The original high quality example Wave files mentioned can be downloaded from Ethan’s web site: http://www.ethanwiner.com/aes

IN THE STUDIO WITH MICHAEL JACKSON by Bruce Swedien

No one was closer to Michael Jackson at the height of his creative powers than Bruce Swedien, the five-time Grammy winner who, with Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, formed the trio responsible for the sound of Jackson’s records – records that topped the charts and shook the world. Friend, co-creator, and colleague, Bruce Swedien was a seasoned recording engineer-plucked from a job at legendary Universal Audio in Chicago – when he began working with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones on the soundtrack to The Wiz, and he was the master technician who gave the records their sound as the trio progressed to Jackson’s greatest triumphs, Off the Wall and the iconic, history-making Thriller, which revolutionized music and video and fixed Jackson in culture as the King of Pop. In the Studio with Michael Jackson is the chronicle of those times, when everything was about the music, the magic, and the amazing talent of a man who changed the face of pop music – and culture – forever. In his laid-back style, Bruce Swedien offers anecdotes about being part of Quincy Jones’ extended “family” and reveals the technical details of creating Michael Jackson’s biggest-selling albums, as well as Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory. Including over 100 photos, In the Studio with Michael Jackson provides an insider’s look that will thrill anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of hit making and the history of some of America’s most influential music.

HOW DOES IT SOUND NOW? LEGENDARY ENGINEERS & VINTAGE GEAR by Gary Gottlieb

Chet Atkins was playing his guitar when a woman approached him. She said, “That guitar sounds beautiful.” Chet immediately quit playing. Staring her in the eyes, he asked, “How does it sound now?” The quality of the sound in Chet’s case clearly rested with the player, not the instrument, and the quality of our product ultimately lies with us as engineers and producers, not with the gear we use. How Does It Sound Now? Legendary Engineers and Vintage Gear contains insightful interviews with 31 of the most famous audio engineers of all time on how they utilized (and in some cases invented) classic analog recording hardware to make some of the highest quality recordings of all time. Each interview provides a walkthrough of audio and music history as you learn how some of your favorite recordings came to be made. But the interviews don’t only reveal what gear was used and why. Throughout the discussions, each interviewee brings up how creating quality recordings was and always will be the ultimate goal of the engineer. And of course, a big reason why each of these legendary engineers was so successful was that their standards for quality were so high. The interviews are loaded with advice and insight on how recording is an art form and how one might go about becoming a master.

(All visual & music content in the Chasing Stars clip is originally created for this service by Kensington artists…)

Because of my heritage in the Church of Christ, I have lots of experience with acappella vocals.  I’ve always found this background served me well as an engineer.  If you can mix/blend 4 or 5 part contemporary vocal stuff, it seems like mixing a band is often times MUCH simpler.  My background made a big difference in mixing bands with money vocals like Avalon or Huey Lewis.

Below are some samples of what we did.  Everything you’ll hear, including the percussion, is all vocal.  Each song is comprised of 6-10 bed vocals – all doubled.  Add lead vocal, bass, and percussion and all told, most tunes come in with anywhere from 24-40 tracks.  I work exclusively in ProTools and this was my first project to do completely in new Version 8.  I have about 90 hours in the project – 35 tracking and 55 editing, tuning, & mixing.  My friend Michael Forehand, a great engineer himself, mastered everything for me and I’m very pleased with the finished result.  Check it out and if you’re interested in more about Chris or picking this up for yourself, head over to his website at chrislindseymusic.com

Let God Arise

Oh The Deep Deep Love

Mighty To Save

]]> http://www.cordernotes.com/blog/other/we-believe/feed 0 http://www.cordernotes.com/blog/monitors/the-iem-missing-piece http://www.cordernotes.com/blog/monitors/the-iem-missing-piece#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:00:46 +0000 timcorder http://www.cordernotes.com/blog/?p=1656 This one goes in the category of why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Last time I wrote about the improvements to our IEM system that have come from implementing a new transmitter/receiver combo and some additional ear piece options.  The problem with adding more wireless into an already congested environment is a higher probability of failure.  I’ve personally managed to avoid Murphy’s Law when it comes to IEM for a long time but I realize it was only a matter of time before someone’s system failed during a service and we’d be in big trouble.

Enter Sidefills.  A friend spent a couple services with me post-Christmas and suggested that what we were missing was a good holistic stereo mix that will fill in the missing pieces when someone pulls an ear out and also provide some added energy to the first couple rows that might be a tad light from the PA over their heads.  It seemed like a good idea.

