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
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Introduction
My name is Tim Corder. I started this blog in February 2007 because there were so few of what I considered good church audio resources available at the time for my team. Fast forward over 5 years and I'm still at it, sharing learnings about the journey towards making audio great. I go through periods where I post a lot and other times when I don't. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share it all with you. Thanks for visiting! 
Hi Tim, this is great timing for me as we have been using our aviom system for a couple of months now with wedges, and the in-ears arrive next week!
Thanks for being such a great resource. We will be sure to set up some ambient mics.
One thing though, when I try to play the audio file of the extras channel on this page it says “error opening file”. I can’t get it to play – can you check it’s all linked up properly? Thanks.
Mark.
Great post. What shotgun mics are you using for ambience? We are looking to move to stereo ears, and right now we are using Crown PCC-160s and small diaphragm condensers for ambient mics, but there is just something missing in our mixes with those ambiences.
Also, just from the clip you posted I really like the song. Is it a song by one of your Kensington crew? I’d really love to get a copy of the mixed audio.
Tim-
Just wanted to say a huge thank you for starting this series of posts. We are sturggling with musician buy-in for our in-ear system, so I am really excited to see what you put up here and how I am able to apply it to our context. Looking forward to the next posts!
Ethan
Ethan Bolvi
Technical Director
Apex Community Church
Thanks Mark! The post accidentally went live 12 hours early before the media was up on the server, so that was the problem. It should be fixed now!
Blake – we use some really inexpensive Audio Technica 835 shotguns. I also started out with a similar setup to what you’re using and the shotguns made a HUGE difference in picking up what I wanted (crowd) without adding so much room and stage wash. Highly recommend!
The song is called “In All Things”, written and performed by our music director, Danny Cox. He has a new record coming out in a few weeks (it will be on iTunes) and this song is the title track. I plan to post the broadcast mix of these two songs from this night at the end of the series for context on the finished product as heard in the house and on broadcast. Glad you like the tune!
Awesome! Thanks so much for this series. I know we all cherish ideas from others. It definitely helps out us smaller church guys like myself. Thanks for all you do!
Hey man. Killer stuff here! Any chances I could post this series you did on my blog? This was something I was planning to work on next and would love to have some of your reference stuff available for people who read it.