Today's Lesson

Controlling your stage monitor volume is more important than you might think for several reasons. The more volume that is created on stage, the more potential you have for feedback. There is also the possibility of monitor feedback spilling out into the audience area and affecting the sound in the venue by interfering with the front of house mix.

The first tip in decreasing stage noise is to increase the number of monitors. That's right, more equals less. If each player has their own monitor with their own mix, the volume of each monitor can remain relatively low since only one person is referencing it. If you have too few monitors and players are forced to share, each player is more than likely going to get an inadequate reference mix and will simply keep turning things up until they hear what they need to hear leading to an overwhelming stage volume which is bound to start feeding back.

Not only does having more monitors help in lowering the overall stage volume, but the performers will perform better because they will have an adequate reference mix at a comfortable listening level.

Another great way to achieve all of this is to use in-ear monitors whenever possible.

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