedback at GigGabPodcast.com or at GigGabPodcast on all
the socials. And yeah, always be performing. We'll see you next week, folks. Later.
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