Inside IEM Mixes: Electric

Today we’re continuing the series on IEM mixes.  I’m in my fourth year mixing at Kensington and when I started here, every artist on stage used a wedge and those wedge mixes were created for better or for worse at FOH.  The job was daunting, to say the least.  Fast forward to today and all but three artists (40+) now use IEM solely when they play at our main Troy campus (the portable campuses have not begun transitioning to IEM yet but hopefully soon!).  All of these things I’m sharing in this series of posts are things we’ve learned along the way in order to gain such wide acceptance from artists.  This is by no means the only way to do it but it is OUR way.

The first IEM mix we’re going to evaluate is lead guitar. Most of our worship arrangements are electric driven so this is a pretty important place to start. Our mixes are generally very dry and we use the extras channels to add space when desired. I’ve worked with artists who like more processing in their ears but this setup seems to work for our artists since we don’t have a dedicated monitor engineer.  There isn’t any significant processing on the mixes you’re going to listen to – they are created with a stereo PQ channel on the Venue, the on-board limiter is engaged to protect the output on the top end, and that mix then feeds the wired IEM system.

I have two samples from tunes to listen to for the electric guitar artist. This first one is from “My Savior, My God”. The instrumentation is electric, acoustic, bass, drums, lead vocal, and BGV. It sounds a little cliche, but you’ll quickly see as we go through this series that each person’s mix probably starts with a “more me” philosophy. This makes sense when you remember that I strongly encourage all of our artists to wear both ears all the time and this results in lots of isolation from the outside world in what they’re hearing. The result is a big need to hear what the artist is doing individually, and then surround that with the other instruments to provide timing, pitch, and ensemble. The band is not playing to a click in this one so you’ll see where our artist placed the drums in relation to everything else. I think it is interesting how out front his guitar really is in his mix, yet you can clearly maintain the placement of the kit, vocal, and the worship leader’s acoustic.

DISCLAIMER – this obviously isn’t the only way to build an IEM mix but hopefully it is helpful to hear what a really good musician is listening to.

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The second sample is a little different in the band is playing to a click & track. At the start of the tune, you’ll hear the count off and a really broken down intro. The electric is just doing atmosphere stuff at the beginning and really kicks in at 1:12. The interesting thing here is the difference in placement between the click and the drum kit in this one. As I listen to the mixes that most of our guys dial in, it seems when playing to a click, everyone really dials into that click and keeps it out front with the kit tucking in behind it. This might just be a preference thing but it works for our guys since everyone is so used to playing to a click. Obviously your mileage may vary.

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If you have any questions based on what you’re hearing, feel free to use the comments on this post for discussion.

Next time: IEM mixes for bass

New series…Inside IEM Mixes

One of the biggest questions and challenges I hear about from other audio guys, especially in churches, has to do with IEM mixes – what should be in them, what do good ones sound like, how do you help your artists have successful mixes, etc. etc.

Today we’re going to start a little journey over the next 2 weeks to cover each major instrument – bass, electric, keys, drums, and vocals – and talk about what makes good mixes for each category.  I also have actual samples that I have recorded so you can hear what real guys dialed in and we’ll analyze each one.  I’ll be posting Mon-Wed-Fri this week and next to continue this little series.

To start things off, I want to refer you to a video blog I did a few months ago about our PQ system that might be helpful so you can see more about how our particular system functions for our artists, just for context.

Next, a tool that is REALLY critical to good IEM mixes is what we call our “extras channel”.  A common complaint you’ll hear from artists who are first transitioning to IEM is that it can feel really disconnecting and isolating.  All of a sudden, guys hear themselves in glaring detail – for good and for bad.  If the tone is aweful, it’s much easier to ignore it when its just coming from an amp at your feet or a wedge.  When it’s in your ear, there’s no escaping it.  The biggest trick to making the ears feel real and less isolating is effective use of ambience mics.  I’ve written about this before, but we have three sets of ambience mics that I use as the primary foundation of our “extras channel” – a set of shotguns on the side of the stage, a set of PCC mics on the 1/3 and 2/3 lines of our stage lip, and a set of small diaphragm condensors hanging over the crowd about half way back.  These mics are mixed on a stereo aux that is fed to the IEM.

The “extras channel” allows the artist to decide how isolated they want to feel when they’re wearing their IEMs.  It is really important that this mix be stereo so it will feel right.  A couple of our guys choose to have mono extras just because they want to use one of their PQ channels for something else, but for the majority of artists I don’t recommend letting them go mono.  Stereo is really important.

Along with the ambience mics, I also mix post fader sources for anything else the artist might need when they AREN’T playing so they can remain connected to what’s going on – speaker and greeter mics, video playback sources that might role while they’re waiting to play, and talkback from the stage manager so they can hear rehearsal requests and communicate back and forth.

Here’s a sample of what the “extras channel” sounds like when we isolate it all by itself during a worship tune.  It really doesn’t sound like much on its own, but the presence that this adds to the mix has done wonders for IEM acceptance at Kensington.  If you don’t have something like this in your ear mixes, you don’t know what you’re missing!

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Next time:  electric guitar IEM mix

IEM Choices

The past few weeks have been spent doing research and preparing a proposal for an IEM system solution for our portable campuses.  The Troy main campus has over 90% acceptance of IEM over wedges and the results in lowering our stage volume have been awesome, especially in partnership with the on-stage PQ controllers.  However, campuses use wedges exclusively, only with the current exception of the drummer.

There are lots and lots of options when it comes to providing ear pieces for our music team.  Because these will be universal fit, the players are narrowed down a tad, but its still dizzying to consider all of the choices – Shure, Future Sonics, Westone, and Ultimate Ears.  Of these, the Future Sonics Atrio M5 series are my favorite sounding pieces at any price.  They are the only ones on the market that are 100% armature-free which also means a single full range driver with no crossover.  The result is thick, tight low end response and very natural high end that is pristine without sounding hyped.  The difference is pretty remarkable.

However, when it comes to outfitting a department, Shure’s inventory and support seems to be untouchable by the others.  If we’re going to own a bunch of universal fit pieces between 5 campuses, being able to stock bulk orders of the replacement foam becomes extremely important.  Shure is the only one I’m aware of who can meet this criteria.  They even upgraded the material in the past few months away from the yellow foam that was functional but too scratchy in the ear and wore out quickly to a new black material that is denser, sounds better, and stays cleaner longer.

Second, and just as important, is the warranty and support.  Recently I had a couple sets of E4′s that started having what I would consider driver issues where one side either stopped working or didn’t sound quite right (and cleaning them thoroughly didn’t solve the problem).  For less than $10 per set, sending in these broken units to Shure gives you a brand new set a week or two later.

I’m curious if anyone has similar support stories about the other manufacturers.  It seems the trend I see across large programs like ours is that while there may be other choices that sound better, Shure is the staple for ear pieces because of the ease of acquiring large quantities of replacement foam and a generous warranty/service policy.

What do you think?