Your band should never use rehearsal studios that have no staff members on site. Here's why.

by Jimmy Mulvihill. Bally Studios Founder. December 2024.

If you’ve been a member of a band over the last decade or so, you’ll have likely come across the new trend of rehearsal studios that have no staff members on site during your rehearsal. You’ll turn up to see a digital keypad by the door of your studio that requires you to punch in a code to enter. Everything is done via an app. Instead of being greeted with a friendly, “alright mate, you’re in Studio 2 tonight, usual teas and coffees for you all?”, instead you’re given a ‘customer reference number’, and are expected to get your drinks from a vending machine down the hall that charges airport style prices. The only interaction that you have with the studio staff is via a smartphone.

We’ve changed our approach over the years based on the feedback that we’ve had from the bands that use us, but there are two policies that have never, and will never change. Firstly, we never charge extra for backline equipment, and never will. It’s unnecessarily complicated, and disproportionally affects musicians who use public transport, who are more likely to be on a tighter budget. Secondly, (and more pertinently to this blog post), we have always had, and always will have staff members on site during a band’s rehearsal sessions. Always.

With the increase in the UK living wage this year, we recently had our staff costs increase by 15% overnight, at a time when our other costs have also risen by more than 40% over the last 3 years. Paying our staff is by far and away the biggest cost that we have, and as a small business owner of a hand-to-mouth business, within an industry where profitable businesses are in the minority, such details are never far from my mind. If it were feasible to save literally hundreds of thousands of pounds in running costs over the next decade by replacing staff members with technology, without it having a big impact on our customers, believe me, I would have a real moral dilemma on my hands.

Thankfully the music rehearsal business is ill suited to replacing staff members with tech, and if you’re using a rehearsal studio where you can’t look those staff members in the eye when arriving at the studios, then you’re being short-changed. You should not be using those studios.

Our decision to have staff on site is not only an ethical one, but more importantly, a practical one. Unstaffed rehearsal studios don’t work for the bands that use them, to an extent that is not fully understood by many. In many cases bands don’t understand the downside of such studios as they have no reference for an alternative, so this blog post aims to provide this perspective. The technology that such rehearsal studios use offer no benefit at all to the customer, yet the lack of staff members on site can have a big impact on the most vital aspects of a band’s rehearsal.

Here’s why.

1) Even though unstaffed studios may appear to be cheaper at first glance, they often end up being less value for money overall.

We have heard time and time again from bands that have used unstaffed studios, who have later gone back to using traditional rehearsal studios with staff members present, that the potential savings that they expected to make never actually materialised. The whole point of having staff members on site is that they get the studio ready for you and fix problems that come up, which takes time and training. If there are no staff members there, then you’ll be spending time within your session doing it instead.

Let’s say that a rehearsal studio with staff members charges £14 per hour, so a 3 hour session works out to be £42 in total. You walk into the studios, and everything is set up for you exactly how you like it. The correct amps are in place, the drum-kit has all of the bits present, the room is clean, the bins have been emptied, the PA system is switched on and checked, the reverb is set up, the staff members have set everything up for you just as you like it. By contrast, an automated rehearsal session charges £12 an hour, so a 3 hour rehearsal session works out to be £36 in total for 3 hours, cheaper by over a fiver. In a cost of living crisis, £6 saved may be enough to tempt a band on a tight budget, so it’s understandable why many bands would choose this option.

However, upon entering the unstaffed studios you need to set up the mixing desk how you want it, as it’s currently set up to the needs of the previous band. They had their own reverb unit, so they plugged out the one that the studio provided, so now you need to work out what cables go where. It turns out that the previous drummer was left handed, so the right handed drummer in your band needs to change the configuration of the kit. You can't find the hi-hat clutch. You now need to throw the rubbish that the last band left into the bin, and then you find out that there are a few items that need some attention. There’s a cymbal stand that is unsteady, a bass drum pedal that has loose springs, a snare head that needs to be tuned, and so on. The studio only has 2 microphones, but you need 4 so now you need to go microphone-hunting. Where did the last band leave the cymbals? The felts are not present on the drum kit, so you need to look for them too.

