Anybody use in ear wired monitors/ headphone amps?

[jgcable]

tomany, electric drums or muffing acoustic drums is not a good solution, the sound, the dynamics and overall feel do suffer.

Let your drummer play with the headphones but so that he only hears overheads, then he will realize how much noise he is making. And make him record his practicing with only one microphone.

You see the problem is very common, today's drummers including A class pros, play the cymbals too loudly. The way drums are recorded in the studio and mixed live since the late 60's has made drummers crappier dynamic wise. Since then, drum mix has become more dependent on close micing which allows drummers to bash the shit out of cymbals. Earlier times, when they used 1 mic on the drumset, that kind of playing was impossible because it would have ruined to whole mix. We all know how heavily Bonham played but he went relatively easy on the cymbals, he didn't use closed mics in the studio, he mixed the drumset by himself by playing with the correct volume.

I love heavy handed drumming but bashing the cymbals is stupid, just unnecessary washy noise. The power comes from the drums not bashing trebly metal sheets. The worst case is when some metal drummers buy the brightest sounding cymbals and beat the living shit out of them including the china (which should be played at ease) but are complete pussies when it comes to hitting the drums.

Drums themselves can be played relatively loud... depends of the venue and situation... It's elementary that a decent drummer can play with the same energy at different volume levels. The loudness comes how fast you throw the stick with the wrist, any kind of Rambo-eque muscle maneuvering is simply wrong playing technique. Just look how those Rambo drummers who move their arms too much are constantly in the hospital for yet another surgery while great drummers play until they are in the grave with any kind of speed and volume level with total looseness in the arms.

Just let him hear how much noise he is making, he should understand what the others feel. Using darker and not too heavy/thick cymbals is good for the ears too (not too dark unless you play old school swing).

I think drummers should start playing like classical musicians, with sheet music which includes dynamic markings. For example when it's heavy rock then the kick and snare are marked with ff (fortissimo) but the hi-hat/ride/other cymbals mp (mezzo-piano) or something like that.

I'm becoming more and more demanding when it comes to dynamic control for drummers, when I play live I don't care about monitors or headphones, I want to hear all instruments on the stage, only the vocals come from the monitors. So the last thing I want to hear is some loud, annoying washy shit when I'm playing live.

As usual by Endrik... outstanding advise. I agree.

[jgcable]

+1

one of the things that helped my band become as successful as we were was because we weren't too loud. the soundman had control of our sound. HE made us loud. we sounded good too. in-ears won't help. they are most effective in rooms with bad acoustics and poor monitor systems.

Hey Mark, I just recently learned that! You would think that over 35 years of playing live I would have figured it out earlier.
For the last year or so one of my bands has been playing live 4-5 times a week. Many times we were told that we are REALLY loud and that the crowd can't have any type of conversations anywhere in the club when we are playing. My response?? "We are a hard rock band. We are supposed to play loud! If you want to have a conversation.. go to Starbucks!"
The last gig we did (last Saturday, I decided to bring only 1/2 of the PA and I had it set at least 30% lower in volume than we usually play.
It was one of our best gigs. The crowd loved it and hardly anybody made a comment about us being too loud. On the contrary, people told me that it was one of the best mixes they have heard.

[vector]

Tomanyjacksons- as a member of yet another "small venue" band, we have used in-ears to varying degrees of success. Here's my findings: 1) they do enable you to hear a LOT more of the mix, they also can help to buffer some of the volume coming from other sources- I use them to help protect my ears from my own amp... in conjunction with a decent sound man and set up they can be invaluable to the band's sound. Drawbacks are that they can be expensive, you need a mixing board that has a feature to select and control monitor signals, i.e. mixing how much of each mic-ed instrument/vox going to each person wearing. That alone can be frustrating as hell. Then getting a quality set of ear buds is expensive. We use a Galaxy Audio 1000T which is reasonable in cost and delivers decent performance but the ear buds suck ass. I went to a quality pair of behind the ear buds for a mp3 player ( 40 bucks) as I tend to thrash around a bit and the buds were always falling out. It looks stupid but it gets the job done until I decide to fork out 300 bucks for a real set of stage buds.

[roodyrocker]

At one gig we were so loud everyone moved to the back wall of the venue. That's not good. In addition, it's not just about people not being able to hear their own conversations but rather about the bar tenders being able to hear the drink orders! This point is very important if you want to get booked again. Nowadays we run a Presonus digital board with powered QSC boxes. The volume levels are lower with lots of head room. It's still loud but things are clear rather than being all out volume which people's ears can't take. Remember, as a band you're behind the speakers. The audience is right in front of those speakers getting blasted!

