stage monitoring thread!

[pounce]

for our gigging friends here, who is using in ears?
who is still using stage wedges?

and what about on stage volume?

how loud is it for you on deck?
do you use a "kicker" on the drum throne?
sidefills?

a seperate mix for each member?

not really a tech thread, but one by the musicians about what they are doing, liking, wanting, and why. what best helps get the music balanced, get everybody hearing what they need, and so forth.

[Spock]

Good topic.

Small band, small places, 4 players. We, or at least I do, try to keep the stage volume down. The drummer can get out of control with the "brass" at times.

We started with one monitor mix. 3 floor wedges and one hot spot for the drummer. The monitors just have vocals in them. It seemed like I was always getting pushed next to a wall, and couldn't ever get a wedge in the right place.

Next I got a pair of in ears, Shure PSM 200. I take the monitor feed into one channel of the transmitter, and a line out from my keys into the other. I can then tweak my own balance and over all level without have to touch the monitor mix.

A few times our guitar player has asked for bit of him in just his monitor, but with one mix that wasn't going to happen. I mainly fixed that issue moving his amp a bit so he can heard more of it.

New board for the band, 01V96. We've used it out just once so far. I have the AUXs setup for 3 different monitor mixes, but we haven't used it that way yet.

When we have had supplied sound, festivals, etc. We tell the monitor mixer that we mainly need the 3 vocals in monitors, and to give me a line leel signal and no wedge. We could have them tweak things a bit more, when you have 15 minutes to get setup and tweaked before you start, we're just happy that we can hear each other.

[Mojo]

My new band has zero backline and the guitarist and I use IEMs. I'm doing this to save my hearing, as was mentioned in another thread. After having suffered loud, bad sounding monitors with bad mixes and the drummers brass for the past 35 years, it was time to take the plunge. I swear I still hear every feedback squeal and cymbal crash ringing in my head. :icon_eek:

I'm taking a mix of everything from FOH, minus my own instrument and voice, into my IEM amp's monitor input. I supply my vocal and instrument via the aux out on a small stand mounted mixer into the mic in on the IEM amp and send the main outs to FOH. This gives me total control over my personal balance and mix with the aux send from FOH. This setup has 18 audio connections in all, which includes a second wireless instrument to make quick FOH checks while I'm not on the mic. After tallying the total investment, I could have bought a wedge system and small bass amp but when the upside is saving whats left of your ears, its worth twice the price.

Another upside to this is there's less noise eminating from the stage, thus giving us better control of the house. The drummer has the only wedge that carries everything in the board minus the kick, the only thing mic'd on the drums so far. I plan to integrate an OH just for the IEMs but only if his wedge doesnt muck things up. I plan to highpass it anyway so it should be ok. I can hear midrange from the drumset but it's murky at best so hopefully the OH will clear things up.

[CloseToTheEdge]

5 members in our group. We're all on IEMs (mostly Shure E3s with the drummer using his cans) Different mix for everyone.

We're also using a small amplifier and volume control box (Rolls PM351 or Bear-Wringer Micromon MA400) at each mic stand to mix the monitor output from the board and just our instrument inputs so that we can get "more me" without annoying our sound guy at the monitor mixer.

Fairly low stage volume. No kickers or other such devices.

Works very well in rehearsal, but our debut gig with this project is not until March. We'll see how it goes. Some still want wedges as backup, but I doubt we will need them.

The only downside is a hell of a lot of cables to rig it up.

[pounce]

well, kickers are good for low volume situations especially. the stage volume seems low, but the drummer still feels the thump very well. its a great supplement to other monitoring methods since you get the feel and whoomp, but without the need to just plain making things loud on deck.

[weedywet]

in the Cyndi Lauper band...
everyone except the guitar player is on in-ears.
The guitar player has a wedge.
Plus Cyndi still wants wedges AND a fairly loud side fill mix,

and the drummer has a bum driver.

so it's a hybrid, and it's relatively loud on stage.

DEFINITELY individual mixes.

a mix of Shure 600 and 700 receivers.
3 of us have FutureSonics.
1 using Sensaphonics
1 using Ultimate Ears.


for our gigging friends here, who is using in ears?
who is still using stage wedges?

and what about on stage volume?

how loud is it for you on deck?
do you use a "kicker" on the drum throne?
sidefills?

a seperate mix for each member?

not really a tech thread, but one by the musicians about what they are doing, liking, wanting, and why. what best helps get the music balanced, get everybody hearing what they need, and so forth.

[Jason Phair]

well, kickers are good for low volume situations especially. the stage volume seems low, but the drummer still feels the thump very well. its a great supplement to other monitoring methods since you get the feel and whoomp, but without the need to just plain making things loud on deck.

Ears, an ass-kicker, a Q-Sub or a dv-sub, plus a pair of texas headphone wedges are what most drummers I run into seem to prefer :lol:

[bunnerabb]

How do you get a drummer to sign a petition?

"WOULD YOU PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION?"

[Tim Armstrong]

Three piece band, two or three wedges with vocals only (unless we're using acoustic guitar or have a guest sax player), dynamic drummer who can play great and rock without hurting us (we mic kick and snare), guitar through a smallish amp (either a Fender Deluxe Reverb or a VOX AD30VT) with an SM57 on it, bass through a Crate PowerBlock with a 1x15 cab and a DI out to the PA system.

We keep it down to manageable level onstage and let the FOH do the heavy lifting. Makes singing on-key so much easier, and having the ability to turn the whole band down with the master volume on the mixer makes it easy to keep the bar managers and bartenders happy!

