I sing with a group of 8. Monitors have always been an issue for us. We're about to switch to in-ear in the next few weeks. In talking about in-ear monitors, the issue has been brought up of giving different singers/parts separate monitor mixes. Since vocals are completely dynamic, I'm not sure how we can ever blend if we're not hearing what the house is hearing.

I'm not talking about overall volume or eq or reverb or anything like that. I'm just talking about the volume of one part in relation to another. For instance, if a soprano has her own mix where she's louder than everybody else, doesn't that make it impossible for her to be sure she's blending with everybody else in the house mix? It just seems to me that the only way to go (a cappella, that is) is to use the same mix relation that's being used in the house.

Can anyone who's been at this for years and years give me some ideas? Pro groups?

My group made the transition to in ears a couple of years ago, and have had some struggles with the transition that perhaps you could learn from. We went back and forth (and back and forth...and back and forth) about the whole "the only way we can blend is to hear exactly what the house is hearing" debate. I think that what you need to remember is that a monitor mix is a tool to provide your best shot at tuning and balancing the vocals. Let me see if I can clearly state my rational for why different monitor mixes for the band are OK.

1) The monitor mix will always sound different from the house mix anyway. There are many reasons for this...the frequency response of the monitors is vastly different than that of the house. Also, the acoustic space is different. The house is big and reverberant and will accent certain frequencies over others. If you're wearing in-ears your head is the acoustical space. Even different places in the house will sound different. It's a little crazy to assume you can know what things sound like out there.

2) Bone conduction in your head screws up how somebody hears a monitor mix. It takes a certain amount of "more me" syndrome to get enough of yourself in your ears to overcome that "I'm singing with my ears plugged up" feeling (which totally sucks). If I had to be subjected to everybody's "more me" requests, everybody else will be too loud and I'll have to turn the beltpack down, which will cause me to have to turn myself up to get over that ear plug feeling.

3) Consistent mixes will take care of the balance issue because of relative balance. Lets say there's 4 people in your group. Person 1 and 2 tend to sing at an average volume. Person 3 tends to sing a little quiter. Person 3 tends to sing a little louder. The house sliders or house gain will probably be set to account for those differences. All you need is a consistent (unchanging) mix to balance to each other in this case. If person 2 starts to sing a little louder, everyone else will hear this change and adjust accordingly. If person 4 starts singing a little softer, everyone can follow along. Because everyone's relative level is set at the board, and what they hear in the ears doesn't change expect for when someone starts singing louder or softer you're probably OK.

What you don't want to do is have people listening to a house mix that will change as the engineer adjusts levels. If singer 3 (the one who tends to sing quiet) is listening to the house mix, and the monitor engineer decides he needs to be bumped up a little, singer 3 will hear that change as him being too loud, and start singing even softer...which will make the engineer turn him up louder, and now you've got an awful game of "level tag" happening. This reason alone is reason enough to not listen to a house mix that will change.

And now the biggest piece of advice: Stereo Monitor Mixes

We spent the last two years trying to work with one mono mix for each person. We could each control our own mix, but only got it in mono. We couldn't change the panning of where other voices were in our head. This was frustrating because it was hard to distinguish my voice from everyone else's. It became a big mush of noise in the middle of my head. Not a very nice thing to try to use for tuning and balance. So, we all ended up taking out one ear or even both ears trying to get something that didn't sound so unnatural. Your head is used to listening to things in stereo. Why deny it that luxury?

We've recently changed over to where we are sharing stereo mixes. We used the same board and paired up our mixes, so instead of six mono mixes, we have 3 stereo mixes (plus one mono mix for our VP who still uses a wedge). 2 background parts share a stereo mix and pan their two voices close to center, the other 2 backgrounds farther out, and the bass and drums to the farthest left and right. The bass gets his own mix because no one else will probably want to hear what he hears. We're able to listen to a more natural mix now, and we're able to keep our monitors in both ears.

If you use stereo mixes we've found stereo ambient mics helpful also. These are two mics (one on either side of the stage) that only feed into the monitor mixes (not the house). Pan the stage right mic all the way right, and the stage left mic all the way left, and what you get is a nice "real" sound that helps make the monitors feel a little more natural. Plus you can hear all those crazy things the crowd shouts at you. They're a nice easy touch to make the mixes more comfortable.

