Every so often, a musician has some sort of issue while performing involving their in-ear monitors (IEM).
The comments of any given video of these moments will usually go into people questioning what an in-ear monitor is for.
Is it cheating? Can they hear the crowd? Why can’t they just keep singing? What do they mean “they can’t hear”?
Now, I don’t expect every person to be a technical audio nerd, so I’m here to explain the basics of what’s going on.
What are in-ear monitors?
At its most crude and basic function, wireless in-ear monitors allow a singer or musician to hear themselves singing or playing their instrument in their ears.
They are essentially earbuds connected to a wireless transmitter they wear somewhere on their stage outfit.
Where the options go from there vary drastically, depending on the artist.
On bigger productions, there is usually a separate person(s) working on the mix the performers hear on the side of the stage (not to be confused with the front-of-house (FOH) mixers, who are working on what the audience hears, typically located center, X feet away from stage (more on FOH mixers later in the post).
https://instagram.com/p/DFbi9UQyFy1
But before we get TOO far into that, let’s go back a bit.
Prior to wireless in-ear monitor systems becoming common in live performances, people would hear themselves the old fashion way: stage monitors, or wedges.
These are strategically placed and angled speakers around the stage floor.
The complexity of what is blasted through these stage monitors would vary depending on the scale of the production. It could be as simple as the main mix that is pumped to the speakers in the crowd, to as complex as each on-stage performer having things tuned to their liking. A vocalist may want less of the music blasting in their speaker, but more vocals. A guitarist may want to hear their raw playing without whatever effects are being pushed for the crowd to hear. A drummer may want to tune out everything but a click track.
While wireless microphones became more popular and commonly used in the mid 1980s, wireless in-ear monitors wouldn’t become the norm until the mid 2000s. Today, it’s just common practice to use them. In some cases, in-ears AND stage monitors would both be used, as a backup measure, or varying performers preferring to use them both in a show.
Here, a monitor engineer is being signaled to turn up what their wedges are giving.
So back to in-ears.
Regardless if a performer uses stage monitors or IEMS, the speakers blasting to the audience are NOT a reliable way for the performers to hear, due to echos, delays, and reverberations in any given medium and large sized venue. It can throw a performance off if you can’t hear the music in time.
Here are 2 short clips of The Weeknd’s stadium tour. While performing “Out Of Time”, he would go down and walk by the crowd and pick a person to sing along with. Notice the delay/echo coming from the stadium compared to when the camera phone in front of him is picking up him speaking.
It’s not significant, but also, he’s not ON the stage, so there isn’t any wedges for him to use as reference. This is where wireless in-ear monitors have changed how big shows like this can allow a performer to move around more freely for moments like this.
They can also better tune out crowd noise to stay focused (think of when you turn on noise-cancelling on your Air Pods. You can still hear noise, but it’s significantly reduced).
Common Uses
Every artist has a different preference of what they want to hear. But the most common, bare bones use is hearing themselves in both ears, but only ONE ear getting the metronome/click track.
But the possibilities go deeper from there.
A performer may want queue words for lyrics. Not a word-for-word reading, but a word to remind them of the next line. This also goes for choreography. There could be reminder queue words for specific moves, stage directions, etc.
A leaked in-ear feed of Madonna’s CELEBRATION TOUR in Milan shows that she would have a male pre-recorded voice give a queue word for upcoming lyrics, and a female pre-recorded voice giving reminders for choreography.
Some people may look down on an artist for having this in place, but it's simply a tool. Having queue words only the performer can hear does NOT take the place of memorizing lyrics or dance steps. They will help if a distraction happens that may throw things off, but you still need to be well rehearsed. Especially if there are technical issues and they can’t hear the feed.
And while this is just a specific example with Madonna, most (if not all) pop stars utilize this same function. You know damn well Beyonce and Taylor Swift, who at any given time has either a full band or dozens of dancers on stage, has queue words to keep everyone on the same page. I imagine things like “female dancers, exit stage left” or “left, right, up, up, POSE”.
And it’s not just pre-recorded queue words. They can also have a live microphone they can speak with the performers as well, should the monitor engineers need to communicate any issues they should be aware of that come up while a show is happening (either tech/sound issues, or to be aware of things happening in the venue/near stage).