Rudy

[vector]

At one gig we were so loud everyone moved to the back wall of the venue. That's not good. In addition, it's not just about people not being able to hear their own conversations but rather about the bar tenders being able to hear the drink orders! This point is very important if you want to get booked again. Nowadays we run a Presonus digital board with powered QSC boxes. The volume levels are lower with lots of head room. It's still loud but things are clear rather than being all out volume which people's ears can't take. Remember, as a band you're behind the speakers. The audience is right in front of those speakers getting blasted!

Rudy

Rudy- we just had a gig with your very scenario- the owner was running the bar this night and he kept telling us to turn down! At one point, he went so far as to approach our sound man and tell him to kill the PA on stage right side. That's fucked up. I get that he needs to hear the drink orders but maybe his venue isn't well-suited to hosting bands- especially hard rock and heavy metal ones! The issue with that place is: that it's so small (75 or 80 people max) even if we didn't mic the drums, our volume would STILL need to be to a level where we could match the un-mic-ed, acoustic volume of the drums. And don't suggest electronic drums- it ain't gonna happen. We'll find bigger venues to play before we go electronic.

[roodyrocker]

Rudy- we just had a gig with your very scenario- the owner was running the bar this night and he kept telling us to turn down! At one point, he went so far as to approach our sound man and tell him to kill the PA on stage right side. That's fucked up. I get that he needs to hear the drink orders but maybe his venue isn't well-suited to hosting bands- especially hard rock and heavy metal ones! The issue with that place is: that it's so small (75 or 80 people max) even if we didn't mic the drums, our volume would STILL need to be to a level where we could match the un-mic-ed, acoustic volume of the drums. And don't suggest electronic drums- it ain't gonna happen. We'll find bigger venues to play before we go electronic.

Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest electronic drums. I'm fan of the old fashioned kind of drums myself. When the venue can't hear the drink orders the band is in danger of not getting booked again. I understand the place is small but still, we run into the too loud situation with many bands. When my band isn't booked we actually run sound for other bands. The volume problem is more prevalent than you think and most bands don't think its their fault that they're too loud or refuse to beleive it can be done at lower volumes. But the reality is that when they listen to what our sound man is telling them which is, turn down and let us turn the volume up from the board through the PA, they actually sound better!
Another option if you want to turn up your amp is too turn the cab facing the wall, away from you, and mic the cab. There many ways of accomplishing what you're after. If I can run a 100w Marshall Randy Rhoads 1/2 stack live then surely others can manage their stage volume too BTW, in most indoor places we only mic the actual drums and not the cymbals. The cymbals ring loud enough that we don't need to mic them.

[tomanyjacksons]

We did'nt need to mic the drums.

[VitaminG]

At one gig we were so loud everyone moved to the back wall of the venue. That's not good. In addition, it's not just about people not being able to hear their own conversations but rather about the bar tenders being able to hear the drink orders! This point is very important if you want to get booked again. Nowadays we run a Presonus digital board with powered QSC boxes. The volume levels are lower with lots of head room. It's still loud but things are clear rather than being all out volume which people's ears can't take. Remember, as a band you're behind the speakers. The audience is right in front of those speakers getting blasted!

Rudy

We want to be loud enough so that it feels like a show, but so loud that people aren't going to stay down front. We get a good crowd dancing right by the stage and don't want to take the heads of folks in the blast zone! Everything is mic'ed and I've been able to turn my amp down quite a bit.

Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest electronic drums. I'm fan of the old fashioned kind of drums myself. When the venue can't hear the drink orders the band is in danger of not getting booked again. I understand the place is small but still, we run into the too loud situation with many bands. When my band isn't booked we actually run sound for other bands. The volume problem is more prevalent than you think and most bands don't think its their fault that they're too loud or refuse to beleive it can be done at lower volumes. But the reality is that when they listen to what our sound man is telling them which is, turn down and let us turn the volume up from the board through the PA, they actually sound better!
Another option if you want to turn up your amp is too turn the cab facing the wall, away from you, and mic the cab. There many ways of accomplishing what you're after. If I can run a 100w Marshall Randy Rhoads 1/2 stack live then surely others can manage their stage volume too BTW, in most indoor places we only mic the actual drums and not the cymbals. The cymbals ring loud enough that we don't need to mic them.

we mic the drums and have a lone overhead for the cymbals. Works a treat. Helps to have a good drummer that can play to the room too. He sounds great playing on my cheap kit when we practice in the front room of my house. And no police visits so far.

[VitaminG]

We did'nt need to mic the drums.

you're probably going to want to if you want the drummer to hear himself in the mix. If he can only hear the other instruments, but his own instrument is a muffled bleed around his earbuds, he's just going to hit harder.