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Gig Etiquette


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There are loads of arseholes in bands, sad but true. But yes, really annoying when you are on last and you have to cut your set short because some wankers before you have fannied about.

As for gear I've never had a problem letting someone use my amp. The only time I can remember anybody refusing to let me use their amp was Jamesy out of My Mind's Weapon, so I had to use the Tunnels backline instead, no big deal.

A few times people have broken strings so I've loaned them guitars and generally they've been respectful.

A couple of times I've had to deal with tubes however. At the Keith Chaos gig I had lent Jo McCafferty my acoustic for her set. Now it's quite an unusual guitar, it's an Epiphone Chet Atkins SST which is "solid body", still with an acoustic pickup and sound, but no feedback at loud volumes.

Now these aren't very common, so often people will say "Oh, what's that?". However, this clown from some celidh/folk rock type band had seen Jo playing it and asked if he could borrow it as a spare in the unlikely event of his own electro acoustic playing up. Jo redirected him to me and I reluctantly said OK.

Of course one song into his set his own guitar apparently developed a problem that no one else seemed to notice and he switched to using my guitar, I'm sure it was just for novelty value on his part.

Another time is when I was doing an acoustic set with Rory out of The Snake Temple Kings at the Belmont. One of the other "acts" on the bill turned up with a crappy old classical guitar, strung with half nylon strings/half steel and no means of amlifying it.

So we play first and he asks if he can borrow my guitar as his one doen't have a pickup. I reluctantly agree - I had my beautiful Gibson J-45 with me. I should have just said no, it cost me a lot of fucking money, but I didn't want to look like a cock. So I lend him the guitar and the alarm bells start ringing when he perches my baby precariously up against the wall when he goes off to the bog or something before he starts. Then mid-set he lights up a fucking fag, takes a draw and starts sticking it in the strings at the peghead in an Eric Clapton stylee. No no no no no no no you fucking don't. Had to shout at him not to fucking do that right in the middle of his set, what a knob.

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I think sound engineers should give enough of a shit, that the mix sounds good on and off stage. It's their job really.

I have another example. We played Snafu ages ago, supporting Underground Heroes. Sound engineer was nowhere to be seen during the time we were meant to be soundchecking. He just hadn't turned up - whether it was his fault or the venue's or a lack of communication between venue and Steven Milne, I don't know, but he wasn't there anyway.

We did as best we could with the amps on stage and had a wee blast at a couple of songs, but with no vocals as the mics weren't turned on. Steven was there but didn't want to mess with the sound desk, so we just went with that and were told we'd get a line check prior to going on.

When it was time to go on, said sound engineer said "just go for it, and we'll sort it as we go" No line check was given. We started off not bad, but all I could hear was my bass and drums. I was borrowing Underground Heroes bass amp which was fucking enormous, and very very loud (apparently, bass was very high in the front of house mix as well). I would personally have got through that set okay with just that, but our singer couldn't hear his own guitar or any instruments for that - he asked for it to be turned up on his monitor. The engineer pretty much cranked it up very very high, and it just caused massive feedback. So, he asked to have it turned down a bit. Engineer turned it off. And so it went. He didn't seem to have the ability to turn it up gradually. Our set turned into a shambles after that cos our frontman/guitarist was completely put off by the shit onstage sound and we actually ballsed up a song that we never make any mistakes in, ever.

I've no idea which sound engineer that was - it's definitely not the current engineer Rob from Kartta, who we've since worked with at Snafu, and the sound was pretty much amazing on and offstage. :)

yes they will care about the general sound but i would imagine they dont care about each band induvidually more as an overall sound for the night.

You always get good and bad nights with these guys, as i say if it is that important for your band to have perfect on/off stage sound then arrange your own engineer that will quickly learn what you like each onstage and use him/her every gig, it does make a huge amount of difference in terms of getting what you like without having to spend half an hour checking levels.

With Kenetic we used to use soundian and it was brilliant, he knew exactly how we played and how each song went and what we liked moniter wise which ment sound checks were just a case of making sure everything worked he already knew the rest before we got there pretty much. Plus he had decent banter when he wasnt taking the piss out of me!!!! LOL

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
yes they will care about the general sound but i would imagine they dont care about each band induvidually more as an overall sound for the night.

