How Can I listen better to my self while Im playing live

There is an experimental new procedure that is being done in Europe....you can have your ears surgically removed and placed on a stand about 50 feet in front of the stage. Then you have FM transmitters installed in your ear sockets and viola!

 

monitors.

 

bigger amp???

 

If you can, in ears.

 

turn everyone else down

 

Point the cab at your ears.

 

Having a cab with highs and high mids that is pointing at your head definitely helps. I'm at least 6'3" with shoes on, so even a normal 2-cab stack doesn't point at my head if I am standing near it. But I've recently been playing with a 50-watt Vox guitar combo placed on top of my 2x10 Bergantino which is on my MarkBass 1x15. I feed the signal from my LMII's tuner out into the input of the vox. I have the highs and high mids (except for a couple of tunes where I turn the high mids up most of the way) turned down most of the way on the LMII, and have the lows turned down all the way on the Vox. The Vox is basically at face level now, and I don't even need to have the volume up more than a smidgeon for it to seem LOUD, and now I have no trouble whatsoever hearing myself. The lows kinda fill the room from the bass rig, but with the highs at ear level, I can hear everything very clearly now.

So yeah, if there is anything you can do to point highs and high mids at your head, maybe tilt a cabinet back so that it aims it's sound at your head, or stack them in a way so that a cabinet is at head level.

 

having one cab near your head always helps. Not always possible though. good luck with monitors that can handle the bass.

best advice i can give you is to "practice" getting used to not being able to hear yourself (or the other musicians) as well as you'd like to on stage. This used to really freak me out, but over the years i developed the knack for being able to pick stuff out. Ideally, we'd always have a great stage mix, but don't hold your breath - you'll die.

 

While it is important to hear yourself and the band - I have found that even when you can'thear each other well - being confident and well rehearsed helps.

I've played where it was hard to hear the guitarist and other band members - but everyone could at least hear the drums and because we were tight - we were able to get through the gig and play together.

In ear monitors with a personal mixer should do it or just a good monitor that you can control the volume and mix on will help.

The other thing to note - there is always an adjustment if you spend a lot of time in rehearsal and then take it to the stage - depending on the room - that can lead you to feel like you can't hear yourself - but it is really adjusting to playing in a more open space - outdoors this is even more prevalent as there are no real reflective surfaces so your back line and monitors are more important - my 3 cents

 

Focus. Playing live in rock bands hearing myself is always a challenge.
What I hear is not representative of what the crowd hears. For one thing, bass wave freqs take a few feet before they develop.
Even if you go out front during sound check by the time of the show the levels are going to be different --- more bodies, band members tweaking knobs, etc.
I don't worry too much about it if I've got a soundguy sittin' out front. Just "mak show, mak show!"
Working in T40 bands you just play well and hope for the best.
But concentration and really focusing was the best I could ever do.
At least now you have monitors!! This wasn't the case long ago.
I don't like bass in my monitors - just vocals (and boost mine a little please).

 

how much money do you have? getting seperate monitor mixes for everyone gets expensive. So do good monitors that can handle bass, the low end of keys, the kick, etc. Monitors tend to be where a pa cuts corners price/quality wise, and with good reason. They don't affect the FOH. (usually)

 

Get a kickback amp or wedge type monitor.

 

What helped me is pushing my mids more and not boosting the bass. The mids will help you cut through. The thing I had to come to terms with is that the sound on stage with my amp is not what the audience is hearing. Getting heard on stage by increasing stage bass freqencies and volume will result into too much sound for the audience. Your tone will turn into big booms. Adjusting the mids helped me. It took a while getting use to, but I the sound better with my band.


Not being able to hear yourself on stage results in volume wars between band members. If the rest if the band has the goal of playing as loud as possible, then the only way is too turn up, but if your goal is to strive for a balance sound, then communicaiton is key to reach your expectation. Keep in mind that if a gig does not call for loud music, it is probably better that the band has a whole doesn't play at top volume. Depending on the music, loud music just pushes the audiences away.

I also feel like that once your ears get calibrated to loud volumes on a gig, then it is difficult to turn down. You get use to that sound and feeling of the too loud volume. So it is important to get the sound balanced from the start of the gig. Try not to get yourself stuffed into a corner with the drummer or the guitar amplifier. You will blowout your ears quicker and will feel the urge to turn up. If you have something other then your bass amp blasting in your ear, then you eventually you will turn up, causing everyone else to turn up. Once the gig gets started, it is difficult to make changes.

 

Boost the mids and you'll find your sound cuts through the mix MUCH better. The precision with which you can do this depends on your eq.

 

A drummer friend of mine uses a small personal mixer with his click on one channel, and a pair of mics in the other channels. The mics pick up his monitors and stage sound and he can mix that with his click. A similar approach with a d.i. from your bass and a stage mic might work out for you.

 

Some good pointers here.

One often overlooked that Ryco briefly touched on is "focus".

I've found a number of times that some band member was freaking on not being able to hear his vocals in the monitors and I'm standing right there using the same great well-tweaked monitor singing harmony and hearing him just fine.

So what's the difference between him and me? Well, he tended to never really focus which parodoxically requires one to be in a more relaxed mental state. He was always worrying, wigging out on stuff, had his attention on all kinds of things that weren't relevant to the moment. Me? I found through experience that even in some pretty chaotic sonic environments that once I adjusted to the room/stage anomalies and kept my focus clear that I could tell what was going on well enough to make it through, and as the night progressed things often just became clearer and easier.

 

When i used to gig, i was always being told to turn down, and could never hear my bass. Finally, I disconnected the speaker from the head, and ran that sound into a wedge monitor (as suggested above). This allowed me to hear myself well, and was placed next to my other monitor which had the band mix. At that point, my sound guy never said turn down again, and I heard myself fine along with the rest of the band.