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Completely “silent” stage: pros/cons, tips/tricks?

#41
Wasnex said:
Ideally a band will use the same setup for rehearsals and gigs. Each player needs a consistent signal path they can dial in and then lock down. When it is done this way, the mixes sound the same every time the system is used, regardless of whether it's a rehearsal or a gig. Small tweaks can be made as our hearing tends to shift from day to day, but only minimal changes should be required.

This only works if you can get the players to accept the need to stop fiddling with their controls.
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Agree 100%.
For the 3 bands I'm in right now, we have mainly ex-pro's who are in other bands, so the settings change are always a minor challenge. The others I subbed with, can't really say. Showed up, plugged in, opened the appropriate mixer/monitor app on my tablet and adjusted my mix. No gain changes. Only have control over my own mix levels.

FWIW - I've had only one band rehearsal since 2016. I get the set list, song keys and show up to the gig (early)!

PS: I'm no pro. Most of these bands play 80% the same songs, some in different keys.
 
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#43
Danny O Danny said:
I don't know... We've auditioned a few musicians who did not have prior IEM/"Silent Stage" experience, and as a precursory part of their audition we "onboarded" them. In each case, all it took was a few minutes beforehand to show the person how to use their personal mixer and, if they didn't have decent earbuds with them, let them use a set of our headphones to insure they could hear well. We also checked in with them as we started playing songs to see how comfortable they were with the mix they were getting, and help them tweak accordingly. I'd hate to miss out on a great addition to our band just because they were unfamiliar with IEM technology. That would be foolish on our part.
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Making sure the candidates can hear reasonably well is likely to be beneficial, but it's not onboarding.

If you want to know what onboarding is: What Is Employee Onboarding Process? Definition, Templates, and Best Practices - Spiceworks
 
#44
Wasnex said:
Making sure the candidates can hear reasonably well is likely to be beneficial, but it's not onboarding.

If you want to know what onboarding is: What Is Employee Onboarding Process? Definition, Templates, and Best Practices - Spiceworks
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Yes, I've onboarded many new hires during my 35-year career in IT. However, I was responding to JamesGrant comment, in which he used the term in reference to bigdaddy12's audition experience (which is why I placed the term in quotes).
 
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#45
Wasnex said:
This is an important issue.

A proper IEM system should have brick wall limiters to protect the users. However, in order for the limiters to work properly while providing the necessary protection, they have to be adjusted properly. The audio tech really needs to understand proper gain staging and how the system is configured.
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Granted I have no experience with this, but it seems like lack of a built in limiter is an accident waiting to happen. Though I'm a jazzer, I've played enough gigs with PA support that I wouldn't trust my hearing to anybody.
 
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#46
fdeck said:
Granted I have no experience with this, but it seems like lack of a built in limiter is an accident waiting to happen. Though I'm a jazzer, I've played enough gigs with PA support that I wouldn't trust my hearing to anybody.
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Which goes back to my earlier post about all my bands bringing their own IEM systems. There were times when one or more of those band members were still using wedges, but mostly not! We've all had too many bad experiences with wedges and/or FOH mixing them.
I don't do wedges anymore!!

Most of the smaller digital consoles will allow you to insert a brick wall limiter on the AUX buss, and the more expensive wireless units have limiters built in, some off those are even adjustable (Shure, Senn..)

EDIT:
To be honest, the biggest problem (if you want to call it that) is that many bands have no clue how to setup (gain, EQ, effects,..) the channels on their IEM mixer for good sound. I've posted about this before, but about 2.5 yrs ago I did five (5) sub gigs with a band. We did one rehearsal (yes, I forgot about doing that one when I said I hadn't rehearsed since 2016) where I found out it was a trio. At the first gig - House does PA and monitors - they brought their own IEM rig and split to the house! We did NOT use IEM's at the rehearsal. BL's house, upstairs bedroom..
We ran one song and the IEM mix/sound was horrible, so I asked the BL if I could mess with my EQ..
Sure.. he says.
I go in and quickly set up the drums, bass, guitar and vocal channels adding some basic reverb on vox (his and mine).
We start the next song and we're 15 seconds into the song when the drummer stops us.
He asks what the hell I did to the mix!!
I said I can put it back the way it was (I'd saved a scene before adjusting).
He says no that's fine.
I asked what the issue was!
He says "Nothing.. I wondered what you did because my mix has NEVER SOUNDED BETTER!! "
I saved that scene for them too! :)
 
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#47
JamesGrant said:
That sucks. I’m sorry to hear that. There are so many ways to onboard people and ‘trial by fire in public’ isn’t one of the good options. Lots of great players are promising youngsters get burnt and passed-by by such an unnecessarily abrupt ‘introduction’ to the machinery of modern ‘live’ church music making.

Learning to be comfortable with that equipment is a short process, learning to be a good musician is a long process - I am sad that people who are possibly fine musicians and great people are rejected due to the ‘gate keeping’ of the simple-to-teach equipment that some churches choose to use and forget to teach. Not church-bashing, but trying to let you know that the onboarding process is broken, and that’s not your fault.
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Yeah. I have since changed churches. I have spoke with our current WL about what happened. He stated i was aet up to fail. The old Church WL didn’t want a bass player. He would rather just use the bass track. Literally them 4 and no more. This is at a 1000 member church. Thinking about auditioning for my current church.
 
