I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to gear (to me, it's just a means to an end), so to get really good advice, you should talk to the people at Music Mart, if you're near State College, PA... or give them a call at Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center. However, you need to have an idea of the number of people you should expect to have to sing over.

A room on a typical Monday night would not require the same PA system as on a crowded Sat night. A couple years ago, I had been playing J's Tavern (Small room with seating for 60, plus a small entry way for standing room for another 25) using 2 - 300-watt speakers (both with a 12 inch driver and a horn) powered by a 1000 watt amp and a Mackie 1202 mixer (8 channels). I bought all this stuff new in 1997 for about $3000. On a Monday night there I could probably sing without a PA (no people).

So figure you're going to play a place the size of J's (not including the pool room which I didn't mention) to about 60 people. Look for a pair of 150 watt speakers, each with a 12 inch driver and a horn. A mixer/amp arrangement that pushes 300-400 watts. Most mixers come with more than 4 channels. The best stuff is made by Mackie, Electro Voice (EV), and JBL. As in most things you get what you pay for. If you want great sound and buy new equipment, expect to pay $1500-$2000 for the whole rig. If you just want to be heard, you can probably get away with spending $700. or less. I don't know much about the quality of the "budget" brands (Krate) so I don't know if one is better than another. Your best bet is to look for a used system made by one of the better companies (there's always someone asking $500 for something they paid 2K for. Check your local papers (especially the bargain sheet). If you live near a college town, check out the papers there. There are a hundred bands and State College, and every day six of them break up.

Here's what I know about audiences and sound systems:

1. Most people don't know a Mackie sound system from a cardboard box. They don't know if the sound is great or barely acceptable
2. After a few drinks (about the third set) your grandfather would sound wonderful.
3. People like to be able to talk while you're playing so don't over do it (this seems to be odd advice coming from a guy who blows the roof off at J's, but J's is a special circumstance. Most of the places I play I try to keep the volume low enough that people can talk).
4. Don't overdrive your PA system to the point that it blares (all the music gets mushy and indistinct). People will notice that.

I'm not a big fan of acoustic guitar amplifiers. I've never heard one yet that does the guitar justice. If you're only going to run an acoustic-electric buy a small PA system. It won't cost you much more than the acoustic amplifier (as I recall, they're pretty dicey themselves). You also would not want to run vocals through a guitar amp. And never run an acoustic guitar through an electric guitar amp. When you do this, all roads lead to bad sound.

You need at least 3 things for a PA system:

• A mixer (that's what you plug the guitars and mics into and control each channel's volume and tone controls).
• An amplifier (to amplify the signal that comes out of the mixer on its way to the speakers.
• And (as I just mentioned) speakers.

You can buy the amp and mixer separately or as one unit. You normally buy speakers as a stand-alone purchase as opposed to part of a system (although some places package everything together. To play small bars, you should have at least 100 watts a speaker. That means that each speaker must support 100 watts and the amplifier (be it built in with the mixer or stand-alone) must support the ability to push 100 watts to EACH speaker.

All this wattage depends on what you're planning to push through the system. If you're going to sit on a stool and sing James Taylor songs and just want to be heard above the din you aren't going to need as much power as if you intend to rock the house and keep everybody's attention.

Where you buy is another item. You can buy prepackaged sound systems with everything you need right out of the box anywhere from $200 to a couple thousand. A good place to look around might be Musiciansfriend.com, if you're looking for ideas. If you live in the Central PA area, you can get really knowledgeable help and all the gear you need at Music Mart in State College. I've done a lot of business with them over the years. They're very good at servicing things if they break or just lending you something to get you through the weekend.

If you aren't in a hurry, try to find used equipment. Used equipment is almost always still very serviceable and 1/4 the cost of new stuff. The people at Music Mart usually know who's selling and may even carry a few used pieces. Ebay is another place to find great deals.

In the beginning, it can be difficult to find the right audience for the music you play. The trick is to find one or two places where everybody there really likes what you do, and then other gigs just seem to spring board from there. I'm surprised at how few people in the bars I play really want to hear a lot of country music. I've never had a request for Travis Trit. Having said that, though, there are some newer country songs that everyone seems to know (It's Five O'clock Somewhere, I Love This Bar), and there are others that seem to get people involved even if they've never head them before... but you have to be careful to pick just the right country songs for this if you're not playing in a country-type establishment.

I've also found that, for me, learning songs that the under 30 crowd listens to on the radio is counter productive, because even when I do those kind of songs I get no audience response. There are a lot of guys out there making a living playing Top 40 music (many of them are DJs and not singers), but it doesn't seem to work for me. Here's my thought on the two kinds of music you can play. By the way, this is the "for what it's worth department". Just because I see it this way, doesn't make it so.

