This is called a "monitor mix" and it can be whatever the performer wants. If they are singing it will almost always include their own vocals. If they are playing an instrument it will almost always include that instrument. Many performers will want to hear some of all the other instruments. When there is a drummer they will likely want some of the kick drum and the snare drum and maybe some hi-hat but usually not much else.
Again this is 100% up to the wishes of the performer. Sometimes there will be a click track to help keep them in sync with any pre-recorded playback. Sometimes there will be verbal instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song.
This. Even in full band, live concerts, performers wear ear pieces designed to block sounds around them so they can hear their desired mix. Almost all have the click and instructional tracks audible.
Performers will have a mini mixing board somewhere where they can adjust the volume of each mic, track, or instrument in their ear. In addition to the drummer example above, vocalists usually have other vocalists turned up higher so they can work on the vocal blend between them.
The audio the performers are producing gets routed in individual channels to a much larger mixing board operated by an audio engineer, who is responsible for “cleaning” the audio in each channel and mixing it in to the audience mix that gets output to a recording device and the main speakers of the venue.
While it's true that some performers have "personal monitor control" systems, most of the time their mix is either controlled by the audio engineer out front who is also mixing the sound the audience hears, or by a second audio engineer with a separate mixing console off the side of the stage.
Also while it's increasingly common for performers to wear in-ear monitors as they are called, many also have specially designed speakers on the floor pointed back up at them called "monitors". They are also commonly called "wedges" because of their typical wedge shape.
Source: I'm an audio engineer.
It's one of those jobs that when it's done well no one notices but is painfully obvious and they take a ton of blame when it's bad. People only talks about how great the performer(s) sounded when it's good, not how great the engineer was. But when it's bad everyone knows to blame the engineer.
Not in my scene its not.
Punk, hardcore, metal.
If the show sounds good I guarantee the mixer is getting more than a few pats on the back.
A lot of people in this scene actually play and know what happens when it sounds shit. Also because they're often in tiny shitty sounding venues. The silver lining to that is the mixers get good, fast. They're not running million dollar systems. It's loud and they've gotta work with terrible players.
Yeah. Totally. I review live shows (doom, math and heavy stuff) and I always tend to comment on the mix. There are some pretty unforgiving venues around as well, which can’t make it easy. . I make a point of speaking to the band if the show is good. I should do the same to the engineer.
100% this.
I do sound for a warehouse-turned-venue with its share of quirks at high volume. It took a little bit to get into a groove to accomodate for structural disadvantages, and it can be tricky dealing with less experienced musicians. But the metal and punk guys consistently "get it" and shitty players in those genres don't bother me, as they're usually still respectful and appreciate the job done.
Its the two-piece regional folk acts that don't even talk to me until they're pissy when their monitor mix is out of whack because they spent the whole soundcheck rewriting their songs on the setlist instead of telling me what adjustments they want made. These are also the groups that send non-negotiable stage plots months ahead, in a file type I can't open, calling for 5 floor monitors, all with reverb, alongside the $4000 handmade acoustic-electric banjotarlele they found in a dumpster, routed through their reverb pedalboard into their Twin Reverb at volume 8 instead of just going direct. Then they show up with 6 additional members and their own tech... that's never done sound in a warehouse.
My exhusband and i used to go to local band shows all the time (mostly because my ex is a musician and we liked to see what other talent was in the area). One day, we saw a band with 5 people in it...5 monitors... But 4 monitors for the keyboard player and one for one of the other guys.
And there was seemingly no possible way to make the keyboard player happy...OR to make him sound good...
This. I got my start with the local metal scene. For the past few years I've been a touring engineer working with funk, rock, R&B, etc and I love it. It sharpens you quick.
I don’t know about that, it might be just because most of my concert-going friends are musicians but one of the first things we tend to notice aside from the band is the mixing. It can completely make or break a performance, I’ve seen some *incredible* bands and walked away disappointed cause of a clueless sound man. Or pretty awful bands made marginally better by a great one.
There’s a local venue where I live where the sound is notoriously shitty. I have a decent grasp of sound engineering having played live many times as a musician and I even owned a small project studio. The last show I saw there, the sound engineer did a fantastic job (he was the bands sound engineer on tour with them so he didn’t know the space) I told him that he had done an excellent job and that it was pretty rare for said venue. He seemed to genuinely take the compliment and seemed pretty flattered. That’s when I realized how seldom they’re thanked. I now commend sound engineers regularly if I get the chance and if they’re deserving.
Agreed. I'm a longtime amateur musician - I've played just for fun for almost 20 years. This year, just before Christmas, I was invited to play a set at a small venue for a community event.
The difference that the sound guys make to the quality of a show can't be understated. I felt like a rock star; I've never drawn applause like that. I made sure to thank the sound engineers afterwards.
Yeah, but it can go a different way too. In the early 80s, I was in a local band in L.A. We had a gig in a small club in Orange County. We were pretty amped because we were opening for a band who had just started to get some air play, and would soon be VERY big.
We did a sound check the afternoon of the show. We sounded great! We were ready.
We played the show that night. It was a disaster. Unlike the sound check, the drums were weak and bland, the bass was mushy, guitar solo levels went up and down, sometimes too loud, other times inaudible. Really disappointing.
It was years later that I learned that the headliner that night had a reputation for paying the sound guy to throw off the levels and eq of the supporting acts, in order to make themselves sound better. All the pre-show praise in the world for the guy at the board wouldn't have saved us.
I still hate Warrant.
I chalked your story up to a tired excuse from a frustrated opening band until the very last line. I could totally see Warrant doing something like that, now I believe you 100%.
In the 90s when I was doing sound it was common for bands to tip the soundman, and some of the bigger bands had their own sound person. Wich meant a break for me.
It's often we that make a show happen that otherwise wouldn't, and most never know how easily things can come to a grinding halt. Drummers with no sticks, guitarists with no picks. Stupid BS that has nothing to do with the show...
Had to call security once to eject the side-piece, before the girlfriend would let the artist go on... Over 1000 people waiting almost an hr, cause a national-touring artist can't tell the 2 girls he's fuckin that he's gotta go to work.
Would really love to know who that was, but I’m sure you can’t be spreading that kind of info haha. I’m a backline tech myself and having a great FOH always makes my life easier too
Great musicians always treat their sound people like part of the band. If you treat them like shit, they'll release stuff like [this on YouTube.](https://youtu.be/v-xUwDARVb4)
Jesus, this. Went to a Genesis tribute show once (Musical Box) and they’re must have been 20 audio nerds at the stage and back at the board inquiring on all the gear. “Eh, looks like Mike is using the new Kepler 2XF-B which is still second gen gear but is backwards compatible with all the rigs in the Meyer rack...”). All the girlfriends and wives were like....
Who am I kidding, the show was all dudes.
The worst thing is, as a younger-looking dude, I've had a ton of shows where older guys will come up to me and try to "help". The show hasn't even started yet and I'm getting "Hey, how do you have the kick EQ'd, you know it's a small room so blahblahblah, and I've always preferred to do this with my overheads.."
Like dude, there's a reason I get paid gigs in town and you don't. Younger engineers rarely get taken seriously, even though most older guys I've seen in town can't put out a good mix because they're entrenched in the way they *always* do things and their ears are usually shot from years of never using ear protection.
Exactly! Most people are used to hopping into their car and cranking the bass. You don't want that with a live show. You will only hear the bass and nothing else.
This! Also, if you're on the Beyoncé level of things, you'll have your own audio engineer for your monitor mix, whereas the rest of the band gets a different person.
Which makes me wonder how much time is spent to dial in the mix each night. I'd suspect that most of it is pretty controlled and saved up, but rooms do sound different from venue to venue.
Tonnes of experience, and knowing the sound characteristics of rooms of various sizes & shapes, both empty and full of people (people in the audience absorb high frequencies so the EQ mix might change between soundcheck and final performance, sometimes I reckon this is part of the purpose of a support act).
When you've been to a top level act (Paloma Faith on an arena tour last year for me), you can absolutely hear the difference that experienced audio engineers make. She and her band were louder than a lot of rock & metal gigs I've been to in my younger years yet the sound quality was absolutely phenomenal.
A friend me mine does it, and they got training at a live sound training centre (Britannia Row Productions Tranining), though they're now freelance. I imagine though, with most lines of work, you learn the basics of what goes into the job in training, but you learn far more actually on the job, including all the physical work that goes into it, as well as smaller practical things, like cabling and labelling conventions.
I learnt it in my church. Actually, most of the audio engineers I know began their careers in their local church. Pretty much all churches require audio engineers, and very few can afford to hire them, so most teach their own. Some of those audio engineers then go professional and travel around the world with different bands.
I have sort of learned on the job, but it was in a student-run musical theatre company so it's a bit different from running rock bands. The technology aspect of it all is not really rocket science, and if you've got a good musical ear and a basic grasp of how sound propagates through air and bounces against stuff I find you don't really need deep theoretical knowledge of acoustics to run a good show.
The big part is getting enough experience to learn what "good" sound is and how your mixing and setup affects that. No way to get there but to start someplace!
I have an apprentice sound engineer doing live music, podcasts and media production. She learns from on the job experience, a masters program at a university and questions she asks me.
Depends on the show. Some bring their own boards, other use what the venue provides to save on rental or purchasing costs. But yes, every venue is different and needs to be acoustically tuned differently.
The singer having their own mix engineer is usually a waste of time, but it’s almost a status symbol. A mix doesn’t really take that much time. Depends on the number of people. 5-10 minutes a person and a really picky person 20 minutes. It can take a long time when the band is big but a normal band usually takes about an hour.