Before you know it, 25 minutes has passed before you’re ready to start getting going, which is being generous. You’re now paying £36 to rehearse for 2 hours 35 minutes, which is £13.85 an hour. You’ve gone to the cheaper staff-less studio in order to save money, but setting everything up has cost you time, which makes the studios more expensive on an hourly basis. And remember, 25 minutes isn’t actually that much at all. If you’re choosing to rehearse at an unstaffed studio to save money, it’s worth working out whether you are actually saving anything at all when you factor everything in. Not only have you lost time, but you’ve also had to spend time doing the boring tasks that should be being done by the studio staff.

We've even heard stories of bands turning up for their 7pm - 11pm slot at an unstaffed rehearsal studio, only to find that the band that booked the 4pm - 7pm slot ahead of them is still playing at 7:15pm. That's the thing about cutting staff members: it's not like they're just standing around drinking cups of tea doing nothing all of the time. If that was the case then EVERY rehearsal studio would be unstaffed. Instead, it's their job to make sure that things are ready to go on time. They'll be resetting the studios to be ready for the next band, vacuuming the rooms, applying contact cleaner to guitar jack inputs on the amps, replacing microphones, making sure that the schedule is kept to, etc. If there's no staff member present, then these tasks either don’t get done, or the band has to do them, and there are numerous things that can prove tricky to fix that can really affect your session. When literally hundreds of bands are passing through a rehearsal studio complex each month, and when there's nobody there to reset the equipment after the session, to check that everything is working, and that the rooms are clean, don't be surprised if you spend the first 20-25 minutes of your session doing it instead.

2) Unstaffed studios factor customer disruption into their business model.

Here’s an experiment: if you have used an automated rehearsal studios, Google their name and add “broken equipment” after it, and up will pop their company policy for dealing with this. Here’s an actual example of how one company deals with this, taken directly from their website.

“Our Site Managers do their best to make sure any faulty or broken equipment is replaced, but sometimes faults are missed or things are broken by the person using the room before you……   Send a photo or video of the issue you’re experiencing to speed up the process of getting things fixed….. our team will talk you through how to fix the issue and they’ll move you into a new studio if there is no other solution.”

Firstly, let’s address the fact that the emphasis for ensuring that the studio is set up properly, and that faults are fixed, is being placed on the bands themselves.   If there are no staff on site then, by default,  it’s up to the bands that use the studio previously to report any issues, and for the following band to fix those issues, otherwise they don’t get fixed.

Here’s the thing: the previous band is there to prepare for their next gig/recording session, not to make sure that the studio is ready for the following band.  That’s not their job.  There is no other industry where the same rules apply. Diners are not asked to wipe the tables for the next diners,  and hotel guests are not asked to change the sheets and run the vacuum around as they leave, and for good reason. They have neither the knowledge, inclination, nor the motivation to do so.  Seriously, can we just acknowledge how ridiculous this is?!?

For rehearsal studios to delegate the responsibility to other bands of making sure that everything is working is unfair on both the band that sees an issue, and the band that will use the studios after them. Not only will many bands not realise that the equipment has an issue to begin with, they may also not be able to articulate what the issue is either.

Asking the band to send that information over to a staff member by photo/video is also impractical.   A photo can’t show how tight or loose a part is, you can only do that by feeling it with your hand.  It can’t convey how a knob on an amp feels sticky when you turn it.  It’s difficult to see how wobbly a stand is on a video, and it’s not possible to hear the subtle differences in the tone of the backline equipment by recording it on your phone, since your phone will likely not have a good enough microphone to pick up the nuances of the issue.  A phone video recording cannot pick up how loud the PA is, the subtleties of the reverb, or small pops and buzzes, yet these are the most common issues that PA systems have. A video can’t tell if you are pushing a microphone stand at the wrong angle.