In my past life as a monitor engineer, sidefills were an important part of getting a great onstage sound since I worked with lots of vocal groups who would often times only wear 1 ear anyway.  For some reason, I never even considered it at KCC since our old PA already put energy everywhere except where I really wanted it – the prospect of adding an additional full-range sound source was unappealing.  However, in the new reality of a controlled PA without a ton of stage spill, it seemed possible this might just work.

Work it does.  I have a set of EAW KF300s that have been unused for a while.  I put them on top of the subs, about 5 feet off the ground, pointed in towards center stage.  Stereo mix gives more clarity & separation than mono, add some EQ to smooth out the rough edges of the boxes themselves, and add a few milliseconds of delay to the PA so the clusters in the air are in relative time alignment with the sidefills and the result is really good.  I’m feeding these boxes from FOH subgroups so they essentially get a rebalanced FOH post fader mix.  The mix is split up to rhythm, band, and vocals.  Using this approach keeps them specifically music-focused – playback and speech mics stay out of them.

We still keep a set of wedges on the front row for lead vocal monitors.  The addition of the sidefills allows the vocal to literally be surrounded by themselves – just a touch of vocal in those front wedges pulls the singer’s image forward.  Needing less band in those front wedges reduces mud heard at FOH since the sidefills are actually working with and as a part of the PA rather than against it.  I find myself putting 100% vocal in them, 80 or 90% band, and 60% rhythm (since the acoustic kit on stage adds its own ambient sound).

If you mix on a primarily IEM stage as I am and haven’t revisited sidefills in a while, this experience enthusiastically suggests they’re worth a try.

First, a few weeks before Christmas we were finally able to upgrade from wired IEMs driven from a headphone amp to Sennheiser EW300G3’s.  The difference has been awesome in a few ways.  First, the sonic quality of the 300s is nothing short of amazing.  The low end is tight, the top end natural.  When paired up with a good set of ear pieces, I’ve been blown away by the mixes some of our guys are dialing in.  Second, not being tied to the IEM wired cable has made a big difference in the comfort level of our artists.  Often times we had to be very careful in how the service was programmed to make sure artists had ample time to get on stage, plug in their ears, put on guitars, tune, etc.  If something went wrong plugging in their ears or they accidentally pulled the cable out, we were in trouble.  Along with using more wireless instruments (I’ll write about this soon), the result has been a much smoother & more polished presentation.

We purchased 4 transmitters & 6 receiver beltpacks.  For the majority of things we do, we will use the 4 transmitters/beltpacks, along with our existing PSM600 and 2 wired mixes for keys & drums.  With some extra beltpacks for the 300s and our PSM600, we can easily expand by adding a few more mono mixes the few times a year they are needed.  It is so hard to justify extra transmitters in a rack if they aren’t going to be used very often so this seems like a reasonable compromise.

A big surprise is how much some of our female artists enjoy the bundled Sennheiser ear bud – the IE4.  The sound quality of the buds is probably on par with a Shure SCL3 or good set of iPod buds.  What is appealing about them, though, is how well they seem to fit smaller ears.  Our vocal director, who’s been wearing our generic Shure pieces for a year and a half or so, felt like these were the most comfortable thing and for the first time she can actually forget she’s wearing them.  Definitely a good problem solver.

Another important piece of the puzzle is the addition of some Westone UM2’s to our inventory.  After someone recommended trying them out, I’ve finally found something to make me give up my Future Sonics that I’ve had forever.  These are the most comfortable universal fit I’ve ever worn and they are the first universal bud that I’ve heard with really natural midrange, which is really important for vocals & guitars.  The Shures, Future Sonics, and Ultimate Ears I’ve heard all can sound really nice in the low and high ranges, but often times feel a little scooped, honky, or just otherwise unnatural in the midrange.  The Westones seem to bring a lot of that presence back.  Best of all, the Shure foamie’s I can purchase in bulk fit on these as well so its a win on all fronts.  Adding Westone’s into the mix have brought 2 of our hold-out musicians into the IEM fold.  Finally they feel like the guitar sound they hear in the ears feels like what it should actually sound like.

I’ve been really disappointed with the build quality of the Shure SCL3’s and 4’s so time will tell if the Westone’s can withstand heavy use.

