Balancing the backline sound

Back in the seventies a band’s live setup consisted of a drum kit, back line amps, and a vocal PA. For a band to sound good, they learned about balancing the backline sound – each musician had to develop not only his or her own sound, but also learn to slot it into the overall sound of the band. If your band didn’t sound good as a unit, with basic gear, then you’d struggle to advance. By the time bands like AC/DC or Van Halen got their record deals they were already rock-solid gigging machines. They could play anywhere, with any gear, and still sound great. There’s a real skill in achieving this and it involves honest discussion, a team spirit, and a willingness to experiment. It also frequently means personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good. It’s often the case that the individual instrument sound, that you might think is great, doesn’t work at all in a live setting. Here are some thoughts on the subject.

Guitar

Let’s start with guitarists. So you have your amazing modelling amp which has every tone from Eric Clapton to Steve Vai built in to it. You can slap on your headphones and build this amazing deep, smooth, sparkling guitar sound. You take it to a gig, get noodling…and no one can hear a damn note you’re playing! This happens all too often, a great guitar player, but he sounds like a wasp in a jam jar…and it’s all about EQ.

No guitar sound should contain anything below 150Hz, and you could usually venture well above that. Low frequencies in a guitar sound add nothing to of value and they just get in the way of the kick drum and bass guitar. The opposite is true of midrange. If you’re cutting mid on your guitar EQ then you’re systematically eliminating your reason for being at the gig.

The ‘voice’ of an electric guitar lies between 300Hz – 4KHz, and the ‘meat’ lies between 400Hz and 1200Hz. If you want what you’re playing to mean anything then you need plenty of that stuff in your sound. You might end up with a sound that seems to be ‘boxy’ or ‘honky’ but trust me, in amongst the other instruments, it’ll work way better than that polished hifi tone.

Bass

Bass players generally fare better than guitarists when it comes to balancing their backline sound live. But then bass guitar is in some ways a less complicated instrument sound-wise. Firstly you have to have low end in there. The ‘speaking voice’ of a bass is usually to be found from 300Hz and up. That’s where you can shape your Flea, Geddy, or Bernard sound. Once you’ve achieved that though, you have to dial in a nice, clean low end. There are preamps out there that actually split low and high so you can actually amplify them separately (called bi-amping). You can then shape tone and apply effects to only the high end, leaving the low end clean. This is great, but it also starts to get more expensive.

On the subject of effects, just keep them relevant. Compression is really useful when used sensibly, and chorus can work well in some musical sections. Distortion can sound great but, applied across the whole sound, it can soften the attack of the note and you’ll lose that crucial factor for bass guitar – definition. Use effects by all means but don’t let them destroy the main function of the bass guitar.

Drums

For drummers it’s fair to say that there are three main things to consider when balancing the backline sound. Firstly, consider the sizes and loudness of your drums. There’s a current penchant for finding the loudest kit that you can and then hitting it as hard as possible. If you’re playing in bars, pubs, function rooms it’s worth bearing in mind that a loud kit can easily drown out every other instrument. This means the band then has to play at a volume that’s uncomfortable for the listeners. The great drummers take the right tool for the job. They play with real dynamic and sensitivity, but also turn it on when required. I’ve seen some great drummers, in small venues, playing smaller-sized kits and the bands always seem to sound great, and at a listenable level.

The second factor is a pet hate – the snare of doom! There seems to be a trend of trying to find the loudest snare drum in existence -as if it’s a badge of honour. It’s not unusual to see drummers playing kits where the snare doesn’t even sound balanced within the context of the drum kit, let alone in the context of the band. It’s not big or clever to just deafen everyone in the room, especially your band mates. Lastly, tuning a kit is a real skill and it’s worth putting the effort in to learn how to do it properly. Spend time on it, take advice from other players, and bear in mind that the audience is hearing the kit from a completely different position to the drummer. A well-tuned kit is a joy to listen to and a breeze to work with. A badly-tuned kit is none of those things.

By all means chip in with any thoughts or comments and feel free to get in touch if you’d like to. Thanks for reading.