How to send the sound to the audience

In this article I'm going to explain how to amplify the sound depending on the resources available. My last articles are about organizing students' concerts at schools, teaching places, music studios (like mine), etc...  but this may also be interesting for rock bands who are starting. The best thing would be if there are some good speakers where the concert is going to take place (a theater, auditorium,...) but this is not always like that.

How is in a rock concert

Rock bands use at least two loudspeakers one on each side of the stage and in great concerts in front of a huge number of people, three or four on each side, one on top of the other. But just one sounds a lot! It's a top quality material and therefore expensive. It just an example to explain something latter.

These speakers reproduce the final sound of a rock band. That means each musician connects the instrument to the amp, also one or several mics placed on the stage for the singer(s) and some for the drums. All that goes to the mixing desk and the sound comes out through these loud speakers.

The mixing desk is much bigger than the one I showed in the 3rd part of my article "How to organize a students' concert" that is useful for a small concerts at school, since is not necessary to amplify the drums, otherwise it would be too much sound! 

What to do at school

Rock bands' loudspeakers are so big and powerful that sound too loud, it's too much! not appropriate for school where the audience is much smaller. But there are smaller speakers not so powerful that work exactly the same. They may be portable or install them at the school's auditorium with a mixing desk,...

But if they are too powerful then you'll need to buy monitors like the one below to place them in front of each musician. Otherwise they won't hear themselves since there are too many watts outside the stage.

So my tip is to reduce the proportions of all this I'm explaining to use it in education, with smaller speakers and easier material but organizing it in the same way.

On this other photo you can see another example of a rock concert. They use two array systems on each side of the stage with many loudspeakers. All this is very powerful to perform in front of a great audience. They are hanging from the holders on top of the scenery and use to have a curvature to "throw" the sound down to the audience since the sound tends to go down. You can see the monitors at the lower side of the stage in front of the musicians placed towards them. If they won't use the stage monitors, they couldn't hear themselves clearly.

They also use another mixing desk to regulate the intensity of the scenery lights. As in this photo in the stages there usually are two holders: one in front with the array sound systems and some lights and another on the back of the scenery (and band) with more lamps that combine with the ones in front, to make the concert more interesting. A school may also purchase a mixing desk for lights and will be useful not only for music concerts but also for theater plays and many more events 

No mixing desk or speakers

But if you don't have a mixing desk and speakers, you have to turn up or down the volume with a pedal or manually depending if you are playing a solo or just accompany. More than one discussion was caused by each one's volume in bands :) That demonstrate band's unity and... friendship?

Limited resources

The amp on the right below corner "Peavey" is 300 watts, the ones next and on it are 100 each, and the other one is smaller 65 watts. Well in a especial case, big amps may be used as speakers although is not usual to do so. But sometimes I've been asked something like that and it's possible. If you are a teacher and you need to do it in a school concert, put it at half volume or less and then take all instruments out of the mixing desk to the amp. That way you'll give a bit more sound which is appreciate it by the audience. But if you put it too loud then the sound would be distorted, not of a good quality. It's just to give a small volume increase.