Cheers, Tim

[timothyclee]

Look Out I'm a drummer!!! I'm currently using a Shure PSM-600 system I got back in 1997 and it's never crapped out on me. I'm also using a Mackie powered sub behind my throne to give me a little more low end. Is there something I missing on the Butt Shakers? I tried one and I just didn't like it, but then maybe I just didn't have it hooked up right. How are you guys hooking up your ass shakers? What kind of routing are you doing to them?

My monitor setup consists on a rackmount Soundcraft board and an 8 channel mic splitter that sends my direct lines to the house and the house/monitor guy will send me a line level monitor mix of the band minus me that I mix in my IEMs. Do you guys have any help on the ass subject??

Tim

[weedywet]

Our drummer has a standalone system.
That is there's a mic in the bass drum that ONLY feeds a pre to a power amp to the bum shaker... all in his rack.
Doesn't go to the monitor desk at all.

[clicktrack]

Our drummer has a standalone system.
That is there's a mic in the bass drum that ONLY feeds a pre to a power amp to the bum shaker... all in his rack.
Doesn't go to the monitor desk at all.

Thats an interesting way of doing it...

is that drum mic a totally separate one from the standard compliment thats going to the house (i.e. kick in & out?)

Why did you guys come up with this way of doing it? Saving channel count on the monitor desk? No one else needed any kick in their mix?

[pounce]

i always think those rump shakers are great.

click, i take it that this is seperate from whatever FOH and monitors are dealing with in terms of both mics and monitors, this is just an additional self contained element to make it more pleasant for the drummer. good move all around. after that, standard mics and monitors apply i presume.

[AxeSlash]

5 piece metal band, the usual: 1 vocal, 2 guitars, bass, drums.

I've tried a selection of ways of doing stuff with in ears, but they just don't work for me. Reason? They don't stay in when doing from-the-waist-up headbanging. Yet to find some that don't go flying everywhere.

We all do a lot of head movement, so that idea has gone the way of the dodo for everyone bar our drummer, who seems to get on OK when we feed line outs from both my guitar rig and his kick trigger drum brain wossitcalled into a cheapass BareRingpiece headphone amp, which drives whatever head mounted devices he happens to have on him (usually either some crap cheapass consumer phones or my Senny IE4s).

This basically means that he gets to hear everything he wants to hear without upping the stage volume. Thankfully he doesn't want/need to hear anything else bar the odd bit of bass (which he can usually hear anyway).

In terms of the front row, we prefer a loada wedges, with the vocal wedge as quiet as we can get away with (loadsa vocals on stage REALLY pisses me off, plus our guy wanders off around the punters a lot anyway, much to the annoyance of the FOH guy).

Personally I don't really NEED a wedge, as long as I can hear kick, snare, and me. I have the advantage of having an 8U guitar rig rack that fits perfectly underneath a Marshall 4x12, raising it up a lot closer to ear height, so as long as we ain't got a stage that reflects cymbals like a mirror I'm usually OK. The rest of the lads seem to just drown in a sea of bass and don't seem to care much anyway as long as they can hear the drums. Our vocalist is pretty easy as long as his wedge is fucking DEAFENING (which gets on everyone else's nerves).

In an ideal world we'd probably carry a complete mon system and a multi split to run off an 01V96 or similar, but budget is against us at the mo. It's mostly local venues we play, pubs, clubs, bars etc with in house sound that ranges from a pair of abused Eons to a 10Kish Turbo system. Nothing major.



At work we tend to put in a UPA-1P & PSW-2 for drummers (possibly more if it's a big ol' gig), shedloads of 1x15" + horn wedges, and MSL-4s & PSW-2s for sidefills depending on the size of gig. Seems to work pretty well, the MSL4s are great for deaf vocalists on big stages.

In-ears wise, we used to live on PSM700s, but recently we've decided that the Sennheiser stuff seems to be more stable and less prone to being beaten to death (although the Stig drove over one of our beltpacks recently).

That said we've just done a large gig where we had no end of problems with in ears, which we think was due to a combination of factors, but mainly the fact that a BBC outside broadcast truck was flattening the venue with RF. The day after they left, things improved immeasurably. Before that we tried everything: fiddling with intermod and frequencies for days on end, bigger, meatier antennas, exceedingly expensive antenna boosters, DAs, all sorts. Still no joy.

I'm told that the guys on the job thought that some of the LED screens had something to do with the RF problems as well, but I'm not convinced...can anyone shed any light on that? Anyone else had LED screens causing problems?

[Droolbucket]

From the low-budget sector....

Wedges (ancient EV 2-ways), vocals only, one mix. We split off our vocals and run the mix from the stage, thus eliminating the middle man (the sound guy).


Simple, bullet-proof, effective.

Droolbucket

[weedywet]

Thats an interesting way of doing it...

is that drum mic a totally separate one from the standard compliment thats going to the house (i.e. kick in & out?)

Why did you guys come up with this way of doing it? Saving channel count on the monitor desk? No one else needed any kick in their mix?

Yes, it's a separate dedicated mic.
then there's another mic that goes to FOH and everyone else's monitors.

we definitely DO need the bass drum, me (on bass guitar,) especially; but this let's the drummer get exactly what he needs to the ass shaker without depending on anyone else and without running needless lines both ways back and forth.

... he can place and treat the mic so that it triggers his bum shaker without worrying whether it's what the FOH mixer wants.