If a band says that they don’t like the reverb, our staff members will scroll through 6-7 different types of reverb to see which one the band likes. “No, no, no, no, no…… oh,oh, I like that one!”  Then we tell the band what type of reverb it is, make a note of it, and the next time that the band has a rehearsal, it is set up for them in advance.  Easy to do when you have staff members there, but it’s not possible for a band to do the same if they don’t know how the reverb unit works. At Bally we keep a record of all of the settings that bands like, and have done since 2018, as explained in this blog. A screenshot of the actual spreadsheet tht we use is below It means less faffing around for the band, and it also means that we get to use the time betweeen sessions better, at a time when the band isn't waiting for us to get our tasks done. It's better for everyone, and it's what any business that cares about their customer would do. The longer you rehearse with us, the more we get to know you. By contrast, you could be rehearsing at a staffless studio for years, and run into the same issues session after session.

Having staff on site means less problems come up, and when they do, they're solved quicker. Time spent faffing around trying to record such issues on your phone, and then sending that video to the staff member is time not rehearsing.   Not only does it take time to get the angle and the lighting right, to then take a photo/video of the fault, to then send it to the person on the other end of the phone, and maybe even leave the rehearsal studio to send it to them if there’s no phone signal in the studio, (a common occurrence in soundproofed studios), you’ll then need to wait for that video to reach them, for them to download it, to view it, and then for them to asses the damage, to try to work out a solution from an imperfect video, and for them to then type out a response to you, and for you to then interpret the solution and try to fix the issue yourself.  It’s exhausting even explaining the process, let alone going through it!    

We were recently told by a band that they had waited 16 minutes to get a microphone stand swapped over for one that didn’t droop down while the rhythm guitarist was singing into it, with the person on the other end of the phone making multiple suggestions first, before accepting that the issue could only be resolved by a new stand.  16 minutes for a single stand to be replaced.  Complete madness.

The need for bands to also prove that an issue is bad enough before action is taken, and the microphone was swapped, is an unfair obstacle to put on them. A better solution would be to swap the microphone stand over straight away so that the staff member can check it over while the band continues their session.  It should be a case of:

Band member: “I think there’s something wrong with this microphone stand...”

Staff member: “Ah, sorry about that!  Here you go, here’s another one, let's have a look to see what the problem is. Thanks!”

Band member: “Cheers!”

Job done. Less than 10 seconds, and the session continues, as it should. Easy.  It doesn’t make sense to have such a bloated system to fixing small faults,  yet this is a necessary evil of such a set-up. Unstaffed studios have no choice other than to keep spare items out of the way, under literal lock and key, so that they don’t get stolen, and that’s a barrier that needs to be overcome when swapping equipment over.  

By contrast, as we have a staff member on site all times, we can leave piles of spare equipment in the corner of the office for a band member to quickly grab if they need it.  The staff member on site can keep an eye on it during their shift, which means it’s always within easy reach.    Not only does this greatly speed up the process of replacing items and solving issues, it also means that the band doesn’t have to consider whether it is worth going to the effort of resolving small issues at all. If there’s any doubt at all that the equipment isn’t working as it should, just swap it over and our staff can check things over.   After all, that’s our job. There’s no need for a band to even explain further, other than walking into the office, mic stand in hand, and saying,  “sorry mate, I’ll just swap this stand over for another one…..”  Trust us, we’ll be able to work out what the issue is while you’re on the way back to the studio with your new stand.

When you make it difficult for band members to report faults in the equipment, it leads to small faults/issues being ignored by bands who can’t be bothered to contact the studios for what is, at this point, a slight issue,  which in turn leads to small issues growing.  This means that issues only get addressed at a stage where their impact is severe enough to impact the rehearsal, which is the complete opposite of how a good studio should be run.     The easier it is to report an issue, the more chance it gets fixed quicker, and not only is it a lot easier to report such issues to a staff member in person than it is through an app, it’s also possible for a staff member to detect such issues without the band even reporting them in the first place.  

