After a year of running monitors in a concert venue, I'm somewhat surprised by the number of bands who either blow off soundcheck or don't really know how it's supposed to go.  To be sure, a lot of bands take it seriously, and are a pleasure to check due to their disciplined approach.  A soundcheck is a luxury, and this is just my perspective on how bands can make the most of it if afforded the opportunity.

Before getting into how we do it, here are a few general rules.

Be attentive and don't play with your phone.  I will invariably have to return to you and recheck whatever instrument you missed.

Don't talk shop with your bandmates.  Yes, the new pickups on your tele are great, but I will invariably have to return to you and recheck whatever instrument you missed.  A disengaged band immersed in conversation is a real soundcheck killer for obvious reasons.

Don't noodle around.  When it's time to check your instrument, you can play until you and everyone else are satisfied.  Until then, please keep it quiet.

On to the process.  The FOH engineer will hit me up on the comm and ask if I'm ready.  If I (the monitor guy) am ready, he'll speak into his talkback mic through the monitors and ask the band if they are ready.  He'll introduce himself, and say "that's Matt over there on monitors, as we go through this just let him know what you need and he'll dial it in."  This is an extremely important directive.  Ask me for what you need as we go, and not when we're done going through each instrument!

We'll typically start with kick drum, but the process will be the same for each instrument.  If you need kick drum in your wedge or IEM, put your finger in the air.  Keep it up until you get the desired level, and then make a fist.  If I get it too hot, point down.  If you're the drummer, pay attention to your bandmates and don't stop playing until everyone seems satisfied.  The FOH guy will ask if everyone is good on kick.  If everyone says yes, we move forward.

This process is repeated until everything is checked.  Then you'll have a chance to play a song.  Don't hesitate to ask me via hand signals for more or less of something as the band plays.  Another very important thing: let me know when you're happy by nodding.  I need that I've made the proper tweaks.

When the song is finished, please maintain order on the stage.  Go one at a time in asking me to make changes to your mix.  I will get to everyone, but I need finish one guy's mix before moving to the next.  I might have to swap out a cable, get a different DI box, move a microphone...keep your head in the game and be ready to play again if necessary.

If we have time, of course you can play another song.  I want this go well just as much as you do.
 
 


 

Well said. Finding bandmates that are willing to adhere to such things are a challenge, though.

I preach the "finger up" method to my band mates.

One guy plays and everyone else in the band raises their finger to the sky. The sound guy then adjusts volume individually and when a person is satisfied with that level in their monitor they put their hand down.


Works great. At the end, everyone makes a big E and does the finger thing again followed by a jam in E for the sound guy for his mains.


Works amazingly well for us.

Not sure why this needed a most...oh yeah, because most musicians are clueless.

Pretty much everything you posted isn't rocket surgery or voodoo.  It's common sense, be attentive, follow directions type shit.  Yet amazingly, so many musicians can't get their shit together.  Then bitch mid set about the monitors or the sound they're getting.

You have to consider that most people who are musicians are so because they are shitty, self absorbed people.

 

And their egos run their lives.

Hey wait a minute, I'm not a sh....

Aw fuck it.

Seriously tho, it is oretty aparrent that most musicians get into it to 1) get laid and or 2) feed their ego and or 3) get famous which of course never happens.

You can generally tell those who play music because they love it, because they have to let it out, vs those who are there because they need that 40 minutes of attention.  The attention seekers could give 2 shits about your sound check rules, or making the performance perfect, as song as their bros tell them how great the set was and they get a blow job later.

There are two kinds of soundmen:

1.  Regular soundmen, who are always telling the band to turn down their onstage amps.

2.  Punk Rock soundmen, who expect guitarists to crank multiple Marshall rigs to the limit.

As a guitar player, I have my pedal board and amplifier set 'just so'. I have pictures of all of my amplifier and pedal settings and I make sure that the output volume on all of my guitars is nearly the same.




I've run sound and I understand the importance of keeping stage volume low. However, it is more important that the people playing the instruments are not only comfortable with their sound, but are also using the sound that they want. And, while louder isn't really better most of the time, power tubes do saturate at higher volumes, and that's what most people go to rock and metal shows for.


To put this all another way, my band had a soundguy who insisted on cutting a hole in our kick drum because it didn't have a port - even though the portless kick is a very important part of our sound. It's dummies like that who sit in their safe world of presets that make live shows unbearable for both the listener and the band.

I'm generally on board with Credge's above post.






My soundcheck rules simply concern etiquette and good communication.  They are not technical, and there is a reason for that.  I am here to serve musicians, not tell them how to set their amps or tune their drums.  My original post was an effort to show musicians how they can get the most out of me.  It's like when I hire a plumber to fix my shitter.  I clean my bathroom floor so that he does not have to wade around in pubes, thus encouraging him to work with thoroughness, happiness, and attention to pertinent details.

Clean up your act as a band and observe how people will want to work for you.








 

Hey man here's to you. I've been a working engineer for over 15 years now. I've toured the world and worked with rock stars and kids alike. Now I'm the production manager for a sound company. I strive to teach my engineers the routine for taking control of a stage. You have to own it to coax out a good sound check. And if you don't, the show could suck. And you will be blamed.

My routine goes like this, and is more based around communicating during a show (for instance between a guitar tech and the monitor engineer):
Point to what you want (guitar, bass, vocal)
What do you want it to do (point up or down)
Where do you want it (IEM or wedges or sub)

Establish a standard for identifying all instruments via hand signals-
Drums
A fist in the chest is Kick,
Mimicking snare is Snare, you can specify Top or Bottom mic,
Mimicking a Tom hit followed by fingers showing which one (1, 2, 3, FL1, etc)

Guitars, establish which one you want. (I mime a guitar and then point to it)
If one guitar player has long hair, for instance, I reference that with my hands

So on and so on.

Then, from anywhere on stage, you can look at the monitor engineer and say Guitar SR, UP, in my IEM.

Better still, from the opposite side of the stage a tech cold say Tom 2, Up, in the Bass players wedge

It sounds complicated, but we used this all over the world. It completely solves the ME's problem of a guy pointing at something on stage. The guitar? What abou it? Your in-ears? Do they work? Do you want more or less? There's precious little time that a musician can communicate during a song, but this works VERY quickly if everyone's on board.

Funny you should mention, I have two boxes sitting next to me that just arrived, a pair of Kelly Shu's and the MAY vent hole XLR.  Internal miccing from now on.  Just give me an XLR dude, I got this.

Cut a hole in my front head?  LOL.

when everyone on stage starts telling me what they want in their monitor all at once, I stop and ask



what is the difference between a monitor engineer and a toilet???

a toilet only has to deal with shit from one asshole at a time, now what do you want in your monitor?

At the concerts where I worked (University indoors stage), I can only recall Martha Davis coming out for the sound check.  Everyone else uses their tech as I recall.  Maybe because their too lazy, or we're not that great of a venue?  Who knows.

The annual concert setup in the football stadium every spring was different.  I remember all coming out for their soundcheck like Jefferson Starship. Maybe it was big enough to care?

Who knows, but want I do remember is that rockstahs are a bit, well, eccentric.  I remember scenes in the dressing room behind the stage where the rockstahs are doing blow, and the campus police (providing security) doing nothing at all.

Weird times.