Andrew - .......As for sound engineering, could you come and turn down the volume on my son? He's well into the first term of his vocational music course and has some recording coming up. I can take the guitar to some extent, but now he's started singing! A bit distracting when you're trying to paint fine detail.
Turn you son down......ummmmmm...........
I'm sorry but that's the one thing I can't do anything about - unless of course you haven't tried gaffer tape!!
That said, you think your son is loud. Their used to be an 'exuberant' teenage drummer in our church band (singers, guitar, bass, singers, keyboard, sax etc.) and I used to regularly get requests to "Turn him down!" (the size of the auditorium means our drum kit is miked up).
I would simply point at the sound desk faders being all the way down to infinity (on a sound desk 0 is the sweet spot for volume) and politely point out that I had already "turned him off" and so what they were hearing was
entirely acoustic sound of his own making, meaning I could do nothing about it other than to turn the rest of the band up, which would have generated far more complaints - we have
very good speakers BTW!
As FYI we do not meet in a picturesque church but rather a warehouse we bought and then converted the main warehouse area into an auditorium. It is 30m wide by 28m deep and seats just shy of 600. That gives you an idea of just how 'exuberant' he was!
ATB
Andrew