SOUNDADVICE
ANDY ANDERSON
How Are Your (In)Ears?
I just got in from another busy week of
working with bands, and have a few lessons about in-ear monitoring that may help
you out in those ever-busy pre-show situations. Here’s a helpful list of tips to get you
on the right track.
1. Have a clearly marked, well notated
and easy to understand chart that
describes which band member wants
which mix and where in the stereo field
they want them.
2. If you are working on digital mixers,
take the time to save a program of all
the settings for your in-ear mixes. You
can then use this as a starting point for
your in-ear mixes (NOTE: You will have to
save your program on the same model of
mixer that you will be using.)
3. When you get done with your sound-check, save your settings to a disk or
other media to use the next time you use
that brand and model of mixer.
4. Carry your own mixes for vocals and
instruments. Know exactly where the
mikes are supposed to be placed and be
consistent about this.
5. Use limiting and compression to control very dynamic sounds: loud guitars,
screaming vocals, kick drums.
6. Use gates or manual muting to turn off
unused mikes while performing.
7. If your mix gets too muddy, try doing
panning of the sound sources such as
instruments and vocals to give the mix
more definition and space.
8. If you are using keyboard setups with
lots of different voices, try to “normalize,”
or make all of the volumes the same.
9. If you are using tracks (prerecorded
segments), either make sure all of the
levels are the same or add limiting and
compression at the mixing board.
Andy Anderson
Andy Anderson
Concert Sound
515-291-0464
Concertsound.org
andent@lvcta.com
