As FOH has gotten more high tech, so has that slice of real estate known as monitor world
Once upon a time, monitors meant a mix or maybe two was handled from the same console as the house sound (and some folks — like this year’s Parnelli winner for FOH Mixer of the Year, Tom Young, still do it that way for acts like Tony Bennett).
But as personal monitors become the norm rather than some weird thing you have to adjust to for some gigs, the game has changed and that change is sure to continue. For instance, take the one-man approach of Tom Young and contrast it to the growing number of acts using more than one monitor engineer.
I first saw this with The Dead, where the entire band except drummer Mickey Hart was with one engineer on a Yamaha PM1D, while Hart’s monitors were mixed by a different engineer on a vintage Gamble desk like the one used at FOH. Saw it again with Springsteen, where two engineers handle each side of the stage. OK, that is a big band (10 pieces), so it makes some sense to have two engineers, each handling five people rather than one on 10. But when U2 last toured, they had three (count ‘em) engineers on three consoles for a four-piece band. And I have not seen it, but I hear that ZZ Top tours with monitor guys for a trio. Monitor World is officially not in Kansas anymore.
FOH asked a trio of respected monitor guys to give us their take on some of the things that might have once seemed weird, but are increasingly common. Read on for Earl Neil’s (Toby Keith) take on using multiple consoles (one for the band and one for the boss), Drew Cansalvo (Black Crowes and currently out with Tower of Power) on a “mixed” stage with some of the band on wedges and some on PMs, and Nick Sodano, who mixes Barry Manilow on a PM1D and lets the band fend for themselves.
Earl Neil — When The Boss Doesn’t Like Digital
I have been mixing monitors for Toby Keith for going on six years now. When I first started we were using one Midas H3000. At that time, our band was a bit smaller than it is now and we were in the process of growing. We had a nine-piece band — three of whom were sharing a single mix because there weren’t enough outputs on the H3000.
When we started the “Shockin’ Y’all Tour,” Toby wanted to add three background singers. I suggested going to a digital console so we could get the number of outs we needed for the additional band members, as well as needing to add some additional effects and sends for stage subs.
Toby had issues with the extremely low-noise floor of the DiGiCo D5 that I had selected for our monitor console. It was difficult for him to get used to hearing his own footfalls on the stage and not hearing the “dirt” he had grown so accustomed to. The band was extremely happy with the clarity and consistency of the DiGiCo and made it known to Toby when he discussed going back to analog. I knew that if we went back totally analog, we would have to carry two consoles to manage the large number of outs. I suggested that since we would have to have two consoles anyway, that we keep the DiGiCo for the band and bring a Midas back in for Toby.
This is the perfect set up for Toby Keith and The Easy Money Band. The DiGiCo and all its functionality allow me to mix the band primarily through the snapshots, which leaves me free to hand-mix Toby on our Midas XL3. Toby enjoys hearing a front-of-house type mix, and I am able to do that for him because I don’t really have many changes to make for the band unless something goes awry.
I really like how my world has come together on the Toby Keith Tour. It is very functional and yet a joy to mix in. I only wish that it didn’t make my world so large. My footprint is about 16’ by 20’. This is fine when playing sheds, but fitting between the stage and the dasher in a hockey arena is not always an easy feat.
Drew Consalvo — Mixing It Up
When mixing monitors for established bands that have some younger PM-wearing members, and some more mature members who still prefer wedges, an engineer has to adopt a dual-mind mentality when it comes to his or her approach to the job. Let’s face it: As monitor engineers, we have virtually spoiled our artists with the vast amount of technology at our fingertips these days: PMs, scene-based digital mixing, reverbs for everyone, etc. Expectations run much higher than when we were all just “blowin’ air” around the stage with sidefills and wedges.
For the guys on PMs, I tend to use parametric EQs on their outputs while any wedge mix gets a graphic. With the PMs, reverbs are a necessity, while not so much the case in the wedges except maybe to warm up a keyboard or smooth a vocal in a dry room. Thank goodness for digital desks and the wealth of DSP they possess within.
