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On-Stage Harmonic Interference/”Beating”; Hearing Correct Notes as Incorrect Notes

ShoesMagoo

ShoesMagoo

Jan 20, 2023
44
66
#1
I’ve been searching around for info on this and have found a lot of posts on EQ, mixing, and volume but none on this specific topic. Perhaps I missed them, if so, feel free to direct me to them.

I currently play in a rock band with two heavy guitars, drums, and a vocalist. Playing at the guitarist’s in-home studio (a small space) with an amp and cab I am able to hear everything I need with no issues. I always wear earplugs, either Earasers, Hearos, or just regular foamies. Have experimented with in-ears and love them but inadvertently turned them up too loudly one day and have been waiting for a bit of subsequent hearing damage in one ear to subside before I can use them again (or maybe I won’t, given the situation).

We recently set up to play at an indoor, medium-sized venue and have had some opportunities to practice/sound check there. The crux of the situation is that even after EQing my sound from the board for me to be able to hear it (mostly) clearly through my wedge I can’t escape this phenomenon of sometimes hearing correctly played notes a half step or so out of tune, and sometimes completely losing the sound of other notes. This is only happening when the whole band is playing, I can hear myself just fine while playing solo.

Each of us has a wedge and I’m stage left. The drummer’s, which is roughly 12 feet behind me on his left, is up loud enough that I can hear what he wants my volume to be at for himself competing on the edges with my wedge. He will not use in-ears, earplugs, or any other form of hearing isolation/protection. I tried using the in-ears and turning my wedge down/off but the problem seems to get worse. The overall on-stage volume is so loud that I’m not able to hear myself clearly through the in-ears without cranking the volume to the point of destroying my ears (not an option, even for one show). I can walk right up next to my wedge or the drummer’s wedge and hear the questionable notes become less questionable, but even then, it is too loud to hear them all perfectly clearly. It seems like the bass as an instrument is at a distinct disadvantage in this situation just based on the nature of the frequencies of sounds that it produces trying to compete with distorted guitars. In fact, I can hear everything both guitarists are playing just fine, and they don’t even feel like they’re so loud that they are taking over the sonic space on the stage.

I played in bands on stages of various sizes 15+ years ago and never ran into this problem, at least not to this degree. I used earplugs then but also always had an amp on stage and never played with more than one guitarist, and they were usually not implementing the same level of distortion that we have in my present band. One thing I haven’t tried currently is to play with an amp on stage in addition to the wedge, but I don’t think lack of volume is the problem and thus adding more would likely make it worse. I can see if we have some time to try playing with different configurations of band members and myself to try to narrow down where it is coming from, but I feel like we could spend an endless amount of time on that and experimenting with different wedge EQing and maybe never even get anywhere with it. Plus, we have limited time and availability, so that might not even be a realistic option to explore.

So…harmonic interference, resonance, phase shifting, or just too f-ing loud, maybe? Trying to understand more about why this is happening and if there’s a path to correcting it, advice and input are welcome.
 
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#3
ShoesMagoo said:
I can’t escape this phenomenon of sometimes hearing correctly played notes a half step or so out of tune, and sometimes completely losing the sound of other notes. This is only happening when the whole band is playing, I can hear myself just fine while playing solo.
Click to expand...
I can say this also happens with IEM's, just much less. I've gotten lost and mildly confused, questioning if I'm in the right key. By just one fret. Seems to be only a certain song or two, and only on odd occasions, but oh yes, It's very real. Combine that with a dimly lit stage where glancing at fret dots for reference is difficult at best, and yeah, it can cause a little struggle. It's an odd issue that doesn't plague me, but does show up occasionally, though I swear it's much less when running IEM's.

I can tell you when it's the worst: running a single ear IEM, as if leaving one hanging out will help. It doesn't. Just don't do it.

Suggestion:
In your case, I agree with with Exploiter8 - get the instrument out of the vocal wedge. I use a small bass cab aimed at me from the front, just like a floor wedge. It does help some, as long as you are near it, even with IEM's.

Good luck, and please share if you find a complete cure for this phenomenon.
 
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#4
The obvious answer is to turn down. Mic the guitars, kit and d.i. the bass.
If your band mates or style of music precludes this idea then your choice just might be to find another gig or slowly go deaf.
There’s only so much one can do if the sound on stage is a pile of mush other than find what frequencies aren’t already bulldozed and eq yourself there.
Good luck. I mean it.
 
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#5
Sometimes indoor spaces will “feature” standing waves that will muddy low frequencies and make things hard to hear. …but I don’t think that’s your problem.

Everything you wrote suggests that you have two guitarists who are turned up way too loud, are using too much distortion and, from what you describe, are probably both EQ’ed with too much low end. It’s the perfect recipe for mud.

Solving the problem should be easy except for the fact that asking people to turn down is sometimes taken as a deep insult. A lot of your success here is going to come down to the maturity level of your bandmates.

Both guitarists should turn down (so that you can, too) and they should EQ their sounds in such a way as to avoid stepping on you and each other. Everyone will be able to hear better. Sadly, it’s usually an uphill climb convincing everyone else in the band.
 
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#7
The thing that stands out is that you're needing to crank your IEM to get above stage volume. Assuming they're decent IEM, this suggests you're getting a poor seal. A relatively cheap Shure SE215 is -37dB of sound damping. I'm usually pretty surprised at how loud the stage is when I remove them and someone is still playing.

Personally, stage amp is for monitoring and wedge is for vocals. I'll dial in a brighter sound on stage for myself knowing the soundman will use the DI to make me sound good out front.
 
