Okay, So after practice tonight the guys said that they can't hear their monitors because my drums are too loud. How many of you play with drum shields on stage?
Need some input here.
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Okay, So after practice tonight the guys said that they can't hear their monitors because my drums are too loud. How many of you play with drum shields on stage?
Need some input here.
tell them three choices
A get in ear monitors (look up nady PEM500 as an example)
B turn up your amps (its the knob that says master...sometimes goes to 11)
C [sorry, not in here... the language filters are there for a reason.]
Plexy really doesnt do too much. sound still must dissipate somewhere. it will focus the sound straight up, backwards, and in some cases, create a nasty echo. Its good if you are playing with a symphony and you need to keep the cymbals out of the violin mics...if your in a small room it will not help in any way.
Drop a pebble in a pond, thats the sound of your drums in an open room. now again with a small piece of wood blocking one side, thats the plexy. the ripples reflect back towards the center from that side and continue out the opposite side. now do the same thing but in a cooking pan. the ripples come back to center and get bigger. sound travels the same way.
Tell them they're too quiet.
monitors? im assuming this is foldback..
tune the speakers with equalizers my brother
hahah
use B
At my church they were using the plexi "shield", but honestly, I didn't think it did much of anything except look stupid. However, I wasn't playing, so maybe the little it might of done was good.
However, they stopped using it, so maybe that tells you something.
Yeah i'm not a fan, i have a very similar problem with my band, and we tried sheilding me but it didn't help just redirected the sound creating an echo, so now i'm in a different room right next to the room the rest of the guys are in
Dampen your drums down. Its practice, you dont need your drums to be earsplitting loud.
Your there to learn the songs. Heck at band practice I use hotrods and moongel.
fight fire with fire. they aren't putting out enough noise to level out the noise your drums are making. they just need to turn their amps up, or add a cabinet
Shields are very good if you don't want the sound of your drums to be picked up by other microphones on a stage and to keep the general volume down for the the other musos. It also gives a sound guy a lot more control over your volume.
But I've never met a drummer that likes to play behind one. The echo can be horrible and it can alter the sound of your drums quite dramatically. And as your audience and band are pretty much only going to be hearing you though the sound system, you have to have a good sound person mixing everything, or it can sound like you're playing underwater.
I don't think it would be your solution for rehearsing.
If your band is telling you that you're too loud... you're probably playing too loud.
You just need to play quieter.
BAND to DRUMMER: "Dude, you need to play with dynamics..."
DRUMMER'S RESPONSE: "DYNAMICS? I'm already playing as loud as I can!!!" :drumset-3:
:dancing:
the shields are good for situations where your drums are miked, and you wanna keep your drums out of other stage mikes. You will notice that most drummers you see on tv are behind screens.
but. . . using plexi screens for volume control is not very effective. It cuts out all your high end, and reflects it back into your ears, giving you a nasty headache. the isolation goes both ways, so you really have to have a good monitor in with you, and you have no sense of the true stage volume, so you might play louder to the level of the monitor and exascerbate the problem the screen was meant to solve.
when I was playing in a small church for worship, the screen helped, somewhat. when we moved to a larger sanctuary, the screen actually compounded the volume problem, because of the reasons I stated above. I removed the screen, and I can hear the true volume of the other musicians, and adjust my volume accordingly. I don't like screens!
i wouldn't worry much unless you play like this guy does.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rezv3VmmapY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rezv3VmmapY[/ame]
I use one in my garage only during rehearsals to keep drums out of vocal mics because I record every rehearsal on a two track digital field recorder and make copies for each band member to listen to at a later time.
When my band plays out, I never bring the shield.