> Peter,
\n> My band played to a loud room of people tonight.\u00a0 We had one hot mic for vocals and the crowd essentially drowned out instrumentation at times.\u00a0 I tried to play into the mic when possible but it didn’t really pick up the mando.\u00a0 Seems you have to almost chew on that mic for vocals to be heard.\u00a0 This was frustrating as some of our playing was inaudible to the crowd.\u00a0 Question:\u00a0 Are specific mics used for the step up style of amplification?\u00a0 Good thing we were not being paid.
\n>
\n> Greg<\/p>\n

This is a problem a lot of bands face, so I thought I’d offer my thoughts here.<\/p>\n

You’re describing a basic problem in this type of music.\u00a0 Modern microphones used in PA work are designed for pop and rock music, where the instruments have electric pickups and are connected to stacks of amplifiers behind the musicians.\u00a0 This means that the mics have very “tight” pickup patterns, whose sensitivity drops off drastically with distance.\u00a0 If this were not so, the mics would cause distortion and feedback from the instrument amps and drums behind them.<\/p>\n

Practically, what this means is that the vocalist or instrumentalist must be within an inch of the PA mic for it to work efficiently.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, if you have a 3-piece group, each with an instrument, you would ideally need six mics for sound reinforcement.\u00a0 This can get expensive, complicated, and constraining for the performers involved.\u00a0 Some musicians use “acoustic” instruments with built-in mics\/pickups, but I have never heard such an instrument that really sounds good\/natural\u00a0 to my ears.\u00a0 Using a built-in mic means loss of dynamics in the sound: one cannot vary the volume using distance from the mic.\u00a0 Use of pickups means one looses the natural overtones of the wood and replaces natural sound with electromechanical distortion.<\/p>\n

There are some specialty mics that have broader pickup patterns, but they can be expensive (eg. Audio-Technica AT4033<\/em>).<\/p>\n

$\"AT4033$ <\/a>
AT4033 microphone<\/p><\/div>\n
Part of stagecraft involves learning to use mic and speaker placement (eg. speakers should not be behind or pointed into the mics)\u00a0 to get the best possible sound.\u00a0 Don’t be afraid to experiment.\u00a0 Learning to “work” a microphone is just as an important skill as is playing or singing.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, early old-time musicians didn’t use microphones — they didn’t exist.\u00a0 Bluegrass is really the first musical style that was actually built around a microphone<\/em>, with the sound blended by distance of each performer from the mic.\u00a0 Watching a band that knows how to do this is a real pleasure, a form of “musical ballet” if you will.\u00a0 The role of the microphone is not well-known, even today.\u00a0 A bluegrass band playing without any mic simply cannot achieve the tonal balance intended for this music.\u00a0 That’s what makes this music different from any other.<\/p>\n
Of course, the best solution is to find gigs where your audience is quiet and listening to your show!<\/p>\n
Best of luck,<\/p>\n
-Peter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently received the following e-mail: > Peter, > My band played to a loud room of people tonight.\u00a0 We had one hot mic for vocals and the crowd essentially drowned out instrumentation at times.\u00a0 I tried to play into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,123,27,125,124],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-bluegrass","tag-microphone","tag-old-time-music","tag-pa-system","tag-sound-reinforcement"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/poY5E-6y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}