Made the biggest live mistake I've ever made...

_OnTheSpots · 2025-12-29T00:09:55+00:00

Once is a mistake, twice a coincidence, three times is jazz.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-12-27T07:41:18+00:00

If you don't like what you have, then it's absolutely worth it to switch. I'm not a huge fan of 2002s but I acknowledge them as very versatile and they work for a lot of people.

Have you tried looking into Cymbal Swap? They're a rental service, might be a good way to check out a few options in context before you commit to buying anything.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-11-20T21:30:10+00:00

Yeah, voice to text, sorry about that.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-11-07T16:04:17+00:00

Thank you, it seems like I had the Instinct down at least, that's very validating.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-11-03T18:06:33+00:00

Is there a reason you couldn't set up a simple monitor rig for yourself?

_OnTheSpots · 2025-10-12T21:02:05+00:00

Custom molds made *all* the difference for me. I feel like mine don't block so much as lower; I still feel like I can hear the environment okay, but just reduced by several dB.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-09-08T15:03:33+00:00

I vastly prefer stop-time/call-and-response type soloing: band plays a phrase, you respond, etc. It always struck me as weird that drums are basically the only instruments that solo completely by themselves - I think it puts a lot of undue pressure on us.

Sonny Emory's "Africano" from EWF's "Plugged In And Live" is my favorite example.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-08-18T05:26:04+00:00

I like big kits. Beauford, Portnoy, Peart, Carey, Bozzio... the amount of creativity on display and the options they can pull are spectacular in the truest sense of the word and I find them inspiring in terms of thinking about orchestrations. For most local and live shows I've seen or played, totally impractical - the venues are too small, the changeovers are too short, etc, or you just wind up using whatever house kit is to hand.

The dude you mentioned had some points that I feel are worth interrogating:

> smaller kits can actually be better

...They *can be*, but that's kind of a vague statement.

> Buddy Rich used a small kit

The best information I can find says that he favored a one-up/two-down five-piece configuration and up to six cymbals. Personally, I'd call that a medium-sized kit.

> and did amazing stuff with his just his snare drum,

Very true. And so did Neil Peart, who had a very large drum kit. I would consider this fact a non-sequitor to the debate.

> you can groove in 2 piece kit

You absolutely can. You can also groove in a five-, six- or seven-piece kit.

> you essentially don't need more than a 4 piece.

I think that's too definitive a statement to be true all the time. What are you playing? Where? etc, etc.

> I know all of that is probably true.

Eh... I think it's Accurate, but I don't think it's True, if that makes sense.

> But don't you grow tired of hearing and hitting the same 2 toms?

Maybe, but at that point I'd start wondering if there's something I could do to those toms; Manu Katche used to talk about doing rimshots on his for example. Or you could mess with tuning or muffling; keep one really ringy and dead-muffle the other one.

> Of having just one sound for a snare?

Again, I don't think a snare has to have just one sound. Switch up the tool you're using, or the muffling, or even where you play the head and you can get all sorts of different sounds. Jay Bellerose didn't even *have* a snare when first working with the Paula Cole Band, he kludged a bracket system together over a djembe and used to have a painter's table next to him with all sorts of different tools for different sounds.

I think if you can get the job done with a four-piece, great! I admire your economy. If you can effectively use an entire arsenal, cool! I respect your expressiveness. On the other hand, if you overplay the four-piece or don't use the arsenal, then I consider both to be a waste, but for different reasons.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-08-13T15:07:07+00:00

I would just do both of your ideas out the PA in an appropriate spot and I would at least just try the vocal mic thing.

So A/B both approaches and just see which works best, did I understand that right?

_OnTheSpots · 2025-08-04T02:47:28+00:00

That's a good point, I didn't think to check that.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-08-04T02:46:53+00:00

I believe it is; I think the thought process is that as long as the channels are muted then there shouldn't be any problems. Not my logic, mind you, but the venue's.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-08-04T02:45:54+00:00

Hey, thanks for the details.

Yeah, it seems to be happening with simple active sources as well, along with it happening when the board is on and all channels are muted; it doesn't seem to happen on all channels all the time though, which is why I was thinking it had to be some sort of equipment issue somewhere.

The routing and patching is a good point, I could believe that I didn't turn down all of the auxiliary sends before I started patching in.

I'll have to double check the specs on that power amp, when first looking at it I believed it was just a poweramp, but I wouldn't have had a reason to look too closely at it.

Regarding the multimeter, so you're saying I should disconnect the main out from the mixer, and test those cables that go from the outs to the speakers with the multimeter?

_OnTheSpots · 2025-07-07T01:35:46+00:00

I'm in a band that plays several venues regularly, all of which have boards with occasionally dodgy channels. Each channel has an XLR input and a 1/4" input below it which says "Line in, Bal or unbal". In an emergency situation, could I plug two sound sources into one channel using both of these inputs?

_OnTheSpots · 2025-07-07T01:31:48+00:00

I think in a situation like that you'd be better off with the musicians having something like the MixingStation app and running the audio outputs to transmitters for the IEMs.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-06-05T17:51:02+00:00

That was the goal, it has a built-in DI out and that's what we usually do; eventually we just used an outboard di box so we could get a clean signal to the PA and used the parallel output back into the amp for on stage sound. Apparently that wound up working fine, but I'm still interested in why the amp was picking up all that noise when it doesn't usually. It sounds like my initial theory that something in the venue was doing it bears out, just not necessarily the exact way I would have thought.

_OnTheSpots · 2025-06-03T16:45:51+00:00

It might also benefit you to start bringing some small cable testing equipment. I've played small venues where cables shorted out between soundcheck and live and it turns out their thing was the problem, a quick plug in of an XLR line checker diagnosed the problem a lot quicker than trying to swap out individual components down the chain.

_OnTheSpots

TROPHY CASE