Two manufacturers that I know of manufacture a small format mixer specifically designed to provide stereo mixes for in-ears. Allen and Heath Mix Wizard Monitor is one, and Crest XRM is another. Both allow each singer to control the volume and pan of each signal independent of all the other signals. They are super cool.

Sorry for the novel. Hopefully that was somewhat helpful.


Mike Henrickson
Cartoon Johnny
www.cartoonjohnny.com

My group made the transition to in ears a couple of years ago, and have had some struggles with the transition that perhaps you could learn from. We went back and forth (and back and forth...and back and forth) about the whole "the only way we can blend is to hear exactly what the house is hearing" debate. I think that what you need to remember is that a monitor mix is a tool to provide your best shot at tuning and balancing the vocals. Let me see if I can clearly state my rational for why different monitor mixes for the band are OK.

1) The monitor mix will always sound different from the house mix anyway. There are many reasons for this...the frequency response of the monitors is vastly different than that of the house. Also, the acoustic space is different. The house is big and reverberant and will accent certain frequencies over others. If you're wearing in-ears your head is the acoustical space. Even different places in the house will sound different. It's a little crazy to assume you can know what things sound like out there.

2) Bone conduction in your head screws up how somebody hears a monitor mix. It takes a certain amount of "more me" syndrome to get enough of yourself in your ears to overcome that "I'm singing with my ears plugged up" feeling (which totally sucks). If I had to be subjected to everybody's "more me" requests, everybody else will be too loud and I'll have to turn the beltpack down, which will cause me to have to turn myself up to get over that ear plug feeling.

3) Consistent mixes will take care of the balance issue because of relative balance. Lets say there's 4 people in your group. Person 1 and 2 tend to sing at an average volume. Person 3 tends to sing a little quiter. Person 3 tends to sing a little louder. The house sliders or house gain will probably be set to account for those differences. All you need is a consistent (unchanging) mix to balance to each other in this case. If person 2 starts to sing a little louder, everyone else will hear this change and adjust accordingly. If person 4 starts singing a little softer, everyone can follow along. Because everyone's relative level is set at the board, and what they hear in the ears doesn't change expect for when someone starts singing louder or softer you're probably OK.

What you don't want to do is have people listening to a house mix that will change as the engineer adjusts levels. If singer 3 (the one who tends to sing quiet) is listening to the house mix, and the monitor engineer decides he needs to be bumped up a little, singer 3 will hear that change as him being too loud, and start singing even softer...which will make the engineer turn him up louder, and now you've got an awful game of "level tag" happening. This reason alone is reason enough to not listen to a house mix that will change.

And now the biggest piece of advice: Stereo Monitor Mixes

We spent the last two years trying to work with one mono mix for each person. We could each control our own mix, but only got it in mono. We couldn't change the panning of where other voices were in our head. This was frustrating because it was hard to distinguish my voice from everyone else's. It became a big mush of noise in the middle of my head. Not a very nice thing to try to use for tuning and balance. So, we all ended up taking out one ear or even both ears trying to get something that didn't sound so unnatural. Your head is used to listening to things in stereo. Why deny it that luxury?

We've recently changed over to where we are sharing stereo mixes. We used the same board and paired up our mixes, so instead of six mono mixes, we have 3 stereo mixes (plus one mono mix for our VP who still uses a wedge). 2 background parts share a stereo mix and pan their two voices close to center, the other 2 backgrounds farther out, and the bass and drums to the farthest left and right. The bass gets his own mix because no one else will probably want to hear what he hears. We're able to listen to a more natural mix now, and we're able to keep our monitors in both ears.

If you use stereo mixes we've found stereo ambient mics helpful also. These are two mics (one on either side of the stage) that only feed into the monitor mixes (not the house). Pan the stage right mic all the way right, and the stage left mic all the way left, and what you get is a nice "real" sound that helps make the monitors feel a little more natural. Plus you can hear all those crazy things the crowd shouts at you. They're a nice easy touch to make the mixes more comfortable.

Two manufacturers that I know of manufacture a small format mixer specifically designed to provide stereo mixes for in-ears. Allen and Heath Mix Wizard Monitor is one, and Crest XRM is another. Both allow each singer to control the volume and pan of each signal independent of all the other signals. They are super cool.

Sorry for the novel. Hopefully that was somewhat helpful.