You always get good and bad nights with these guys, as i say if it is that important for your band to have perfect on/off stage sound then arrange your own engineer that will quickly learn what you like each onstage and use him/her every gig, it does make a huge amount of difference in terms of getting what you like without having to spend half an hour checking levels.

With Kenetic we used to use soundian and it was brilliant, he knew exactly how we played and how each song went and what we liked moniter wise which ment sound checks were just a case of making sure everything worked he already knew the rest before we got there pretty much. Plus he had decent banter when he wasnt taking the piss out of me!!!! LOL

I'm not saying "perfect" sound. Just being able to hear each other. The engineer on said night in Snafu just didn't care one bit. He hadn't soundchecked us and couldn't give a fuck if we were unable to hear each other or if there was a horrible amount of feedback. Everyone in Snafu hears the feedback and does that cringing thing because it sounds horrible. Which makes us look bad, puts us and everyone else off. How difficult would it have been to turn it up a little bit at a time, just so he could hear his guitar and vocals enough to know what's going on?

You get engineers in these places who do actually care and listen to what you say. If everyone turned up at the right time, and helped each other out, there's no reason why soundchecks can't be done efficiently, and all bands get a decent amount of time to run through different parts of their set and discuss what could be turned up/down onstage and the engineer can tweak things front of house etc.

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I'm not saying "perfect" sound. Just being able to hear each other. The engineer on said night in Snafu just didn't care one bit. He hadn't soundchecked us and couldn't give a fuck if we were unable to hear each other or if there was a horrible amount of feedback. Everyone in Snafu hears the feedback and does that cringing thing because it sounds horrible. Which makes us look bad, puts us and everyone else off. How difficult would it have been to turn it up a little bit at a time, just so he could hear his guitar and vocals enough to know what's going on?

You get engineers in these places who do actually care and listen to what you say. If everyone turned up at the right time, and helped each other out, there's no reason why soundchecks can't be done efficiently, and all bands get a decent amount of time to run through different parts of their set and discuss what could be turned up/down onstage and the engineer can tweak things front of house etc.

im not in anyway defending that guy by all accounts he sounds like a prick, i was just speaking generally.

You do get those who do care, they are usually young and new to the job haha!! You are right tho, if everyone turned up on time and didnt fuck about then it would run smoothly, problem is in 10 years i think it might have happened a handful of times for me, there always seems to be little problems either with equipment or band members that slow things down.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
im not in anyway defending that guy by all accounts he sounds like a prick, i was just speaking generally.

You do get those who do care, they are usually young and new to the job haha!! You are right tho, if everyone turned up on time and didnt fuck about then it would run smoothly, problem is in 10 years i think it might have happened a handful of times for me, there always seems to be little problems either with equipment or band members that slow things down.

To be fair to Calum (Drummonds) on Friday - when I turned up he was trying to fix the broken in-house bass amp, which ended up taking up a lot of time. I could very easily have taken my amp if I'd known, but we were told backline was provided, and it's a very good amp - just been used and used and is now dying.

All in all - it went well in the end on Friday - we've had far worse experiences. And Calum is generally one of the better engineers we've worked with...

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It is always a good idea to contact the venue/sound engineer BEFORE a gig to discuss arrangements. Make a stage plan and channel list to send to them so that when you arrive there is nothing unexpected on the venues behalf. If you need a particularly unusual monitor mix let them know before hand. These small things really help and you'll cone across as a band that looks like they know what you are doing. Not every band needs a soundcheck, but trying to play with a difficult monitor mix is next to impossible.

There is a great thread in the articles section about gigging tips/soundchecks etc. It really is worth a read.

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I for one used to be terrible for playing gigs and having to bolt afterwards, but it was never a fault of mine or the band. It was sheerly due to the fact we weren't allowed to stay in the club late due to laws as we were underage. Plus the fact we'd probably just played shit and wanted to get outta there.

I tend to think good gig etiquette is just being friendly and professional, that's all there really is to it.

