Unfortunately it seems like he's no longer on this forum...

@crazyquik

Stage monitors and in-ear monitors serve the same function; let the musicians hear themselves for pitch and timing.

In-ear solve all the issues with feedback and the retarded musicians thinking that the monitor is supposed to sound good and not feedback.  It can't sound good and not feedback at the same time, and most musicians are sonic idiots.

How much of that is for hearing protection?

Hearing protection is certainly one reason for using in-ears, but there are multiple benefits.

One is consistency. An IEM system gives a touring band basically the same sound in their ears from venue to venue.

I've done monitors for a lot of touring bands who use the house monitor wedges and console at whatever venue we're all at, and to me it often seems like they're taking a gamble. I always do my absolute best, and generally make bands happy, but I reckon they occasionally walk into places with shitty monitors wedges, shitty monitors engineers, or both. Bringing in-ears helps. Bringing in-ears, your own monitor console, your own mics, and your own monitor engineer helps even more.

Another reason is the house sound. You can hear stage monitors in the house. Just because they're pointed at the musicians doesn't mean the audience can't hear them. Loud monitor wedges screw with the FOH engineer's ability to control his mix. There are times when I'll deal with muddy vocals when mixing FOH. I can cut the low end out of the vocalist's channel all day, but if it's coming from his wedge, I just have to keep dealing with it. Same goes for anything coming out of the stage wedges: drums, keys, guitars, whatever. If it's loud and audible in the house, there's nothing I can do about it.

In the old days the monitors played the same mix the audience heard through a separate set of speakers pointed back at the band, hence the term "foldback" system.

Now each musician gets his own mix. The trumpet player, for instance, may just want some of his horn and some keyboards coming through his monitor. If you have eight musicians on stage, the monitor guy is creating eight different mixes, each one tailored to the musicians' requests, respectively. It's all done on a different sound system than the one used for the audience.

Regarding the last question, it can be both. You can receive cues through your in-ear monitors in addition to hearing the performance. Separate "talk" mics are often set up for the former. These mics are only routed through the monitor system; they do not go to front of house since they're only meant for communication amongst the musicians and their crew. If you're ever at a concert and you see a performer walk up to a mic and talk into it, but you don't hear anything, he's talking to his band and/or the monitor guy through everyone's in-ears.

Hearing protection isn't generally an issue with stage monitors - honestly Surfire EP3/4s give a flat enough response curve that I have zero issues performing with them.  Foamies suck balls.

We used to run a splitter on the monitor setup that split everything in the snake to the monitor board and to FOH.  I ran monitors.  Deaf musicians under a tent, near the edge, are awful to work with.  You just can't get enough sound to their ear without feedback.

You can figure out pretty quickly where the feedback is and cut those frequencies but they are usually in the areas that the musician "needs" to hear.  1-1.5k, 4k, and 6-8k are what I recall being problem children under a tent.

Saying that monitors cannot sound good without feeding back may be going a little far.    If stage levels are kept reasonable, monitors can certainly sound alright.  Yes I know that "if" is a big one sometimes.

Saying that most musicians are sonic idiots may not actually be going far enough though.    Hoo boy.  I don't disagree with you there!

My favorite is when I'm asked to put reverb into the monitor...

I'm getting berated recording/programming/mixing some demos for my band by a professional right now.  A lot of it I understand from my live sound monitor and FOH experience but it is hard to put into practice without someone yelling at you.

Just a bump to keep this around.

How much of a percentage does Livenation take out for merchandising fees?  I recall awhile back a singer at a festival telling the audience to not buy their merch at the venue, and buy it directly from the band's site.  I get the impression it was at a ridiculous level

Do you work at one place, or many?

Most venues take a cut of merch. It isn't just a Live Nation thing.

Normally it's around 15% of soft goods (t-shirts, etc.). They usually don't take a cut of vinyl sales.

eta: sounds dumb for a musician to discourage on-site merch sales from the stage. A lot of bands do really well selling merch at their shows, even after giving a cut to the venue.