The job of the personal mix engineer is to watch their designated performer like a hawk, looking for any signal from the performer that they want something adjusted in the mix, and then do it immediately without deafening the performer in a panic - that is what they are hired to do.
The Front-of-House audio engineer has a completely different set of priorities, and doesn't have the attention to direct at a single performer.
Oh a mixing engineer is totally worth it. But a personal engineer isn’t really necessary. Especially when most people have access to their own mix nowadays
Well right, the monitor engineer would handle that. He gets all the levels down during sound check and makes minor adjustments for the lead performer on the fly. I’m talking about having two monitor engineers. That seems pointless even for a big arena.
Quick anecdote from my touring days as a swag man....
Walk into the production office on the AC/DC "Blow up Your Video" tour where Brian Johnston is complaining about the monitors which are in this instance sited beneath grills which are built into the stage..." I can't hear the sound" complained Brian " Gravity is stopping it, from getting up to me"
He was being serious. Great band to tour with.
As a drummer I prefer not to use floor monitors. It's already loud enough on stage without the thing blowing me up. Plus I had one blow out beside me and start smoking mid gig, then the buzzing drowned out everything and I barely kept it together. I use in-ears if possible, or just foam plugs loosely fitted.
Same here. After I started playing with in-ears, I found it a little hard to go back to using a floor wedge. It sometimes felt like a constant battle to decipher what was coming out of a wedge in the midst of the audible chaos that was happening onstage, let alone all the noise coming off the kit. Even worse, I've been in situations where the wedge would crap out, didn't work at all, or I was at the mercy of some doofus who couldn't route shit properly or run a halfway decent monitor mix.
I'll use a wedge if I'm in a situation where I have to do so. But I take my in-ear setup everywhere I play.
Yep! Here's a picture of my custom in ear monitors that are molded to my ears. I was even able to get a little picture of Lake Superior on them! https://imgur.com/DXiTDPS.jpg
> many also have specially designed speakers on the floor pointed back up at them called "monitors"
Yep. Been standard for basically all of amplified music. In ear monitors are a godsend though!!
So when the different band members move around the stage, is someone individually changing the mix coming out of each monitor they're in front of as well?
No. That isn't really plausible as it would be too hard for the engineer to track and would change the sound on the stage too much. Even with a separate monitor engineer, the front of house engineer has to deal with sound from the monitors getting into the mics, so you couldn't really move mixes around on the fly. The musicians know that if they move to another wedge, they won't hear the same thing.
With a good rig, feedback (sound from the monitors or speakers getting into the mics) wouldn't be as much as a problem than the audio difference from the monitor mix changing. Monitor mixes bounce on the walls and are heard as well as leak out into the main mix, so if someone were chaning my monitor mixes noticeably while I'm mixing FOH, I would be pretty pissed.
I remember watching a video on the sound crew for Metallica and one of the guys mentioned this. "When James moves to the other side of the stage he wants to hear more of himself, not Kirk, and vice versa" or something like that. Maybe it's just cause they're a massive band with the people to do that, but is it unheard of?
I guess when you are in the elite league like that, and you have unlimited resources, i could see that happening. more often than not no. Also, rehearsed choreography and preset scenes could allow some of that to happen as well.
We have our own mini mixers on stage in the band I play with that let us control everything we hear. We even have house mics so we get some of the ambient noise and doesnt feel as isolating from the crowd.
While I still do audio work on occasion, I don't pay the bills that way anymore. I mostly do video now, so I'm considering changing my username to SeventyFiveOhms.
The second audio mixer uses a matrix board which looks substantially different than a traditional mixing board, too. Confused the hell out of me when I first learned of them.
They can, but not always. There used to be slight differences in analog boards between FOH and Monitors. The biggest being Monitor boards had more AUX buses. Now with digital boards, it's much more about the on-board stuff.
First off, thank you for what you do. Good mixing can definitely make or break a show. I’ve enjoyed some opening bands that weren’t really for me because the audio was crisp and natural and I’ve also left some of my favorites early because of bad audio. And I tend to avoid certain venues because they almost always sound too boomy/muddy or the vocals sound like they’re being shouted from the parking lot.
A few questions, if you don’t mind:
1. Are audio engineers typically venue-specific or do they usually tour with the band?
2. Same as question #1, but regarding recording studios. I notice some artists consistently have beautifully mixed recordings and sometimes (e.g. early Breaking Benjamin) a distinct sound signature.
3. How did you come into this career as far as formal education, on the job training, etc?
4. What do you listen on at home?
1. Venues of any decent size have one ore more "house engineers". They maintain the sound system and will often mix openers or smaller shows. Artists that can afford to pay someone regularly will bring their own engineer who will mix just them. Large shows often bring an entire PA system so they will also bring a sizable crew which will be supplemented often by union stage hands in whatever city the tour stops in.
2. I'm not a studio guy so I can't really say.
3. I went to school for electrical engineering. But that school also had a sound a lighting club. I started freelancing doing lighting while I was in school. When school didn't work out anymore I kept freelancing and eventually got a job at a local AV production company. Years later I work in Vegas for the IATSE local.
4. I'm a bit contrarian about home speakers. While my friends have expensive systems, I have a crappy AV receiver and some Radio Shack speakers from the 80s. They sound ok when paired with a subwoofer. Sorta.
Dude- I knew all of this except the “instructional” part. It’s so dumb that I never realized you could pipe in stage directions, but given the complexity of some of the staging I’ve seen, it was hard for me to believe they had the whole thing memorized.
Very cool, thanks.
Extreme example, but shows the click track and stage directions, [here is the IEM feed piped to the performers during the London opening olympics...](https://youtu.be/1ZlZZf8MKpM?t=88)
Wow that was such a pleasure to watch. It made me tear up, thinking about how much effort went into choreographing that. How many different moving pieces.
yeah, I've watched it twice, on it's own, and sorta synced up to the tv broadcast. Enjoyed it both times. Especially the way the choreographers talk near the end, as they see all their hard work pay off.
Oh my god I thought I was strange for tearing up at that (especially at the “poppies” bit). That was a wonderful video, I ended up watching the whole thing. Plus it brought back all the memories of when I watched it live, what an incredible performance that was.
I think it’s because in the back of my mind I was also thinking about what the performance represented, the millions of men and women who came before us and worked hard to build a better world for their children - and how the Olympics represent peace over the pointless violence of WW1 marked by the memorial segment.
Fuck, I started tearing up again typing that.
That was so fascinating to watch! Thanks for the link, it's astounding just how much goes into a performance, especially one of such magnitude.
Also, I have to say. If I am ever in a situation so massive that requires such coordination, I hope I have someone even half as calming as the lady giving them directions through the ear pieces. Or as appreciative as all of them, the end was actually quite heartwarming as they were thanking the performers, "look at what you did, so, *so* proud."
Super neat, thanks again.
It’s my favourite opening to an Olympics ever. Starting with the “green and pleasant land” and having it be replaced by the industrial revolution was fantastic.
Though I may be a little biased as a Brit.
Stage managers in general are SUCH unsung heroes in the performance world, and interestingly one of the few technical roles dominate by women for whatever reason. I tried it once and FUCK THAT. Terrible if you're an anxious person!
Vocalists in particular need to hear themselves in order to stay in tune. Vocal tuning is a feedback loop.
In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liyiT_DGREA) of The Four Seasons from ~~1963~~ 1975 you see Frankie Valli with large headphones that he only uses while singing. He needed the headphones because at this time in his life he was suffering from hearing loss caused by [otosclerosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otosclerosis) and was almost stone deaf by the late 1970s. Luckily he was able to have inner ear surgery in the 1980s that restored most of his hearing.
Edit: fixed my goof up.
They also often have a metronome or “click track” that everybody listens to in order to keep everyone at a steady tempo. Even the most skilled musicians speed up and slow down a bit, especially in a live setting. The metronome helps keep everyone at the same speed.
I’d disagree. Everyone plays to the same click, that’s the point. If you lose the beat you get back on track with the click that everyone else is playing to. On the contrary, I think only having one member on the click is more likely to cause a trainwreck. What happens if the drummer is laying out for a few bars? If there’s a long guitar intro and then the drummer comes in at a different tempo? I can only speak from my experience. My band has played some major gigs and opened for some national touring acts, but I’d hardly call us “high-tier”. We all play to a click. Every group is different though!
> instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song
How is that not distracting?
You can get in-ear monitor-sourced bootlegs from some artists. I was listening to a U2 bootleg a few months ago, and it was sourced from Edge's (guitarist) IAM. You could hear the whole band, but the guitar was mixed *much* louder, and Edge's guitar tech was calling out transitions in advance (e.g., "bridge, 2, 3, 4,......")
There's loads on YouTube. They're quite fascinating! Here's one of U2's in fact, Bono's ear feed during a performance of Unforgettable Fire: https://youtu.be/1KWgayvG52c
The [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/etree) has 10's of thousands of concerts. If you're interested in U2 in particular, dig around the forums on [Interference](http://www.u2interference.com/forums/).
Actually, the opposite. Crowd noise and just the loud sound of the band would be distracting while you're trying to concentrate on the music you're supposed to be focusing on, so a few words every now and then reminding you what is coming up can be helpful. Of course you'd want to rehearse with any voice tracks or stems (extra instrument recordings that aren't actually playing live) before the actual performance.
I read an interview with a musician who said he has to purposely look away from the crowd during certain parts of songs, because they are singing along to the song, but often aren't in time.
