I know I'm kind of late in this thread, but it's been a while since I've visited the PG Music Forums, and I'm playing "catchup". (as opposed to mustard)

Lots of good thoughts here... Since I'll be playing my first solo BB gig this weekend, I can't say from experience how to cope with the problem of a too-loud audience, for a soloist with BB accompaniment. But with bands I've been in over the years, this didn't seem to be much of a problem, because most of the time we used floor wedges or in-ears to monitor. For my setup, I'm just going to be using two speakers on stands. My strategy at this point is to have the speakers slightly behind me and to the sides, so that my mains are also my monitors. In my live test setups, feedback has not been any problem, even at moderately loud levels. Even though I'm not in the optimal spot to hear the speakers (outside the full-frequency dispersion pattern), I can still hear plenty of P.A. sound and my own playing. Well, since I'm playing flute & clarinet, hearing myself play is not a problem, but I'm saying that hearing the BB accompaniment through the P.A. is not a problem, either. I'm using cardioid and supercardioid mics, and close-miking the instruments, so I don't think I'll have a feedback problem.

And, since I'm billing myself as background music, I'm not concerned about my audiences "not paying attention" - there is no "show" per se. I'm just providing a sonic background tapestry, and like we used to say in the Army Bands when we would play dinner music at the Officer's Club, I'm playing "music to be ignored by". If the audience were to get really loud, so loud that I can't hear the speakers enough to stay in time with the music, I might crank up the volume a little, but I'm not going to get into a volume war with them. I'll just unmute the Melody track in BB and let the Band play for a while. And mime playing a la Milli Vanilli so that people think I'm actually playing. :-)

--Doug

Last edited by protostar; 09/09/09 01:03 PM.
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