Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

9 - Bring earplugs. ****ING BRING EARPLUGS. BRING GODDAMNED EARPLUGS. As a sufferer of tinnitus, I can tell you right now, that ringing in your ears after you are somewhere loud for 4 hours straight is NOT going away over time. You are just learning to tune it out. It is cumulative damage to your hearing and it WILL **** you over before you're 40 if you're not careful. BRING. ****ING. EARPLUGS. You'll be able to hear things more clearly anyway because the earplugs will serve to block out weird aural anomalies like standing waves and beaming. The whole band should be doing this, and I do not give a **** how "Uncool" you think you are for wearing them. You should be wearing them onstage too. There's nothing you can't hear with earplugs IN onstage, that you would be able to hear without them. Sure, between songs you'll be shouting, but that just makes you seem to have more stage presence, rather than being a member of the crowd you seem commanding and powerful.

10 - In line with the above - When you practice, face all amplifiers to the drummer, turn them down to minimum, have the drummer play, and then turn your amplifier up until the drummer says he can hear you over himself. Repeat this process for the other guitars, the bass, and the vocals. That way you'll practice at a level that isn't insane, you'll have more clean headroom, and the room you're in will contribute less distortion to your final sound. Everybody wins.

11 - Really, this is sort of a 10b, but think about this. If you hear a man and a woman say the same thing at the same time, its very easy to seperate out which voice is which. The reason is obvious, the woman's voice is much higher than the man's. If you have two men say the same thing together, you may well find it much more difficult to seperate the two, since they'll have more similar voices.

The same applies in sound mixing, both onstage and in practice. If you find you can't hear one instrument over the other in practice, try changing your TONE before you change your VOLUME. A guitar with the mids cut out, playing over a guitar with the mids boosted, will retain more of its own voice than two guitars with a flat EQ. A vocalist with a very low voice will probably have to ask the guitarists to turn that frequency down on their amplifiers. A bassist will have similar concerns.

Generally speaking, if you have a bassist at all, guitars don't need to have a very bassy tone. Its more important that they cut through, and have just enough bass to stop them being weedy and thin. Conversely, a bassist doesn't need a lot of treble to be defined within a band, as long as nothing is stomping on his low end.

Also, avoid guitar tones with too much treble in. You'll overpower the cymbals. The guitars voice is in the midrange. You want to be sculpting that range, you DO NOT want to be adding in too much bass and treble through excessive EQ. a little goes a long way.