It's a live guitarist's responsibility to have a good tone?

[HotRats]

Played a gig in a theater yesterday and the sound man - a guy I've worked with few times in the last couple of years - told me:

"it's always a pleasure to work with you because you always sound good and I don't have to do anything to your sound. It just works as it is form start to finish. No volume jumps, no need to EQ the hell out of it, no need to re eq you song by song, no crazy amount of effect that blurry you"

This comment made me really happy and proud because I take care of my tone, I learn my gear and I like to have as much control as possible over the sound I give to the sound man (I use a cab m+ instead of a mic in front of the cab for this very reason).

Told this to a guitarist friend of mine and he somehow argued that I'm able to give the sound man a good sound because I'm a sound engineer and I know what I'm doing.

He implied that if you are only a guitar player you don't necessarily need to know how to sound good. That's the sound man work.

My opinion is that when you play live, having a good tone, having all your sounds well balanced and organized in coherent way, is your responsibility. You owe it to the audience and to the band.

TL : DR

It's a live guitarist's responsibility to have a good tone? Or playing good is enough? After all sound guys are there for you.

 

[Frodebro]

Gaslighting because he knows he sucks and he’s trying to guilt trip you for not being as stupid as he is.

 

[FuzzyAce]

The concept of 'good tone' is debatable I suppose, but having consistency in your levels and owning your sound is very important, not just for the band and sound guy, but the audience.

 

[la szum]

Man, sounds like you need smarter friends.




Always nice to get props from an engineer like that. Pretty sure it counts double.


I have had a lot of engineers ask about switching (channels/amps/fx) and whether or not a "boosted"
tone is going to be used. I appreciate when they are asking up front and into their details like that.

 

[HotRats]

Gaslighting because he knows he sucks and he’s trying to guilt trip you for not being as stupid as he is.

He's a good player, actually. He might not be always perfect with his volumes but overall sounds good.

I think is an important topic this one we argued about, kind of an elephant in the room for many players and bands.

The concept of 'good tone' is debatable I suppose, but having consistency in your levels and owning your sound is very important, not just for the band and sound guy, but the audience.

Yeah "good tone" is debatable, I agree.

Maybe bad tone is less debatable in the context of a cover band or a band doing originals in a predictable style.

In my experience modellers/profilers made thing worse for some players, because the availability of all the options, the possibility to have a different amps for each song or even song section require much more discipline collared to a traditional analogue rig.

I don't think that having all your sounds balanced and ready is that hard, though.

You don't need to be a sound engineer, you just need to listen carefully.

Man, sounds like you need smarter friends.

Don't be that hard on him, he's a nice guy.

Always nice to get props from an engineer like that. Pretty sure it counts double.


I have had a lot of engineers ask about switching (channels/amps/fx) and whether or not a "boosted"
tone is going to be used. I appreciate when they are asking up front and into their details like that.

100%

And I always ask the sound guy if he needs some changes from my side, usually some bass cuts.

In the cab m+ I use to apply a cab sim to my amp - and then feed the PA, I have copies of the same preset with different low cuts (0, 41, 82, 110) stored in order and the next ones are the same with added mids, just in case.

 

[Piing]

What gear is your friend using? I hope that he isn't wasting money on that area.

Tone must come 100% from his hands. He could go to a pro recording studio session or to a stadium gig with just a Marshall MS-2 mini-stack, a rusted cable, and a Rock Hall Fender Strat Mini.

 

[newholland]

music is also a craft. be a good craftsperson. kinda the long and short of it. sounding bad and expecting the sound guy to fix it is like running your car without oil and expecting your mechanic to fix it afterwards. don't make your music their problem and be shocked when they 'don't get your vision'.

 

[HotRats]

music is also a craft. be a good craftsperson.

that's so true.

What gear is your friend using? I hope that he isn't wasting money on that area.

Tone must come 100% from his hands. He could go to a pro recording studio session or to a stadium gig with just a Marshall MS-2 mini-stack, a rusted cable, and a Rock Hall Fender Strat Mini.

He sounds good, I've played with him for years and he's good at both playing (he's a pretty good shredder!) and using gear, we just have different ideas about things and we love to argue about them.

But he never placed a mic in front of a cab, run a PA by himself or played full digital outside his home.
He second guess himself a lot when he's outside his comfort zone (wich is a tube amp, analog or digital fxs and and a cab).
He just take care of what he hears from his cab, that's it. It's the kind of player that doesn't care if amp is too loud and rips band mates faces off.

Our conversetion made me start this thread to check what others think about it because I see there might be an problem in this area.

I can understand where his reasoning comes from, the idea that you, as a player, do your best for yourself and take care of the sound you hear on stage from your cab.

From the speaker to the FOH is a sound man responsability to make it work.

