Seems you didn't understand the point I was making. The things you are trying to claim are "unique" about jazz - "originality", "not sounding like other musicians" - are not unique at all to jazz. They are inherent in all genres of music, including the popular music that you say you are "glad you don't play".
JBLs are good. Particularly the old-school, passive stage monitors and mains, which have outstanding sound.
Covers are a big part of jazz. In fact, most of jazz is playing covers with space for individual improvisation and arrangement. You yourself just mentioned a mashup of So What and Autumn Leaves. In my band we do a mashup of I Will Survive and Flowers. I don't see any difference between what you are doing and what we're doing.
I’m a former Hammond/Leslie lifter, now reduced to a more elderly-friendly set-up.
We just did a show at a new venue this past Friday. The club said that we could use their sound system and that we just needed a mixer, monitors and cords/mics. The sound system was two JBL PRX One line arrays (bass module and stick setup). 5 piece band sounded fine. Here is video, you can see 1 of them on the right at about 1:12 in the video. Not sure if the permissions to see the video are ok or not ....
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Is that how line arrays are marketed? I never heard that. It doesn't make much sense. You want your on-stage volume and mix to be separate and independent from the what the audience hears.
It's how Bose markets it (or at least, how they have in the past). They actually want each player to have his or her own. ;-)
If you have a soundperson out at FOH, then yes, that's typically what you want, that's the pro approach. One person is out front creating the right mix for the house from the mains, while the band members get their own monitor feeds that emphasize what they want to hear.
Oh geez, so they want you to have, like, 7 line arrays up on stage?
Well, I mix it from stage in my band, and the two are definitely different. My drummer doesn't want any guitar in her monitor, she wants mostly singers and some keys. The guitarist doesn't want any keys at all and the lead singer's monitor is near him, so I have to reduce keys in there. For my monitor I want only myself (keys) and the singers,, I don't want any guitar. This on stage mix is totally different than the mix I'm sending to the audience. The mix I send to the audience is a balanced mix.
I'm glad you got that method to work for you, but it didn't work for us. We used to do it that way, where for example the various vocalists on stage had the mixes they want, but with no one out front managing the main mix, if we listened back to a FOH recording of the gig after the fact, we'd find that balance among the vocals could be unpredictable, probably more so as the night progressed. That particular problem may not come up as much if there's always one lead vocalist and the others are always harmonies, but if the same singers could be singing lead or backup depending on the song, it gets more complicated.
Thanks for this. OP here. I think you are the only one to understand my position. You are correct that I don't put my keys through the band PA. Only vocals and sometimes drums. It might sound amateur but then we'd need a sound man and I probably wouldn't trust him anywayIt's an interesting trade-off, which, coincidentally, is something I've been dealing with lately as well. If you are playing mono (as many of us do), and the audience is hearing you only from your own gear (as is also often the case), the single powered PA cabinet can go plenty loud (at least if you're using a mixer ;-) ) but it will have a relatively narrow dispersion (often 90 degrees), meaning that people farther off-axis--which notably also often means other band members on stage with you--may not be able to hear you. My Bose L1 Pro 8 has very wide dispersion (180 degrees), but they don't project as far as my EV ZXa1... so the Bose would provide much wider coverage close to the stage, but the sound would fall off more quickly as you go further back from the stage. (The Pro 16 and Pro 32 go louder, but then you're looking at pricier and heavier stuff.)
If you want both wide nearfield coverage and deep projection of course you could use a pair of typical powered PA cabs, but much of the reason many of us play mono in the first place is that we don't want to deal with the extra gear shlep and the space it takes up and the setup/breakdown time it requires (for additional speaker, tripod, signal cable, power cable). So... I don't know. If the goal here is a single mono speaker, I wouldn't necessarily rule out the Bose approach. I think whether, for example, a single Bose L1 Pro8 is better or worse than a single QSC or EV really depends on the circumstance.
(I will say that the Bose is louder than the EV if I go direct into the EV's line input, but the EV will go louder once I add a mixer.)
Ah. You were thinking that his keyboard is going into band's PA as well, I was thinking it was not. When he said he couldn't get enough volume out of the QSC, my thought was that he could not get enough volume for the room (as opposed to not being able to get enough volume even to use it as a personal monitor).
That is really the crux of the OP, he was feeding his board directly into the QSC, it wasn't loud enough, and he was asking about adding a mixer or preamp to boost his signal. That's why I was surprised when you seemed to be telling him not to do that, since as you've said here, usually powered PA speakers are indeed fed by a mixer.
...which then goes out to the mains, with your keyboards coming back to you via a monitor feed, right? That kind of approach is ideal, but can be tricky if you don't have a sound person. At any rate, "simple" is relative... that's not as simple as what the OP is doing... feeding his keyboard into an amp, done. ;-) But he probably does want to add a small mixer.
I can see that for solo work (or solo passages), but when you have an ensemble piece? I would be surprised if they told the string players (or their piano accompanist), "okay, here's the general structure, and within that, you can play whatever you want." I could see that for modern avant garde, though.
. I have my KC400 right next to me. That way I have a good idea of my level. We've been together for 28 years and are constantly in high demand. We know what we're doing. Thanks for this. OP here. I think you are the only one to understand my position. You are correct that I don't put my keys through the band PA. Only vocals and sometimes drums. It might sound amateur but then we'd need a sound man and I probably wouldn't trust him anyway
So my question remains. I just need a recommendation for the best thing to put between my keys and hopefully my new powered speaker to boost the volume. Trust me, we're not a loud band. It's simply, will a little mixer work? Or a pre-amp? Thank for taking the time to read and reply.
You would need a mixer with a channel gain knob.
Yes. Any active mixer should work (i.e. one that need electricity, as opposed to a passive mixer).
Thanks for mentioning this. The first I'm hearing of this amp. Not that I need it, I use our Yahama DZR-12s and EV PXM-12MP, but it's good to know there's a powerful, quality amp that works with keyboards.
