Photo by Katie Dobies / Getty Images Signature
One of the most stressful things about playing live shows is trying to get the sound right. Unless you are able to carry your own sound engineer on tour, soundcheck will likely be a hit-or-miss experience for the large majority of a tour. But I have learned that with a little patience and some tact, you can almost always achieve enjoyable sound for yourself and for listeners. The trick is to imagine your interaction with the engineer as you would a first encounter with a new lover. Hear me out …
Although your sound engineer is one of the most important team members at the show, it’s easy to be distracted with your own travel and touring party when meeting them. Don’t take the sound engineer’s goodwill for granted! Imagine meeting someone for a date. Don’t just talk about yourself! Ask them where they’re from, have they worked at the club long, do they play music. Take the time for a friendly introduction, try to remember their name (I am terrible with this, but it’s easier now that I run into a more diverse cast of characters and every engineer is not “Steve” or “Joe”), and ask them something about themselves. You want this person to be on your side, and they need to care enough about you to do their best for the show.
Once you start setting everything up it can get tricky. Often, engineers will arrive with some preconceived notion of what they want to do for the sound setup. But just as not everyone likes the same thing in bed, not everyone likes the same sound for their show. There’s a lot of ego involved here. Nobody wants to be told that they’re doing it wrong. It’s better to frame your opinions as your own personal desires and needs, not “the way it should be done.”
For example, I love to sing into a plain old Shure SM58 microphone. This is a standard vocal mic that almost every venue has. Some engineers like to upgrade and use fancier, more expensive mics. These different mics might be phenomenal, they might be worth thousands of dollars, and they might be worthy of high-end recording sessions, but for me, in a live setting, I prefer to just work with what I know. I’m used to singing into a 58, and I know how to treat it to get the sound that I want.
Sometimes, when I ask for an SM58 to replace whatever fancy mic the engineer has placed, they say, “Of course! Sure! Whatever you want!” But sometimes they get really upset and tell me about how much better their mic is and why I should be grateful to use it. Because of this, I’ve started going in with a really long-winded “Hey, I know this mic is probably wayyyy better than a 58 but because I’m so used to it, I just prefer the consistency of using a 58, do you mind?” Letting your lover — I’m sorry, I mean sound engineer — know how knowledgeable and trustworthy you think they are can go a long way toward getting the scene right! Just remember, it’s more important to have the sound that you want than to be “right.”
Sometimes, though, the engineer is just getting it plain wrong. The sound in the room is terrible, the sound in the monitors is terrible, there’s an unfixable problem, etc. Even if you think you know how to fix the issue, approach with questions rather than demands.
Recently, I was working with an engineer who couldn’t figure out how to turn the phantom power on for my fiddle line. He was embarrassed, and kept explaining that it was his first time using this board, and he just couldn’t find the right button on the console. Much like in an intimate situation, when things go wrong, it is both time-sensitive and embarrassing. The pressure to perform with showtime sneaking up on you can be psychologically difficult. So, rather than getting angry or frustrated, try to defuse the situation.
In this case, I said, “Would you mind showing me what you’re looking at? Sometimes it just takes another set of eyes!” So together we looked through all the options he had tried. I am not a trained engineer and I wasn’t able to find the phantom indicator, but I did notice that the phantom seemed to be already on in another channel we were using for an instrument that didn’t need it. So, we switched the channels, and voila! Problem solved. I high-fived him and said, “We did it!” (Teamwork makes the dream work).
Let’s say that the engineer is using reverbs that really don’t match your style, or EQing your banjo to sound like Mumford & Sons (a classic problem for me). Back to our lover metaphor, don’t criticize! Guide them toward what you like. For example, don’t say, “It sounds like a stadium in here, that’s really not the kind of music I play.” Do say, “That sounds pretty good!” (even if it doesn’t). “You know what I have been loving lately? A reverb with a short tail. Could we try shortening that?”
Now, watch out that you don’t actually become lovers with all this beautiful communication!
