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Acoustics. You've probably heard the word dozens of times, but how many musicians truly know what it means? Most rehearsal studios and many small clubs (capacity 450 or less) are some of the worst acoustic spaces imaginable. Cubelike boxes like these have horrible acoustic anomalies. And most amplified musicians I know just "turn it up" to compensate — which unfortunately makes it worse.
So I'd like to start with a brief chat about acoustics, then offer some advice about how bands can work best with less-than-ideal acoustic situations. I'll focus on generalized assessments of spaces, and explain how you can attune your hearing to a space and figure out how to make it better for yourself and your audience.
Intro to acoustics
The most basic explanation of the science of acoustics deals with how sound waves physically behave in a room. Enclosures trap the energy of sound. Just as your speakers are enclosures, so are rehearsal studios, concert halls, and nightclubs. The main thing that distinguishes them from one another is shape, size, and the absorptive or reflective materials found within them.
There are three components to the way sound behaves in a room: direct sound, early reflections, and reverberant sound. Direct sound reaches the listener's ear first. Early reflections are sound waves that have interacted with a particular type of hard surface (walls and ceilings) and bounce back to the listener's hearing. Reverberation is a blending of multiple reflections that combine as they get smaller and their timing diminishes, making the sound waves indistinguishable from one another. Reverberant sound tells our brains the approximate size of a given space.
Add all these factors together, and you can see how the room in which we hear sound has a direct influence on what we actually hear.
We've all gone into large, cavernous spaces and clapped our hands once or twice to hear the sound as it travels around the space. We've all hooted or honked our car horns in tunnels to hear the effect of the sound in that space. (Or is this a uniquely American thing?) So we have some experience with acoustics, usually starting at a fairly young age. Now it's time to put these acoustics to work to make your music sound better in a given space.
Why the room sounds so bad
A square room is the worse shape for sound. The sound waves get trapped, ping-ponging back and forth between parallel walls, and there are additional problems associated with 90-degree angles.
Have you ever stood in a bare hallway and heard the "flutter echoes" that happen when you talk? You can hear the repetitions of the sound waves pinging to and fro between the enclosed space.
Now imagine that same phenomenon in a much larger square space. You don't hear those flutter echoes anymore, but you do hear a muddying of the sound, because several sound waves are bouncing off the surfaces and clashing into one another. This can cause resonant frequencies in the space.
What is a resonant frequency? Put simply, a room resonates just like an organ pipe in a big church. In the full spectrum of audible frequencies, resonant frequencies are usually in the low end to the lower midrange. High frequencies are shorter, disperse more quickly, and do not play a part in this room resonance. The term "muddying the sound" refers to the low-end room hum that your audience hears over your music unless it's kept under proper control.
The room: Your new bandmate
Think of the room as an extra unnecessary instrument in your band that takes up more space than all of you combined. Unfortunately, the room is the leader of the band and you can't kick her/him out, so you're stuck.
Many musicians who play acoustic music already understand the need to play better with that "third thumb" of a bandmate. Their instrumentation relies on using the acoustics of a space to their best advantage.
Here are some tips to make amplified music sound better in small clubs and similar spaces.
• Note the size of the room and the stage area where you'll play. Keep in mind that if the room is small, your overall volume should come down to better suit the space.
• Notice what the walls are made of, and whether there is any absorptive material on the walls, ceiling, or floor — like curtains, baffles, or carpet. Take special note of what is covering the back wall behind you. Has the club installed an absorptive curtain that cuts down on the reflections of your monitors and the backs of your amplifiers?
If all these surfaces are hard and reflective (glass, Sheetrock, brick, tile, etc.), then you really need to maintain a lower volume level to sound better, both onstage and to your audience. (Perhaps now you're beginning to understand why the people closest to the stage complain that they can't hear your vocals...)
• Move your amps away from the back wall. And if you can, put some type of baffling behind them to diffuse the horrible reflections that muddy up the sound.
• This may sound crazy, but a really good band investment is a set of stage curtains (at least 15 feet wide and about ten feet high, along with some stands to hold them up) that you can place behind your band. You can use them in your rehearsal studio, and better yet, take them to clubs that haven't properly attuned their live sound space to amplified music. This will make you sound SO much better! These drapes can be expensive — so look for a used set from theaters that are going out of business or being renovated.
• Here’s a good one to add to your next show flyer: “Hey everyone! We’re playing at Club XY on Saturday night. Bring a friend — we’ll sound better!” Yup, the room sounds exponentially better if more people show up to hear you. Why? A human body can be an excellent acoustic baffle — those bodies soak up the reflections of sound waves that are bouncing around. So the more bodies you have at the show, the better the room “plays” with your band.
• One theme you’ll see throughout most of my blog posts concerns loudness. If people are not turning out in the numbers you anticipated by the time you have to begin your set, don’t turn up. Do the opposite and turn down. Play a bit quieter so that the room plays better with you. The room plays worse when you turn up, so keep that in mind before you begin.
• One last reminder about using EQ, as this can help tremendously with room resonance (see my previous blog entitled PA for pubs: EQ and speaker tips). You can notch out some of the frequencies that are causing trouble for your monitor mix and the house mix. I usually find that cutting some of the mids around 400 Hz to 630 Hz helps clear up the muddy sound quite a bit.
In short, remember that with amplified sound, the louder you play, the louder your room will play. Don't get drowned out by your bandmate, the room!
Posted February 2007
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