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Guest Tam o' Shantie

i find that rubbish NME indie acts usually had awful gig etiquette because they had only played about 4 gigs before hitting the front pages. we played with this rubbish band called ladyfuzz, they soundchecked for 2.5-3 hours at fucking tunnels leaving us unable to have one and basically delaying the entire gig. this was a fucking 3 piece band. having played more gigs without soundchecks than these colourful tossers had probably played actual gigs, even 5 minutes would have been sufficient to sort our sound out but we resorted in the end to the trusty patended Wishes 'monitor mix diagram' which tends to look a bit like this:

fp4hfm.jpg

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i find that rubbish NME indie acts usually had awful gig etiquette because they had only played about 4 gigs before hitting the front pages. we played with this rubbish band called ladyfuzz, they soundchecked for 2.5-3 hours at fucking tunnels leaving us unable to have one and basically delaying the entire gig. this was a fucking 3 piece band. having played more gigs without soundchecks than these colourful tossers had probably played actual gigs, even 5 minutes would have been sufficient to sort our sound out but we resorted in the end to the trusty patended Wishes 'monitor mix diagram' which tends to look a bit like this:

fp4hfm.jpg

yeah i remember playing with The Enemy and they took hours to set up and sound check and were fucking shite as well i was gutted to see them do well, they were so far up their own arse as well. When we played with sugarcult their sound check was funny, they didnt actually do any of it, their sound guys and instrument techs did everything whilst they sat upstairs taking coke and eating pineapples....rock.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
i find that rubbish NME indie acts usually had awful gig etiquette because they had only played about 4 gigs before hitting the front pages. we played with this rubbish band called ladyfuzz, they soundchecked for 2.5-3 hours at fucking tunnels leaving us unable to have one and basically delaying the entire gig. this was a fucking 3 piece band. having played more gigs without soundchecks than these colourful tossers had probably played actual gigs, even 5 minutes would have been sufficient to sort our sound out but we resorted in the end to the trusty patended Wishes 'monitor mix diagram' which tends to look a bit like this:

fp4hfm.jpg

2.5-3 hours for soundchecking is just plain ridiculous. We've soundchecked for an hour before, just because we were at Moshulu mid-afternoon and the engineer was there etc, and we weren't encroaching on anyone else's time. But it's totally unnecessary from a sound point of view. It was just a good opportunity to have a free practice more than anything.

I think 30 minutes of stage time should be scheduled in for each band at the likes of Tunnels, with the stage being set up by the engineer (in terms of drums being set up and mic'd up, amps being on, mics being on the stands and plugged into the PA), so that bands can walk on stage, plug their instruments in and be ready to actually soundcheck. A 4 band line up could easily soundcheck between about 5.30pm and 8pm in this scenario and could each be in Tunnels for about 40 minutes, with 30 minutes of that being soundcheck time, instead of all being there for about 2 hours, and only getting about 10 minutes stage time. 10 minutes stage time is fine if you know in advance you're getting 10 minutes, and when it will be, but pissing about for nearly 2 hours, when you could have been doing something more productive like eating your supper instead, or trying to drum up a bit of interest on the old mobile phone to get folk to come to the gig.......

Just a little bit of organisation would go a long way.

Touring bands that completely take the piss at places like Tunnels really piss me off. They quite clearly haven't left the city they were in the previous night cos they all got pissed up and slept too long, they then don't know where the Tunnels is, and end up not showing up till about 6.30pm. But there's no way the guys at the Tunnels can let you soundcheck before the act you're supporting. They then use up the rest of the time to soundcheck. Touring bands should arrange to be at the venue earlier, and get their arses their earlier, and not totally walk all over the local bands supporting them, and bringing a few punters through the door to see them on a Tuesday night at the Tunnels!

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Gig etiquette according to me.

Arrival time:

Don't be late. If you're going to be late make sure someone tells the sound engineer your ETA.

Soundchecks:

Be ready to set up as soon as the stage is clear.

Don't play long songs, you're just wasting peoples time after the first 2-3 minutes of a song generally.

Get off-stage quickly, ask the sound engineer what you need to move and where to put it.

Gig:

Be in the venue in plenty of time.

Wait until the stage is pretty clear before setting up.

Stick to your allotted set length.

Get you gear off stage asap, pack it off-stage if possible.

After gig:

Say thanks to the relevant people.

In short: Show respect for other people's time and equipment.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
yeah i remember playing with The Enemy and they took hours to set up and sound check and were fucking shite as well i was gutted to see them do well, they were so far up their own arse as well. When we played with sugarcult their sound check was funny, they didnt actually do any of it, their sound guys and instrument techs did everything whilst they sat upstairs taking coke and eating pineapples....rock.

Snorting coke is cool and you know it.

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Guest idol_wild
Gig etiquette according to me.