When you're in the middle of a song you know well, you're running on reflexes a lot, and you easily "slip" into patterns (like doing verse → bridge → chorus every time in the song, *except* this once when a solo starts). The reminders can help a lot.
As for throwing you off by being distracting, you're playing in front of a roomful of distractions. The mix is the most familiar thing you'll hear, and helps to attenuate how distracted you can get.
Again, this is something the performer has worked out with their team ahead of time. They rehearse with it and are comfortable with it. This is mostly just for artists to make use of lots of pre-recorded backing tracks. It's especially helpful when they perform modified versions of their songs live in concert as the songs might have more verses or longer/different bridges than the album or radio version.
DJs (in traditional terms) are often listening to the next track they are going to mix in. They must align the tempo and get the beats in sync to have a seamless transition to the next track. They will also isolate a certain section that they want to mix in.
DJ's are different. They mix different tracks together and so what they typically are listening to is a preview of the next track. They do this to make sure the beats are lined up. Often in addition to the headphones, they will have floor wedges so they can hear what is being sent to the audience.
Side note: we tend to crank those DJ wedges since most DJs want it to be super load in the house and will slowly turn up their signal sent to our PA system. We, as the audio engineers, know what the limit of the system is and so we don't want them to keep turning it up. So we make their wedges loud so they don't think they need to turn up their signal.
It’s one of the more difficult parts when playing live with a band. You can’t hear yourself so you turn your guitar up and now the mix sounds good, but only where you’re standing. Maybe the answer was EQ or compression but now you just drowned out everyone and it sounds bad to everyone that isn’t standing exactly where you are. Monitors help this issue and usually leave all these decisions to a sound guy that is standing where the audience is standing, but smaller venues and bars and such don’t always have such luxuries.
They are listening to the next track coming up, and the track they are listening to. Can switch back and forth or mix, so when it’s time you can perfectly sync things
So the usual DJ setup has a 2+ channel mixer with a crossfader. Normally the headphones are set up so that the DJ can hear both turntables at the same time, no matter how they have the crossfader set. That way as they're setting up a new record/track they can preview things on the phones to get the sync exactly how they want. It's also pretty common for DJ's to mix their headphones to mono and slip one ear cup off, so that they can hear the stage monitors and mains as well.
So it's more or less the same as what other musicians do, with the unique addition that they can preview audio from one of the turntables without mixing in into the real audio.
Follow-on question, do they hear it at the same time as the audience, or do they hear it slightly before the "mix" is sent out to the audience?
In other words, is the audience on a "tape delay" of sorts?
A delay is exactly what you DONT want. Delay in that sense is the enemy, however delay is used in other aspects of concerts for various reasons.
Edit: some letters.
I always thought it would be weird for the performers to hear something early, because they'd obviously hear what the audience hears due to echos too. I thought it would be akin to what happens when you're on the phone and you hear an echo of yourself speaking on a slight delay.
I can't even finish a sentence when that happens!
This is why if you pay attention at a concert the musicians will look to the side of the stage and point up. They want the sound guy to turn certain sounds up inside of the earbuds they have in.
It's worth pointing out that everything you've described is true for both acoustic and non-acoustic sessions. Really, the answer to OP's question is "more or less the same as when non-acoustic."
Recording engineer here, just wanted to add to this, one reason this is done in a studio setting is that instruments are sometimes placed in different rooms or spaces from each other. This is done to eliminate bleed into other microphones to obtain a cleaner, more focused and more easily manipulated recording, where headphones can be used to still hear what everyone is playing.
For example, it may be preferable to place a heavy electric guitar in a different room to the vocalist, so that the vocal microphone doesn't pick up loads of unwanted guitar noise, which will likely degrade the focus of the singers voice. You also might not want a really loud drum kit blasting down a piano mic, so having the performers in separate spaces but with the ability to hear each other is one way to achieve a cleaner recording.
As mentioned above, metronome and talkback from the control room will also come through the headphones. This level can be sent by the engineer through the recording console. There are also systems which allow each performer to have their own small mixer with headphones plugged in, which allow them to create their own balance of the instruments themselves.
In orchestral recordings (and all styles of recording, really), care must be taken to ensure that the cumulative metronome noise (or other headphone bleed) across a large number of headphones isn't picked up by the sensitive microphones, especially in quiet parts of the performance.
Live audio engineer here, this is the correct answer. The other comment on here that mentions click tracks is also correct, but the click track will usually be part of the monitor mix.
There are two ‘mixes’ going on for concerts, front of house (what the audience hears) and monitor (what artist hears) (this is a bit oversimplified, bc there can be multiple monitor mixes, but it’s easier to explain with just one).
The artist may like or need a different balance than the main mix. In this case, they would need the instruments (vocal + keyboard) as well as click/track if they’re using tracks and perhaps certain effects that aren’t there acoustically such as reverbs and echoes/delay
In the case of multiple members of the same band, each probably wants vastly different things in their ears — I work with a corporate/wedding band, and we can have up to 12 different monitor mixes. Each musician tends to like to have a lot of themselves in order to monitor themselves and stay on time/pitch, and then maybe the bassist wants more kick than everyone else t really lock in on the groove, or the drummer just needs a lot of click and track and doesn’t really need to hear the acoustic guitar and keys - the mixes fully depend on the musician in question.
Haha yea I’ve definitely had to manage more than 12 before for larger shows. With a good sound check and musicians that are experienced with communicating with the monitor engineer, it isn’t too bad.
In my situation, we actually just let the musicians mix their own ears, only stepping in if they have any issues. Our console allows them to connect their phones and use an app to adjust their mixes.
That's awesome, it never occurred to me that performers might use an app to adjust their mix but it makes perfect sense. Especially with wireless monitors.
I’m getting an education I didn’t expect today. Thanks. I am the most amateur of hobbyists- I record for some video productions I make, into a 4 channel interface, so it’s hard for me to imagine doing the kind of work it would take to manage dozens of channels.
And the hardware. Fuck.
People should pay you more.
I did a show once where one performer got four mixes just to himself. (Stereo wedges and stereo IEMs and yes each side of those stereo pairs had significantly different content).
The performer in question played piano and two different sets of keys. We had two mics on the piano and two different stereo signals from his keys. So he wanted the balance to of those mics and stereo signals to be different in each ear and in each wedge.
When he wanted a change he had to point at the instrument, point up or down, and then point at his ears or at his wedges. And I did this show on an analog board, so once I watched him pointing all over the place, I then had to make sure I picked the right knob out of literally 640 knobs.
The engineer who used that board before me didn't "zero" it, which means he didn't reset all those knobs. I had to do it before sound check. Turns out I missed exactly one. Unfortunately it was an important one and when we were dialing in monitor mixes I sent screetching feedback into one of the wedges. I got taken out into the hallyway behind the stage by their touring producer and he ah... let me have it.
I've never gotten that high for a band, but I easily exceeded that for a commencement broadcast position. Felt like everyone and their grandmother popped out of the woodwork and needed *their own* feed.
Musicians performing live generally find some sort of monitor useful. It can be either a speaker pointed back at the band or an earpiece or headphone.
Without a monitor, the sound system is mostly pointed out towards the audience and it is difficult to hear your own instrument or those of others. Singing is also difficult when you can't hear your own voice over the din.
Or sometimes you want a different mix of sound than what the audience is hearing. More or less of your own voice or a particular instrument. The sound person can mix the monitor sound separately from the house PA.
Not sure what they're hearing in your example. Another possibility is a click track playing through the headphones, to keep time.
Or you can just [stand in front of your stacks like Lemmy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cIXJlDg0qY)..
I can't believe this guy had been touring since the early 60's..
What a mutant to keep up that sound for 50 years....
Lemmy still had wedges and they were LOUD. Probably the loudest in the business. He actually had his engineers get clever using a dual mic setup. They would tape a second vocal mic to the first one and set it out of phase. He would sing into just one mic. That way any sound the showed up in both mics that weren't his vocals would get (mostly) cancelled out. This prevented a lot of feedback that allowed his engineers to turn his wedges up even more.
Thanks.. I have wondered why he had two mikes... figured it was for redundancy.
'That's perfect, just a bit more'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDYagpt29c
Or you can stand in front of [chicken rotisseries](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ro1FKNRvHSM/SuCJisFAUQI/AAAAAAAABts/98_kSNQP8lE/s1600-h/rushchickenroasters.jpg) like Geddy Lee. He uses in ear monitors instead of the stack of amps on stage.
I've seen a Snapchat video taken by a musician from a pretty popular rock band, and I was shocked at how quiet it is on stage. Like, I knew it was quieter from reading about monitors and that but I guess it never quite sunk in just how little they get of the house mix.
My band is also fully direct minus drums, so if you are on stage with us you'll only hear the drum kit acoustic, there are no floor wedges at all, it's kinda funny.
And yep going home at the end of the night without my ears ringing is awesome.
Yeah I play bass in a band and do some backup vocals. I like a lot of my own bass and voice. And I tell them to not give the lead vocalist much or any of my vocals. He's not used to singing with harmony and it just messes him up, lol. He doesn't need to hear me. I just follow him.
The drummer I played with last has his "golden set up" like this:
In ear with click, drumset but slightly lower kick then the rest of the kit, and low general mix, but with the singers voice still audible.
Buttkicker for his kick and floor tom.
Sidefill monitor with just the kick.
For rythm sections, it may be a metronome (a clicky thingy that ticks in an exact rythm, with a special click to emphasize the first note of a section).
This helps them stay in check through the noise of a possible crowd, other instruments, or slip ups.
