Amplification

Amplification is a fact of life for 75-100% of gigs, depending on what type of music you play. However, as most performing musicians learn early on, live sound is a minefield. The following is what I have found from playing various gigs over the years, for what it's worth.

Why Amplify at all?

People who work with me know that I'm a massive old fogey when it comes to volume. I like it to be as low as possible.

In a folk or jazz club or other listening environment, it's possible to pay very quiet, and is often the most powerful thing you can do. With a drummer it becomes trickier, but with a sensitive drummer it is perfectly possible to play very soft.

Amplification affects the sound of the instrument. for electric guitar this is desirable. For acoustic guitar it is only ever a necessary evil.

I often play at 30-40 seater venues used to acoustic styles of music and they usually provide a sound engineer. There is still a perceived need for amplification even here - my feeling is that it's perfectly possible to play these venues with a purely acoustic line up - if you play electric you could use a small amp. A lot depends on the drummer, but most of the drummers I work with have a great sense of dynamics. An acoustic guitar solo might struggle to be heard in this situation, but you can always add a touch of volume with a small amp - an AER say - if required, without changing the sound too much. In these situations my little AER alpha spends its time around '1' on the master volume.

Actual acoustic music sounds very 'small' and 'light' compared to amplified but it has many more shades of nuance and complexity. There is a magic to acoustic sound which is completely lost even in the most hi-fi of mics and PAs and it's shame people don't have more confidence in the audience to enjoy a purely acoustic performance in venues. There's a great intimacy there, and volume does not mean more energy....

Furthermore, a good sound engineer who understands acoustic music and jazz is worth their weight in gold.

Noisy punters

Playing quieter styles of music - folk, jazz etc - for a party crowd or a noisy audience obviously raises some real problems. There's no doubt in my mind that audience level is the biggest 'game-changer' when it comes to sound. You can sound check as much as you like, but when there's a crowd in the room, all bets are off.

One thing I've noticed is that many musicians are worried about projection and performance energy. A common way to try to inject more projection and energy into a performance is to simply turn up. Needless to say it doesn't work. If you need to do this, then the battle for the audience's attention is already lost.

It's a massive temptation and I think we all do it from time to time. Often, this is led by the drums. Drums are capable of a huge dynamic range and I think most drummers are trained to 'play the room' - that is, they will play to the level of the audience. Also, on most small gigs drummers are often the only instrument not amplified through the PA, so they often need to be louder so that they balance front of house.

However this also happens with drummer less groups as well. Often you get into an arms race, and for reasons given below, what happens is usually bad sound. The audience will always win....

When it comes to functions, I think unless you are booked as a party/dance band, most clients actually don't want the band to be heard - hence the classic request for the band to turn down. Best thing to do (I think) is play unamplified as much as possible. I work with several groups who play 1920s/30s type background music purely acoustically to often quite noisy punters, and it still works. You can actually hear what you play (depending on the room's acoustic) better than you think and punters always comment on how nice it was. What's going on here I think is that clients are interested in the overall sound and the effect it creates rather than being able to hear what you play. An acoustic group creates a certain ambience even if you can't really hear it, and if punters really want to hear it they can go closer to the band.

It's an ego-bruiser, but it's what the average function client really wants, I think, 9 times out of 10.

Leaving aside the specific problems of playing acoustic swing guitar in a group (let's not go there :-)) what kind of factors do we have to deal with when we do play with a fair bit of amplification?

Welcome to a world of mud

Amplification is an important part of the sound for louder bands and styles of music.

It's particularly hard to get right when using an acoustic guitar and amp. In fact, it's basically impossible to accurately amplify the sound of an acoustic guitar for all but the quietest gigs. Anything that increases the fidelity of the sound increases the instrument's susceptibility to feedback.