Usually a quick blast of compressed air, a drop of contact cleaner or swapping over a guitar valve is all that is needed to resolve the issue, but that needs staff members on site to do those tasks.   Even the best studios in the world will have issues with their equipment;  and there’s no shame in that. We had a PA speaker blow just a few weeks ago, but that doesn’t mean we are a bad studio.   The more important factor is how quickly studios can respond to small issues.  In that case it was literally a 5 minute job to swap the speaker over.   In the case of unstaffed studios, that emphasis is put on the band to discover, to report and to explain the issue well enough for it to be addressed.  

There’s also a world of difference between, on one hand, the band needing to make a “broken equipment report” via an online form,  where they are asked to be proactive and to take the time to report any issues, typing all of the details out on their phone, and on the other hand a studio staff member asking the band:

“how was everything in the studio, everything okay?”,

with the band member replying,

“yeah, it was all okay….. Actually, no, now you mention it, the hi-hat did seem a bit stiff, you should get that looked at…..., ”    

This happens to us a LOT.  80%+ of feedback of equipment faults comes as a result of us being proactive and actually asking bands about it.   You’re always going to get more information when you actually ask for it, rather than if you put the emphasis on the customer to tell you about any issues, so it stands to reason that faults get picked up more in rehearsal studios with staff members present, which in turn means that they get fixed quicker, meaning less repair costs which, inevitably, will get passed onto the customers.  If there is no-one at the studio to check on the equipment, of course it is going to develop more issues over time.  

If we had a penny for every time that a band said to us, "I started going to another unstaffed studio complex, and at the start everything was great, but over time nothing was really maintained and the amps all started breaking, so now it's not really worth going there.....", then we'd have about 20p.   A band is better off using really good equipment that has been well maintained, as opposed to amazing equipment that hasn't been, on the basis that all you need is one knob to be damaged on an amp and the whole thing can be unusable. Equipment will undoubtedly be used with less respect if there is nobody there to watch over the bands, and even if 95% of bands are very respectful with the equipment, (which in my opinion is actually an underestimation, I would say that the figure is about 97%-98%) all you need is one band who abuses the equipment for every other band’s sessions to be affected.

We've also had instances where it's clear from the sound coming through the studio's door that a band is using the equipment incorrectly, in which case we can pop our heads around the door and help the band to set up their equipment for a better rehearsal session .  A prime example of this will be guitarists/bassists who find it hard for each member to be heard within the room, which results in each band member turning up their amplifier.    A better option would be to change the position of the amplifiers within the studios, either to put them on a stand or to angle them so that they point towards the person using it, or to apply changes each amplifier's EQ so  that each member of the band is now able to occupy a certain part of the EQ spectrum, which will mean less frequencies are clashing with each other, allowing each band member to cut through the mix better.   The bassist can roll off a bit of the mids and the highs, and the guitarists can cut their low frequencies, which allow for each instrument to cut through the mix better.

Likewise, a clean vocal signal will need less amplifying than one that has been set up with a poor gain management, which will lead to it distorting,  yet all too often if a band can't hear the vocals properly it'll be due to the gain being too high and the faders being too low.  The band will then boost the volume in order to make it cut through the mix more, in doing so distorting the signal further. A much better approach would be to find the source of the distortion, and to clean up that signal so that it cuts through the mix a lot better, with clarity, but again this needs specialist knowledge to know how to do this, knowledge that our staff members have.

Any rehearsal studio that doesn't provide staff members is depriving their customers of these benefits.

3) The “solution” to equipment faults is often moving to a new studio, which is easier said than done.

Picking up on the quote again in the previous point:

“….. our team will talk you through how to fix the issue and they’ll move you into a new studio if there is no other solution.”  