There are two kinds of songs to play in bars:
1. Production numbers: You sing and the audience listens. Everybody goes "Wow, that was a great song"... or they just ignore you and continue to converse.
2. Bar songs: You sing and people sing along... or at least they know the song and can hum, clap, or dance to it. Either way, they get involved

If you're a bar singer, you still have to have some production numbers because there just aren't enough bar songs to carry an entire evening, and people lose interest too quickly, and it's the bar songs that people remember you for. Most of the music that kids are listening to on the radio (whether it's today or ten years ago) pretty much fall into the production number category. Why? Because most top 40 or alternative music isn't designed to get people involved. I was totally amazed when I started doing this stuff that the college students in State College wanted to hear songs from the Beatles, Jimmy Buffett, and Tom Petty. They almost never requested the stuff that was current. I still throw a few current songs in once in a while just for my own enjoyment, but the response is almost always flat.

Some venus are designed for production numbers. Lounges and dance-type places are two that come to mind. The Schnap Shop at the 4 D's Lounge in Altoona is one such place, where Dave and Paula have been getting people on the dance floor for years. Much of their show showcases Paula's amazing vocal talent and Dave's ability to sequence midi numbers for them to perform to. They always have a current list of adult contemporary songs, and perform them as well or better than the original artists. But they never play anywhere else. Their equipment is a permanant fixture in the room there and they've had something like 15 years to generate a following. The venue and the act are perfectly matched. I would be total flop if I were to play more than two songs for their audience and their excellent performances would be totally lost on some of the colorful places I play where the most frequently heard phrase is "Play some Skynyrd, Man".

Anyway, this has been my experience and I'm only one guy with a limited view. I'm sure there are other singers out there who do really well with other kinds of material. Just keep one thing in mind, however. No matter who you are or where you're playing, if your name isn't Josh Groban, your job is to be an entertainer, not a singer. If people are entertained, no matter how you do it, they will remember you. Of this I'm positive.

Sound quality
One way to go is to buy a keyboard with all the midi instruments and editing capability built right into the machine. If you go this way, you won't have to buy any other piece of midi-related equipment. All you'll need is the keyboard and a PA. There are a lot of good keyboards out there that have excellent quality sounds. As with most things, the more money you spend the better the quality. And the more variety. For live shows, you don't need 30 drum kits and 100 dance loop, but you should have several excellent piano and organ sounds, realistic brass, and bass. It's hard to get great electric guitar sounds with midi regardless of the equipment you buy, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. Just remember, that you can't have "live" sounding midi performances if you don't have "live sounding" midi instruments to start with.

Your PA system also contributes a lot to the sound. I started out using a pair of small EV SX300 speakers, which were wonderful when it was just me and my guitar, but as soon as I added danceable midi music, the low end just didn't cut it. I had to add a pair of subwoofers to get the chest-thumping sound people like to dance to. That made a big difference. Today, I'm using a pair of Mackie SWA-1501 subwoofers and a pair of Mackie SRM-450 loudspeakers. I run everything through a Mackie 1202-VLZ mixer. This is powerful enough to fill any small club.

When you depend on your keyboard to generate your midi instruments, you're limited to the instruments that came built into your keyboard (unless you have a high-end keyboard that allows you to update the internal sound module). Many keyboard players prefer to have a stand alone midi sound module to get the sounds they want. Most of these will set you back anywhere from $1000 to $1500 US. That brings me to the next item:

Editing
Many midi-enabled keyboards provide some way to edit midis on the keyboard, using an onboard LCD screen. I don't recommend this. Keyboards are built primarily to play music, not to edit it, and as such the editing capabilities are going to be something less than desirable. The same is true of stand alone midi sequencers.

Like midi keyboards, many of the high end midi sound modules include the ability to sequence and edit midis right inside the device. I looked at a lot of sound modules in my desire to find the best sounding - easiest to figure out machine. I decided that trying to sequence my own midis or even edit someone else's on the sound module's small LCD screen would be nearly impossible. For this reason, I opted to buy a sound module with no sequencer, and do my sequencing on the computer using Sonar. Sound modules with no sequencer on board are less expensive (You can save $400 - $500 this way), however, you then have to purchase software to do the job. Sonar or Cubase VST will set you back $300 or so.

If you opt to use the keyboard/midi approach, you still should use Sonar or Cubase to edit your midi's before playing them back live. This way you can fix bad notes, rewrite song endings, and change the key to suit your voice. To do this, you'll have to carry your keyboard into your office (or wherever you keep your PC), and hook the keyboard up to the PC. Most computers do not have a midi input or output built into their sound cards, so you'll need some sort of interface to allow your midi device to talk to the PC. Now you could just carry a floppy with the midi file into the PC and edit it without the keyboard, but the sounds your PC's sound card generates will be completely different from the sounds you'll get from your keyboard. When you edit, you'll definitely want to LISTEN to the same sounds you'll hear during a live performance.

