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Tips to Help Deal With a Reverberant Venue
While there’s no doubt that intentionally adding some echo or reverb to your band’s vocals can be a nice effect, the overbearing natural reverb and echo that results from the acoustical properties of certain concert halls, churches, and other venues can be a huge problem for your band’s overall sound and result in an unintelligible mess! If your band is all mic’ed up through the PA, playing and hearing mostly echo instead of instruments can make it really difficult to perform well, let alone stay in time and in tune with one another.
This article will give you an idea of what to do if you are faced with this situation and help you to prevent a reverb-filled venue from being your band’s worst enemy.
- Turn it down. The more sound your band puts out, the more echo there will be. Keeping your overall stage volume to a minimum can work wonders! A best practice on any stage is to keep amp volume to a minimum and let the PA do most of the work in delivering your sound to the audience, and that rings true especially in this situation.
- Adjust your technique. If you’ve got a heavy hitting drummer or singer who loves to belt it out, have them try and adapt to the room and modify their technique. This may be difficult, considering many musicians have a set way they like to perform and don’t like being told to change on the spot. It definitely helps if you have knowledge of the venue’s acoustical properties in advance so you can give your band a heads up, and even practice the adjusted technique in rehearsals leading up to the show.
- Easy on the Bass. Bass frequencies are huge and omnidirectional, which spells out bad news in a reverberant venue. These lower frequencies also have the longest reverberation time, so that rumbly low E your bassist played may carry over for more beats than it should. Your bassist may disagree, but it’s for the greater good of the band if you go easy on the bass.
- Switch up your speaker setup. A high quality line array like the Carvin Audio TRX3210A or the TRC Column Array Systems can greatly assist in reducing echo. If you’re a venue owner or sound person looking to tame an echo-filled room, a line array system distributes sound far more evenly and can be focused better than conventional loudspeakers and does not waste power sending any sound upwards towards the ceiling. Considering one of the original purposes of line arrays was to put more sound on the audience and less bouncing on the walls, they are one of the finest solutions available.
- Fill up the room. Having lots of people in a venue helps to soak up the sound, seriously! Human bodies absorb sound directed at them, so the more people you have in the room, the better. Go ahead and invite all your friends and tell them they are helping your band to sound its best, because they really are!
The only way to completely remedy an echo chamber is to modify it physically or acoustically, but 99% of the time that is not a feasible solution (unless your guitar player is an acoustic engineering guru who can move at the speed of the Flash and fix the room before you play). Next time reverb is an extra instrument in your band’s sound, try out these tips!
Comments
We recently had a gig inside a very large aluminum building. The reverberation inside was impossible to deal with.
The irony is that people outside the building said we sounded incredible. People inside the building could barely hear us because of all of the sound bouncing around.
Fun time
Reverberant often means hard surfaced, and it has been useful to also roll the highs back somewhat.
I used to tour as sound engineer for a four piece folk group. We played everywhere from the Barns at Wolf Trap to little clubs and auditoriums. One of the scariest things for me would be when we’d play a church and someone would say “The acoustics are great. Our choir sounds so good here.” It meant that there was a lot of reverb in the room and it would rarely be good for an amplified musical group.
One thing that worked for me on occasion was to turn it up. I know that sounds counter-intuitive but for some rooms it worked. I would only recommend that as the last resort, and I wouldn’t suggest that the band turn up, but running the PA hotter can be a solution and might be worth a try if all else fails.
Filling the room with bodies is still a great solution acoustically and financially!
Another thing that works in difficult rooms is to use your PA speakers only on one side, a single point source. I found this out one night when another player put his guitar case on a speaker cord on a break, disconnecting one side. This also had the effect of reducing power, but it sounded much better even when I turned back up. One point source, fewer sources to generate reflections.
Most venues, at least the ones I’ve played in, are less than perfect when it comes to a musical/sound performance. If you’re a travelling band/act, EACH stage (if you’re lucky enough to have one) will be different and each room will react differently when it comes to sound projection. My best suggestion is to USE YOUR EARS in evaluating the surroundings and figuring out the best way to sonically proceed. A simple “clap” of the hands can help you evaluate the inherent echo/reverberation properties of each venue. Unfortunately, it’s not the more the merrier here and the more return you hear, the lower your volume MUST be. If it’s a small room, maybe only your monitor amps should be on. And THAT can be a lot for a band to get used to, especially if you’re a wham and slam act. And, if it’s really bad, maybe your band should emulate the “unplugged” concerts you see and hear. Up for a new experience, guys?
Playing closer to acoustically may save the gig! It might also give your band new musical ideas….and direction. You can still do the Mammoth thing, but, maybe not there, for that job.
Much more to say, as I’ve said, each venue will probably take a different amplification/performance approach. But, hey, we’re in it for the music(ality) of it, no?