A Musician’s Guide to Monitor Mixing

Date:2020/1/4 17:30:47 Hits:

Dan VanAmerongen has been a musician, singer, recording engineer, and live sound engineer for over two decades. He’s also a Sweetwater Sales Engineer. Dan shares his experience and insights into what musicians need to know when creating their own monitor mixes.
While some musicians have mixed sound before, they may lack a fundamental understanding of how to mix sound. For many musicians, it can be challenging to get the mix they like, with everything they need in their monitors. This is often because they aren’t aware of what needs to be in the monitor mix and what doesn’t.

As musicians, we all enjoy hearing a great mix and appreciate a well-balanced recording. Onstage, that mindset needs to shift, however. It is not the monitor’s primary role to provide every detail of the song. What we need most from our monitors is to hear what is necessary to perform well with the group.
It is easy to get a cluttered monitor mix, where you can have trouble hearing the things you need to hear. While it feels intuitive to ask for more of something in the monitor so you can hear it better, that is often the wrong approach to crafting a monitor mix. The opposite is actually true. Instead of adding more, use a subtractive tactic to determine what is in your monitors. Try removing or turning way down the things you don’t need to hear. Lowering the volume on parts that are not essential to your performance allows you to hear what you need at a lower volume, so your stage volume is reduced. And what you need to hear will be different based on the part you play in your band.

For example, when I’m playing bass, I key on the kick drum, the lead vocal, and the rhythm guitar or keyboard. That’s it! I don’t need much of the backing vocals, the acoustic guitar, percussion, or other things that may be going on. It’s not critical for me to hear those other parts to play well with the group. Instead, I can focus on locking in with the drummer and listening for the lead vocal to know where we are headed.

This technique applies whether you are using floor wedges or in-ear monitors. When using in-ears, the challenge remains the same, but you have added functionality with a stereo mix. If you have the ability to create a stereo in-ear mix, do it. It can be helpful to pan things, especially other vocals and guitars, left and right, leaving the center open for the click, your vocal, drums, and your instrument.

If there are other vocals, try panning them left and right. This leaves the center image open for the parts you need to focus on. The left and right components are generally things that might be left out of a floor wedge mix, but with the flexibility of an in-ear mix, you can put them in the sides at a lower volume so you can still hear their parts as much as necessary.

If you are a vocalist only, you may find that you leave most of the band out and only include the instrument that gives you the best timing and chordal information for you to sing well. That way, you can have the vocals higher in the mix so you can harmonize more effectively with the other vocalists. However, the principle is still the same — to be able to hear the things that you need to hear and reduce the things you don’t need to hear. If you are on in-ears, always use both earpieces!

If you play an instrument and want to hear high and low details, I recommend using earphones with two or more drivers. You will appreciate the fuller range and better articulation these earphones provide. If you are a vocalist and need to focus on that range, you can typically get away with a single-driver earphone.
Other than your mix, your satisfaction with the in-ear system is primarily affected by the quality of the earphones, so get something with good fidelity that has a good fit in your ear canal. An earphone that does not have a good seal in your ear canal will not provide the full sonic range of sound. This is the primary benefit of custom-molded earphones like the Westone in-ears that we sell.

Once you have a good seal, you may find that it is so good, you can’t hear the audience or even comments from other players in the band during rehearsal without pulling out the in-ears. A cost-effective way to mitigate this effect is to have a room mic that is sent to the in-ear feed (but not the PA system) so performers can hear the ambience in the room. Fortunately, Westone also has a new series of earphones with filters that can attenuate the sound around you and let some of that into the earphone instead of sealing it completely out.
When choosing stage wedges for monitors, consider 10″ or 12″ models and pass on 15″ or larger units. Since these monitors typically sit on the floor, their placement tends to boost low frequencies anyway. Since low-frequency wavelengths are very long, they are not very directional and can bleed across the stage. Many powered speaker brands have a switch to help combat this, notching out some of the lower frequencies.
You can further control this, even for passive monitors, by using an EQ on the Aux Out from the console’s monitor feed to tone-shape the monitor send, shaping the low end.

Keep in mind that the more monitors you have onstage, and the more open mics, the greater the potential for feedback, so managing levels and placement of the monitors in relationship to the mics is very important.

Know the mics you are working with. If you have super-cardioid vocal mics, place the monitor to the side of the mic, not directly behind it. If you have a cardioid mic, place the monitor directly behind it. Place the monitors so the horn will only cover the area that it needs to cover. If a vocalist is standing right up against it, the bulk of the sound is going to be hitting the knees and waist instead of the ears. If you are using a music stand, don’t place the music stand between your ears and the horn of the monitor, as it will block a portion of the sound.

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