Concerning a midi to PC interface, I recommend a MidiMan USB interface. You can get this one for under $50. By the way, you can buy sound cards with midi inputs and outputs, but I don't recommend them; you run into a problem with latency with these. Latency is the lag time between the time you hit the key on the keyboard and the time the event is actually recorded (or sounds) on your PC. This will be less of a concern if you use a USB interface. Anyway, you just run a midi cable from your keyboard (or sound module) into the interface, and connect a USB cable from the interface to the PC. Nothing could be easier. Now you're ready to use Sonar or Cubase to edit.

The midi learning curve
Editing or sequencing your own midis is going to require surmounting a learning curve no matter how you decide to do it. If you edit from the keyboard, you have to learn to use the keyboard's onboard editing options. If you use Sonar, you have to learn to use the software. Given that you have to learn to use SOMETHING, it's best to invest your efforts in learning something that will give you the most flexibility in the end. For example, if you learn how to edit on the keyboard, and then buy a new keyboard, you have to learn things all over again. If you learn to use Sonar or Cubase, you can use that knowledge regardless of what keyboard or sound module you purchase in the future. Granted, there are a lot more bells and whistles to learn in Sonar than on your keyboard, but the time spent to learn it is well spent.

Stand alone sound modules
If you use a stand alone sound module to edit your midis, you also need to carry that with you to your gigs and hook it up to your PA system. Stand alone modules all have 1/4 inch analog outputs, so you plug them into your PA mixer like a microphone (or better yet, like you would a CD player) or you can route your stand alone through your keyboard (midi pass through) and vice-versa.

Learn to use Sonar
Edit your midi's in Sonar and instead of using a hardware sound module, use Sonar's built in DXI soft synth (Edirol Sound Canvas) to generate the sounds. This saves you the expense of buying a hardware sound module, and the sounds are just as good.

For playback live you can do one of two things:
Install Sonar and your edited midis on a laptop and carry the laptop with you to your gigs to serve as a playback device (not recommended because the potential danger of damage to your expensive laptop) OR

Export your edited and sound-assigned midis to audio format (WAV or MP3) and then burn them onto a CD. If you use the WAV format, you can play them back through your PA using any standard CD player. If you save them to MP3, you'll need a CD player that handles that format.

If you do it this way, you will have no (that's as in nothing, zip, nada, El Zero) expense. No new equipment to purchase at all. If you have a CD player, you're in business. All you'll have to do is learn to use Sonar... but you have to learn to use something anyhow. The quality of your sound will be excellent, and you'll sleep better at night. I'll tell ya, if this technology (DXI soft synths) was available to me three years ago when I started learning all of this stuff, I could have saved myself a couple thousand dollars and a lot of sweat and blood. Oh, if you want to use your keyboard to sequence new midi stuff, you'll still need a $50 midi interface, but if you're just touching up downloaded midi's you don't even need that.

Midi-Hits.com is where I purchase most of the midis I use for my show. I love this company and the work they do, and have had much to say about them over the last couple years... all good. The following is a letter I sent to someone who had seen my endorsement on the MH web site and had written to ask some questions about using their products.

Yes! They are that good. There are several things I like about Midi Hits. The first is their attention to detail. When they sequence, ALL the instruments are there and they get all the notes right 99% of the time. Occasionally, you find something that makes your eyes squint, but not very often. Another thing is, if you download your songs in the Cakewalk format (don't do this if you don't have Pro Audio or Sonar on your computer) they explode the drum tracks so you don't have the entire rhythm section globbed into one track. They include lyrics with most of the songs (you can read them if you're using Cakewalk Sonar). Their delivery system is instant. Order now, get it now. I haven't found these things to be true of other professional midi sites. And of course, there's the huge number of midis to choose from.

Midi Hits is arguably the largest collection of professional midis in the world (over 11000 now). There's very little you can't find there. That said, I should also tell you I spend HOURS with each midi I buy, editing in Sonar to get the key right and assigning the right instruments from my sound module. I could actually do all of this in about 15 minutes for each song, but I fuss and fume over every little thing until it's perfect. The difficult part is setting the volume levels for each instrument. Midi Hits does this with the raw file, but after you assign YOUR instruments, you discover quickly that your sound module's instruments may have been sampled at a "hotter" level than the original (or just the opposite).

Some time ago, I got an email from someone else who had seen my article at Midi-Hits. Phil was not having such a good experience.

