Thread: Music getting turned down

What do you do when your music is CONSTANTLY turned down by the staff (one person in particular- owner's son) when you're dancing? Happens to me almost every single time I dance. Some songs are louder, some are quieter, and I don't usually zil anymore because the music is so quiet...
And the stage is in the CENTER of the restaurant, so the belly dancing should be the focus, not a background.
Do I throw a little tantrum and say I won't dance unless I can hear the damn music? (tempting but I know that's not the right way to go)
Walk off stage to the volume control and go turn it right back up?
Just let him do it?

He says people complain. Maybe every now and then but I really don't think EVERY TIME.

It is SO hard to be dancing and having a great time and then hear your music get super turned down and have to struggle to hit the accents in the music right. Then the audience isn't into the music, or the dancing, no one claps, and I dance for a bad crowd, which has the potential to be a great crowd!
What do I do?
Tonight I will have the other dancer monitor my music, but that's not always possible.

I think the owner's son wants to make every customer at the restaurant as comfortable as possible so that they will return, and he is assuming that one complaining customer represents five others who are not complaining, as could very well be the case.

It IS hard to dance without hearing the music. Unfortunately, many restaurants don't have optimum sound systems for dancers. I'm going to guess that the unhappy customers are the ones near the speakers, who cannot hear themselves talk and maybe even are getting a headache?

Is there a possibility of finding songs that work best under these circumstances and using those exclusively? Perhaps your monitoring helper can sit near the speakers and figure out what musical components are the problem.

I'm not implying that there is an easy solution to this. There isn't. But it might be solvable.

I experienced this a few years ago. Not me personally, but a dancer friend of mine that was dancing at a place that I and my coworkers used to frequent for lunch.

So, the owners decided a few years ago, to create a festive atmosphere during the holidays by bringing in a dancer during the lunch crowd. The dancer was already charged to dance "low key". So Oum Khalsoum etc. Very conservative costuming.

One day, I brought in a large group to show my support. I thought the show very low key, quiet and I admit boring. Imagine my suprise, when my friend came up to me later and said that as low key as the show was, patrons were complaining about the music being annoying! I mean, they are in a ME restaurant and the music was really low key!

Anyway, the owners abandoned the lunch dancing. They were successful with Arabic nights on Sat. for a while but are now closed down.

Personally, I think, if you are going to have a dancer you need to go full blast and do it right. Too often places that can't make it are looking for a belly dancer to draw in business when what they really need is a realistic look at their business plan.

If I were you, I would speak out and say you can't dance under these conditions. But you have to be prepared to lose the job if you do so. It sounds to me as they are more concerned about appeasing customers and having a "restaurant" rather than attracting customers by "putting on a show".

Have you talked to some of the other dancers to see if their music is also being turned down?

Have you talked to some of the customers, after your show, and asked them what they thought about the music and/or sound quality?

The acoustics of the room could definitely be a factor. Music could be roaringly loud coming out of the speakers, but by the time it gets to the stage area, there could be all kinds of architectural muffling, phase cancellation, and so on, which would make the volume considerably lower to your ears on the other side of the room. This is addressed by moving the speakers, or adding an additional monitor to the stage area.

Another factor could be a difference between your personal expectation of what constitutes the right volume and what the owners/customers like. I was at a hafla out of town a few years ago and the music was painfully loud, not I-have-to-shout-to-talk-to-the-person-next-to-me loud, but my-ears-will-still-be-ringing-an-hour-after-I-leave loud. The dancer working the sound system that night had a much higher tolerance for volume than I did. If you listen to a lot of loud music, particularly loud music through headphones, it is possible to damage your hearing to the point that you don't realize how high your normal volume has become. (Not saying this necessarily applies to you, just putting it on the table...)

From an audio standpoint, narrowing the discrepancy between your louder and softer parts will address some of the problem regarding the inability to hear the quieter sections. Artistically, it's not good to take all of the dynamics out of your music, but if you are mixing different quality recordings and not already adjusting your overall volume, this is a legitimate issue to fix. You're not in a concert hall where people actually care about your forte being forte and your pianissimo being pianissimo. You're in a restaurant with clanking dishes and talking patrons. Sometimes flattening out the volume a little is a compromise you have to make.