For this reason most people have got used to sparkly sound of a piezo pickup through a PA (or acoustic amp.) If you actually listen, it doesn't actually really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it is an attractive sound, acceptably close and easy for overworked, underpaid sound engineers to deal with. Some players, such as Lionel Loueke, have made this artificial not-really-acoustic sound into their own. From a personal point of view, a piezo under the bridge is uber practical, and as much as I'd like the sound of my acoustic, but louder, I'd take consistency and reliability over 'perfect tone' any day.

This realisation has resulted in a hilarious device called a Godin Multiac - a professional quality, electric-only guitar that imitates the sound of a piezo doing a not particularly good job of amplifying an acoustic guitar. It's very popular and widely used by guitarists. In a way, it's the guitar equivalent of those french fries that don't actually contain any potato.

Even when playing the most practical rig for a loud gig - electric guitar into a reasonable sized amp - some complicating factors come into play. One thing that I notice is that you get a lot of low range mud when you are louder. This is not actually because of the amp - but because of your hearing. Here's a graph, just what you've always wanted:

This is a plot of how loud a sound at a certain frequency (or pitch) needs to be to sound the same volume for the listener. So for a the low A on the guitar (110Hz) needs to be at around 40db to sound at the same volume as the A on the 1st string (440Hz) at 0 dB. For those who don't know the dB sale that's a HUGE difference. As we get louder the curve flattens out, so 100 dBs is about the same for everything (much louder than this and you will hit the threshold of pain, Slayer fans.)

For those not conversant with graphs or numbers, what it says is that when the sound is quiet, it's harder to hear bass, and as sound gets louder, the ears become more and more aware of it. So your amp could be totally flat in response, and you still hear a lot more low end coming in as you turn up. This will also tend to aggravate the bass player as well, BTW. So it's generally don't be inflexible about amp settings - what works for quiet recording or practise will be different to what works on a gig - room acoustics will also effect EQ. Most experienced guitarists I have met know this well. I believe some amp makes are factoring this into their designs, although this does not appear to be the case with, for example, a Fender Twin :-) It's also a good reason to do a Brian May and use a treble booster if you want to really crank it.

This graph raises all sorts of interesting issues regarding live sound generally.

A second issue is the way in which EQ'ing works within a band. While a sound with lots of bass and treble sounds great for solo guitar, in a band these frequencies are occupied by the bass and by the drummer's cymbals. It's often said by experienced players that what you need in most bands is more midrange.

Incidentally, one reason why macceferri and archtop guitars were developed in the 1920s and 30s was to increase midrange output in particular. As a result they can sound a bit much on their own, but in a band, they cut through much better than a flat-top acoustic. It also makes them a bit troublesome to amplify, unfortunately.

Obviously with smaller amps there are often issues with 'boxiness' and too much mid range. There's not a huge amount you can do about this, apart from get a bigger amp.... You can also use a bigger cab - the 6" speaker ZT lunchbox, for example, sounds absolutely gigantic through a 4 X 12 cab. (Though if you have to move a 4X12" to the gig, you might not want to use a ZT Lunchbox, it's true)

There's also issues regarding the direction of the speaker. Place an amp behind you and at your feet (standard practice for many guitarists playing with a combo) and you will hear the amp rather more quietly than it sounds from the front. You will also hear less treble - as high frequencies diffract (go around corners) less easily than low frequencies.

You could tilt the amp towards you (some amps are wedge shaped for this reason) or put it on a table or chair if it is small enough. However, this is an issue for acoustic instruments as it can raise the likelihood of feedback. Some acoustic amps, such as the AER Alpha, seem very directional, which helps feedback if not on stage sound....

Finally, distortion is a very interesting and difficult one. I find that the louder you are, the less is required. For me any sort of heavy distortion above a certain volume becomes almost impossible to hear with a band. I'm sure there are many who have spent years working out the perfect combination of pedals and amp to get a great live overdriven sound, but I have to say for my own uses, a bluesy, slightly driven sound is great for most situations I play in. Specialists playing heavy rock guitar and shred styles I'm sure would have a lot more to say in this area.

I have to say though, perhaps the best live sound I have ever heard in this context is actually Eric Clapton's. It's almost clean.