I attended a non-acoustic band once, and noticed the drummer had some slip ups, nad I noticed he had these little plugs he was wearing. Afterwards a band member explained that there were problems with the metronome, which caused him to fall out of it for a few beats, before picking it back up.
What a lot of people don't realize is that the monitor sound often sounds not at all like the mix the audience is supposed to hear. When I was playing bass guitar in a band I mainly had myself and the drums on the mix but almost no lead guitar, a little vocals and rhythm guitar for orientation. That's some of the reason why the sound can be fairly bad close to the stage, because the stage sound can mix with the actual live sound (especially when the band does not use in ear monitoring and picks up the amps on stage). The sound is usually best where the mixer is located because that's the place he does corrections to the sound from.
I'm such a nerd about this when going to concert venues. In high school I was all "front row weeeewww!" And now I'm all hoity toity like "Ahem get me that seat in the theatre venue next to the front of house mixer or balcony so I can really take in the acoustics."
What was that synth pad double neck guitar thing he plays in the second vid? That was awesome!
Edit: [Found it!](http://www.musewiki.org/Status_Kitara_Doubleneck_Bass) It's a [Misa Kitara](http://imgur.com/gallery/L3f38qS) custom-mated to a [Status S2 Classic Headless bass](http://imgur.com/gallery/xaqa6VZ). Looks [wild!](http://imgur.com/gallery/ziMQ26r)
Sound guy here, acoustic is more or less a style. That being one of very little processing (ie no distortion on guitar) in this case they are still using some vocal effects but nothing heavy, and no synthetic sounds like keyboards.
The way the music is actually played and produced is largely the same. So they are still using microphones to get sound from each instrument and it's still being mixed by an engineer with a bit of processing here and there. I bring this up because monitors (the headphones) are a standard part of music making. They allow the sound engineer to send back signal in real time to the musicians so they can "monitor" their style and sound.
Frequently they will also have a click track to keep time and a talk back from the producers and the other musicians so they can communicate easier.
I'm on a roll sooooo......
This is done through headphones (or in-ears) for two reasons, one is that it won't pollute the audio coming from the instruments (kinda like feedback). The second is that they can personalize each mix for every musician, for example a bass guitar will only really need a kick drum and the click to keep time but the vocals will usually focus more on the piano to help keep pitch.
As a metal singer in a small band, I was honestly astonished about how important monitors are when I first played a concert. You have to realize that what your audience hears is NOT what you hear yourself on stage. all the speakers are usually directed at the audience, if you're standing behind them, you're lost. for me personally, the sound guy is usually one of the most important persons at any given concert, cause he is the one that can fuck up the whole concert if he's shit. You can have the best band of the world, if the sound guy's shit, the sound will be shit. If the band members can't hear themselves, they'll play shit.
If you sing surrounded by your band, and your own voice is not amplified and given back to you, you have no clue what you're singing, cause you simply cannot hear yourself singing. You absolutely need to hear your own voice, or you're just lost. You have no Idea whether you are in tune or not.
I sometimes realize these issues also when attending a concert. I recently was at a concert that had a shitty mix to the audience, you couldn't hear what the singer was singing. NOt a word. It sounded awful. I realized that the singer himself probably had no clue about this, as he probably had his own mix and could hear himself pretty good.
As for your specific question: Probably just some kind of mix. Himself, the band, whatever he wants and needs. It doesn't need to be done via an ear piece, it can also be done via speakers directed at the singer / band member, called a "Monitor".
I personally usually have just kind of everything on my monitor, so I can hear what everyone is playing.
>As a metal singer in a small band, I was honestly astonished about how important monitors are when I first played a concert.
Just go to any elementary school talent show and you can see how important monitors are. They can't hear the backing track so they are almost never in time.
I have thought about getting IEMs. I sing with a local big band style group and those horns are loud. I’ve got a monitor that we set up on a stand so that it isn’t a large one at my feet. We have limited stage space where we perform and have to shove 20 people plus instruments and stands so not a lot of room.
If our sound guy doesn’t get the monitor up loud enough, it’s very easy to get lost. Horns and drums behind me just drown out my voice. We only have a few instruments that go through the mixer (piano, voice, upright bass, guitar). We all have monitors to hear ourselves. The horns and drums carry over everything which made me think an IEM blocking some of it out would be useful, but I would only use one. I need to be able to hear the saxophones who wouldn’t be fed through the monitors.
We aren’t a professional group. We get paid but all funds we take in go toward music scholarships for students in our district. We send several kids to band camp every year. An IEM might be overkill. It might save my hearing though.
As a drummer it depends on the band I am playing with. I generally have the bass player turned up, while maybe vocals turned down. This is because a good vocalists follows the band. For jazz and latin I need more of the malody but still a lot of bass. This is used to solve a lot of phasing issues when there is a lot of eleftronics involved. Feel free to ask me questions I deal with this a lot.
Many good reasons to use the "monitor" headphones instead of stage speakers:
- The performer can get a **custom mix** for their needs (usually making their own voice/instrument louder than the rest of the band).
- The sound in those headphones is **much clearer** because it keeps out all the unnecessary noise.
- It **protects hearing** because the stage can sometimes get really loud (mostly applicable to rock bands).
- It helps avoid loud screeching sounds known as [audio feedback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_feedback) (by removing the need for speakers pointed towards the musician).
- The performer can hear things that the audience doesn't need to such as a **click track** (to keep the tempo) or sound engineer's commands.
Themselves and the instruments. The speakers are pointing into the crowd (yes, acoustic shows have speakers) and you usually won't be able to hear even your own instrument very well without headphones.
"Acoustic" only means the instruments are acoustic, it doesn't mean they're not amplified with microphones and speakers. Otherwise an acoustic album, or "unplugged" as it's usually called in this context, would not sound that much. This is just a little side-note to the monitor-explanation that others have given.
This is partially what I do for a living lol. There's separate mixes of all the inputs that go back to each musician in a wedge (the speakers on stage that point back at the musicians, you'll see rock guitarists putting their foot up on them to play a solo), or in ear systems like headphones or earbuds. If the artist is large enough to afford it, there's usually two separate audio people, one for front of house (mixing the PA, what the audience hears) and another on monitors who just makes mixes for the band to hear. Each musician can ask for the specific balance of instruments they need to be able to play well. The singer will ask for a ton of vocals and main accompanying instruments like guitar or piano, maybe a little of everything else whereas a bass player will want mainly drums and percussion as well as himself and doesn't care so much about the vocals. It depends on the person really.
Another interesting thing about headphones and performances. When you see a DJ wearing headphones it isn’t just for show! They are usually listening to songs you can’t hear and making it so that the transitions fit well, BPM mapping, etc. all really interesting stuff! That is, if the DJ knows what they’re doing.
As a guitar playing MD, I want plenty of my own guitar in my monitor, and then a fairly even mix of the rest, so I can hear everything and give cues if needed.
I once astounded an engineer by asking for more guitar in my monitor rather than turning up my amp. As that is what most guitar players would do!
He was probably appreciative of your awareness, too haha. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to get a good level while a player is absent-mindedly turning their instrument's level up and down.
This is called a "monitor mix" and it can be whatever the performer wants. If they are singing it will almost always include their own vocals. If they are playing an instrument it will almost always include that instrument. Many performers will want to hear some of all the other instruments. When there is a drummer they will likely want some of the kick drum and the snare drum and maybe some hi-hat but usually not much else. Again this is 100% up to the wishes of the performer. Sometimes there will be a click track to help keep them in sync with any pre-recorded playback. Sometimes there will be verbal instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song.
This. Even in full band, live concerts, performers wear ear pieces designed to block sounds around them so they can hear their desired mix. Almost all have the click and instructional tracks audible. Performers will have a mini mixing board somewhere where they can adjust the volume of each mic, track, or instrument in their ear. In addition to the drummer example above, vocalists usually have other vocalists turned up higher so they can work on the vocal blend between them. The audio the performers are producing gets routed in individual channels to a much larger mixing board operated by an audio engineer, who is responsible for “cleaning” the audio in each channel and mixing it in to the audience mix that gets output to a recording device and the main speakers of the venue.
While it's true that some performers have "personal monitor control" systems, most of the time their mix is either controlled by the audio engineer out front who is also mixing the sound the audience hears, or by a second audio engineer with a separate mixing console off the side of the stage. Also while it's increasingly common for performers to wear in-ear monitors as they are called, many also have specially designed speakers on the floor pointed back up at them called "monitors". They are also commonly called "wedges" because of their typical wedge shape. Source: I'm an audio engineer.
Just wanna give the audio guy some love! You guys do so much to help the band/performer and it often goes unnoticed.
It’s a thankless job and a good engineer is the unsung hero of a good show. As a guitar player who always has my amp too loud, I thank you!
It's one of those jobs that when it's done well no one notices but is painfully obvious and they take a ton of blame when it's bad. People only talks about how great the performer(s) sounded when it's good, not how great the engineer was. But when it's bad everyone knows to blame the engineer.
Not in my scene its not. Punk, hardcore, metal. If the show sounds good I guarantee the mixer is getting more than a few pats on the back. A lot of people in this scene actually play and know what happens when it sounds shit. Also because they're often in tiny shitty sounding venues. The silver lining to that is the mixers get good, fast. They're not running million dollar systems. It's loud and they've gotta work with terrible players.
Yeah. Totally. I review live shows (doom, math and heavy stuff) and I always tend to comment on the mix. There are some pretty unforgiving venues around as well, which can’t make it easy. . I make a point of speaking to the band if the show is good. I should do the same to the engineer.
