Hello all. This is my first post but I've been lurking for a while. I haven’t been able to find an answer to my problem in the other posts. I have a FOH/monitor mix problem and I'm hoping someone has a good suggestion(s) to help me solve it. I'm sorry about the length of this post.
I'm 53 years old and have been involved in the Canadian Military Music Branch as a fulltime musician for the last 27 years. Last Feb I was asked if I would transfer over to the sound engineer position, as the other individual was so frustrated he was ready to quit. (We do not have professional sound engineers in the Canadian Forces Music Branch).
I’ve been involved in home studio music production for a number of years and felt that I would like to tackle this challenge. It’s been an interesting year to say the least.
I adopted an 18-piece Show Band that hosts 3 primary vocalists, a full rhythm section (Drum Kit, Percs, Bass, 2 Electric Guitars including Acoustic when needed, Keyboards), 4 Saxes, 3 trombones, 4 trumpets. On top of that I have an additional 4 extra vocalists that all sing both backup and lead giving me up to 7 vocalists at any given time. My 3 primary vocalists all use IEM’s and I use 7 wireless mics.
The equipment I adopted are 4x K-Array subs/6x tops and 4x on stage monitors, 3x Sennheiser wireless transmitters and receivers, 1 x DBX Drive Rack, Yamaha Digital Snake and all snake hardware, 4 Shure UFH-R wireless mics/receivers and 3 Shure UHF wireless mic/receivers plus a host of dynamic and condenser mics.
I mix from a Yamaha LS9-32 with a digital snake. Presently I use 29 channels and have used up to 34 channels in some cases.
I employ 6 monitor mixes and 1 FOH giving me 7 mixes. We do not have a separate monitor mix engineer. I’m it. Oh yes we also use a Smartfade with Martin lights, which I also control.
The learning curve has been steep but I have been able to manage live shows (100- 1500) people. We average 150-300 people a performance. Being military also means not being able to pick the venue so that in itself has presented some interesting challenges.
That’s the background. Now to my problem. I’ve been able to manage the IEM’s and FOH mixes quite well (the odd little tweak for IEM’s). The problem comes from the requests of the other 4 secondary vocalists that are relying upon the on stage monitors. They seem to be the typical vocalist problems when using monitors: one needs more of this, another needs more of that, add more or less eq etc, but once the band has played a few tunes the 2 largest problems are: that they can’t hear themselves or the mix is not balanced enough. The onstage volume without monitors or mains ranges between 91 db-106 db. Add the monitors to this and it adds it’s own colors and stage volume increase.
We have tried to get the horns to play softer but that is not an option, especially the way the arrangements are written. Basically the trumpets are screaming at the top of their range.
To anyone out there what solutions would you suggest?
So far I’ve thought of:
1. Using on stage personal mixes (Axiom or Hear Technologies personal mixers) but have no idea if it will work as I don’t know what is involved;
2. Having those that need monitors all have IEM’s and using no onstage monitors.
3. Maybe instead of me adding more equipment is there something I can do at the board to solve this?
Our shows are 90 –120 min nonstop. One tune basically seques into another, sometimes with a short banter between the vocalists. Trying to get hand signals from the vocalists as to what they want is difficult. We have a talkback mic but as no one leaves the stage it’s hard for them to communicate with me. Finally we have no extra people that can be offstage to relay info or work a monitor board.
Your help would gratefully be appreciated. Again sorry for the long post.
Thanks.
I'm 53 years old and have been involved in the Canadian Military Music Branch as a fulltime musician for the last 27 years. Last Feb I was asked if I would transfer over to the sound engineer position, as the other individual was so frustrated he was ready to quit. (We do not have professional sound engineers in the Canadian Forces Music Branch).
I’ve been involved in home studio music production for a number of years and felt that I would like to tackle this challenge. It’s been an interesting year to say the least.
I adopted an 18-piece Show Band that hosts 3 primary vocalists, a full rhythm section (Drum Kit, Percs, Bass, 2 Electric Guitars including Acoustic when needed, Keyboards), 4 Saxes, 3 trombones, 4 trumpets. On top of that I have an additional 4 extra vocalists that all sing both backup and lead giving me up to 7 vocalists at any given time. My 3 primary vocalists all use IEM’s and I use 7 wireless mics.
The equipment I adopted are 4x K-Array subs/6x tops and 4x on stage monitors, 3x Sennheiser wireless transmitters and receivers, 1 x DBX Drive Rack, Yamaha Digital Snake and all snake hardware, 4 Shure UFH-R wireless mics/receivers and 3 Shure UHF wireless mic/receivers plus a host of dynamic and condenser mics.
I mix from a Yamaha LS9-32 with a digital snake. Presently I use 29 channels and have used up to 34 channels in some cases.
I employ 6 monitor mixes and 1 FOH giving me 7 mixes. We do not have a separate monitor mix engineer. I’m it. Oh yes we also use a Smartfade with Martin lights, which I also control.
The learning curve has been steep but I have been able to manage live shows (100- 1500) people. We average 150-300 people a performance. Being military also means not being able to pick the venue so that in itself has presented some interesting challenges.
That’s the background. Now to my problem. I’ve been able to manage the IEM’s and FOH mixes quite well (the odd little tweak for IEM’s). The problem comes from the requests of the other 4 secondary vocalists that are relying upon the on stage monitors. They seem to be the typical vocalist problems when using monitors: one needs more of this, another needs more of that, add more or less eq etc, but once the band has played a few tunes the 2 largest problems are: that they can’t hear themselves or the mix is not balanced enough. The onstage volume without monitors or mains ranges between 91 db-106 db. Add the monitors to this and it adds it’s own colors and stage volume increase.
We have tried to get the horns to play softer but that is not an option, especially the way the arrangements are written. Basically the trumpets are screaming at the top of their range.
To anyone out there what solutions would you suggest?
So far I’ve thought of:
1. Using on stage personal mixes (Axiom or Hear Technologies personal mixers) but have no idea if it will work as I don’t know what is involved;
2. Having those that need monitors all have IEM’s and using no onstage monitors.
3. Maybe instead of me adding more equipment is there something I can do at the board to solve this?
Our shows are 90 –120 min nonstop. One tune basically seques into another, sometimes with a short banter between the vocalists. Trying to get hand signals from the vocalists as to what they want is difficult. We have a talkback mic but as no one leaves the stage it’s hard for them to communicate with me. Finally we have no extra people that can be offstage to relay info or work a monitor board.
Your help would gratefully be appreciated. Again sorry for the long post.
Thanks.
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