So from a music team standpoint, we now have 100% of our band members transitioned to IEM.  Next time I’m going to outline another addition to our monitoring system that feels like its filled in the missing link in the chain.

This is just a quick post to let you know I’m still here and will be back regularly updating this site once we get on the other side of Christmas.  For the past year I’ve managed to always have 8 or 10 posts in the queue so its made it easy to keep things fresh on here.  With all of the life things happening the past few months (a trip to South Africa, lots of responsibilities at work, and two kids at home that keep getting bigger and bigger every day), I’ve not been able to find the extra time to devote to writing.

BUT…

I have lots to write about.  The trip to South Africa was life changing in lots of ways and I want to share some of what we experienced and God taught me through the trip.  We just released a DVD of Danny Cox’s CD release show from October and it turned out so great.  I can’t wait to share a few clips!  I think this disc captures the essence of what we’re trying to do musically and artistically at Kensington better than anything I’ve ever seen us release.  I’m currently in the throws of 32 Christmas at Kensington services between 6 campuses.  Last week was my campus’ heavy rehearsal week.  I’ll be mixing 10 of those 32 services at the main campus in Troy so if you’re in the area for Christmas, come check it out.  This year is very music heavy (I think there are 6 or 7 tunes in the day) so the rehearsals were extra intense.  God’s also doing some crazy stuff right now that I hope I can talk more about soon.

I’m now the dad of a 4 year old and 1 year old which is so hard to believe.  Time is REALLY flying with Maddie & Brady!  But a couple of big “landmark” dates are coming, I guess.  January 10th I’ll turn the big 3-0.  I know to most that I talk to who are older than me, 30’s not that big of a deal but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.  I guess there’s a lot of life evaluation sort of stuff going on in my head right now, which is probably good.  But still.  Then on top of that, Mindy and I will celebrate our 6th anniversary in February.

All of this to say I will be back come January.  Lots to share and lots to catch up on.  See you then!

I’ll leave you with a clip from the concert in Cape Town with Acappella Classic.  We started the show with having the group’s founder, Keith Lancaster, come out on stage all by himself, sing a bit, and then take it from there.  This clip is from my Flip Camera sitting at FOH but I think it captures a bit of the genuine excitement and joy we experienced from the thousands of people who came to the concerts in South Africa.  You’ll see what I mean that the crowds literally knew the words and harmonies to every single song in the set list.  The experience was one I will never forget!

I’m probably going to take a few weeks away from the blog while life is especially crazy. This past week, our music director, Danny Cox, released a new CD and we hosted a release concert in our main auditorium on Friday night.  It was a really special night as we also captured the show for potential DVD release.  The team on stage and behind the scenes knocked the entire night out of the park and it was such a great experience to be a part of.  Hopefully I can post some video down the road of some cool moments from the night.  Personally, as a fan of Danny’s music, I think it was one of the major highlights of my time at Kensington…let alone having the honor to mix it!

A week from Wednesday, I’m leaving on a very special music mission trip to South Africa that will take me to Johannesburg and Capetown mixing for a group of guys who were musical heros growing up.  Some of you may be familiar with the group Acappella – a contemporary all vocal christian group a.la. Rockapella or Take6 that has been singing in some form or another for over 25 years.  Growing up they were a huge influence on me and it was a great experience as I was building a professional portfolio to be able to work for the Aca Company back in 2002.  A reunion group of some of the old members has formed, called Acappella Classic, to do an extremely limited number of dates over the next few years internationally and I’ve been asked to mix their shows and road manage when I can get away from my regular gig at Kensington.  In addition to the tour in South Africa, there are plans for a central European tour next year, as well as an appearance in Nashville, TN next summer.

I’m really excited to embark on an adventure outside of the States for the first time.  The only bummer is that my wife isn’t able to join and it will be REALLY hard to be away from my family for 12 days (the longest we’ve ever been apart).  If you wouldn’t mind, I’d greatly appreciate prayers for safe travels and awesome ministry opportunities to be Jesus in a new place to new people.

Here’s a clip I found on Youtube of Acappella from back in the day…

I will return in a few weeks and we’ll be head deep into the marathon to Christmas.  Until then…

Following are a few tips that you might consider following when micing musical instruments for sound reinforcement.