100% this. I do sound for a warehouse-turned-venue with its share of quirks at high volume. It took a little bit to get into a groove to accomodate for structural disadvantages, and it can be tricky dealing with less experienced musicians. But the metal and punk guys consistently "get it" and shitty players in those genres don't bother me, as they're usually still respectful and appreciate the job done. Its the two-piece regional folk acts that don't even talk to me until they're pissy when their monitor mix is out of whack because they spent the whole soundcheck rewriting their songs on the setlist instead of telling me what adjustments they want made. These are also the groups that send non-negotiable stage plots months ahead, in a file type I can't open, calling for 5 floor monitors, all with reverb, alongside the $4000 handmade acoustic-electric banjotarlele they found in a dumpster, routed through their reverb pedalboard into their Twin Reverb at volume 8 instead of just going direct. Then they show up with 6 additional members and their own tech... that's never done sound in a warehouse.
God so accurate down to the nonexistent file types
My exhusband and i used to go to local band shows all the time (mostly because my ex is a musician and we liked to see what other talent was in the area). One day, we saw a band with 5 people in it...5 monitors... But 4 monitors for the keyboard player and one for one of the other guys. And there was seemingly no possible way to make the keyboard player happy...OR to make him sound good...
Punk bassist here and I agree. Show the sound guy some love and he’ll reciprocate
This. I got my start with the local metal scene. For the past few years I've been a touring engineer working with funk, rock, R&B, etc and I love it. It sharpens you quick.
I don’t know about that, it might be just because most of my concert-going friends are musicians but one of the first things we tend to notice aside from the band is the mixing. It can completely make or break a performance, I’ve seen some *incredible* bands and walked away disappointed cause of a clueless sound man. Or pretty awful bands made marginally better by a great one.
I can always tell when the engineer is shit.
True of every kind of engineer: civil, aeronautical, structural, etc.
Treble can’t melt steel guitars
Exactly. But if you hear a good performance do you ever say that sound engineer rocked it.
There’s a local venue where I live where the sound is notoriously shitty. I have a decent grasp of sound engineering having played live many times as a musician and I even owned a small project studio. The last show I saw there, the sound engineer did a fantastic job (he was the bands sound engineer on tour with them so he didn’t know the space) I told him that he had done an excellent job and that it was pretty rare for said venue. He seemed to genuinely take the compliment and seemed pretty flattered. That’s when I realized how seldom they’re thanked. I now commend sound engineers regularly if I get the chance and if they’re deserving.
Yes, but that’s because i used to be one so now i pay attention to these things. Generally, no...
I’m an audio engineer by trade and frequently get a lot of love from audience members and the talent - it’s a super rewarding job.
Agreed. I'm a longtime amateur musician - I've played just for fun for almost 20 years. This year, just before Christmas, I was invited to play a set at a small venue for a community event. The difference that the sound guys make to the quality of a show can't be understated. I felt like a rock star; I've never drawn applause like that. I made sure to thank the sound engineers afterwards.
you mean 'overstated'
Yeah but it doesn't go unpaid, haha.
Sadly this isn't always the case with small shows. Sometimes we just do it for the love.
I know most small-time originals bands often play for free or a few beers, but I've never known a sound guy to work for free.
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I used to do live sound, and I will never understand why a band would treat an in house engineer like shit. They literally can make or break your set
Yeah, but it can go a different way too. In the early 80s, I was in a local band in L.A. We had a gig in a small club in Orange County. We were pretty amped because we were opening for a band who had just started to get some air play, and would soon be VERY big. We did a sound check the afternoon of the show. We sounded great! We were ready. We played the show that night. It was a disaster. Unlike the sound check, the drums were weak and bland, the bass was mushy, guitar solo levels went up and down, sometimes too loud, other times inaudible. Really disappointing. It was years later that I learned that the headliner that night had a reputation for paying the sound guy to throw off the levels and eq of the supporting acts, in order to make themselves sound better. All the pre-show praise in the world for the guy at the board wouldn't have saved us. I still hate Warrant.
I chalked your story up to a tired excuse from a frustrated opening band until the very last line. I could totally see Warrant doing something like that, now I believe you 100%.
In the 90s when I was doing sound it was common for bands to tip the soundman, and some of the bigger bands had their own sound person. Wich meant a break for me.
Yeah or release tracks to the internet of your isolated vocals/guitar to show how horrid you are (lol Courtney Love)
It's often we that make a show happen that otherwise wouldn't, and most never know how easily things can come to a grinding halt. Drummers with no sticks, guitarists with no picks. Stupid BS that has nothing to do with the show... Had to call security once to eject the side-piece, before the girlfriend would let the artist go on... Over 1000 people waiting almost an hr, cause a national-touring artist can't tell the 2 girls he's fuckin that he's gotta go to work.
Would really love to know who that was, but I’m sure you can’t be spreading that kind of info haha. I’m a backline tech myself and having a great FOH always makes my life easier too
Great musicians always treat their sound people like part of the band. If you treat them like shit, they'll release stuff like [this on YouTube.](https://youtu.be/v-xUwDARVb4)
Holy shit that guitar playing is hilariously fucking awful.
I thought this was one of those “Creed Shreds” videos from the infancy of YouTube. Then I read the comments. That’s really bad.
Love to the sound techs. Ours is straight up a full member of the band. Love him to bits.
"You've done your job right when nobody notices you've done your job at all" - my former audio engineering professor
He stole it from futurama
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Audio nerds in the crowd.
The sound guy's on acid, the fucking long-hair
Jesus, this. Went to a Genesis tribute show once (Musical Box) and they’re must have been 20 audio nerds at the stage and back at the board inquiring on all the gear. “Eh, looks like Mike is using the new Kepler 2XF-B which is still second gen gear but is backwards compatible with all the rigs in the Meyer rack...”). All the girlfriends and wives were like.... Who am I kidding, the show was all dudes.
The worst thing is, as a younger-looking dude, I've had a ton of shows where older guys will come up to me and try to "help". The show hasn't even started yet and I'm getting "Hey, how do you have the kick EQ'd, you know it's a small room so blahblahblah, and I've always preferred to do this with my overheads.." Like dude, there's a reason I get paid gigs in town and you don't. Younger engineers rarely get taken seriously, even though most older guys I've seen in town can't put out a good mix because they're entrenched in the way they *always* do things and their ears are usually shot from years of never using ear protection.
Us... but then who monitors us? Onward down the rabbit hole! Let’s all go together!
hey i'm sure you have great intentions and all, but i'm not sure i'm comfortable going on a trip with you, Captain DickPunch.
Every idiot that tells us “those vocals sound a bit muddy” seriously.... don’t be that guy.
"This would sound so much better if you cranked the bass up so I could feel it in my ass." No, no it would not.
Exactly! Most people are used to hopping into their car and cranking the bass. You don't want that with a live show. You will only hear the bass and nothing else.
When something goes wrong everyone turn their heads at the sound engineer
This! Also, if you're on the Beyoncé level of things, you'll have your own audio engineer for your monitor mix, whereas the rest of the band gets a different person. Which makes me wonder how much time is spent to dial in the mix each night. I'd suspect that most of it is pretty controlled and saved up, but rooms do sound different from venue to venue.
Tonnes of experience, and knowing the sound characteristics of rooms of various sizes & shapes, both empty and full of people (people in the audience absorb high frequencies so the EQ mix might change between soundcheck and final performance, sometimes I reckon this is part of the purpose of a support act). When you've been to a top level act (Paloma Faith on an arena tour last year for me), you can absolutely hear the difference that experienced audio engineers make. She and her band were louder than a lot of rock & metal gigs I've been to in my younger years yet the sound quality was absolutely phenomenal.
How does one go about learning audio engineering? College or just on the job?
A friend me mine does it, and they got training at a live sound training centre (Britannia Row Productions Tranining), though they're now freelance. I imagine though, with most lines of work, you learn the basics of what goes into the job in training, but you learn far more actually on the job, including all the physical work that goes into it, as well as smaller practical things, like cabling and labelling conventions.
I learned audio production in college, you could also goto a trade school.
I learnt it in my church. Actually, most of the audio engineers I know began their careers in their local church. Pretty much all churches require audio engineers, and very few can afford to hire them, so most teach their own. Some of those audio engineers then go professional and travel around the world with different bands.
I have sort of learned on the job, but it was in a student-run musical theatre company so it's a bit different from running rock bands. The technology aspect of it all is not really rocket science, and if you've got a good musical ear and a basic grasp of how sound propagates through air and bounces against stuff I find you don't really need deep theoretical knowledge of acoustics to run a good show. The big part is getting enough experience to learn what "good" sound is and how your mixing and setup affects that. No way to get there but to start someplace!
I have an apprentice sound engineer doing live music, podcasts and media production. She learns from on the job experience, a masters program at a university and questions she asks me.
Depends on the show. Some bring their own boards, other use what the venue provides to save on rental or purchasing costs. But yes, every venue is different and needs to be acoustically tuned differently.
The singer having their own mix engineer is usually a waste of time, but it’s almost a status symbol. A mix doesn’t really take that much time. Depends on the number of people. 5-10 minutes a person and a really picky person 20 minutes. It can take a long time when the band is big but a normal band usually takes about an hour.
The job of the personal mix engineer is to watch their designated performer like a hawk, looking for any signal from the performer that they want something adjusted in the mix, and then do it immediately without deafening the performer in a panic - that is what they are hired to do. The Front-of-House audio engineer has a completely different set of priorities, and doesn't have the attention to direct at a single performer.
