The room plays such an important role in the music - if the room is too live it amplifies everything, and if it's too dead there's no ambience and everything sounds small. There are too many great sounding rooms to mention - and too many terrible ones.
Basically, if the room is big and live, try setting up further apart so you don't blast each other. if the room is big and dead (unusual but it happens), set up closer - otherwise those kind of rooms can make you feel isolated from the rest of the band. If it's a small live room with a small stage, there's only one solution - reach back to the amp and turn it down! Hopefully you're playing with a drummer who knows how to adjust his volume to the room - something we were seriously lacking in Tribal Tech. If the room is small and dead with a small stage, the only thing you can do is play with a bit more reverb than usual and even have a little bit of drums in the monitors with a bit of reverb.
The biggest mistake is to set up and not be willing to move if necessary. No one can guess what it's gonna sound like until you actually play - I don't have a problem moving further away from the drums if we're blasting each other. My favorite rooms are small, about the size of Ronnie Scott's. There's enough carpet around to not amplify the band, but there's still some ambience. The stage is big enough to have a choice of how far away from each other we want to set up - that's a perfect scenario for a great gig.
The sound man also has an important role - unfortunately if he sucks, you have a huge problem. Our longest sound checks are when we have a clueless sound man - it's easy to spot them when they add 10db of 100Hz to the bass drum. Their main job is mixing metal bands so you'll have to use your looper, have the guys play along, and go out to the board to give the poor bastard a music lesson... if he's a nice guy, he'll respect what you want. If he's not and decides to ignore your advice, it'll be a shitty gig so just live with it and move on.
I re-read some of my posts here, and I've given Kinsey and Covington a lot of criticism, and rightly so because they both should've been fired long before they were - but I haven't owned up to my own mistakes. Back then I was often very nervous on stage - the volume I had to play to hear myself made it even worse. I found it difficult to relax, and the louder I played, the more the flashy "look at me" part of my playing came out, instead of the musical part.
I've made it sound like it wasn't my fault the band was so fucking loud, but I'm equally to blame. Back then it never even occurred to me to simply move away from Kirk when I was getting killed by his snare - we usually had plenty of room, but for some reason we thought we needed to set up close together to react to each other, when the actual result was a snowball-effect volume nightmare. Kinsey's position on stage was directly in front of the drums, usually no more than a foot from the bass drum. I can't even imagine how loud he was playing to hear himself over that - we were literally trying to play jazz at stadium death metal volumes. I'll never understand why we didn't recognize proximity as the problem and just fix it. Young and stupid is such an understatement.
Anyway, I'm done. Now you know more about Tribal Tech than you probably wanted to. Too bad I can't get into the juicy personal shit, because that would be a real earful and you'd think we all need to rush to a psychiatrist immediately.
I re-read some of my posts here, and I've given Kinsey and Covington a lot of criticism, and rightly so because they both should've been fired long before they were - but I haven't owned up to my own mistakes. Back then I was often very nervous on stage - the volume I had to play to hear myself made it even worse. I found it difficult to relax, and the louder I played, the more the flashy "look at me" part of my playing came out, instead of the musical part.
I've made it sound like it wasn't my fault the band was so fucking loud, but I'm equally to blame. Back then it never even occurred to me to simply move away from Kirk when I was getting killed by his snare - we usually had plenty of room, but for some reason we thought we needed to set up close together to react to each other, when the actual result was a snowball-effect volume nightmare. Kinsey's position on stage was directly in front of the drums, usually no more than a foot from the bass drum. I can't even imagine how loud he was playing to hear himself over that - we were literally trying to play jazz at stadium death metal volumes. I'll never understand why we didn't recognize proximity as the problem and just fix it. Young and stupid is such an understatement.
Anyway, I'm done. Now you know more about Tribal Tech than you probably wanted to. Too bad I can't get into the juicy personal shit, because that would be a real earful and you'd think we all need to rush to a psychiatrist immediately.
Thanks for all the insight on the band. I have to reiterate that it was such an important band for so many of us and that it's probably hard for you to imagine how awesome it was on the outside.
I also don't think you guys sounded all that much like Weather Report and you are too hard on yourself that way. I wrote some reviews of Tribal back in the day and know most of the jazz reviewers. I can tell you most of them don't listen really to fusion and their only reference point is Weather Report so any modern jazz with fusiony sounds = Weather Report.
I can also tell you I was talking to Dave Liebman and Vic Juris at one point (and I know you like Dave's playing, especially his out playing) and you came up and Dave had nothing but the highest praise for you and he isn't usually a big fusion guy. So I think the people who should know better actually do know better.
By the way, I recall you saying at the time that you were fortunate to play with the greatest bassist in the world in Gary Willis. You have certainly played with some incredible musicians and Travis is great for the trio but I have to say that you and Gary together is something really special.
Do you imagine you will ever do anything again with him at some point?
He's such an incredible musician, but I don't think he's going to leave Spain, and I like Disneyland and Universal too much to leave LA... long distance records are tedious to make, and that's one of the reasons we decided not to continue with Tribal Tech. I can't say enough good things about Deron Johnson, and I know Willis would've loved working with him - he's the only keyboard player in LA who I'd want to work with. After the few conversations I had with him, I learned that he's hooked up in the LA film scoring scene and doing very well. Those guys don't like to leave town, and I can just imagine myself chasing him down and interrupting his well paying sessions with 20 dollar ones.... I didn't wanna be that guy, and that's another reason we called it quits on Tribal Tech.
Willis is definitely one of the all time greats, just like you.
I remember when I was getting into fusion and got your self titled album. "What's wrong with these guys?!?!" was the first though that came to my mind when hearing stuff like dense dance etc.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
Users Currently Chatting
