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