I suspect the bigger issue is the passive-aggressive behavior of someone who either doesn't want a dancer, or doesn't want you dancing and is trying to encourage you to quit so he can bring in someone else. If the volume you want is reasonable, then you're going to have to bring in your own sound person or hope you can get success by going over his head.

Yes to both- one of the regulars said she's never found my music "offensive" aka too loud, and the other dancers music gets turned down too....by the same person.
and he was gone last night and we had a lovely time dancing to our music at the perfect volume :)

Oh and I do not have a high tolerance for volume, lol. I'm always the one to turn it down in the car :)
I think the last statement may be true- passive aggressiveness.
I think it will take time to come to an agreement! or else be a constant battle.

The acoustics *are* kind of odd in that restaurant. The space is...well...cavernous and given that, the stage location in the middle of the restaurant kind of has the effect of dwarfing things a bit--I noticed the music sounds quieter and less clear on stage than in a lot of places in the restaurant, likely because you have such a big open space overhead, lots of tables and bodies in all directions (absorbing sound), the walls that the sound bounces off are far away (muddies the sound where you are), and the speakers are not near the stage. So, I could certainly see it being quite possible that even though the music sounds muddy and quiet to you, it might be problematically loud at certain tables.

That said...if it's just one person who turns down the music a lot, then it may specific to the individual. Could be as simple as he's just a lot more sensitive to the sound/customer comments than others. You could try talking to him about it, but the advice about working with your music is also relevant. Be sure, for example, that your songs are all mixed/amplified to the same level on CDs. So often we're pulling music from different sources, and you can end up with, say, a really loud opening number followed by a quieter second piece. So, owner-worker-dude turns down your music during the loud first number and its kind of ok...but then you're struggling to hear your midsection piece.

Is it possible that you could ask the Mngr if he could move the speakers closer to the stage or main area you dance in?

Originally Posted by aamel_MirahAmmal

The acoustics *are* kind of odd in that restaurant. The space is...well...cavernous and given that, the stage location in the middle of the restaurant kind of has the effect of dwarfing things a bit--I noticed the music sounds quieter and less clear on stage than in a lot of places in the restaurant, likely because you have such a big open space overhead, lots of tables and bodies in all directions (absorbing sound), the walls that the sound bounces off are far away (muddies the sound where you are), and the speakers are not near the stage. So, I could certainly see it being quite possible that even though the music sounds muddy and quiet to you, it might be problematically loud at certain tables.

That said...if it's just one person who turns down the music a lot, then it may specific to the individual. Could be as simple as he's just a lot more sensitive to the sound/customer comments than others. You could try talking to him about it, but the advice about working with your music is also relevant. Be sure, for example, that your songs are all mixed/amplified to the same level on CDs. So often we're pulling music from different sources, and you can end up with, say, a really loud opening number followed by a quieter second piece. So, owner-worker-dude turns down your music during the loud first number and its kind of ok...but then you're struggling to hear your midsection piece.

If that is the case, it sounds like the problem could be solved with monitor speakers. The monitors face the stage so you can hear the music. Then the loudspeakers for the audience can be adjusted to what ever level works best for the space.

Originally Posted by norma

Personally, I think, if you are going to have a dancer you need to go full blast and do it right. .....

speaker placement and bad acoustics aside, im finally starting to integrate this understanding in my dancing. if you're at all apologetic about your show (holding back on your moves, shying away from eye contact, keeping the volume low as if you're trying not to distract people with your show, the whole thing just poo-poos. something that is easy to understand, but hard to really internalize. explaining it might help this guy understand that you're not asking him to leave the volume up because you're a diva, but because you're trying to provide the best show for him and his restaurant that you can.

the restaurant im at at first was so loud that when i'd go to see the other dancers we needed pen and paper to pass notes back and forth because even yelling mouth-to-ear we couldn't hear each other. a lot of people must have complained because now i sometimes can't hear my music. with out the volume a lot of energy is missing and it's very hard to create it yourself.

It is not unheard of for restaurant owners to ask the impossible :)