 

[Sascha Franck]

It's a live guitarist's responsibility to have a good tone?

Very defenitely. At least in my neck of the gigging woods.

And it's also one of the reasons why I went through quite some lengths in setting things up. For instance, back in the days when I was still using amps, I didn't just bring my own mic (including marked positions on the speaker grill) but even a goosneck mic clamp that I could mount directly on my cabs so the position was always the same, no stage vibrations would move a mic stand, etc. Sound guys have always been pretty happy with that and all they told me they had to do occasionally was to perhaps apply a little bit of low cut, otherwise it's been a "fader up" affair.

Another thing that really leveled things up quite a bit was using a dedicated lead EQ back with my first loopswitcher rack. Before I got the odd comment on my lead tones either being not loud enough or too loud in comparison to the rhythm tones. The EQ fixed that as I can easily adjust the rhythm/lead balance now - and even add a bit of mids, which very often helps lead tones quite a bit. Amazingly enough, for me the same setting works for all of the sounds I'm using, from clean to hairy to fully driven.
It's something I keep doing until today and one of the main reasons why I want global blocks on modelers. So much that I'm willing to deal with some rather unfortunate things to get there (such as using Boss GT units...).

Along these lines, I've spent a whole lot of time to balance my sounds by recording myself to some "minus one (hence guitar)" live cuts that I tried to took on gigs over the years. Once that became possible (thanks to digital consoles), I would just bring my laptop and a small interface and ask the sound guys (ideally those that would mix a number of the same gigs) to set up a "front mix minus guitar" signal for me. Which worked pretty well quite often. This gave me a good idea about how to actually balance some patches instead of going for some guesswork.
Taught me quite some things, every bit worth the efforts it took.

And these days, as I switched to modeling/DI all throughout, one of the things that's also making my life easier is supplying a steady level to the FOH folks, independent of my own monitor level. Fwiw, that's one of the reasons I likely won't buy an AM4 because it's not supplying such an option.
Really, this is one of the things sound guys often commented on. For very good reasons, they just don't like players changing their overall levels throughout gigs.

I also always deliver my own balanced XLR output, so all these folks need to give me is an XLR cable.

Almost needless to say, my live sounds are all checked at gig level, too. Regardless of whether you're using real amps or modeling, that's a most crucial thing to do.

Oh, one thing I found crucial during the last years, in which IEM (and other digital) monitoring scenarios got more and more popular: Apart from getting a pair of decent IEM headphones, it's absolutely important to become familiar with all the various remote monitor mix controls, so you can roll your own instead of being at the mercy of the FOH folks (who usually have better things to do than taking care of the guitarist's monitoring sound). These days, I always try to do my monitor mix myself, regardless whether it's IEM or wedge monitoring.
Most remote apps feature a demo mode, so you can get familiar with how they work in advance of the gig. I cannot recommend it enough to do just that.
Why is that important for your guitar sound? Because you can only make educated decisions about how to finetune some things in a decent monitoring context.

Whatever, it's defenitely a sum of quite some things.

 

[Byrdman]

I try to have the best tone possible with my setup so it hides my playing

 

[BFRaid]

I have found sound guys, especially at clubs where they have to mix 3-5 bands a night, will coast or go on autopilot if your tone is "bad" typically meaning thin, giving them little to work with. Noisy rigs also piss sound guys off. They will bury you in the mix if your volume is all over the place to avoid volume spikes.

The best advice I can give any musician is to talk to the sound guy before sound check, let him know what you are looking for sonically. Tip the sound guy "before" the soundcheck, and if you go out for a meal after soundcheck, take the soundperson with you or bring them something back to eat.

 

[HotRats]

Very defenitely. At least in my neck of the gigging woods.

And it's also one of the reasons why I went through quite some lengths in setting things up. For instance, back in the days when I was still using amps, I didn't just bring my own mic (including marked positions on the speaker grill) but even a goosneck mic clamp that I could mount directly on my cabs so the position was always the same, no stage vibrations would move a mic stand, etc. Sound guys have always been pretty happy with that and all they told me they had to do occasionally was to perhaps apply a little bit of low cut, otherwise it's been a "fader up" affair.

Another thing that really leveled things up quite a bit was using a dedicated lead EQ back with my first loopswitcher rack. Before I got the odd comment on my lead tones either being not loud enough or too loud in comparison to the rhythm tones. The EQ fixed that as I can easily adjust the rhythm/lead balance now - and even add a bit of mids, which very often helps lead tones quite a bit. Amazingly enough, for me the same setting works for all of the sounds I'm using, from clean to hairy to fully driven.
It's something I keep doing until today and one of the main reasons why I want global blocks on modelers. So much that I'm willing to deal with some rather unfortunate things to get there (such as using Boss GT units...).