• Try first to get the instrument to sound good acoustically before miking it.
• Use a mic with a frequency response that is limited to the frequency range of the instrument.
• To determine a good starting mic position, try closing one ear with your finger. Listen to the sound source with the other ear and move around until you find a spot that sounds good – put the mic there.  Remember, this may not be practical (or healthy) for extremely close placement near loud sources.
• Remember that the closer a mic is to a sound source, the louder the source is compared to reverberation or ambient noise.
• Place the mic only as close as necessary, keeping in mind proximity effect.
• When possible, use as few microphones as possible due to the Potential Acoustic Gain rule which tells us (among other things) that the volume level of a system must be turned down for every mic added in order to prevent feedback.
• If the sound from your loudspeakers is distorted even though you did not exceed a normal mixer level, the mic signal may be overloading your mixer’s input.  To correct this situation, use an in-line attenuator or pad to reduce the signal level from the microphone, or just back it away from the source some.
• More than anything, experiment and listen!

(Thanks to Shure for the tips.)

Check out a really cool video from Digidesign on the Making of the Venue platform.  One of the best parts of partnering with Digi is the accessibility of the leadership team and this video is a great example.  I’m not aware of another console manufacturer with a more public and accessible team.

Download it here. (10 mb .pdf)

Mics #1 are a set of Audio Technica 835 shotgun mics (purchased for this project) on the outside corners of our stage, mounted just under our side screens, pointed out into the room.  These are the primary audience pickup source because so much of the audience’s energy is directed towards the stage that these do a great job of capturing without adding too much PA to the mix.  They’re inexpensive and sound good for what I’m using them for.  You could certainly upgrade the make/model here to something more boutique but this serves our purposes well.

Mics #2 are a set of Crown PCCs placed on the lip of the stage at the 1/3 and 2/3 lines from left to right.  These combine with the shotguns to provide some presence and immediacy to the signal since another set of shotguns wouldn’t be acceptable aesthetically in these positions.

Mics #3 are a pair of Shure SM81s hung from the first catwalk, almost at the half way point of the room, also on the 1/3 and 2/3 lines to the stage.  These mics serve almost entirely the purpose of room ambience – making the mix sound like it is happening in the auditorium rather than happening in a dead studio.

The three sets of ambience mics serve dual purpose for us – ambience for IEM and ambience for the broadcast/record feed.  In the IEM world, we lean most heavily on the shotguns at the front of the room at the corners of the stage and supplement that with the PCCs on the front of the stage towards the center.  These mics are used mainly because they provide localization of what the artist is hearing in their ears.  For example, when someone to the artist’s right calls to the stage, we want everyone on stage to turn their head in that direction.  Likewise, if someone on the front row is singing their heart out, it’s cool for the artists to be able to sense that from those PCCs on the front of the stage.  That localization goes leaps and bounds towards breaking down the isolation.  Every artist is different with how much ambience is just right.

We may still look to add an additional set or two but I’m stuck because adding them will mean needing to deal with delay times between those mics and the rest currently in place.  Two of my current three sets are directly in line with the PA so there’s little issue there.  The delay induced by the third set certainly does some phase stuff to the mix but the added space it puts in the mix when the speaker is up is worth the compromise to me.  So we’ve dodged the bullet to this point and I’d like to avoid having to go there with more mics.  This is one of the only limitations of creating the broadcast mix inside the Venue rather than in an outboard mixer/processor.  There is no way to have the degree of time alignment control that would be needed in the broadcast feed without making other more significant sacrifices.

The shotguns are the most important piece of the puzzle for me because their pickup pattern is most effective at picking up the audience and rejecting PA and stage bleed.  The PCCs are next important to fill in the center stage imaging – think of the shotguns panned hard left and right and the PCCs panned at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock or 10 and 2.  The hanging mics are almost halfway back in the room and that time delay adds depth to the ambience space. For IEMs, it can be distracting.  But for broadcast, it enhances the size of the room and makes it feel more real when you’re listening back.

Watch the music one first for more on our mission and some stories about our incredible artist team, then check out my team’s profile.

I’ve also seen another forum where one poster blasted me and called me a moron for approaching this topic.  It has been fun to see how literally some people take this whole thing and think I’m somehow saying you should literally mix your show from the gain knobs or advocate poor gain structure in your console or the rest of the system.  QUITE the opposite.  I run my console really hot because we all think the Digidesign mic pre sounds better when its hit pretty hard and the desk as a whole sounds great when you get up and go with it.  I think some are missing the point of my suggested unity mixing completely, so let’s dive into this just a bit to hopefully clear it up.

