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Okay, you've learned to play bass and you play now for a band concert. This series of articles will help you overcome some problems faced by all bass players when they play live. 9 Tips Gig awaiting professional during sound checks.

If you play for a group to a concert and another person (and not the group) is the sound – if the location or production company – here are some dos and don'ts for the soundcheck.

Once you've set up your amp and your bass – and you're happy with your sound stage – put your bass to his position and wait for the engineer of his request for some bass. Do not stay on the stage playing a medley of your greatest licks. I call this "syndrome Store music. You see every Saturday morning in the music stores up and down the land. There is no place for it to sound checks. Save your mix stones when your friends come for a beer … or a coke … or coffee (delete does not apply to you).

If you use pedals or effects, it is your responsibility to ensure that the different sounds that you use have similar volume levels. Do not expect to give the engineer the sound of a copy of your play list and say something like: "Uh man, I use a distortion in hysteria and my pedal is really hard so you might need to bring my level down to that.

Spend some time at home with your rig and get volume levels with your effects pedals to be approximately the same as the volume level without pedals, effects of your file.

When sound engineer calls you to give it a little low for him to get a line level and begin to apply EQ to your channel, do not pull not your potpourri of cool licks again. Instead of choosing a line from one of the tunes that you play and just play. If you have a song where the line Low covers much ground on the neck pick that one. In this way, the engineer will be able to hear the bass and the highs and should be able EQ and configure your channel.

Remember: you'll have more to impress the engineer giving a feed it can do its job by playing with something flashy. His job is to make the right group. It is in your interest he does a good job, and you can make it easier for him.

The other area you need to sort Out followed. A few concerts this will be the same engineer, really big gigs, you may find you have the luxary of having a monitor engineer. Once all the main channels have been ordered by the Engineer to ask the band to play together so it can adjust the front of house mix. Once that is done satisfaction monitor mixes will be sorted.

Now, it is common to check sound levels and levels of collaboration to be effective very different because of the adrenaline rush you get from being in front of an audience. So when you configure the monitors do not be too picky – Make sure you can hear the drums, keyboards and singing in that order.

A sound engineer can make some noise – or it can destroy your sound. People in the audience will not know why the group does not sound good, they'll just know it was not good. It's sad to say that I was on the receiving end several times to sabotage engineer – and it's not much fun (and the cost of my band work and money too).

To contribute to the sound engineer, as far as you can.

If you want more bass related info, head over to my how to play bass website where you’ll find video lessons, articles, reviews and much more. There’s also a weekly ezine you can sign up for – in return for signing up you’ll get a PDF file with 5 cool bass lines in – and each week’s ezine features a bass line in music notation and bass tab. http://www.how-to-play-bass.com

This article originally appeared in my free weekly ezine.

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