Archive for May, 2015

Pleasure Tax – Sell Us Water, Sell Us Air!

Posted: May 7, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
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Having written songs with my older brother from the beginning, I often bounce ideas at him to see what comes back.  I remember (and take all of this with a grain of salt as I am not the best at chronology or details!) going up to him and saying something like… “I have this idea for a song and not sure where it goes, but I keep thinking get out of here leave me alone take it away, and that they want to charge us for anything.  Soon they will sell us air and water”.  Below is the result.  I called it The Pleasure Tax, and it is more relative today.  And yes, they do sell us air and water now!

I am very picky about tuning and tones used.  Putting new strings on your guitar was sometimes a luxury.  When I finally did it is like turning on a light bulb in a dim room.  Yes, you could see before but now you can even read!  Music can be like that.  Things are not inspiring or do not sound very good and you change the strings (or reed, drum head, pads) and BAM!  You want to go out and play it hard!

The tax is still out there, so be careful when you want to relax.?

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

“THE PLEASURE TAX”  © 1981

Music by Michael S Kennedy          Lyrics by Michael S and Charles D Kennedy

Intro:

Take it away………… The Pleasure Tax  4x

Verse 1

Take it out, or take it home.

Take it back, it hasn’t grown

Take it away or leave it alone.

Say what you want, or hang up the phone.

Chorus

Put new strings on your damn guitar.

Make it simple, but play it hard.

He says he likes it I don’t know why.

We don’t understand but we’ll give it a try.

Verse 2

Hit the road or face the facts.

There’s something that your system lacks.

The very next time you go to relax,

You’ll go down from the Pleasure Tax

Getting to the Next Level

Posted: May 5, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
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We all try to rationalize situations we are not sure of.   We attempt to explain why things happen – or things that happen to us.  We try to understand the world around us.  When I worked at the instrument music store, I rationalized that I got the job because I was a previous customer and that I could program and understand the new digital MIDI keyboards hitting the market.  Very quickly (months, I believe) I was given my own satellite store to manage.  I opened three more chain stores in a few short years.  In reality, I probably bought more in equipment than I got paid to work there!  Almost kidding, but I understood a lot of the toys and had played with a bunch of them, but to get a room full of toys all day long and then get paid to learn all I could about them, well, I won’t get into religion here but that was heaven on Earth.  I would have done it for free.  And do you know how I rationalized being a SALES MAN? (I am pretty anti-establishment from way back………..) I tried to listen to where the customer was coming from and what they needed.  From there I would teach them what I knew about gear that would help get them to the next level.   Everyone needs to get to the next level.  That is what I am doing today.  It is what you are doing right now.

And sometimes we need to explain to ourselves why.   Why do I need to buy that new toy?  Why do they like me?  Why does the sun always shine where I am?  Why aren’t things working as I planned.  Why don’t they understand me?   What did I do right or wrong?  This has bugged me all my life and I hope it does not get to you.  Working in the music store(s) I sold gear to a lot of bands. Some people were regulars.  Always something needed, some new gear.  One of the bands told me that their sound man was on vacation and they needed someone to run sound for them.  It SEEEEEEMED logical to ask me, I knew about the mixing boards and PA systems.  But I had never run sound before ( truth in advertising alert – – – I did run sound for one other band prior to this but that is a funny story I wanted to share with you later.  So I did it once before  ….. technically  …….) What would you do?  These are good customers and by now good friends too.  If I run sound and really suck, the friendship and the work relationships are out the window.  I let them know I do not have a lot of experience but if they don’t have anyone else I would be glad to help.  They decide to go with me for the vacation gigs.  I run through the checklist a thousand times in my head.  I set the stage and house equipment up methodically, I run through the gain staging like riding a bike, I get the monitors working and run CD audio through the mains to test them.  Time to start.   Big crowd.   Lots of people and friends.  As you can imagine I am rapidly cycling through excitement, concern, confusion, fear, panic, and jazzed up one after the other.  The band starts playing and they are soooooo good I just relax.  I think even I can make these guys sound good!  I was lucky.  From what I remember the event was fine.