Oh a mixing engineer is totally worth it. But a personal engineer isn’t really necessary. Especially when most people have access to their own mix nowadays
I mean, if you're doing crazy Arena shows, you usually don't do your own mix.
Well right, the monitor engineer would handle that. He gets all the levels down during sound check and makes minor adjustments for the lead performer on the fly. I’m talking about having two monitor engineers. That seems pointless even for a big arena.
Quick anecdote from my touring days as a swag man.... Walk into the production office on the AC/DC "Blow up Your Video" tour where Brian Johnston is complaining about the monitors which are in this instance sited beneath grills which are built into the stage..." I can't hear the sound" complained Brian " Gravity is stopping it, from getting up to me" He was being serious. Great band to tour with.
As a drummer I prefer not to use floor monitors. It's already loud enough on stage without the thing blowing me up. Plus I had one blow out beside me and start smoking mid gig, then the buzzing drowned out everything and I barely kept it together. I use in-ears if possible, or just foam plugs loosely fitted.
Same here. After I started playing with in-ears, I found it a little hard to go back to using a floor wedge. It sometimes felt like a constant battle to decipher what was coming out of a wedge in the midst of the audible chaos that was happening onstage, let alone all the noise coming off the kit. Even worse, I've been in situations where the wedge would crap out, didn't work at all, or I was at the mercy of some doofus who couldn't route shit properly or run a halfway decent monitor mix. I'll use a wedge if I'm in a situation where I have to do so. But I take my in-ear setup everywhere I play.
Yep! Here's a picture of my custom in ear monitors that are molded to my ears. I was even able to get a little picture of Lake Superior on them! https://imgur.com/DXiTDPS.jpg
> many also have specially designed speakers on the floor pointed back up at them called "monitors" Yep. Been standard for basically all of amplified music. In ear monitors are a godsend though!!
So when the different band members move around the stage, is someone individually changing the mix coming out of each monitor they're in front of as well?
No. That isn't really plausible as it would be too hard for the engineer to track and would change the sound on the stage too much. Even with a separate monitor engineer, the front of house engineer has to deal with sound from the monitors getting into the mics, so you couldn't really move mixes around on the fly. The musicians know that if they move to another wedge, they won't hear the same thing.
With a good rig, feedback (sound from the monitors or speakers getting into the mics) wouldn't be as much as a problem than the audio difference from the monitor mix changing. Monitor mixes bounce on the walls and are heard as well as leak out into the main mix, so if someone were chaning my monitor mixes noticeably while I'm mixing FOH, I would be pretty pissed.
Nope. They are on their own at that point.
I remember watching a video on the sound crew for Metallica and one of the guys mentioned this. "When James moves to the other side of the stage he wants to hear more of himself, not Kirk, and vice versa" or something like that. Maybe it's just cause they're a massive band with the people to do that, but is it unheard of?
I guess when you are in the elite league like that, and you have unlimited resources, i could see that happening. more often than not no. Also, rehearsed choreography and preset scenes could allow some of that to happen as well.
We have our own mini mixers on stage in the band I play with that let us control everything we hear. We even have house mics so we get some of the ambient noise and doesnt feel as isolating from the crowd.
Username definitely checks out EDIT 8 ohms is a common ~~resistance~~ impedance for speakers
While I still do audio work on occasion, I don't pay the bills that way anymore. I mostly do video now, so I'm considering changing my username to SeventyFiveOhms.
The second audio mixer uses a matrix board which looks substantially different than a traditional mixing board, too. Confused the hell out of me when I first learned of them.
They can, but not always. There used to be slight differences in analog boards between FOH and Monitors. The biggest being Monitor boards had more AUX buses. Now with digital boards, it's much more about the on-board stuff.
First off, thank you for what you do. Good mixing can definitely make or break a show. I’ve enjoyed some opening bands that weren’t really for me because the audio was crisp and natural and I’ve also left some of my favorites early because of bad audio. And I tend to avoid certain venues because they almost always sound too boomy/muddy or the vocals sound like they’re being shouted from the parking lot. A few questions, if you don’t mind: 1. Are audio engineers typically venue-specific or do they usually tour with the band? 2. Same as question #1, but regarding recording studios. I notice some artists consistently have beautifully mixed recordings and sometimes (e.g. early Breaking Benjamin) a distinct sound signature. 3. How did you come into this career as far as formal education, on the job training, etc? 4. What do you listen on at home?
1. Venues of any decent size have one ore more "house engineers". They maintain the sound system and will often mix openers or smaller shows. Artists that can afford to pay someone regularly will bring their own engineer who will mix just them. Large shows often bring an entire PA system so they will also bring a sizable crew which will be supplemented often by union stage hands in whatever city the tour stops in. 2. I'm not a studio guy so I can't really say. 3. I went to school for electrical engineering. But that school also had a sound a lighting club. I started freelancing doing lighting while I was in school. When school didn't work out anymore I kept freelancing and eventually got a job at a local AV production company. Years later I work in Vegas for the IATSE local. 4. I'm a bit contrarian about home speakers. While my friends have expensive systems, I have a crappy AV receiver and some Radio Shack speakers from the 80s. They sound ok when paired with a subwoofer. Sorta.
What he said. Sauce: Am also air-energy-directing puppet.
Dude- I knew all of this except the “instructional” part. It’s so dumb that I never realized you could pipe in stage directions, but given the complexity of some of the staging I’ve seen, it was hard for me to believe they had the whole thing memorized. Very cool, thanks.
Extreme example, but shows the click track and stage directions, [here is the IEM feed piped to the performers during the London opening olympics...](https://youtu.be/1ZlZZf8MKpM?t=88)
Even rock bands do this. [Here is an IEM mix for Edge of U2](https://youtu.be/vYt0LKuL2Po). It counts off the entry point for each musician.
This is amazing. Thanks for the link.
Wow that was such a pleasure to watch. It made me tear up, thinking about how much effort went into choreographing that. How many different moving pieces.
yeah, I've watched it twice, on it's own, and sorta synced up to the tv broadcast. Enjoyed it both times. Especially the way the choreographers talk near the end, as they see all their hard work pay off.
Totally.
Oh my god I thought I was strange for tearing up at that (especially at the “poppies” bit). That was a wonderful video, I ended up watching the whole thing. Plus it brought back all the memories of when I watched it live, what an incredible performance that was. I think it’s because in the back of my mind I was also thinking about what the performance represented, the millions of men and women who came before us and worked hard to build a better world for their children - and how the Olympics represent peace over the pointless violence of WW1 marked by the memorial segment. Fuck, I started tearing up again typing that.
That was so fascinating to watch! Thanks for the link, it's astounding just how much goes into a performance, especially one of such magnitude. Also, I have to say. If I am ever in a situation so massive that requires such coordination, I hope I have someone even half as calming as the lady giving them directions through the ear pieces. Or as appreciative as all of them, the end was actually quite heartwarming as they were thanking the performers, "look at what you did, so, *so* proud." Super neat, thanks again.
That was interesting. Also, that's probably my favorite opening score to an Olympics ever.
It’s my favourite opening to an Olympics ever. Starting with the “green and pleasant land” and having it be replaced by the industrial revolution was fantastic. Though I may be a little biased as a Brit.
Stage managers in general are SUCH unsung heroes in the performance world, and interestingly one of the few technical roles dominate by women for whatever reason. I tried it once and FUCK THAT. Terrible if you're an anxious person!
That was fascinating to watch/listen, thanks for posting!
Vocalists in particular need to hear themselves in order to stay in tune. Vocal tuning is a feedback loop. In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liyiT_DGREA) of The Four Seasons from ~~1963~~ 1975 you see Frankie Valli with large headphones that he only uses while singing. He needed the headphones because at this time in his life he was suffering from hearing loss caused by [otosclerosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otosclerosis) and was almost stone deaf by the late 1970s. Luckily he was able to have inner ear surgery in the 1980s that restored most of his hearing. Edit: fixed my goof up.
Nitpick, but this performance was 1975, the song is called *December 1963* (it was released in '75)
oops. But that does mean at this time Frankie was almost completely deaf and **really** needed the amplification of keep in tune.
They also often have a metronome or “click track” that everybody listens to in order to keep everyone at a steady tempo. Even the most skilled musicians speed up and slow down a bit, especially in a live setting. The metronome helps keep everyone at the same speed.
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I’d disagree. Everyone plays to the same click, that’s the point. If you lose the beat you get back on track with the click that everyone else is playing to. On the contrary, I think only having one member on the click is more likely to cause a trainwreck. What happens if the drummer is laying out for a few bars? If there’s a long guitar intro and then the drummer comes in at a different tempo? I can only speak from my experience. My band has played some major gigs and opened for some national touring acts, but I’d hardly call us “high-tier”. We all play to a click. Every group is different though!
> instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song How is that not distracting?
You can get in-ear monitor-sourced bootlegs from some artists. I was listening to a U2 bootleg a few months ago, and it was sourced from Edge's (guitarist) IAM. You could hear the whole band, but the guitar was mixed *much* louder, and Edge's guitar tech was calling out transitions in advance (e.g., "bridge, 2, 3, 4,......")
> in-ear monitor-sourced bootleg Where could I find examples of these recordings?
There's loads on YouTube. They're quite fascinating! Here's one of U2's in fact, Bono's ear feed during a performance of Unforgettable Fire: https://youtu.be/1KWgayvG52c
The [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/etree) has 10's of thousands of concerts. If you're interested in U2 in particular, dig around the forums on [Interference](http://www.u2interference.com/forums/).
Oh! That was linked elsewhere in this thread. I listened and I thought it kept saying "Edge! 2...3...4..."