Along these lines, I've spent a whole lot of time to balance my sounds by recording myself to some "minus one (hence guitar)" live cuts that I tried to took on gigs over the years. Once that became possible (thanks to digital consoles), I would just bring my laptop and a small interface and ask the sound guys (ideally those that would mix a number of the same gigs) to set up a "front mix minus guitar" signal for me. Which worked pretty well quite often. This gave me a good idea about how to actually balance some patches instead of going for some guesswork.
Taught me quite some things, every bit worth the efforts it took.

And these days, as I switched to modeling/DI all throughout, one of the things that's also making my life easier is supplying a steady level to the FOH folks, independent of my own monitor level. Fwiw, that's one of the reasons I likely won't buy an AM4 because it's not supplying such an option.
Really, this is one of the things sound guys often commented on. For very good reasons, they just don't like players changing their overall levels throughout gigs.

I also always deliver my own balanced XLR output, so all these folks need to give me is an XLR cable.

Almost needless to say, my live sounds are all checked at gig level, too. Regardless of whether you're using real amps or modeling, that's a most crucial thing to do.

Oh, one thing I found crucial during the last years, in which IEM (and other digital) monitoring scenarios got more and more popular: Apart from getting a pair of decent IEM headphones, it's absolutely important to become familiar with all the various remote monitor mix controls, so you can roll your own instead of being at the mercy of the FOH folks (who usually have better things to do than taking care of the guitarist's monitoring sound). These days, I always try to do my monitor mix myself, regardless whether it's IEM or wedge monitoring.
Most remote apps feature a demo mode, so you can get familiar with how they work in advance of the gig. I cannot recommend it enough to do just that.
Why is that important for your guitar sound? Because you can only make educated decisions about how to finetune some things in a decent monitoring context.

Whatever, it's defenitely a sum of quite some things.

We are on the same wavelenght here.

I not only do my best to give the FOH the best hassle free tone I can but I also bring all I need to be as much independet as possible.
I bring extra amount of cables of various lenght, ground loop isolators, extension cords, power strips, fuses, gaffe tape, cable ties, a multitool with screwdrivers & c, guitar stands and of course a backup rig.

All I need at a gig is a socket in the front current and possibily an XLR cable so I don't have to use put down mine.

I also try to place the amp facing me from the front or side of the stage to prevent the direct sound from my cab from reaching the audience.

 

[ChordInversion]

It's every performer's responsibility to do what they can to achieve a good performance. Tone is part of that, though what constitutes a good tone is individual and all but infinitely variable. So no, pawning it off on the sound engineer isn't legitimate. But neither is a fixation on tone that can for some players become narcisssitic and counter-productive (the "I don't care if nobody else can be heard and the first 5 rows need to have airport runway cans on to avoid bleeding ears - I gotta have my toan, man" phenomenon). But the OP notes those important elements, so I agree.

 

[HotRats]

And these days, as I switched to modeling/DI all throughout, one of the things that's also making my life easier is supplying a steady level to the FOH folks, independent of my own monitor level

This is somenthing I miss from my full digital days.

I never ask for my guitar in the stage monitors therfore I rely on my cab only. With the current analogue rig I move my master volume up, during the show, only If I start digging too hard into the strings trying (and failing) to compensate for volume.

 

[sleewell]

lol who else's job would it be?


sound guys at local shows just do a shitty sound check and play games on their phones

 

[Sascha Franck]

I not only do my best to give the FOH the best hassle free tone I can but I also bring all I need to be as much independet as possible.
I bring extra amount of cables of various lenght, ground loop isolators, extension cords, power strips, fuses, gaffe tape, cable ties, a multitool with screwdrivers & c, guitar stands and of course a backup rig.

Same here, unless I know the company supplying all the PA stuff well.
Most important little helpers during the last years of playing "function" gigs: A spare DI and a sufficiently long XLR cable. Found myself in "sorry, no dedicated monitoring for the guitar player" quite sometimes (even if it would've been possible I rather prefer not to annoy them and myself even more), and as what I usually need the most is some keyboards, I will then try to grab a split with a DI box and route it into my own wedge.

I also try to place the amp facing me from the front or side of the stage to prevent the direct sound from my cab from reaching the audience.

Yeah, always did that, too. Today it's obviously not an issue anymore as my wedge is sitting next to my pedalboard anyway (ok, sometimes some 1-2 meters away, in case others need to hear me through my system as well).

This is somenthing I miss from my full digital days.

Really, monitoring volume independent from FOH feed volume is one of the greatest aspects in using DI rigs. Not only can you finally become friends with FOH guys, the others in the band profit as well, as the guitar levels on their monitors always stay the same, too.