Arrival time:

Don't be late. If you're going to be late make sure someone tells the sound engineer your ETA.

Soundchecks:

Be ready to set up as soon as the stage is clear.

Don't play long songs, you're just wasting peoples time after the first 2-3 minutes of a song generally.

Get off-stage quickly, ask the sound engineer what you need to move and where to put it.

Gig:

Be in the venue in plenty of time.

Wait until the stage is pretty clear before setting up.

Stick to your allotted set length.

Get you gear off stage asap, pack it off-stage if possible.

After gig:

Say thanks to the relevant people.

In short: Show respect for other people's time and equipment.

I think this nails everything involved in gig etiquette.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
At Drummonds its impossible with a 8pm door to soundcheck all 5 bands. We arent allowed to make the slightest bit of noise til after 6pm. To set up and soudcheck all 5 would be pretty hard pushed unfortunately - as in the case of the Fat Hippy night mentioned.

Aye - that's fair enough, squeezing 5 bands into an hour and a half (7.30pm doors for Fat Hippy nights) is completely impossible. But the agreement is 2 bands get soundchecks, first one at 6pm, second one at 7pm. We were due to soundcheck at 6pm, but didn't get to do so till 7pm-7.20pm ish, so the other band didn't get a soundcheck at all. If soundcheck time is 6pm, it should be 6pm that the band gets to go onstage and start plugging in etc. Not 6pm that the engineer starts pricking about, putting the drum kit in place etc.

I mean, I left the bastard pub at 5.30pm to go to soundcheck, to then have to stand about on my own for a while, then with my aggrieved bandmates for about an hour. It's a hard life.

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I think sound engineers should give enough of a shit, that the mix sounds good on and off stage. It's their job really.

I have another example. We played Snafu ages ago, supporting Underground Heroes. Sound engineer was nowhere to be seen during the time we were meant to be soundchecking. He just hadn't turned up - whether it was his fault or the venue's or a lack of communication between venue and Steven Milne, I don't know, but he wasn't there anyway.

We did as best we could with the amps on stage and had a wee blast at a couple of songs, but with no vocals as the mics weren't turned on. Steven was there but didn't want to mess with the sound desk, so we just went with that and were told we'd get a line check prior to going on.

When it was time to go on, said sound engineer said "just go for it, and we'll sort it as we go" No line check was given. We started off not bad, but all I could hear was my bass and drums. I was borrowing Underground Heroes bass amp which was fucking enormous, and very very loud (apparently, bass was very high in the front of house mix as well). I would personally have got through that set okay with just that, but our singer couldn't hear his own guitar or any instruments for that - he asked for it to be turned up on his monitor. The engineer pretty much cranked it up very very high, and it just caused massive feedback. So, he asked to have it turned down a bit. Engineer turned it off. And so it went. He didn't seem to have the ability to turn it up gradually. Our set turned into a shambles after that cos our frontman/guitarist was completely put off by the shit onstage sound and we actually ballsed up a song that we never make any mistakes in, ever.

Why didn't you pick up on the fact that the bass was too loud onstage and your singer couldn't hear his guitar when you had your wee blast at a couple of songs?

I'm not going to defend him on the rest but that was a mistake on your bands part.

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Aye - that's fair enough, squeezing 5 bands into an hour and a half (7.30pm doors for Fat Hippy nights) is completely impossible. But the agreement is 2 bands get soundchecks, first one at 6pm, second one at 7pm. We were due to soundcheck at 6pm, but didn't get to do so till 7pm-7.20pm ish, so the other band didn't get a soundcheck at all. If soundcheck time is 6pm, it should be 6pm that the band gets to go onstage and start plugging in etc. Not 6pm that the engineer starts pricking about, putting the drum kit in place etc.

I mean, I left the bastard pub at 5.30pm to go to soundcheck, to then have to stand about on my own for a while, then with my aggrieved bandmates for about an hour. It's a hard life.

Maybe they don't pay him to be there before 6? Tom used to slip me some cash to come in early on FH nights but he can't afford that now Drummonds charges a hire fee.

I assume you offered to help set up the backline to speed things up a bit, or did you just watch and bitch?

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Soundchecks as well used to do my head in, with point and stayover we spent more time setting up equipment than we did sound checking, i just didnt see the point, if you know your songs you can play them no matter what you hear on stage. Bands who dick about moaning about moniters are usually the ones who either A: dont know their songs or B think they are the dogs bollocks that "deserve" to be up there fucking around, ive played with a few bands like that before.