Moving into a new studio is not a solution, it’s an acceptance as to the limitations that such a set-up has.  Packing up your guitars into their case, packing up the pedals, plugging out all of your cables, re-setting all of the controls up on the guitar amplifiers, taking the cymbals off of the kit, etc, it all takes time.   A band will usually only move into a new studio as a last resort, once they have both tried to solve the problem themselves, then reached the stage where they feel it’s justified to contact the customer service phone number, before then trying to solve the issue with them, before finally accepting that the issue is sufficient enough that they need to be moved to a new studio, at which point they need to pack everything up and move studio, before setting everything up again and getting the studio ready again.    That all takes time, which is the reason why live music venues have 20+ minutes between bands, yet this is what bands are being asked to do to get around the limitations that unstaffed studios have.  

If a band needs to move their rehearsal studio to overcome the limitations that are in place because the rehearsal studio wants to reduce their staff costs, then by definition, the rehearsal studio is putting their own needs ahead of the bands that use them.

4) Unstaffed rehearsal studios can negatively disrupt the whole point of why bands may be rehearsing in the first place.

There are two main reasons why any band would go to a rehearsal studio. Firstly, for fun, in which case they don't care how productive the sessions are, or how tightly the songs are performed, they go to the rehearsal studio to spend 4 hours in a room with people that they like, playing the music that they like, drinking a few beers, and joking around between songs. In these cases, the session is its own reward. In which case, having to clean up from the previous band and fix little problems that they caused does not help you have fun. That sounds like work.

Secondly, many bands treat rehearsals as a way to put in the hard graft that is needed to develop songs and become better as a band. The sacrifices made in those sessions, working hard and being focused, is rewarded later when the band is able to perform those songs better. Yet in this scenario, if a band is not able to get the absolute best out of the equipment, then these sessions will not be as productive as they otherwise should be. By all means, if you have somebody in your band who is a trained sound engineer that understands the best way to get the most out of the PA system, and who comes with a bag of spare parts that they can use to fix up the equipment in the room, then maybe the productivity of those sessions won't be affected. However, that doesn’t apply to many bands.

You can’t have a great session if the vocals don't cut through the mix, or if the guitar amp has issues that can't be addressed immediately. Such issues will affect how productive your rehearsals are.

I can still remember a session that happened 15 years ago. A band had been rehearsing elsewhere for about 3 months previously, ]and they came to our studio to do a final rehearsal before their debut gig just up the road, at the Walthamstow Standard, while it was still open. At the time I was running cables around the complex, so I was standing just outside the door to their studio, and I would hear the band playing an intro of a song, and then stop after about 30 seconds. This kept on repeating itself time and time again. 30 seconds of an intro, then the band would stop. Eventually the lead singer left the room in an agitated state, while the rest of their bandmates stood around, awkwardly looking at each other. As I was clearing up the plastic clips from the floor, the rest of the band left the studio and I heard the guitarist say, "maybe we can just add loads of reverb and reduce the volume of the vocals in the mix, that may work......".

After talking with the drummer in the band while he was waiting for the kettle to boil, it turned out that they had never really understood how to use the PA system in the other studio that they had been using, which also had about 100 watts behind it, with two 10-inch speakers to push the vocals though. As a result, the vocals were never loud enough for the band to hear them. When they came to us and had a 4,000 watt amplifier which I had set up for them, properly, with x4 15-inch speakers to throw those soundwaves into the room, suddenly the band could hear the vocals as clear as day....…... including how off key they were. It wasn’t that the singer couldn’t sing, it’s just that they had never heard their vocals properly and so hadn’t practised correcting their pitch enough. I was able to set up the reverb on the mixing desk to help mask this, so having a staff member on site meant that I was able to correct the issues that had arisen from the lack of staff members being on site in the other studio. Over the next 4-6 weeks the band would rehearse regularly with us, and over time the singers' pitching improved each week.