What challenges present themselves when coordinating with lighting and pyro?

I assume codex is the 'easy button' if the band is playing to a click?

Are musician initiated triggers still utilized in tandem in such a situation?

How prevelant is it for a band to play to a click, in general?

The reason I ask is I'm trying get a picture of how much of a pain it must be to set up shop in someone else's venue, with their PA. Surely you bring some equipment of your own, and I imagine you've been in these venues before, so it's not like you are walking in blind every time.
Are the IEM's a separate concern, or just another facet of setting up the PA?

I'm neither a lighting guy nor a pyro tech, but regarding the last question, lots of bands utilize click tracks live.

Tracks have become so acceptable now that bands don't shy away from using them anymore, even in more traditional genres. Last Friday I did a country show with a guy I used to work with years ago. He's not one I suspected would've used tracks, but he now uses them and a click.

I can tell you that most lighting is done independently by a Lighting Director who knows the band's show, and is not triggered by the actions of the musicians themselves.

As far as challenges go, I know that some lighting guys like to wear IEMs and have a feed from the audio console so that their cues can be on time and not laggy. The delay from the PA speakers to FOH makes a difference to them.

There's nothing wrong with walking in blind if you know what you're doing and the venue has a good house staff and a good system with quality mics, cables, hardware, etc. The show I was talking about from Friday was like that. The sound engineer had never been to our venue or used the type of console that we have, but I knew him and knew that he was competent, so all I had to do was answer a couple of questions for him and he was off to the races.

That said, there is a gamut of preparedness that goes from being fully self-contained to being almost entirely dependent on the venue for both the equipment and the operators. It comes down to the venue having a good Production Manager with whom you can advance the show. So you're not really going in "blind." You may be dependent on the venue for all your production needs, and may be entering it site unseen, but you've been assured by the PM that you'll be well taken care of. Or you could tell him that you're fully self-contained and that his house techs will be sitting on their asses all day. In that case, all they'll be using are "stacks and racks", i.e. the house PA, and all I'll do is hand them drive lines and that's it.

In reality, most of the time it's somewhere in between, with the band bringing some audio equipment and the house supplementing the rest.

Regarding IEMs, they are always a separate concern. I pity the guy who is a band's sole sound engineer and is responsible for both monitors and FOH. It's doable, but not much fun IMO, especially if you're talking about wireless IEMs and the RF concerns that come with them. Going back to Friday, that was the situation their guy was in. At one point during soundcheck a musician came down to FOH with a faulty pack. The sound guy had to run up on stage, re-sync it, and run back to FOH. He did it without hesitation, but you could tell it frustrated him. You should have a separate engineer on or near the stage to deal with that stuff, or at least a musician in the band who can.

IIRC the festival was a fundraiser, and the band got pissed at the venue for taking a percentage of the proceeds they were donating to the charity.

Well, that's different, but an example of not working those details out in advance and trying to settle them from the stage.

It should be spelled out in the contract what, if any, cut from a band's merch sales goes to the venue. Some contracts say 0%.

Having one of those days at the venue where it's the first day of the band's tour. These are always interesting.

They're not carrying any consoles, so I spent a lot of time along with our other audio guy helping their FOH engineer come up with a scene for ours. We're starting from scratch, but he'll be able to save it and load all his settings if he encounters this particular console again in another venue.

They'll do a soundcheck and then spend the afternoon rehearsing, since apparently they didn't have adequate time to practice before the tour began.

You have to be flexible on days like this because obviously the band and their crew have kinks to work out. One of the first things I was asked for today was a rasp so that they could file a sharp burr off of one of their road cases. It was the lead singer's amp case and he was worried about cutting himself.

People can be a little on edge since it's their first show of the run, but you try to do everything you can to help and set them at ease. So far, so good.

Anyone we may have heard of?

A very mellow, indie-type band called Phosphorescent.

Steel Panther today

Chris Isaak on Sunday

Awesome!