Yaaaarrrgghhhdjhkjfshkjsf.

No.

Vocal harmonies without being able to hear the other person(s) singing is almost impossible to do properly. Pulling it off with bad on-stage sound is usually done with a good stroke of luck more than anything else.

Not being able to hear the snare drum on stage is also terrible to work with. You're a drummer, so obviously this doesn't affect you, but how is everyone else supposed to know how to keep time if you can't hear the timing being played?

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Aye - that's fair enough, squeezing 5 bands into an hour and a half (7.30pm doors for Fat Hippy nights) is completely impossible. But the agreement is 2 bands get soundchecks, first one at 6pm, second one at 7pm. We were due to soundcheck at 6pm, but didn't get to do so till 7pm-7.20pm ish, so the other band didn't get a soundcheck at all. If soundcheck time is 6pm, it should be 6pm that the band gets to go onstage and start plugging in etc. Not 6pm that the engineer starts pricking about, putting the drum kit in place etc.

I mean, I left the bastard pub at 5.30pm to go to soundcheck, to then have to stand about on my own for a while, then with my aggrieved bandmates for about an hour. It's a hard life.

if i was you in that situation i would have just left the soundcheck and just line checked when you went on stage after discussing it with the engineer. Assed standing about there for that long for so little reward.

BTW your going the right way to make sure you get a shitty sound next time you play drummonds :up:

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Yaaaarrrgghhhdjhkjfshkjsf.

No.

Vocal harmonies without being able to hear the other person(s) singing is almost impossible to do properly. Pulling it off with bad on-stage sound is usually done with a good stroke of luck more than anything else.

Not being able to hear the snare drum on stage is also terrible to work with. You're a drummer, so obviously this doesn't affect you, but how is everyone else supposed to know how to keep time if you can't hear the timing being played?

you dont need a sound check for that tho, tell the engineer what you want in your wedge mix and if there is a problem tell him after the first song.

As for not hearing the drums i dont get this one, how can you not hear a drum kit that is less than 5 meters away from you? Especially a snare drum it cuts through everything usually.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
Maybe they don't pay him to be there before 6? Tom used to slip me some cash to come in early on FH nights but he can't afford that now Drummonds charges a hire fee.

I assume you offered to help set up the backline to speed things up a bit, or did you just watch and bitch?

Don't be such a tit. Of course we set up the backline, in terms of putting the drums together, putting the amps in place etc. Then we stood and watched whilst he mic'd everything up - that's not something we can't really help with because we have no idea where he plugs things into etc.

It seemed to take bloody ages.

I assume he isn't paid to be there before 6pm. In that case, he should arrive at 6pm and the bands should be told to arrive at say 6.30pm.

It's just a common sense thing.

As for your comment on my onstage sound at Snafu. We didn't have any mics or monitors going when we did our little jam session, and it sounded not too bad, but we were going on the premise we were getting a line check, and that we could iron it out then. But we didn't - we just had to go for it. There was nothing coming out of the monitors at all for the first song, so none of us could hear vocals. Also, the sound of the PA in front of house effects what you hear on stage, so what we heard when we were jamming was totally different to when the PA was switched on etc.

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Guest Exposure @ Lemon Tree
if i was you in that situation i would have just left the soundcheck and just line checked when you went on stage after discussing it with the engineer. Assed standing about there for that long for so little reward.

BTW your going the right way to make sure you get a shitty sound next time you play drummonds :up:

Haha - yeah - I get that point too.

Although i did say that Calum is one of the better engineers we've worked with. I don't think it's his fault what time we're told to turn up, if he only starts work at 6pm there's no way he can be ready for us at 6pm, so we should be told to turn up at 6.30pm or 7pm or whenever he'll be ready for us.

I think it's just a laziness thing on the part of whoever tells all the bands to turn up at 6pm. The bands should be given an actual time that is realistic and the engineer can stick to. If there are bands that don't generally do soundchecks (like you guys didn't), that should be factored in, and the other bands can use extra time if they want. But telling bands to turn up at 6pm, and sometimes those bands don't even get a soundcheck at all, is just going to piss people off, make the sound engineer feel harassed etc etc.

Little bit of organisation goes a long way!

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