Where do monitor engineers go when they retire? That’s easy: they go to heaven. After dealing with all of the crazed artists and onstage insanity that comes along with creating multiple mixes for performers with widely varying needs, they deserve it. Yours truly does not fall into either category (monitor engineer or heaven), but that doesn’t mean that we can’t dig out tips and techniques to help you in your quest to create a better stage experience for the artists with whom you work.
I took a trip across the Blue Öyster Cult stage and visited Andrew Gearhart — one of my favorite people and engineers. Gearhart has been working with BÖC since 2004 when he started as a stage tech. He quickly expanded his role into being the band’s monitor engineer, no easy task given the fact that we don’t carry production and both of us are victims of “console du jour.” Gearhart also mixes monitors for the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, though in that context he does travel with some gear, making his life a bit easier. Recently Gearhart was gracious enough to share some of his ideas regarding monitor mixing for ears and wedges simultaneously.
“My biggest challenge with Blue Öyster Cult, begins Gearhart, “is not having enough time (we often travel on day of show) and using different wedges and mixing consoles every day — some of which may not be well-maintained. With digital desks, it’s less of an issue because I can load a file to get a head start when we don’t have time for a sound check. Yet whether it’s an analog or digital desk, I try to get the input levels for each microphone consistent on a night-to-night basis. In an ideal world, I’d have the exact same input levels every night. If I can get the gain structure right first — and not worry about making the monitor mixes ‘perfect’ — then the mixes fall into place more easily,” Gearhart explains.
In the (Monitor) Mix
“When we’re in a club or theater, I’ll start with the EQ curves that the venue’s monitor engineers have created, because they know the room. The typical issue with wedges is that they are never loud enough. For example when Rudy Sarzo was playing bass for BÖC, kick, snare and overheads had to be very loud in his wedge. The kick had to be full, so I wasn’t EQing it like a typical vocal wedge. It was big, loud and boomy. You have to be careful that you don’t kill the wedge with kick, snare and bass. I’ll put a small bump on the bass around 900 Hz and a huge bump on the kick at 3 kHz to help it cut through. Given time to ring wedges, I find that pulling out 600 Hz, 800 Hz, 1.25 kHz and 3 kHz helps me get higher gain before feedback. Now that we are using in-ears, I try to leave the low-end in the wedges and let them complement the ear mixes.”
Gearhart says he runs compression on the monitor mixes “in stages: some on the bass and kick drum channels, plus compression on the mix bus. If it’s a digital mixer, I compress everything at the input (the drums get compressed hard) and at the mix bus, except for vocals, which are compressed lightly for ears and wedges. When BÖC was on wedges, I wasn’t doing heavy compression on the vocals, because that invites feedback, but with ear mixes, there’s a good deal of compression on the mix bus, plus compression on the packs, and then the RF circuitry may add companding as well.”
Gearhart explains that in BÖC, Eric Bloom (vocals/guitar/keys), Rich Castellano (guitar/keys) and bassist Kasim Sulton get ear mixes and wedges simultaneously. “Kasim gets a mix that’s pretty close to a full front-of-house mix, except there’s a bit more bass and a bit more of (vocalist/guitarist) Don “Buck Dharma” Roeser’s vocal. The wedge is mostly for getting the feel of the kick and snare. It’s not very loud.”
One of the things that keeps Gearhart busy is the fact that Eric and Rich switch off playing the same keyboard rig. Neither of them wants to hear the keys and keyboard vocal mic when they are not using it. As a result, he has to mute the keyboards and the keyboard vocal mic in Rich’s mix when Eric is at keys and vice-versa (got that?). When Rich is at the keys, Gearhart also closes Rich’s front vocal mic and the mic on his guitar amplifier to avoid leakage. “Even with the newly revised ‘quiet version’ of Blue Öyster Cult” he quips, “an open mic on that stage is ridiculous.”
In the Digital Domain
On the surface, this sounds like a pretty easy maneuver, but such is not always the case. As Gearhart reveals, “if it’s a Digi (Avid) or Yamaha desk, I can mute sends for each channel individually by turning the encoder on or off for a specific send. In that case, I’m not muting the channel, only the signal going to a particular send from that channel. But there are other digital desks and some analog desks (Midas notwithstanding) where I have to turn down the level in the mix, because I can’t mute signal from a channel on a per-send basis. The send mute is global and it would shut down that signal in everyone’s mix. If I am on a desk where this is a problem, and I have enough channels and mix buses, I’ll create two additional mixes using the keyboards and keyboard vocal mic. I’ll route those mixes back into two channels — one gets routed to Rich’s ears and the other to Eric’s ears. I can then turn those channels on and off as needed so I don’t have to disturb send levels. In cases where I can switch the sends pre- or post-fader on a per-channel basis, I’ll keep all the faders down and have all the sends pre-fader. Then I can switch a send to post fader as a means of turning off the send without changing the level.”
According to Gearhart, life on the road with the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band is a bit different. “We carry a Yamaha DM2000, a mic package and we always have plenty of time to sound check because we’re usually at the venue early. There are only two sets of Shure PSM900 ear mixes: one for Kenny and the other for vocalist Noah Hunt. Noah uses ears and double wedges and they are very loud. They’ll take your head off. I remove a lot of high end from his wedges because he gets it from the ears. It helps a bit with feedback, but the wedges still ring at 400/630/800 Hz. I EQ Noah’s wedges to ring them out. It’s more about how loud I can get them. He wants to feel the low end of his vocal hitting him in the chest.
The Stage Mic Trick
“Their stage volume is very loud and one of the issues we have is that when Kenny Wayne moves away from his vocal mic, his ear mix changes. His vocal mic captures a wash of stage sound and he likes that in his ears, but when he steps up to the mic, we lose that ambiance because he is blocking the band from the microphone. Plus, there’s compression that kicks in on his vocal mic, so the band gets ducked when he sings. To compensate, we have an omni microphone on the corner of the drum riser. When he steps in front of the vocal mic, he gets the ‘band’ from that omni. Sometimes I’ll bump up that microphone when he sings to give him back that stage wash.
“In general, wedges just tend to increase the stage volume, so the ideal situation for most bands is to go with the ear mixes and lose the wedges. The ‘ears’ save your hearing, and you can get them to sound amazing.”
