The Ear…

28/12/2006 by david.

Most gigger’s will know the story.

You’re slap, bang in the middle of a song, perhaps just about to start a lead break, or doing some sweet backing vocals when a punter comes up, beer in hand, trying to get your attention.

“Can you play xxxxxxx ?”.

You can’t hear, because the PA is right beside the ear he’s shouting into and you’re just about to start the leadbreak!!! And here’s what happened next…

“What?” I shouted.
“Can you play xxxxxx, it’s blah blah end”
“Whaaat?” (PA right beside my ear)
“Can you play xxxxxx, it’s for my girlfriend”
“Don’t know it, sorry” (bum note)
“Well what about xxxxx, can you play that ?”
“No, sorry, but we’ll play another one by that band” (PA still blasting in both of our ears)
“What ?” he shouts.
“I said we’ll play another another one by that band, how about xxxx xxxx?”

The guy recoiled in horror. Not because he disapproved of the song I’d just suggested. But because I’d just bit his ear !!! I bit his EAR !!!! I had to get SO close to his ear and shout that I actually got his ear in MY mouth and bit the damn thing !!!!

Talk about embarrasing. I watched him go back to his girlfriend, just sauntered off, rubbing his lug and drinking his pint.

Thankfully there was no serious damage done. In fact we both had more damage done to our ears by the PA blasting into our ears as we tried to make sense of, and communicate, with each other. But it has started me thinking a lot (again) about the way we set up our gear. Generally, most of the gigs I do the PA is right beside my right ear, no more than a a couple of foot, and I use it as my monitoring. When I want to hear how we’re sounding I stick my head into it, and try to determine whether I’m in tune or not. How wrong is that?

I try to be polite when I’m playing, and not have the guitar too loud on the backline, in fact it’s barely audible (or is that because I’m now nearly deaf after over twenty years of gigging ?). But I intend from now on to find some sort of monitoring solution where I can hear what I’m actually playing and remove the need to have the the PA speaker slightly angled towards me, and dip my head into it every now and then to hear what’s going on. I have thought about it many times over the years, because I know, like you do, the dangers of having loud music projected at my ears for consistently long periods of time. But, to quote Alanis Morisette, “isn’t it ironic” that it took someone else’s ear to finally bring it home to me that it was time I actually did something about it.

Even more ironic (or perhaps moronic) is the fact that we have a perfectly good monitoring solution available to us. We have a couple of small wedges that we have plenty of room for in the van, yet we never bring them with us. They sit and gather dust in a shed, except for every now and then when we play a venue we have never played before and then we bring them out ‘just in case we can’t hear ourselves’. What, like the way we can’t hear ourselves every gig we do ?

There are many monitoring solutions out there and we have one of them. It’s a very good one, and we have it now, so from now on we’re going to use it. It’s a very simple affair of powered wedges fed from the main PA mixer head. But there are so many solutions out there now, from wedges to in-ear phones, that frankly, there is no excuse for not hearing what you’re doing, and at a reasonable, non ear damaging volume.

Don’t wait until you’ve bit someones ear, it’ll probably take years for the nightmares of embarrasment to go. Get yourself a monitoring system if you don’t already have one.

Posted in Gigging | Print | No Comments »