The whole point of this discussion is to make the inputs well mixed while setting gain, rather than just blindly going channel by channel and setting each to maximum individual gain.  It doesn’t have to be perfect but just get things in the neighborhood so you don’t have to run some faders -30 or -40 dB below others.  This makes mixing monitors from the same desk (which we do at every Kensington campus) MUCH easier.  In this configuration, the inputs are well mixed, so that the sends to the monitor mixes and FOH faders are (more or less) at the same place across the board, making adjustments for the band a lot easier.  If I know the band well, I can often dial in their monitor mixes from the FOH board ahead of soundcheck and nail it with few, if any, changes needed.  We’re still running the inputs as a whole as hot as they should be through the desk so let’s not get into the whole topic of maximizing digital bits in the desk and the like.

Another example… imagine trying to adjust a monitor send, pre-fader of course:

A) with a very hot input, therefore with the FOH fader pulled down a lot, and
B) with a low input setting, with the fader pushed nearly all the way up . . .

‘A’ will be very sensitive to tiny adjustments at 9 o’clock and
‘B’ will need large movements at 4 o’clock.

With a mess like this all over a big mix, the experience is not nice trying to keep the band happy with their wedges and that is what gets so many of our engineers in trouble!

Second, if you end up with a difference, for whatever reason, where one fader is sitting at -30 or -40 dB most of the time, you have a MUCH harder time mixing due to the same amount of travel for a 3dB difference at or near unity, now gives you a 10-20 db difference with every move (Or whatever it works out to on the board, but a LARGE difference).  This makes fine tuning a mix really difficult.

That’s it.  Does this help make the concept clearer at all?

These two tunes are from an all-worship series we did in late August/early September. First, “My Savior, My God”…

Next, a Danny Cox original I’ve posted before but with a fresh mix of the track…

Thanks everybody.  Back to regularly scheduled programming next time around.

As with some of the other mixes we’ve discussed, our vocalists seem to largely prefer their voices dry…if they want to wetten things up, adding more of the extras channel does the trick.  This works well in our particular setup since the vocals are fed to the IEM system direct off of board channels – adding verb would increase the complexity of routing.

I strongly encourage everyone who wears ears to keep both sides in all the time.  My primary reasoning is that your brain does a cool thing when it receives similar input from both ears in summing that source 6 dB internally.  So, if you only wear one ear, you’re going to have to turn up your IEM mix approximately 6 dB in order for it to feel as loud as both ears in.  Obviously you have to be really careful with this because an untrained artist could easily cause themselves hearing damage night after night of crazy levels in their IEM.

I say all that to say, the mix an artist wants changes pretty dramatically depending on whether they are wearing one or two ears.  These mixes you’re going to listen to today are one ear in mixes, so you’ll find that the acoustic, vocal, and click are WAY more out front then in the other mixes we’ve analyzed since the artist is getting a lot of their sound ambiently through their other ear not wearing the IEM.

Our philosophy at Kensington regarding ears has been to do everything possible to gain band acceptance.  By doing that, the stage volume lowers significantly and vocals have a much easier time just hearing themselves through a wedge.  I’ve mentioned that we have 6 channels of wired ears and 1 wireless transmitter/receiver system.  Because of this wireless limitation, we haven’t pushed very many vocalists to jump to ears.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since vocalists often have a much harder time adjusting to performing through IEM systems then instrumentalists because it can effect their pitch center, how loudly they perceive their head voice, etc.  So we’ve had good success getting musicians on ears and, by doing that, getting enough sonic space on stage for the vocalists to be able to hear themselves comfortably through wedges and not have to deal with their transition yet.

I’ve heard from another large church that they have the policy that a new vocalist must sing BGV on ears for at least 6 months in order to get used to them before they would ever ask them to sing lead VOX.  I can certainly see the wisdom in that approach.

We’ll wrap this whole thing up next time with the live mixes of the 2 songs we’ve been using for test material so you can hear overall context.  See you then!

On a given week, we submix as many as three keys sources in mono to send to the IEMs. The first source is Ivory from our Slam Grand.  If the piano shell is not in the set, often times I will still run MIDI out of the primary keyboard into the Ivory system so that tone is available if we want a grand piano patch in the day.  The other two inputs are our house keys – a Yamaha Motif8 and a Korg Triton.  Every once in a while one of our artists might bring in their own boards but it doesn’t happen very often in a month.