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#48
s0c9 said:
Which goes back to my earlier post about all my bands bringing their own IEM systems. There were times when one or more of those band members were still using wedges, but mostly not! We've all had too many bad experiences with wedges and/or FOH mixing them.
I don't do wedges anymore!!
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Even when PA's had wedges, if offered one I always declined. On a few occasions, I'd discreetly push it away from me, and in one case, I unplugged it. Most of the time, the wash from the other wedges, or even from the monitors, is enough for me to keep my place in the music. And when I'm playing upright, a wedge is just another source of feedback. When a wedge is completely unavoidable for whatever reason, I find it helps to ask the tech to turn the low end EQ all the way down, since it's actually the harmonics that I need to hear for my intonation.

For now the jazz world hasn't gone there. For one thing, every gig with a different band would be a different PA, often from a third party sound company.
 
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#49
fdeck said:
Even when PA's had wedges, if offered one I always declined. On a few occasions, I'd discreetly push it away from me, and in one case, I unplugged it. Most of the time, the wash from the other wedges, or even from the monitors, is enough for me to keep my place in the music. And when I'm playing upright, a wedge is just another source of feedback. When a wedge is completely unavoidable for whatever reason, I find it helps to ask the tech to turn the low end EQ all the way down, since it's actually the harmonics that I need to hear for my intonation.

For now the jazz world hasn't gone there. For one thing, every gig with a different band would be a different PA, often from a third party sound company.
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I like having a wedge as long as it has a custom mix dialed in to my specifications. I don't generally like putting bass in my wedge if I am using a bass rig. Sometimes it can sound great, but more often it doesn't. Why? IME a wedge and bass rig tend to fight down low. Adding bass to the wedge may audibly increase volume, but it can make it harder to hear pitch and definition. This problem relates to variation in phase and group delay characteristics of different speaker designs. Having the wedge high-passed to cut the lows can help mitigate the problem. The problem also relates to speaker placement and polarity. Ideally the sound from each cab will reach your ears at the same time and with the same polarity. Placement of your monitor and bass rig can be adjusted to equalize propagation delay, and flipping the polarity on a DI or the mixing console can resolve polarity issues.

Bleed from the subs can also be a big problem. Sometimes switching the polarity on the PA side helps. If doesn't fix the problem, it just moves the issue to a different frequency. Sometimes the makes it better and sometimes it makes it worse, and sometimes it's a wash (doesn't matter). Moving your bass rig can help as well.

If I am playing upright, I prefer if there are no nearby monitors with bass in them.
 
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#51
I think I'm tolerant of wedges (not wedgies) because my first few years of playing, while I was in college, we had no monitoring whatsoever. We just listened to the amps behind us and the mains out front as best we could and it was fine. Later I got to play with monitors, and that's how it was for the next 20 years or so.

Interesting case here: Several years ago I played with a church for about 6 months that used IEMs (adjustable by each individual performer via his/her iPhone "registered" in a Presonus 24.4.2, for his/her aux mix). Silent stage, electronic drums, no floor monitors. So, the scheme worked well, but I was actually more comfortable with no monitoring at all because that's "how I grew up", so to speak. I got everything I needed from the house system, just like the formative years. Even the vocals, and I was a harmony singer so I had to be spot-on wrt pitch. I should also mention that the band used no backing tracks, so no click track was necessary, otherwise of course I'd have had to use my in-ears.

My last few years of serious playing at churches, it was all contract work. I mean where you get a Planning Center request, you show up, they have an IEM cable drop for you on stage, and you have to accept what the outfit happens to be doing WRT monitoring and has been doing for months/years, including who's on the board, and if you don't like it, well... tough s__t. If you squawk about it, forget about any more calls.

With me, I worked that the reverse way. Those hearing-damage incidents meant permanent blacklisting of those sites on my part, forever, regardless of who Planning Center showed would be on the board, even if I trusted who was listed, because that person could always refuse the PCO request at the last minute and the church might slide in some joker because that's all they had available on short notice.
 
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#54
My band has been doing this for about 8 years and it has worked well. It was an easy transition for me, but harder for our lead player, who is an inveterate tone tweaker. He eventually got on board and he’s moved his tweakage from an amp to his pedalboard, to the enduring frustration of our sound engineer.

Obviously, IEMs are critical and worth the time and expense to get them right. Ears - you only get two…
 
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#56
4Mal said:
1 band I'm in is silent stage. I love it. I miss it when I'm with a blues band I'm subbing with.
The silent stage band uses ansd splitter and an XR18. We use the same rig rehearsing. It took my bandmates maybe 2 rehearsals to go yeah! We are very vocals forward. Singing on IEM's is just heaven...
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We use the same system in the band I just joined. I have been rehearsing with them for a month or so and we use the same mix for live and rehearsal. I played my first gig with them Saturday night. It was fun and I could hear everything just fine. During the first set I accidently bumped the channel button on the belt pack and lost my IEMs. I could still hear enough to get by, but I ended up pulling one of my buds out thinking it would help me hear. I was not ready for how loud it was. I'm no stranger to loud as I've been playing for 45+ years, but once you've gotten used to something it's easy to forget how load rock bands are. Since I joined this band I've only heard us through the IEMs. I like using them and do think they will protect my hearing!
 
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