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#8
I've played in hostile live environments where the visual component becomes more important (looking at your neck playing more by position than usual) but this takes the cake. Being dependent on wedges only vs 2 distorted guitars sounds insane to me. I'd get a small tilt back amp (like an Ampeg BA112 II) for behind me or to the side aimed up at me and accent the high mids on it. Might help might not, but you have to do something. A compressor and/or overdrive might help too. Live, high mids are key even if it sounds lousy soloed.
 
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#9
RandomKaren said:
The only time I have had anything like this happen was with a guitarist who used a sealed, front-ported cab and the "wolf" notes, way below the low E on a guitar, were coming from the ports. Doesn't sound like that's what's happening here but you never know.
Click to expand...
There are sealed cabs & ported cabs. But no sealed cabs with ports.
 
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#11
Hey

I have a guitarist friend who played in a loud prog metal band for 6 years.After he left the band I ran into him a couple of years later when he told me he cannot play guitar any longer bc he’s lost his “tonal center” Above certain freqs he cannot tell if a note is correct or not.

He never played with ear protection and now he can’t play at all (I suggested he take up bass, but yeah).

Hearing loss is a real thing and it comes in many forms.

Turn down and good luck.
 
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#12
I've wrestled with this at times in the band I'm in during rehearsals until recently. We have now mostly moved to IEMs, which has solved the problem for me. But previously, we all played through a common PA that the rental room has. The lead guitarist insists on cranking the volume and then everyone else has to turn up their volume to compete (including the drummer, who uses an e-kit). My theory why things go non-musical and I start to doubt that I'm playing in the right key is that the volume level is high enough to cause hearing damage and my ears are overloaded and reporting false information.

Echoing what Some Dude said, the key to IEMs is a good seal. The ones I use are cheap ($60) KZ10s that come with silicon tips that can seal OK but lose that seal if I so much as smile. The fix was to get Comply brand foam tips instead of using the stock silicon tips.

Before the band moved to all using IEMs, my solution to the too-loud rehearsals was for me to feed the output of my pedal into a behringer P2 belt-mounted IEM amp. I'd adjust the seal on my IEMs to quiet the rest of the band and then adjust my P2 volume to blend in enough of my bass so I could hear what I'm playing. It wasn't ideal (as I couldn't selectively boost drums/cut guitars) but it protected my hearing. Now that we can make our own personal mixes with IEMs, the audio quality is much better and rehearsals went from not fun to being something I now look forward to.
 
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#13
This happens- I’ve found it’s usually when my amp is fighting frequencies from loud subs on hollow stages. It’s made my brain temporarily short-circuit because you know you’re in tune, a wrong note is overtaking your bass signal and you look down and know you’re playing correctly. Weird.

Yeah, like a lot of people said- ya’ll need to turn it down some and maybe use a bass amp instead of the wedge. Get the stage volume under control and let the P.A. do it’s proper job.
 
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#19
Thanks for all the input, everyone. As many suggest, I will agree and attest that the volume is indeed up too loud. I can also confirm that getting everyone to turn down in this circumstance is unlikely to happen. Just asking about it would almost certainly be a point of contention, unfortunately. No one else in the band has any intention of using hearing protection or isolation. One guitarist and possibly the drummer have probably lost so much of their hearing at this point that turning down would be too unpalatable an option for them, at least for playing loud, distorted rock music. I’ve tried to get the drummer to try earplugs like the Earasers so he wouldn’t need to have his wedge cranked to 11 just to be able to hear everyone else over himself, and he was almost receptive to the idea, but he seems to have some kind of arbitrary aversion to implementing any form of ‘improvement device’ (also refuses to ever use/practice with any form of a click). Le sigh.

The venue has two sound guys, one of whom is our primary guitarist. They’ve both worked the area doing sound for a variety of venues for several years so I’d say that qualifies as at least legit on some level. Although our guitar player/sound guy may want his and everyone else's volume cranked on stage, he's professional enough to know to keep the FoH mix appropriately balanced. They’ve both been very willing to work to try to resolve the issue here. Nevertheless, there’s only so much time available to devote to it. We’ve already done the dialing in for this show so it would be a tall order to ask to wipe everything and start over. It would be worthwhile though to see if we can EQ out some of the low end from the guitars to see what impact that has.

I had originally been using a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro X’s with Comply tips but switched over to using a set of mid-range Shure’s when one of the guitarists tried them out and decided he wasn’t going to use them anymore (lol). The Shure’s were an upgrade over the KZ’s but I haven’t tried putting the Comply tips on them because the seal is so good that it blocks more sound than regular earplugs do. I’d already been looking at getting a pair of custom molds at some point, so maybe this is the time to sell some gear to fund a nice set. Some Dude's point about not being able to hear through in-ears over the stage volume is a huge takeaway.

We’ve got one more rehearsal/EQ session before the show so I’ll have to test out swapping in my amp/cab setup for the wedge, maybe trying different tips on the in-ears or switching back to regular earplugs, and maybe dialing in a brighter sound for myself on stage. It’s also at least worth a shot to see if I can motivate everyone to agree to hear how everything on stage sounds turned down, even if just for a minute or two to get confirmation as to the source of the problem.

Edit: My mistake, the in-ears are the t.bone EP 4 model from Thomann, not Shure. Not that it probably matters. Yep.
 
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#20
Comply sells a package with 3 sizes. The Shure's come with 3 sizes of Comply, but if your bandmate didn't keep track of them you may need to buy a package.

When my band did the IEM conversion I spent about 7 months with a couple of my bandmates insisting they had a good seal before I got mad and swapped their tips for them. Then I got the "that's so much better" response.
 

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