How to set up monitor mixes for live sound

hi everyone bruno loose here with glv productions I had a request from one of my subscribers to film a video about how to set up monitor sense so that's what this is going to be just to be clear about what a monitor is when we say monitor we are referring to the speakers on stage that the musicians and singers use to hear themselves other people will call them fullback speakers some people call them wedges and in some play in some cases they called slots or slot speakers but we're referring to the ones that the musicians and the singers use to hear themselves okay so here's a view of the mixer that we'll be using for this demonstration this is an analog mixer it's a sound craft spirit live for to once again this information will apply to any analog mixer digital mixers are still developing their user interfaces so there's no common user interface yet for digital boards but in general analog mixes are pretty much the same the first thing that you have to understand about monitor sends is that they are controlled separately from what are called front-of-house ends front-of-house ends are the signals that we the engineers and the audience listen to monitor sends are listened to by the musicians and the singers now typically on an analog board you will have a division into an auxilary section which in this mixer is the green and blue knobs at the top and a fader section right the faders are down here the auxiliaries up here monitor sends are typically created using the auxiliary sends also known as the box ends front-of-house mixes are usually created using the faders so what I always tell people when I train them faders are what we listen to axes are what they listen to what the musicians and the singers listen to so to begin with when you set up a monitor mix you have to realize that you are not just looking after one mix you're looking after multiple mixes each one being listened to by a single performer or in certain cases a group of performance if we come over here to the master section of the mixer you'll see that here you have master faders now those master faders control the overall level of what we the audience our congregation listen to you'll also see down the side here you see a series of auxiliary master faders now you can see that on this mixer you have a total of six auxiliary faders each of these represents a single monitor mix and these knobs function the same way as these do their master control for the overall level of the monitor mix so the first thing that you do is you assign monitor mixes to each artist musician or singer in this church box one of the singers at the front aux to our bass player and guitarists who are located on the step behind the main singers three is the keyboard player and four is the drummer so once you've decided what will be what you set your aux masters to the unity gain position now the unity gain position on this mixer is two o'clock on some mixes it will be twelve o'clock on this mixer it's two o'clock something else which I have to point out to you here if you look carefully you see a button here which is labeled ox for free this is to switch this ox pre or post theta when an ox is pre theta what that means is that the level of the channel theta does not affect the signal going to that ox if it's post fader the level of the fader affects the signal going there now in general on monitor sense you want them to be pre theta and I'll explain why later now on this mixer the first three aux ends are pre fader the last two are post and this one is switchable pre or post fader if you want to use it as a monitor sent it must be switched pre fader with a yellow light on okay so now here we have a view of the channels themselves and this is where people get confused you remember I just said that the each aux master corresponds to one individual loudspeaker on stage in the case of our church aux one other leaders aux two other guitarists and bass player three is keyboard and four is drums so let's say that this channel is the lead singers channel this knob represents the level of his mic going to himself this knob represents the level of his mic going to the guitarist and bass player this knob represents the level of his mic going to the keyboard player and this knob represents the level of his mic going to the drummer so it's often useful when you are looking at a given channel to ask yourself who needs to hear this person so in the case of this channel I set it up such that everyone is getting him everyone can hear this person if on the other hand Judas I did that say the drummer does not need to hear him you would turn the knob down if the bass player needs to hear him more you would turn up the level for the bass players now on this channel say this is a backing singers Channel and the backing singer needs to hear himself so you turn up the first one and say the guitarist and the bass player need to hear him the keyboard player doesn't need to hear him so you turn this down and the drummer doesn't need to hear him either so you turn that down as well there are some cases where nobody needs to hear that person because there is an on-stage amplifier so for example say this channel represented the level of the bass player now the bass player has a bass amp onstage so his signal does not need to be in the monitors at all hence why you turn them all down if the singers say oh we can't hear the bass player you could ask the bass player to turn their amplifier up slightly or you could increase the level to them a little bit okay now earlier you heard me mention the difference between pre fade and post fade auxiliary sense the difference between them is whether the fader affects the level that is going to the auxilary on a pre fade send this does not affect the level that's going out here so you could pull this fader all the way down and the monitor would still be on on a post fade send if you pull this down the monitor would also cut off the reason you use pre fade auxiliary sends for monitor mixes is that you don't want the level of the monitor to go up and down as you are mixing the front-of-house sound remember you can't hear what the monitors what the musicians are hearing in the same way that they can't hear what you are hearing so use pre fade auxiliaries when you're doing monitor a sense that way you can make all the changes you need to in your mix and you won't disturb the musicians and the singers at the front so that's a real quick video tutorial on how to set up a monitor mix and monitor mixes I hope this video was useful to you there's a couple of things to remember about monitor mixes first of all remember that you can't hear what the musicians are hearing so you need to communicate with them and you need to ask them what each person needs to hear sometimes their requests may seem rather strange but you need to trust them with their monitor mix in the same way as they trust you the front-of-house guy with the front of house mix secondly remember if possible use pre fade auxiliary sends for your monitor mixes that way when you make changes to the front of house mix you're not messing up monitor mixes that the musicians are hearing thirdly remember that not everything needs to be in the monitors if an instrument has an on-stage amplifier it may not need to be in the monitors at all because the spill from the amplifier is already more than enough for the musicians and singers to hear similarly instruments that have a high natural sound level such as drums brass and percussion instruments also sometimes don't need to be in the monitor mix likewise electric guitar which has an on-stage amplifier may not need to be in the monitor mix so keep those sends off until the musicians asks for them again your mileage may vary all bands are different and all setups are different so you'll need to work that out based on your individual circumstances this is bruno loose from jlv productions thanks for watching if you have questions or comments please leave them below I'll do my best to get back to you until the next time thanks take care and I'll see you soon

Channel: GLB Productions

Views: 742,296

Keywords: Foldback (sound Engineering), Mix, Audio, System, Sound, monitor, wedge, amplifier, sound reinforcement, mixer, aux, auxilliary, stage

Id: MUAbIGGkeUk

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2012