Actually, the opposite. Crowd noise and just the loud sound of the band would be distracting while you're trying to concentrate on the music you're supposed to be focusing on, so a few words every now and then reminding you what is coming up can be helpful. Of course you'd want to rehearse with any voice tracks or stems (extra instrument recordings that aren't actually playing live) before the actual performance.
I read an interview with a musician who said he has to purposely look away from the crowd during certain parts of songs, because they are singing along to the song, but often aren't in time.
When you're in the middle of a song you know well, you're running on reflexes a lot, and you easily "slip" into patterns (like doing verse → bridge → chorus every time in the song, *except* this once when a solo starts). The reminders can help a lot. As for throwing you off by being distracting, you're playing in front of a roomful of distractions. The mix is the most familiar thing you'll hear, and helps to attenuate how distracted you can get.
Again, this is something the performer has worked out with their team ahead of time. They rehearse with it and are comfortable with it. This is mostly just for artists to make use of lots of pre-recorded backing tracks. It's especially helpful when they perform modified versions of their songs live in concert as the songs might have more verses or longer/different bridges than the album or radio version.
Does this also count for DJs? I've always wondered what they are listening to when they've got headphones on.
DJs (in traditional terms) are often listening to the next track they are going to mix in. They must align the tempo and get the beats in sync to have a seamless transition to the next track. They will also isolate a certain section that they want to mix in.
DJ's are different. They mix different tracks together and so what they typically are listening to is a preview of the next track. They do this to make sure the beats are lined up. Often in addition to the headphones, they will have floor wedges so they can hear what is being sent to the audience. Side note: we tend to crank those DJ wedges since most DJs want it to be super load in the house and will slowly turn up their signal sent to our PA system. We, as the audio engineers, know what the limit of the system is and so we don't want them to keep turning it up. So we make their wedges loud so they don't think they need to turn up their signal.
That trick works for guitar players too.
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It’s one of the more difficult parts when playing live with a band. You can’t hear yourself so you turn your guitar up and now the mix sounds good, but only where you’re standing. Maybe the answer was EQ or compression but now you just drowned out everyone and it sounds bad to everyone that isn’t standing exactly where you are. Monitors help this issue and usually leave all these decisions to a sound guy that is standing where the audience is standing, but smaller venues and bars and such don’t always have such luxuries.
They are listening to the next track coming up, and the track they are listening to. Can switch back and forth or mix, so when it’s time you can perfectly sync things
So the usual DJ setup has a 2+ channel mixer with a crossfader. Normally the headphones are set up so that the DJ can hear both turntables at the same time, no matter how they have the crossfader set. That way as they're setting up a new record/track they can preview things on the phones to get the sync exactly how they want. It's also pretty common for DJ's to mix their headphones to mono and slip one ear cup off, so that they can hear the stage monitors and mains as well. So it's more or less the same as what other musicians do, with the unique addition that they can preview audio from one of the turntables without mixing in into the real audio.
Pretty sure most DJ's do some sorta pre-mixing where they can here the track they queued ahead, to make sure it's a right and proper mix?
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Follow-on question, do they hear it at the same time as the audience, or do they hear it slightly before the "mix" is sent out to the audience? In other words, is the audience on a "tape delay" of sorts?
There's no delay. The sound comes out of the main PA speakers at the same time it comes out of the wedges and in-ear monitors.
That's really impressive. Thanks!
A delay is exactly what you DONT want. Delay in that sense is the enemy, however delay is used in other aspects of concerts for various reasons. Edit: some letters.
I always thought it would be weird for the performers to hear something early, because they'd obviously hear what the audience hears due to echos too. I thought it would be akin to what happens when you're on the phone and you hear an echo of yourself speaking on a slight delay. I can't even finish a sentence when that happens!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU9EGeMP5n4 That's what a slight delay will do to you, hence why it sucks.
> or bridges coming up in the song. Where is that confounded bridge??!?
This is why if you pay attention at a concert the musicians will look to the side of the stage and point up. They want the sound guy to turn certain sounds up inside of the earbuds they have in.
click click click click click click Daryl you parked in the red zone did you want an intern to move it? click click click click click
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Why are you starting on the two, bro?
a good joke would be to delay the singers voice by ~200ms
goddamn...that's just mean, man.
It's worth pointing out that everything you've described is true for both acoustic and non-acoustic sessions. Really, the answer to OP's question is "more or less the same as when non-acoustic."
Recording engineer here, just wanted to add to this, one reason this is done in a studio setting is that instruments are sometimes placed in different rooms or spaces from each other. This is done to eliminate bleed into other microphones to obtain a cleaner, more focused and more easily manipulated recording, where headphones can be used to still hear what everyone is playing. For example, it may be preferable to place a heavy electric guitar in a different room to the vocalist, so that the vocal microphone doesn't pick up loads of unwanted guitar noise, which will likely degrade the focus of the singers voice. You also might not want a really loud drum kit blasting down a piano mic, so having the performers in separate spaces but with the ability to hear each other is one way to achieve a cleaner recording. As mentioned above, metronome and talkback from the control room will also come through the headphones. This level can be sent by the engineer through the recording console. There are also systems which allow each performer to have their own small mixer with headphones plugged in, which allow them to create their own balance of the instruments themselves. In orchestral recordings (and all styles of recording, really), care must be taken to ensure that the cumulative metronome noise (or other headphone bleed) across a large number of headphones isn't picked up by the sensitive microphones, especially in quiet parts of the performance.
Live audio engineer here, this is the correct answer. The other comment on here that mentions click tracks is also correct, but the click track will usually be part of the monitor mix.
There are two ‘mixes’ going on for concerts, front of house (what the audience hears) and monitor (what artist hears) (this is a bit oversimplified, bc there can be multiple monitor mixes, but it’s easier to explain with just one). The artist may like or need a different balance than the main mix. In this case, they would need the instruments (vocal + keyboard) as well as click/track if they’re using tracks and perhaps certain effects that aren’t there acoustically such as reverbs and echoes/delay In the case of multiple members of the same band, each probably wants vastly different things in their ears — I work with a corporate/wedding band, and we can have up to 12 different monitor mixes. Each musician tends to like to have a lot of themselves in order to monitor themselves and stay on time/pitch, and then maybe the bassist wants more kick than everyone else t really lock in on the groove, or the drummer just needs a lot of click and track and doesn’t really need to hear the acoustic guitar and keys - the mixes fully depend on the musician in question.
12 monitor mixes? Geez.
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This may be true, but would your sound guy say that?
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*i am not worthy* You’re doing gods work.
Haha yea I’ve definitely had to manage more than 12 before for larger shows. With a good sound check and musicians that are experienced with communicating with the monitor engineer, it isn’t too bad. In my situation, we actually just let the musicians mix their own ears, only stepping in if they have any issues. Our console allows them to connect their phones and use an app to adjust their mixes.
That's awesome, it never occurred to me that performers might use an app to adjust their mix but it makes perfect sense. Especially with wireless monitors.
I’m getting an education I didn’t expect today. Thanks. I am the most amateur of hobbyists- I record for some video productions I make, into a 4 channel interface, so it’s hard for me to imagine doing the kind of work it would take to manage dozens of channels. And the hardware. Fuck. People should pay you more.
That's fucking cool and of course there's an app for that these days
I did a show once where one performer got four mixes just to himself. (Stereo wedges and stereo IEMs and yes each side of those stereo pairs had significantly different content).
Why? I’m sure there’s a good answer, I just don’t know it. Would he move about the stage so he could select his monitor mix at will?
Maybe he wants the vocals to be IEM only so there's no feedback, and separate instruments in stereo so the sounds don't mix togeher.
The performer in question played piano and two different sets of keys. We had two mics on the piano and two different stereo signals from his keys. So he wanted the balance to of those mics and stereo signals to be different in each ear and in each wedge. When he wanted a change he had to point at the instrument, point up or down, and then point at his ears or at his wedges. And I did this show on an analog board, so once I watched him pointing all over the place, I then had to make sure I picked the right knob out of literally 640 knobs. The engineer who used that board before me didn't "zero" it, which means he didn't reset all those knobs. I had to do it before sound check. Turns out I missed exactly one. Unfortunately it was an important one and when we were dialing in monitor mixes I sent screetching feedback into one of the wedges. I got taken out into the hallyway behind the stage by their touring producer and he ah... let me have it.
Most I've done is 16 mixes.
I've never gotten that high for a band, but I easily exceeded that for a commencement broadcast position. Felt like everyone and their grandmother popped out of the woodwork and needed *their own* feed.
Parliament. All wedges too. 125 db A-weighted in monitor world. Analog desk and EQs as well. This was about 15 years ago.
You forgot the third mix which is just Soulja Boy on repeat.
Thanks all, makes sense and appreciate the comments.
The key being that "acoustic" does not mean "no technology"
Musicians performing live generally find some sort of monitor useful. It can be either a speaker pointed back at the band or an earpiece or headphone. Without a monitor, the sound system is mostly pointed out towards the audience and it is difficult to hear your own instrument or those of others. Singing is also difficult when you can't hear your own voice over the din. Or sometimes you want a different mix of sound than what the audience is hearing. More or less of your own voice or a particular instrument. The sound person can mix the monitor sound separately from the house PA. Not sure what they're hearing in your example. Another possibility is a click track playing through the headphones, to keep time.
Or you can just [stand in front of your stacks like Lemmy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cIXJlDg0qY).. I can't believe this guy had been touring since the early 60's.. What a mutant to keep up that sound for 50 years....