It sounds obvious, but a singer can’t practice singing unless they can actually hear themselves, and the PA system isn’t going to set itself up. If PA systems could do that, then we wouldn’t have sound engineers at gigs. A drummer can't put in a great performance if the equipment that they are using is moving or is unsteady, and a bass amp that crackles and hums doesn’t help either. There is no room for compromises - if you want to have a good rehearsal, then you have to have everything working properly, and that needs staff members to be on site. Without that happening, you may be rehearsing, but who knows how productive those sessions are?

5) A rehearsal session can be as strong as the weakest piece of equipment. Not only can problems be difficult to fix, sometimes they’re difficult to identify.

It's not just the time taken to make such changes that will impact bands, it's the knowledge to know that changes can and should be made at all.   At the risk of pointing out the obvious, a problem can only be fixed if it’s identified, and that is not always straightforward.

We have had split lock-out bookings in the past where some bands would rent a studio on a 24/7 basis for a year or more. A week before the end of their rental period, we would go into the studio and check that all of the equipment was in good condition, for when we would take the studio back and rent it out by-the-hour again. On some occasions we would find that one of those bands had changed the settings on the equipment, and none of the other bands had realised the effects that those changes had had.  Often the changes had compromised the equipment dramatically, without any of the bands realising.  

I can remember instances where a PA system had two 15 inch speakers on each of the left and right outputs, 4 speakers in total, but somehow during the 12-month period, (during which the band had asked for complete privacy, and for us to not disturb the sessions) a cable had come loose, and 2 of those speakers were no longer connected to the PA system.    We quickly spotted this and plugged them back in.  An hour later,  the band was coming to the office and say, "Did you do something with the PA? It's suddenly a lot louder!"    It had been operating on half-power for a few months previously.

A simple act of leaning against the PA system may dislodge a single cable which could cut the feed going to half of those speakers, and our staff members know exactly how that PA system should sound, so we know what changes to watch out for.   If you are unfamiliar with the room, you won't know if the quieter volume of the PA is what is to be expected, or if it's a sign of a wiring fault that can easily be fixed. In short, you may not know what problems to look out for, which means it’s difficult to fix them. This is just an example, but there are numerous other instances where the same happens.

We’ve had drummers telling us that when they rehearsed at other studios, their core stomach muscles (their six-pack) would ache at the end of the session as a result of their drum throne being unsteady, meaning they had to keep on correcting their seating position while they were playing. When the throne leaned left, they would lean right, and vice versa, so they were constantly changing their seating position. . We’ve had keyboard players comment that when they used our keyboard stands, and finally had the keyboard at exactly the correct level, they suddenly realised how the non adjustable stand in their other rehearsal studios had caused them to stoop over during their rehearsal session. We’ve had guitarists think that you have to trade clarity of signal for volume, or choose between one or the two. The lesser powered guitar amps that they were used to using would naturally distort when pushed to their limits, so they never experienced a guitar amp that was able to cut through against a loud drummers, whilst also retaining it’s clean sound.  In all cases, their sessions were compromised, but they didn’t realise that there was no need for them to be.

Whilst bands have the option of contacting a staff member if they need any help for technical faults, sometimes the bands don't know if the equipment has a technical fault at all, or whether that's just the way that it's supposed to sound.  It’s also not their job to know this – that’s what staff members are for.   A bass drum pedal may come slightly loose, causing the beater to hit the bass head at a slightly crooked angle. It will still sound somewhat punchy, so the band sees no issue,  but our staff members will know that when the pedal is aligned perfectly with the head, that you'll get that really great "thwack" sound that happens when the beater makes that solid connection with the bass drum, and we know to make that adjustment.    We know when the springs need to be tightened up on the bass pedal, and it’s our job to make sure that that happens.  