Mike Henrickson
Cartoon Johnny
www.cartoonjohnny.com

Here's another way to work with an in-ear mix. I always found using a pair of in-ear monitors to be somewhat isolating, even with ambient mics feeding the in-ear mix. Try using just one ear, with a mono mix, and keeping the other ear open for the ambient sound. If you're working with a board that can send individual mono mixes, even better. It's easier to get a happy mono mix that way, and one doesn't feel cut off from the proceedings. You hear enough ambient sound through your free ear to stay connected and balance yourself. Most of the accomplished recording artists I've worked with use only one side of their headphones for the same reason. If your only reference is your in-ear system, there's a good chance that you'll either undersing or oversing as a result of losing the 'natural connection' to your own voice.

You may not need all the parts in your in-ear mix! This may sound like heresy, but...Figure out what you need in your mix, and either eliminate or minimize parts that tend to pull you off your part. If you're working with one ear, you can often hear ambiently the parts you don't have in your in-ear mix.

The house is never going to sound like the monitors. One of the mistakes that a cappella groups frequently make derives from the desire to enjoy the sound of their monitors. Monitors, whether in-ear or wedges, are there to help you stay together and in tune. That's it. If you want to enjoy lush sound, go sit in the house. Low end boom only gets in the way of intonation. Roll off your monitor mix around 100 Hz. and things will sharpen up considerably. You'll be able to hear all the parts, and also the core of the pitch. Putting effects like reverb and octave dividers in the monitors is also an invitation to disaster. Monitor mixes should just give you the facts.

Thanks for all this great info. I can tell that this all comes from many many years of combined experience. This all pretty much makes sense to me for the most part. The one thing I should have mentioned in the first message might change the perspective on this one. We sing almost always in a church or churches. In our own church, the board will be run by 5 or 6 different people. This isn't the kind of situation where we have anyone on staff whose job it is to run the sound. This is also not the kind of situation at all where we can just trust the sound guy and let it go at that. When we're on the "home court", we'll end up having about 3 different groups of singers at different times. We'll have to get the board settings "right" for each of the 3 groups and have a template and guidelines that each sound person can refer to (starting to sound like a nightmare even as I'm typing).

Because of all this, I still can't see any way to be consistent besides having the monitors reflect the house mix so that each singer can be responsible for blending instead of letting someone else have total control. The reality is that we're just not in the position to be able to put total faith in whoever has his hands on the faders right now. Does that make sense? I guess I should have just prefaced all this to make it known that this wasn't the ideal kind of situation. Please let me know what you think.

Also, sort of on the same topic... does anybody have any experience with communicating with the person on the board? We're usually in the front facing the same direction as person running the board who's in the back. I know he can talk to us through the monitors. I'm wondering if anyone has ever tried setting up a special mic just for talking to the person in the back if someone needs turning up or down, etc.

I think even though you have different people running your mix, you still don't want to listen to a house mix. First of all, you will never be able get a sense of what the house really sounds like. There are too many obstacles in your way in that regard (see my first post). In fact, if you try to listen to a house mix, and you never know who's running the board, your monitor mix will be different every time, and that defeats one of the benefits of in-ear monitors...a consistent mix that doesn't change and moves with you as you move around stage.

If you guys set your levels right, you should be able to set everyone at a consistent level at the house (use your solo button to check the signal going into each channel and watch the meter to make sure everyone's levels are about equal, maybe sing something that's kind of choral not a specific lead then set each monitor mix for each person so that it is workable for that person. Remember, if monitor levels are always the same you can tell if someone's singing louder or quieter than they were a minute ago and you can follow each other. if you're hearing every slider move the dude on the house board makes you can't tell whether he moved it or the guy next to you is singing quieter. You don't know whether or not you should follow. That's harder in my book.

I heard it put best when someone said you set your monitors to give you your best shot at blending, and the house guy can make little tweeks to get it right. The house guy shouldn't be making wholesale level changes...just little nudges here and there to make it perfect.

I defintely understand the desire to hear what the house sounds like, but unfortunately...you can't. It's tough to let go of, but once you do set a consistent monitor mix I think you'll find that your house sound is more consistent no matter who's running the board.

Incidentally, with the number of people in your group you'll probably want to go with an Aviom Monitor Mixing system. It's probably all you can use to get the number of individual stereo mixes you need, unless people want to share mixes.