A lot of the “more mature” performers still really enjoy the feel of their pant legs flapping around with every kick of the bass drum. The moves you make on the sends are far more aggressive on wedges than with PMs. When a player on wedges requests more snare, for example, I will usually bump it at least 3 dB to get the thumbs-up, while it may only require 1 dB to elicit the same response with someone on PMs. The moves one makes for the PM-wearing members are much more subtle — thus, the “dual-mind” mentality.
Then there is the issue of the dual cue buss requirements. Cueing a vocalist’s PM mix at nominal through the cue wedge can be downright scary and loud enough to freak out a nearby keyboard player. One must be able to separate the wedge cue from your PM cue. While many desks offer this capability, others do not, and I have gone so far as to take the headphone output of the desk and route it to one of my cues. The dual mind requires that you are always cognizant of which type of mix you are adjusting. This and the right attitude will help lead to job security.
Nick Sodano —“I mix Barry. The band fends for themselves.”
Self-mixing is here and the phenomenon is only going to grow. With the advent of systems from Hear and Aviom, and just plain wacky stuff like Jimmy Herring from Widespread Panic, who has a series of mixes sent to an army of wedges, which he mixes himself using volume pedals, our jobs may increasingly become about educating the artist and keeping them out of trouble. The following is from an interview FOH did with Nick Sodano, monitor engineer for Barry Manilow at the Las Vegas Hilton, where he uses an Aviom system for the band.
Says Nick: “The trick is to weed out the guys that are great musicians that can’t mix, and then help them out every now and then because there are guys who took to the technology like ducks in water, and there are a couple of guys who can’t mix a drink, you know? They’re gonna get in trouble every month or so, so I go up and say, “Here, try this” and it’s all, “Oh, OK. It’s great. Thanks.”
BE: Do you ever find that you have to take control back? Do you have the racks where you can take control back?
Nick Sodano: I don’t ever take control from them unless one of the singers or somebody does something silly or something just stupid, like muting their own vocal, for instance. One of the background singers actually muted their own vocal and did not know how to turn it back on — she just hit the wrong button — and didn’t tell me for three days. She was almost in tears. “I don’t hear myself!” I looked at the rack and was all, “Oh, there it is. Boom. Done.”
Now what does make it harder is that you’re walking a line, because you can’t. Normally, my impulse is to grab an input gain… that impulse has to stop, because now it’s, “Oh my God, I’m going to mess up… ”
BE: Everybody’s mix.
Everybody’s stems as well, just to correct something for Barry, so you have to get it somewhere else, you know what I mean? You have to make sure that your gain structure is set up such that if you need more for the Aviom stems, then you have it without actually grabbing an input gain. On Barry’s thing… it’s not a big deal if I were just mixing Barry. I could grab an input gain and do what I need to do, but it affects everybody else at that point.
BE: I own a Hearback system, and I use it for gigs where I have to mix front of house and monitors at the same time. But the thing that I’ve found with the Aviom system, lower on the food chain, is you can do so much that people are spending more time tweaking. It’s like, you’re supposed to be playing instead of tweaking…
The guys are good about it. Like I said, some of them took to the technology better than others. The guy on the wedges, the guy that’s on the stereo wedges is Mike Lepig, the guitar player, took to it unbelievably. Obviously, he has a studio at home. He’s a gear-head, so he’s actually taken advantage of… you have 16 presets, so he’s muting certain things on certain songs, he’s boosting things on others.
He’s really into it. He’s got scenes. I’m trying to get the other guys to play with the scenes more and more. This show can get rock-concert loud, and all of a sudden, you’re in a ballad and everything changes like that. There’s a lot of dynamic range in this show, so that helps a lot, so the guys can say, “OK, this is my ballad setting. This is this song’s setting. This is this song’s setting.” I’m getting them to start doing that more and more.
But the challenge is controlling the stems that you are sending to the stage mixers. For instance, if I have one person ask for more hi-hat in the drum mix, I can’t just do it. I have to stop and ask, “Is everyone OK with adding some high hat to the drum stem?” It becomes a balancing act.