We know that if the band is particularly loud, then we can add extra 4x12 cabinets to boost the volume even further, and we know that different vocalists in the band can have different types of reverb on their vocals.  We know how to pan certain band members to certain speakers so that they hear themselves more during the session, and what to look out for when a tweeter diaphragm blows, (the tell-tale sign being the sudden lack of clarity that is present in the vocals.) We know the difference between a guitar cable and a speaker cable, and how to adjust the microphone stands so that they stay in position the whole session. When the drummer is having to nearly drive their fist through the snare drum in order to cut through the mix, we know to offer them a louder snare drum that they no longer need to hit it with the same force, thus allowing the drummer to play with a lighter touch, offering them more control, and allowing them to save their energy for the last hour of the session.    This knowledge and skill takes time to build up, and that’s what you get from staff members being on site. That’s also what you lose when there are none.    

Imagine you turned up to a gig and there was no sound engineer. You’d be worried about whether your band will sound at it’s best, wouldn't you?  The same applies to an unstaffed rehearsal studio.   Such tasks should be left to someone with the relevant knowledge to know how to get the most out of the equipment.  That’s even before we come to the safety aspect of asking bands to fiddle around with an appliance that has 4,000 watts of electricity running through it, without knowing exactly what you are doing.   On that basis alone, allowing bands to rehearse without a trained staff member on site is not only badly customer service, it can be a potential safety risk.

Unstaffed studios say that help is available by contacting them on their app, or via WhatsApp, but even then, since they are not physically at the studios, the best that they can do is to advise you how to solve the problem yourself.  But if the cause of the issue is due to the limitations that the band has in not knowing how to use the equipment, surely putting the emphasis on the band to resolve the problem is a flawed one?  

Have you ever tried to explain to your parents over the phone how to switch the HDMI input on the TV menu without actually being in front of the TV?  In person it’s a case of pressing two buttons, but over the phone it’s surprisingly difficult, and it takes MUCH longer than it would if you could just do it yourself.  Likewise, explaining to a band over the phone what the issue could be is not to be underestimated.

Having worked in and around rehearsal studios for 20+ years, it’s at least x10 harder to fix a problem when you are not there in person, even when there’s a qualified person on the other end of the phone, but let alone when there isn’t.   Not only do you need to second guess what the issue could be without seeing it yourself, you then need to articulate the solution to them in a way that the other person can understand.  The more stressed the band member gets, the harder it can be to explain the solution to them.  You not only need to know how to solve the issue,  you need to anticipate how another person can both understand and resolve the issue.  All the while the person on the other end of the phone is helping multiple bands out, and the band is seeing the clock on their 3 hour session run down. Time that they are paying for.  

If no sound is coming through the PA system, there are numerous things to check for.

- Is the desk switched on?

- Is the power amplifier switched on?  

- Are the master faders up?

- Are the channel faders up?

- Is there a dead spot on any of the faders?  

- Is the channel muted?

- Is the gain input high enough on the individual channels?

- Are the channels routed to the main or the sub output?

- Is the microphone switched on?  

- Is the XLR cable connecting the microphone to the mixing desk connected properly?  

- Is the microphone defective?  

- Is the cable defective?  

- Is the cable connecting the mixing desk and the power amplifier defective?  

- Are the cables connecting the power amplifier and the speakers connected properly?

- Is the volume on the power amplifier turned up?  

So long as you know what you are doing, and so long as you are in front of the equipment yourself, it takes about 1 minute to check all of these things, at most. Most of the time the problem is identified within 20 seconds.    By contrast, if you’re on the end of a phone and you can’t see the PA yourself, you’re now needing to read each of these 14 possibilities out to the band member, and putting the emphasis on them to resolve the issue.  That can be 15-20 minutes gone straight away, and now you’re starting your sessions 20 minutes late, and stressed!!   The band just wants to get on with their session, and now it’s their job to do maintenance on a PA system, and to undo the bad job that the previous band did in setting up the PA system for their sessions.   They didn’t sign up to any of this, they just want to have a band practice!

  

The second half of this blog post is coming soon.