In-Ear Monitors: Don't Use Just One! (Updated)
Anyone who has ever performed live knows you need some kind of stage monitors that will help you sing accurately and deliver confident performance magic. The mix of instruments and voices, the sonic envelope, ambiance and volume of sounds you hear in your monitors can make or break your performance, because your vocal apparatus responds to what your ears hear. Hearing too little of what you need will usually result in pushing your voice excessively, which can lead to vocal fatigue and damage as well as limit vocal control. Too much monitor sound, or the wrong mix of sounds, can sabotage confident breath support as well as control, and can cause you to sing out of tune, among other issues.
In my career, I have most often used stage wedge monitors, but finally made the plunge and got a set of in-ear monitors to use myself and to be able to advise my students.
Personally, I really love hearing the whole room when I perform, and getting ready for my first in-ear show I wondered how I would do with those monitors inserted in both ears, isolating me from the sound I'm so used to. I actually ended up LOVING them!!
...never use just one!
Santucci explains: "One danger from too much isolation comes when musicians decide to “fix” the problem by wearing an earpiece in only one ear. When players take one out, their brain loses its ability to do binaural summation, where two ears together add up to a 6dB increase in your perception of loudness. If you're hearing 90 dB in both ears, your brain thinks it's hearing 96 dB. If you take one ear away, then that one ear has to go from 90 to 96 to sound like 96. And now the other ear is open and getting bashed by the band, the P.A. and the crowd. So this loud sound coming into the open ear causes you to turn the other ear up even more. In terms of ear safety, using one earpiece is a dangerous practice — it could actually be worse than using none at all.”
Mike Dias continues the discussion: “There's a common misconception that an artist can use just one earpiece and still use stage monitors, but this results in the worst of both worlds,” says Dias, who offers a simple experiment to demonstrate this. “Have someone stand onstage with a beltpack using one ear and turn it up to a comfortable performing level. Now shut the beltpack off and run the stage monitor to a comfortable level. When you turn the monitors and the single earpiece on, the artist inevitably thinks the in-ear sounds weak and cranks it up to compensate. But when you turn the wedges off, the artist will notice that the earpiece is too loud. In the case of one-ear listening, you don't get the benefit of hearing protection and you don't get the accuracy benefit of the in-ears.”I don't know about you, but I value my ears too much not to heed this advice from this authority. If you find yourself in the habit of dropping one of your in-ears on stage, and you have the budget, it might be worth an upgrade to ambient sound in-ears, which gives you the ability to 'dial in' just the right amount of ambient sound.
More In-Ear Tips:
- Don't forget to clean them after every use! That wax build up can create problems.
- Be careful how much bass you have in your mix. Bass overtones can cause you to be pitchy.
- from the Shure company... https://youtu.be/Q_cQx6qd4VQ
- from audio professional at Kettner Creative... https://youtu.be/bfWeA0FP62A
Now what about you?
Labels: 3-D Active Ambient In-Ears, in-ear monitors, Judy Rodman, live performance, Michael Santucci, Sensaphonics, stage monitors