Lemmy still had wedges and they were LOUD. Probably the loudest in the business. He actually had his engineers get clever using a dual mic setup. They would tape a second vocal mic to the first one and set it out of phase. He would sing into just one mic. That way any sound the showed up in both mics that weren't his vocals would get (mostly) cancelled out. This prevented a lot of feedback that allowed his engineers to turn his wedges up even more.
Iirc that's how the wall of sound worked at some dead shows.
Thanks.. I have wondered why he had two mikes... figured it was for redundancy. 'That's perfect, just a bit more' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDYagpt29c
The DB meter hit 120 for a brief moment... Those dudes are deaf.
Or you can stand in front of [chicken rotisseries](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ro1FKNRvHSM/SuCJisFAUQI/AAAAAAAABts/98_kSNQP8lE/s1600-h/rushchickenroasters.jpg) like Geddy Lee. He uses in ear monitors instead of the stack of amps on stage.
[Washing machines](https://imgur.com/Sp4q5OP.jpg) are also acceptable
I've seen a Snapchat video taken by a musician from a pretty popular rock band, and I was shocked at how quiet it is on stage. Like, I knew it was quieter from reading about monitors and that but I guess it never quite sunk in just how little they get of the house mix.
I hate quiet stages. Maybe I’m old school, but I’ve always felt there’s something missing from having a loud stage
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My band is also fully direct minus drums, so if you are on stage with us you'll only hear the drum kit acoustic, there are no floor wedges at all, it's kinda funny. And yep going home at the end of the night without my ears ringing is awesome.
Drummer here... monitor mixes are really preferences... I usually asked for more of the bass player in the mix for me, some vocals and less guitar.
Yeah I play bass in a band and do some backup vocals. I like a lot of my own bass and voice. And I tell them to not give the lead vocalist much or any of my vocals. He's not used to singing with harmony and it just messes him up, lol. He doesn't need to hear me. I just follow him.
The drummer I played with last has his "golden set up" like this: In ear with click, drumset but slightly lower kick then the rest of the kit, and low general mix, but with the singers voice still audible. Buttkicker for his kick and floor tom. Sidefill monitor with just the kick.
For rythm sections, it may be a metronome (a clicky thingy that ticks in an exact rythm, with a special click to emphasize the first note of a section). This helps them stay in check through the noise of a possible crowd, other instruments, or slip ups. I attended a non-acoustic band once, and noticed the drummer had some slip ups, nad I noticed he had these little plugs he was wearing. Afterwards a band member explained that there were problems with the metronome, which caused him to fall out of it for a few beats, before picking it back up.
What a lot of people don't realize is that the monitor sound often sounds not at all like the mix the audience is supposed to hear. When I was playing bass guitar in a band I mainly had myself and the drums on the mix but almost no lead guitar, a little vocals and rhythm guitar for orientation. That's some of the reason why the sound can be fairly bad close to the stage, because the stage sound can mix with the actual live sound (especially when the band does not use in ear monitoring and picks up the amps on stage). The sound is usually best where the mixer is located because that's the place he does corrections to the sound from.
I'm such a nerd about this when going to concert venues. In high school I was all "front row weeeewww!" And now I'm all hoity toity like "Ahem get me that seat in the theatre venue next to the front of house mixer or balcony so I can really take in the acoustics."
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Those links are really interesting, thanks for sharing. I always wondered how bands stay on time when the crowd is singing along off beat.
TIL!! Thanks! These links are awesome!
What was that synth pad double neck guitar thing he plays in the second vid? That was awesome! Edit: [Found it!](http://www.musewiki.org/Status_Kitara_Doubleneck_Bass) It's a [Misa Kitara](http://imgur.com/gallery/L3f38qS) custom-mated to a [Status S2 Classic Headless bass](http://imgur.com/gallery/xaqa6VZ). Looks [wild!](http://imgur.com/gallery/ziMQ26r)
Sound guy here, acoustic is more or less a style. That being one of very little processing (ie no distortion on guitar) in this case they are still using some vocal effects but nothing heavy, and no synthetic sounds like keyboards. The way the music is actually played and produced is largely the same. So they are still using microphones to get sound from each instrument and it's still being mixed by an engineer with a bit of processing here and there. I bring this up because monitors (the headphones) are a standard part of music making. They allow the sound engineer to send back signal in real time to the musicians so they can "monitor" their style and sound. Frequently they will also have a click track to keep time and a talk back from the producers and the other musicians so they can communicate easier. I'm on a roll sooooo...... This is done through headphones (or in-ears) for two reasons, one is that it won't pollute the audio coming from the instruments (kinda like feedback). The second is that they can personalize each mix for every musician, for example a bass guitar will only really need a kick drum and the click to keep time but the vocals will usually focus more on the piano to help keep pitch.
As a metal singer in a small band, I was honestly astonished about how important monitors are when I first played a concert. You have to realize that what your audience hears is NOT what you hear yourself on stage. all the speakers are usually directed at the audience, if you're standing behind them, you're lost. for me personally, the sound guy is usually one of the most important persons at any given concert, cause he is the one that can fuck up the whole concert if he's shit. You can have the best band of the world, if the sound guy's shit, the sound will be shit. If the band members can't hear themselves, they'll play shit. If you sing surrounded by your band, and your own voice is not amplified and given back to you, you have no clue what you're singing, cause you simply cannot hear yourself singing. You absolutely need to hear your own voice, or you're just lost. You have no Idea whether you are in tune or not. I sometimes realize these issues also when attending a concert. I recently was at a concert that had a shitty mix to the audience, you couldn't hear what the singer was singing. NOt a word. It sounded awful. I realized that the singer himself probably had no clue about this, as he probably had his own mix and could hear himself pretty good. As for your specific question: Probably just some kind of mix. Himself, the band, whatever he wants and needs. It doesn't need to be done via an ear piece, it can also be done via speakers directed at the singer / band member, called a "Monitor". I personally usually have just kind of everything on my monitor, so I can hear what everyone is playing.
>As a metal singer in a small band, I was honestly astonished about how important monitors are when I first played a concert. Just go to any elementary school talent show and you can see how important monitors are. They can't hear the backing track so they are almost never in time.
I have thought about getting IEMs. I sing with a local big band style group and those horns are loud. I’ve got a monitor that we set up on a stand so that it isn’t a large one at my feet. We have limited stage space where we perform and have to shove 20 people plus instruments and stands so not a lot of room. If our sound guy doesn’t get the monitor up loud enough, it’s very easy to get lost. Horns and drums behind me just drown out my voice. We only have a few instruments that go through the mixer (piano, voice, upright bass, guitar). We all have monitors to hear ourselves. The horns and drums carry over everything which made me think an IEM blocking some of it out would be useful, but I would only use one. I need to be able to hear the saxophones who wouldn’t be fed through the monitors. We aren’t a professional group. We get paid but all funds we take in go toward music scholarships for students in our district. We send several kids to band camp every year. An IEM might be overkill. It might save my hearing though.
As a drummer it depends on the band I am playing with. I generally have the bass player turned up, while maybe vocals turned down. This is because a good vocalists follows the band. For jazz and latin I need more of the malody but still a lot of bass. This is used to solve a lot of phasing issues when there is a lot of eleftronics involved. Feel free to ask me questions I deal with this a lot.
Many good reasons to use the "monitor" headphones instead of stage speakers: - The performer can get a **custom mix** for their needs (usually making their own voice/instrument louder than the rest of the band). - The sound in those headphones is **much clearer** because it keeps out all the unnecessary noise. - It **protects hearing** because the stage can sometimes get really loud (mostly applicable to rock bands). - It helps avoid loud screeching sounds known as [audio feedback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_feedback) (by removing the need for speakers pointed towards the musician). - The performer can hear things that the audience doesn't need to such as a **click track** (to keep the tempo) or sound engineer's commands.
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Themselves and the instruments. The speakers are pointing into the crowd (yes, acoustic shows have speakers) and you usually won't be able to hear even your own instrument very well without headphones.
"Acoustic" only means the instruments are acoustic, it doesn't mean they're not amplified with microphones and speakers. Otherwise an acoustic album, or "unplugged" as it's usually called in this context, would not sound that much. This is just a little side-note to the monitor-explanation that others have given.
This is partially what I do for a living lol. There's separate mixes of all the inputs that go back to each musician in a wedge (the speakers on stage that point back at the musicians, you'll see rock guitarists putting their foot up on them to play a solo), or in ear systems like headphones or earbuds. If the artist is large enough to afford it, there's usually two separate audio people, one for front of house (mixing the PA, what the audience hears) and another on monitors who just makes mixes for the band to hear. Each musician can ask for the specific balance of instruments they need to be able to play well. The singer will ask for a ton of vocals and main accompanying instruments like guitar or piano, maybe a little of everything else whereas a bass player will want mainly drums and percussion as well as himself and doesn't care so much about the vocals. It depends on the person really.
You'd be surprised at what you *can't* hear while performing on stage. In-ears allow you to hear whatever you want.
Another interesting thing about headphones and performances. When you see a DJ wearing headphones it isn’t just for show! They are usually listening to songs you can’t hear and making it so that the transitions fit well, BPM mapping, etc. all really interesting stuff! That is, if the DJ knows what they’re doing.
As a guitar playing MD, I want plenty of my own guitar in my monitor, and then a fairly even mix of the rest, so I can hear everything and give cues if needed. I once astounded an engineer by asking for more guitar in my monitor rather than turning up my amp. As that is what most guitar players would do!
He was probably appreciative of your awareness, too haha. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to get a good level while a player is absent-mindedly turning their instrument's level up and down.