Their sound man decided to move onto other things and when he came back from vacation I was asked to take his place.  Again I had to rationalize;  well, they only like me cause I can get them a deal at the store. Well, they like me because I can set up the equipment pretty fast.   Well, it went over well because they are really tight and have great equipment.   You have probably done that a bunch of times as well.  It was hard for me to accept all the way down to the point of knowing that they noticed and appreciated the mix.  Their fans did too but most importantly, so did the band wives!  Never forget the power of the spouse!  So now for the first time, I am involved with a real band.  I am the regular sound guy.  The Band understands the power of the PA, and they determine that the sound guy gets equal cut…… as if he is as important to the overall sound as the individual band members were.  Amazing concept and it worked so well over the years.  I could not rationalize my way out of deserving that one; we worked as a team and the band always sounded great.

All this from knowing how to program a digital keyboard.

Live Sound Reinforcement Series Chapter 13 – Down the Signal Path

Posted: May 4, 2015 in Live Sound Reinforcement Series, music technology, technology
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Again, there are lots of guidelines about setting EQ.  But don’t let this confuse you early on.  Basically, this is a fancy way to change the tone of the signal.  Knobs that are tied together in brackets work together. One determines the frequency range that will be affected and the other knob determines how much boost or cut will be applied to the selected frequency range.  The first instinct is to turn everything up.  Indeed this is quite natural but wrong.  Test after test, many people will say one sound is better than the other even though the only real difference is the higher or louder volume level.  If you think of boosting the frequency group with the EQ as if it were an amplifier turning the frequency group louder, this will help explain why we needed the extra head room when setting up the gain stage – you are making the signal louder when you add EQ boost.  If everything is set and you boost a channel EQ, you can unintentionally overload the input level on the EX send for example, causing that signal to distort or clip when returning back to the mix.

In this configuration there is a hi frequency group cut/boost knob.  Then there are hi-mid frequency knob tied to a cut/boost knob and below another pair in the Low-mid frequency range.  Underneath that is the low end group cut/boost knob.  In essence, select the amount of cut or boost on the frequency groups (Hi – Lo) to shape sound so it reflects the source signal.

For the paired knobs, select the frequency to be affected and using its pair cut or boost that particular frequency (as opposed to a larger group of frequencies for the Hi-LO knobs).  Keeping in mind sometimes less is really more, rather than try to turn frequencies up or louder to make them sound better, try making them sound bad.  Which frequencies interfere with the shape and tone of the instrument?  Does a certain frequency make a nasty squawking sound when it is a bit louder?  Try cutting that frequency a good amount.  You might be able to turn the channel volume up after cutting signals and keep the level not necessarily louder over-all in the mix but in the correct group or place in the instrument/vocal mix.  Listeners will be able to hear the instrument clearer and more distinctly if it closely resembles the real instrument’s group. So this gets pretty easy.  Like a simple home stereo, turn the top know to clockwise to make the sound brighter by increasing the hi frequency group.   Turn it counter-clockwise if it sounds harsh or brittle in the upper range.  The paired knobs allow you to select specific frequencies within a group (Hi or Mid) and then cut or boost to shape the tone of the source and add flavor or reduce gremlins.

For microphones that will be used by vocalists, this is an area where you can make a lot of difference because the vocalist signal is also being sent to the on-stage monitors.  Sometimes they are really loud.  And when that happens, the monitor is blaring the vocalist’s signal right back into the microphone on stage.  This in turn goes quickly to the monitor and straight at the microphone again.  Soon this will turn into a squeal in the range that is strongest or loudest.  This is the classic example of a ‘feed-back loop‘.

The knee-jerk reaction is to turn the channel volume down or turn the monitor sends down.  The better way is to learn which frequency/frequency group is triggering the loop first.  Use the paired EQ knobs to change the hi-mid or lo-mid frequency responsible for triggering the nasty loop.  Successfully done, slowly turn the volume up a bit.  Slowly increase volume (usually to the monitors, but will apply to the House Mains in some situations) until you start to hear a feed-back loop starting.  Determine which frequency it is and turn it down in the mix. You want as much clear gain as you can to the performers. If you can only turn Monitor Send up to 5, let’s say or you get feedback, the performer might not be able to hear themselves over the amplified instruments and will be forced to scream louder and louder to get heard.  If you pull down the offending frequencies you can turn the same signal to the Monitor Send to maybe 8 or so.  Happy vocalist.

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