Barbershop, Show Choir, and a Soundguy

The other night I had the privilege of running sound for the Christmas show of the Duke City Sound, a Barbershop Choir. They sing a capella and usually have a barbershop quartet or two sing with them. They also invite a high school show choir and the 505, which is 25 and under a capella men's chorus, to sing do a few songs. The show is always great but there are some lessons I would love to teach to all the groups involved. Here at DSC we don't exactly take a huge amount of time for sound checks but we always do them. The Duke City Sound always spend a good hour warming up and singing on stage which makes for a great sound check and a great show,but I always have to remind them to do a sound check for the quartets( I will go over how I mic up the choir and the quartets in a later post). The show choir and the 505 never do a sound check. The show choir usually has at least one song with a CD as a backing music track. The choir's timing is off because they can't hear the CD and I have to make adjustments so they can get back on during the performance. If I had a sound check they could have told me whether or not they could hear. The 505 never stays on the Choir risers and ends up out of the sweet spot of the microphones. Both scenarios bring the performance of the choirs down. I can't state it enough, always do a sound check.