My Church Gig

You’d think that personal mixers and in-ear monitors would effectively eliminate your vocal feedback woes. Ironically no. Not always.

This is one major drawback to in-ears that I had completely forgotten about till last weekend. Working with our guest artist, the imitable Sara Groves, I was reminded of it. Now, Sara did great on Sunday, but I’m going to tell on her a little. I doubt she’d mind.

Saturday night we did a late sound check so they wouldn’t have to in the morning. During a song she stopped and said, “hey, I think I hear a little ringing in my mic.” On the talkback mic, “yeah, I’m sorry Sara. I’m having trouble getting your voice loud enough so I’m riding the edge till I find where my limit is.” “Oh, I can sing louder and eat the mic; I just get lazy sometimes.” Well, I wouldn’t say lazy. Jet lag and a long couple of days at a church conference left her and her band a little exhausted. On Sunday morning she sounded phenomenal.

Years ago I toured as FOH engineer with another singer/songwriter and a full band for one of the most challenging audio experiences of my life. Oh, and one of the best sounding consoles I’ve ever touched; an Amek Recall. He and his band were all on in-ears and he was a whisperer, even in powerful sections of songs. When tuning a room for a show I’d have to make sure I had enough headroom by throwing the main fader full up, and work the feedback out of his channel till it that fader was full up and still get it to reasonably sound musical. At a Nashville show, with the vocal and main faders full up, an industry type came up to the console and shouted, “I need more vocal!” Me shouting, “Who are you?” “I need more vocal!!!” “I said, who are you?!” I was just trying to make sure I wasn’t about to tell the artist’s publisher to [bug off]. Those were younger days.

Here’s the rub. With in-ears you can turn your voice up in your head till you sound great to yourself at any intensity, from a whisper to full out rock and roll. In the studio it works fine. In a live room you’re competing with the dynamics of natural physics. You can only turn up a mic so much till it rings in the mains. If you’d like your words to sound like, well… words, then you really can’t sing as softly as you’d often like.

If you sing with in-ears here’s a tip:

This is counter-intuitive so read carefully. When a mic rings with feedback the normal reaction is to back off. Don’t do it! It’s backwards. What your FOH engineer needs at that moment is a reason to turn your fader down, not up. Get on that mic and sing up so he or she has to turn you down. Otherwise you put them in a lose-lose situation: leave you where nobody can hear you or risk feedback by turning you up to see if they can get you back in the game.

One more thought about critical listening skills as a vocalist:

I’ve notice over the years that good vocalists care deeply about what their voice sounds like but great vocalists care as much or more about what their mic sounds like. In fact, they’ll comment on the microphone before their voice. They’re aware that, no matter what comes out of their mouth, everyone hears only what comes out of the mic.  Their aim is to make the mic sing, and in-ear monitors help them do that better.