Mixing FOH AND IEMs from the stage?

p90fool · May 2018

Bear in mind that the only thing in the IEMs is the two singers themselves, I'm only talking about the balance between the two of them being the same as the audience hears, so that they can change their own dynamics in a musically meaningful way.

If someone is singing backing vocals too loudly then I need them to HEAR that they're too loud, I'm too busy to pull back faders on errant vocalists. A hostile glare from the lead singer is enough.

If they both had their own separate "more me" mixes neither of them would know when to pull back.

Supplying singers with a full band mix is an entirely different ball game.

Emp_Fab · May 2018

Funnily enough, I’ve been pondering on both of your arguments. We’ve not used in-ears in anger before, so last week’s session was the first rehearsal with them. After doing a very rough FOH mix, I turned to our monitors and halfway through the session I became aware that nobody in the band had any idea what the FOH sound was like now, because none of us were listening to it!

In the absence of a sound man, all we can do is rely on a trusted audience member to give hand signals if anything is wildly out. I’ve been at the mercy of ‘sound men’ before - the real problem is trying to find one that has the faintest idea of what they’re doing. I’ve seen so many blokes in various pubs twiddling away but achieving sod all apart from making the sound even worse. Only once did we get a good chap. I don’t have much trust in people proclaiming to know how to operate a mixer.

I suppose in an ideal world, I could stick a couple of mics at the back of the pub and have the ability to switch my in ears to those every now and then to check on the mix !

p90fool · May 2018

They are quite isolating obviously, which is why with our simple pub setup we only have them for singers.

Using a couple of JBL Eon Ones as FOH also means that we can all hear vocals everywhere in the room anyway, even the singers could if their IEMs should die.

delorean · May 2018

Our full-time soundman retired about 4 years ago, so we've been mixing our own sound since then.

Personally, there aren't many audience members I would trust to give me solid, impartial advice on my FOH sound.

We get around not having a soundman by soundchecking a little longer.

We play one song without keyboards but with full backing vox - the keys player goes out front to check levels to ensure everything is balanced

We then play one song with keys - I go out front and check levels to make sure the keys are balanced with everything else.

Finally I also record the soundcheck for each gig from out in front of the stage, and review it quickly to ensure that everything things are definitely sounding balanced.

Once it's set, none one touches so much as an EQ knob under penalty of death!

In our case, it helps that we use a digital mixer which recalls our most commonly used settings and all the monitor mixes - this way half the work is already done and we only have to make minor tweaks (usually) to account for for the room.

uncledick · May 2018

Just tell your band mates they're lucky to have monitors at all. I've played more gigs without than with so any kind of vocals heard on stage I still consider a luxury.

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Mixing FOH AND IEMs from the stage?

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