Panic Promotions
Advice for Soundcheck:
To minimise accidents and injury we cannot have anyone other than band members present in the room during set up and sound checks. Mates, girlfriends, hangers-on must wait elsewhere during this time (there is usually another bar at the venue they can use).
All band members please ensure that all your gear is in good working order and that you have brought all necessary leads, power cables, extension leads and bits of gear that you need.
Guitarists make sure that you have enough plectrums, your guitar should be in tune and you should carry spare strings. Please check that your amp, heads, cables and connectors are safe and working properly a day or two before the gig. If you need to share the equipment of one of the other bands please let us know in advance.
Drummers must have at least two pairs of drumsticks and a drum tuning key. If you are sharing a drumkit please make sure that you bring all your own breakables, i.e. snare drum and stand, kick drum pedal, cymbals and stands, hi-hat and hi-hat stand, throne,
Alternatively make sharing arrangements with other bands in advance, and make sure you know who is using what on the night.
The Sound Check
Make sure all band members stay on stage during your sound check. Don’t wander off while we check the drums, please be patient. Then balance all levels as if you were in a practice session, so that nobody is overpowering anyone else, the best way to do this is to play guitars, bass and drums together.
Play one of your own songs so you will know what to listen for. Send either your singer or a member of the band who has a long lead, out in front of the stage to listen to see if you can hear each individual member.
Make sure that the guitar amps are not overpowering the drums, if they are you won’t hear the drummer when you play and will probably lose track of where you are. Don’t ever rely on monitors to play everything back to you; they’re there primarily for vocalists. In most venues there is no need to pump everything back at the performers at the front of the stage.
If the amps are balanced, make sure all your effects come out at the same volume. Engineers in a bigger venue may ask you to turn up your clean channel for example. There should be no volume difference between clean and overdrive\distortion, just a difference in sound.
Once you have everything balanced, you are ready to sound check. We start with the drums as these can be ‘walled in’ by amplifiers, meaning they barely project out from the stage.
Will drummers please make sure that when we ask them to hit something, i.e. kick, snare, toms that they play it as if they were playing a song. If you hit a drum gently for sound check and then whack them twice as hard when you play properly, your levels on the desk will be completely incorrect; there is not a lot that a sound engineer can do in this case. Hit the drums hard, that’s what they’re there for!
We will then balance the amps through the P.A. and get the balance that you have on stage coming out the front. This should be easy if the amps are equal on stage. We will ask you to go through your effects on guitars and bass to double-check your levels.
Finally we will check the vocals. This is an important part, which often we can’t do properly due to the vocalist. When sound checking a vocal mic, singers should always sing at the volume they will when they perform! An unenthusiastic one-two is no use to us, you must either sing as you would when playing or speak at the volume you will sing at. You can say anything (try a nursery rhyme), but the volume is the essential part, if you whisper in sound check and then proceed to scream down a microphone, your levels will be wrong; this is not the fault of the sound engineer, it is the fault of the vocalist.
We will then ask you to play a song, anything will do, just a song. Please do not spend 5 minutes deciding what song to play; a sound check is behind closed doors. During this time we will set up a typical monitor feed for you, with just some vocals in every monitor, and kick drum, snare and bass guitar in the drummers monitor.
After you have completed your song, please state clearly to the sound engineers what your preferences are for each monitor. We will do our best to feed what you want into each individuals monitor. Drummer’s need their mix just right, so please communicate to us what you need as we appreciate hearing from the back of the stage is difficult when you are surrounded by amps pointing in the opposite direction.
Some pointers:
· If you do not co-operate, there is very little we can do to help you. Please listen to what the sound engineers ask you to do. They will return the favour later when you ask them for monitor mixes.
· Do not, under any circumstances change the volume of anything once you have started playing. The sound engineers cannot read your mind, and may not notice what you have changed. If you have to change an amp level, because you can’t hear it, tell us during sound checks. There is no point trying to battle with each other. Remember, the sound out front is what counts and that is monitored by the sound engineer. It may not sound right to you. If you do change a level on stage, inform us and we will do our best to adapt, although we make no promises once your main set is underway.
· Please arrive promptly and with the right gear. If you are going to be unavoidably late then please PHONE US. The phone number before 4.00 pm is 01244 817 818, after 4.00 pm call Dan on 07736 277 771. We would appreciate any late calls so that we can plan around you.
· Broken or missing leads. We will happily lend you something if it breaks on the night through no fault of your own, but if you turn up without something because the dog ate it, replace it before the gig. It’s not our problem.
· If you follow the above advice we can work together to produce a good sound for the band and make the night run as smoothly as possible
· The most important thing to remember is communication, if we need you to do something we expect you to do it, if you are unsure of anything please ask, more than anything we are there to help, but we can only do this if you talk to us.
· Please be polite, as with any job, if someone is rude to you then you are less likely to listen to their needs and put in 100% effort for them, the same goes for the sound engineers.