Phil:
I just saw your testimony on Midi-hits and start purchasing songs because of your comments. I noticed that some of the songs are very good, but lately, I've been getting songs from Midi-Hits that are not up to par or based on the original recordings especially in the pop area. Have you noticed a drop in the quality? As a local promoter, purchased backing for many types of performers even recording artist in town visiting a club who may perform if the track is available. Several times, especially on some of the new recording a well know artist refused to perform because of the track I provided and they were from Midi-Hits.

I wrote back to Phil asking for more information. There was another exchange of letters and I came to the following supposition: I believe Phil's problem is the lack of a remix. To demonstrate how valuable this is, I've created a web page for you to compare the original Midi Hits version of a song with my mix. My mix doesn't change any of the notes, but there is a huge difference just the same. My Proteus 2000 sound module has terrific instrument sounds, and makes the song come alive. The drum sounds you hear in the MP3 version were enhanced with reverb and delay. This is possible when you're converting midi to audio. More difficult to do if you're just leaving it as a midi file. I've also lowered the key a bit. Click here to go to the sample page.

The soft-synth concept
Midi is nothing more than a series of instructions designed to be read by a sound card or sound module, which in turn, supplies the instrument sounds. Midi is to a sound module what a paper scroll is to a player piano. Midi requires a sound module (or sound card) to be heard. There are lots of different kinds of sound modules and keyboards that contain sound modules, but the coolest thing to come down the pike in years is soft synth technology.

You see, a sound module is just a piece of metal with some microchips. It's the programming stored in the microchips that makes the sound module sound like all those instruments. The chips are just a way to store programmed synthetic sounds. Well, someone finally asked the question: if the sounds are nothing more than ones and zeros, why do we need to store them on a machine at all? Why not just find a way to create those sounds on a PC... without the hardware? Why not write a program that thinks it's a sound module and get rid of the need for hardware-based midi completely? And that's what they did. Someone invented soft-synths. The Roland TTS-1 that comes bundled with Sonar is such an animal.

A soft-synth is a sound module that lives on your hard drive. It thinks its a sound module, it does everything a sound module does and each soft-synth even has its own set of controls and capabilities. Here are some of the highlights:

• Soft-synths are far less expensive than hardware sound modules.
• Soft-synths are incredibly easy to set up since there are no physical cables or interfaces to worry about.
• You can demo these things after a download, and you don't have to go to a music store to hear them.
• There are soft-synths for absolutely anything you might want to do creatively (for example, create new sounds).
• Best of all, if you need to change a sound, add effects, or edit the instruments in any way, you do it all on your computer screen instead of a sound module's tiny, hard to read LED screen.
• The instrument sounds are amazing!!
• If you have Cakewalk Sonar, you don't have to buy a single thing. Everything you need is right there because Sonar comes bundled with several soft-synths.
  
  The end product of all this wonderfulness (Is that a word?) is a Wav or MP3 file of your song. Unless you want to use a PC on stage (and many musicians do), you'll have to export your completed songs to audio and burn them to a CD. On stage, you would then play the songs back using a regular CD player. Sort of like karaoke (without the TV screens and lyrics).
  
  These things are very easy to use in Sonar and can be set up in two steps:
  1. Insert > Dxi Synth (and then pick the one you want from the list). This inserts a new audio track in your project with the synth set up in the track.
  2. Set the OUT port of your midi tracks to play to that Synth.
     Very simple.

  The 2 soft-synth formats
  There are two basic formats for soft-synths: VST and Dxi. Steinberg's Cubase 4 uses the VST format while Sonar uses Dxi. Most Windows music editing programs favor the Dxi format because Dxi is built on Windows DirectX technology, something that's already in place in the Windows operating system. This is good news because software developers can develop a Dxi application and it can be used by any program that has DirectX installed... that's nearly every PC sold today! What's more, many Dxi programs can be shared between applications. For example, I use both Sonar and Adobe Audition. Both programs share the same Dxi effects.
  
  Dxi programs span the creative spectrum as far as what they can do. Some are designed as support programs for use in a recording studio (pitch transposers, metronomes, guitar tuners). Some are designed as effects (reverb, delay, EQ, and so forth). And some are designed as full blown synthesizers (soft-synths).
  
  VST has been around a while and there are hundreds of VST plug-ins available for use in Cubase. Originally, if you had a hard drive full of VST plug-ins, you could not use them with a Dxi application (Sonar), however for Sonar 2 users, Cakewalk offers a conversion utility plugin that allows you to take any VST program and convert it for use in a Dxi environment. Sonar 3 comes with this conversion capability buit right into the program, no plugin needed.