I was concerned when we first installed our IEM system that the keys would need to be in stereo just like the drum kit in the ears mixes and that would present channel count issues with our desired allocation.  Thankfully, I don’t think anyone has ever commented on the keys being submixed to mono rather than stereo.  As a result, the only truly stereo submixes in the ears are the drum mix and the extras channels.  Everything else goes to the IEMs in mono and can be panned around in each individual mix as desired.

I’ve received a few questions via email for more information about the ambience mics specifically so I am preparing more info about that to tag onto the end of this series.

With that said, check this out…

Next time we’ll listen to the final IEM mix – lead vocal/worship leader.  Thanks for reading!

Yesterday I re-discovered a concert that I consider a benchmark for the current state of artistic presentations.  A couple years ago Keith Urban introduced the most effective use of IMAG in a concert that I’ve ever experienced and the entire show is flat out incredible.  Check out this opening tune, especially about a minute and a half in once the band fully kicks in.  Whether you’re a fan of country or not, I think the creative use of IMAG, produced video content, lighting, staging, and a really great DVD audio mix makes Keith Urban’s “Love, Pain, & the Whole Crazy Thing” DVD a must-watch.

When we first adapted the PQ system for our IEM mixes, I was concerned that a stereo drum mix that everyone shared might cause problems.  The reality couldn’t be further from that.  A stereo aux creates the submix for the drums and it is slaved to the channel pan so whatever panning is done for the house translates to the ears.  I actually leave the sends to this aux set to unity in my default console setup.  That way, as I soundcheck the drums, I can build my house mix with the faders near unity and it translates almost perfectly to the ears.  It is RARE to need to tweak the mix for the ears – I actually can’t tell you the last time I listened to it other than preparing for these posts.  It just works every time.

By now you should be sensing some trends.  The ears mixes are pretty dry and really simple.  If we had a separate monitor desk, I’m sure there are more things we could do to make the environment even better for the artists (things like manually riding audience levels, riding solos, adding effects if desired, etc) but this system works for our guys, as evidenced by the wide acceptance factor.

Song #1 is still “My Savior, My God”.  Check it out…

Song #2 adds the click and track.  Again the click takes almost singular focus in the mix since everyone is locking to it.  I can’t speak very much into what it takes to be successful with the whole click track thing from an artist perspective.  Kensington has been using click’s for so long that it was just something we do by the time I got here.

Again, if there are questions, let’s use the comments section to discuss.

Next time:  keys mixes.  We’ll have to use different songs then the ones we’ve been using so far since there wasn’t a keys player in this band.  It will be good to change it up a bit, as well!

Right now is a good time to stress the importance of good ear pieces in order to achieve wide acceptance.  When I started at Kensington, all that we owned were some Shure E1s and NO ONE was excited to put those things on for anything.  The first time we did a band with ears for a holiday, everyone but the bass player wore E1s and it was painful.  Now we use Shure products exclusively (I’ve written about this before – check the archives if you’re interested in why) and have a mix of SCL3, SCL4, and SCL5’s.  Since I consider us still in the early days of a transition campus-wide to IEM, only a small handful of our artists own their own ear pieces.  Most use our house sets.  We stock the replacement foam and change it for each set whenever a new artist is using them.

Focusing now on the mix, our artists get a stereo drum mix to their PQ mixer for their IEMs. Everyone gets the same drum mix and we find that works fine for us. The only exception is that the bass player also gets the kick channel individually in addition to the stereo mix since bass players always want more kick then the rest of the band. When you listen to the first clip from “My Savior, My God”, the first thing that jumps out is the placement of kick and bass in relation to everything else in the mix. There’s also quite a bit more of the extras channels in this mix then in the electric mix we listened to last time. One caveat though – due to the channel limitations of our system on this particular night, the bass player chose to have mono extras rather than the normal stereo. Personally the stereo part of ambience is really important to me but this particular artist isn’t reliant on ambience so its a simple trade off. I’m actually surprised in listening to his mix that he has this much extras present. Regardless…

The second clip, like last time, adds a click and track into the mix. What is interesting is that with this mix, the click is pretty buried. In fact, once the drums kick in I don’t think it is very present at all. Again you can get a better idea of the importance of the extras channel in the mix when you hear the crowd singing along.

Again, if there are questions, let’s use the comments section for this. I’m really not sure what else is helpful to share.

Next time: drums IEM mixes

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.

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.

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

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!

Next time:  electric guitar IEM mix