Are You Exhausted With Screeching Feedback, Bad Cables and Figuring Out Why Your Live Sound Sucks?

However, the sound system can feel like a terrifying technical challenge when you’re trying to figure out how everything works.

The amount of channels on the mixing board looks overwhelming, you’re not sure which cables to use where or how microphone selection and placement differs from studio recording.

And those are just the problems you face before you even turn the system on!

As soon as you power up the speakers you recoil in pain from the feedback screeching through the venue.

Feedback is the nemesis of the live sound engineer, but it’s simply what happens when you don’t set the gain of your system properly. Unbeknownst to you, somewhere you have a microphone feeding back through a monitor, making the band wince from pain at the back of the stage.

At the same time, there’s something exciting about the liveness of it all. It keeps you on your toes and gets your blood pumping. You think to yourself, “what’s gonna go wrong this time? Blown speaker? Drunk lead guitar player? Awful feedback?”

There’s no room to relax like you would in the studio. You only have seconds to dial things in, but it’s the rush of getting things right quickly that makes it so exciting. This is the rush that got to you in the first place and now you might like live sound more than playing music yourself.

However, this quick-thinking mindset is also why it’s so important to make the right mix decisions immediately.

Although you may know about EQ and understand what mixing means, you don’t feel confident you’re applying them correctly to live sound. You might know whether things sound good or bad, but you have no idea how to start fixing the bad or making the good sound better.

I understand this situation all too well because it’s literally how I got started in audio.

Here’s the story:

My heart cracked just a little every time the band got annoyed at me or yelled at me when they couldn't hear themselves on stage. I wasn't cut out for this. I obviously wasn't good enough to help these bands out.

Who was I fooling?

And every show had multiple bands with different requirements. It was so stressful to keep track of all the instruments everyone was playing. They changed from band to band.

And the bands were always late. Sometimes so late that we didn't even get to sound-check properly. That usually meant that the first band pretty much sucked while I was scrambling to get a good sound going. I can still remember the faces of disgust in the audience, all looking at me and whispering about how I obviously had no clue what I was doing.

But guess what?

It got better.

I actually learned how to run sound. And I did it really, really well.

In under a year, the Old Library became a hot place to play. I learned the best ways to make the band happy. I bought extra monitors and made sure the stage sound was as good as possible. And with a happy band came a kick-ass sound. The mixer didn't scare me anymore. I had mastered every single rule of signal flow and wielded my audio with ease.

I learned how to position the stage and the P.A. to make the band sound better. The audience wasn't looking at me in disgust anymore. They looked with admiration, and countless people came up to me just to compliment the quality of the sound.

Sure, the bands kept coming late but I knew how to handle them. I knew my mixer inside and out. I knew the best way to place every amplifier, microphone and monitor.

The sound of the Old Library became an extension of myself. Even if we didn't have time to sound-check it didn't matter. I could get a good drum sound in my sleep.

I want you to experience this same feeling of transformation.

I want you to become a kick-ass, in-demand live sound engineer that all the bands want to know, even if you've NEVER run live sound before in your life. That's why I’ve teamed up with James Wasem from the Great Sound Institute and GreatLiveSound.com to bring you something I'm very excited about.