So, how can you make sure your band is going to sound as good as it can in any venue?  How can you avoid feedback, have crystal-clear vocals, and sound loud and punchy without making everyone’s eardrums bleed?

Here’s the answer: Let the sound person do as much of the work as possible.  They’re out in the audience, you’re not.  They’re hearing what your fans are hearing, and believe me, everything sounds different out there than it does up on stage.  Plus, like I said, they’re paid by the venue to make you sound good.  When you limit their options (i.e., by turning up so loud that they can’t feed any of your instrument through their speakers because you’re already overpowering everything else in the mix), you’re basically not letting them do the job they’ve been trained on, and are getting paid for.  They know the venue, they know what frequencies cause feedback and which ones cancel out.  They know how loud the room can get before people start to leave and management gets pissed.  That’s their job.  Let them do their job!

There are a variety of ways to do this, but The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad takes it to the extreme. And by extreme, I mean extremely tiny.

Here’s our setup:

Guitars

Both go through little 3W practice amps.  One of them is an Esteban.  It sounds awesome.  All of the distortion and effects come from multi-effects units, not from the amp. 

“Small”We also split the signal coming out of the effects pedals to DI boxes with cab simulators.  This way the sound person can either use the DI signals, or mic the practice amps, or both.  The practice amps are mainly used as monitors, so their volume stays very low.  Sometimes we’ll ask the sound person to put some of the guitar in the floor monitors, but this is often not necessary because our overall stage volume is so low.

Drums

We use a Roland TD-6v electronic drum kit.  It takes literally 3 minutes to setup.  Pull it out of the car, unfold the arms, attach the kick pedal and cymbals, and plug it in.  Done.  The samples are great and the feel is very responsive.  If you’re a drummer and you can’t play well on this kit then you need to switch to tambourine and let a real drummer take over. 

The sound module has a ¼” output that goes into a DI box.  There is no discernable stage volume from these drums.  The sound person has complete control over how loud the drums are for the audience.  This is awesome.  Even though the sound people are usually good about putting enough drums in the monitors, we almost always split off the signal to our own little amp so we can tweak the stage volume if necessary.

Bass

Little combo amp.  Like the guitars, it’s turned up loud enough for everyone on stage to hear (which isn’t very loud, because remember, we don’t have a drum kit blasting our ears out).  DI out from the amp into the sound board.  Again, as with the drums and guitars, the sound person is completely controlling the relative volume of the instruments from the audience’s perspective. 

The net result of all of this is that every instrument can be heard clearly, both on stage and in the audience.  Our stage volume is so low that we don’t even have to wear earplugs while playing.  And the audience actually understands our vocals and laughs at all of our extremely witty lyrics.  The venue is thrilled because people are having a good time and drinking all night instead of leaving because their ears hurt, and the sound person is stunned that they were able to quickly setup a great mix without fighting feedback the entire set.

At the end of the night the venue’s management asks us to play there again, our loyal fans congratulate us for another great show, and we sell some merch to new fans who liked us better than the band they came to see.  All because (gasp!) we sounded awesome.*