Here is another IEM feed of Madonna singing “Live To Tell” where she says she can’t hear the feed, which causes her to sing a bit out of time and out of tune. You can hear the in-ear technician speak to her.
-“When she gets down, somebody make sure her pack is plugged in, because she’s singing behind the beat.”
-“Dennis and Caitlyn are there. They have a spare. That was impressive, Madonna.”
-“Chances are she got unplugged.”
For reference, audience video of this segment. She’s up on a platform alone, so a tech or dancer can’t run to fix the problem. And since she’s basically relying on the audio pumped to the audience, it sounds off.
Taylor Swift also had a problem where she couldn’t hear. She had to look to another on-stage musician to make sure she was on beat, because again, the speakers the crowd hears are useless in this situation.
Not just for POP!
You’d think all what I just described was limited to pop musicians. Not at all.
The same techniques are used by rock, country, edm, and hip hop artists alike.
Doesn’t all this ruin the spontaneity?? Not necessarily. A band is free to do whatever they want when performing. These measures, like metronomes, are to keep everyone in line and in synch. They can certainly go off script should they wish. There may even be set moments in a show where they do just that.
IEM’s also aid with timed visuals they need to correspond to behind them as they are performing a song. So they need to play to the synched visual. The in-ears make that process much easier to deal with, especially if it involves stage directions.
Some older performers don’t like change, and find the in-ears harder to adjust to, and have preferred to stick to wedges and stage monitors. It really is personal preference.
PULLING OUT
You ever see a performer pull out one ear during a song? It’s not just for dramatic flair.
They may get to the portion of the song where they can just wail and wing it.
Ad lib to their hearts content after doing the majority of the song on queue.
The click track and/or stage directions may be an annoyance at these moments.
OR, there may be times when they would rather hear themselves singing (in one ear, at least) through their OWN ear, rather than the feed being sent to them. Sometimes to get a better sense of tone from their actual hearing. You may see a performer pulling one ear out and putting it back multiple times in a single song for this reason.
I'm reminded of this live performance of Ariana Grande, who takes one ear out and puts it back multiple times throughout the song.
Audience mics are usually also their own channel that can be fed to a performer as well, to help get a sense of the room tone, as well as hearing the crowd a little more (and also used in the event of a live album being recorded, or concert video).
Lip Sync and Backing Tracks
IEM’s greatly help artists who either full on pretend to sing live, use a backing track to assist, or a mix of both.
For whatever reason, artists may prefer to lip sync certain portions of songs during the run of a tour, but come in LIVE (generally) towards the last third of a song. They presumably would either remember the spots, or have a queue they can hear that their mic is about to be turned back up.
Or in the instance of a technical issue with playing the vocal track, they can be informed via a live mic that their mic is gonna be turned up.
Front of House and Monitor Engineers Workflow
Earlier I mentioned front of house mixers controlling what the audience hears, as opposed to monitor mixers handling what the artist hears.
It sounds tedious and complex, but it’s a relatively simple process.
While there isn't always a single "central hub" in the sense of a single mixing console that both engineers share, there is a central point of distribution where the signals coming from the performers (vocals, instruments, etc) are split.
This is accomplished by splitters, and in modern systems, by digital routing.
This ensures that both the FOH and monitor engineers can do their jobs effectively, and not necessarily rely on each other to do their work.
So the FOH engineers can mix, alter levels, or mute as they need to, and this does not disrupt the monitor engineers workflow to cater to the artists needs.
Here’s a video of a monitor engineer doing a final input check with the FOH engineer, each making sure they are good to go.
…
With all this talk of various mixers, I forgot about a whole other crew during a live show.
Lighting, pyro, and video visuals are controlled by a whole OTHER separate team who gets their own little hub in the venue as well! But that’s a WHOLE separate discussion for another time…
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If you care to know more details, an interview with a working monitor engineer:
And a walkthrough of LCD Soundsystems setup (good lord, they are BIG fans of actual hardware on stage. And clearly prefer to not use IEM's).
"I have 50 speakers out on stage. Having control and clarity is a huge part of my day."
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While stage monitors give performers a sense of the tone of the room they are performing in and be able to hear more of the crowd, having speakers BLAST in your face night after night, as well as over compensating your voice because of how you THINK you should be projecting, can take its toll.
The advent of in-ears gave performers so much more control of what they need to hear to give their best performance possible.
The end.
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