"Shawn" wrote in message
om...
This is really a no-brainer to me, but then I'm coming from the
professional musician's viewpoint not the professional (or
un-professional as the case may be) club owner perspective.
Will this kind of approach/limitation/demand limit the clubs we can
play in?
Is this that common?

We play a lot of bars and events that are already open at load in time
and either allow no sound check or only a very minimal sound check. As a
result, we've gotten very good at guessing, since we know our gear and our
band, so we have a pretty good idea of where things should start. Then we
use the first few songs to tweak. If we're worried about it, we'll push a
few 3 piece songs to the front of the set list so that there is less to
worry about at first, and more parts are added in after a good baseline is
set with the guitar bass and drums. I can't give you anything as useful as
George's reply, and I wouldn't be able to do it nearly as well if I were
mixing different bands every night. We *always* do a signal check on every
channel before start time, to make sure that everything is at least present
in the mix, and then play it by ear once the set starts.

I much prefer a sound check, but unfortunately it's not on many venue
owner's priority lists.

ryanm