Hear the In-Ear Mixes of Chris Tomlin's Band 

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Yes indeedy!!!!

Yes my brother, very nice and chewy, tight mids. The Lord has blessed Him richly as a musician.

A true 'hillsong' tone

@@isaacmugunda8370 Oh really? I guess I need to check that out, I didn't realize.

@Benjamin yes.. A very common churchy tone in most soft rock gospel music

i think it comes from the Strymon "Big Sky" effect device. most valuable common device in worship

Don't, it's about refence points for each individual, NOT good time listening.

I love you!

@@2112Dale I don't seem to understand. Please clarify

Have you ever experiment with the room mic? And adding a little reverb? That helps a couple of our volunteers to get that “live” feeling

Never tried a room mic. There's so much bleed from all the stage mics anyway. We do reverb in the in ears however, and each person can adjust their own mix. Might be interesting to try a room mic though.

@@JamesKimSynergize yeah that helped me a ton, especially when I’d sing. The room mic really helped, if you have a stereo system then using two is a lot better also

In-ears are best used for blaring loud settings, they have noise cancellation built in for that purpose. If you watch any decent 'gigs' on RU-vid, they all have in-ears, or headsets. The only guys who don't are the "small setup" ones like pub gigs where the tech are still severely outdated and it's not worth it for covers bands to replace the entire audio system just to make a few measly hundred bucks... Amps blaring on stage still happen, in-ears are the next gen stuff. It's no different to you switching from a smartphone from 2005 era to an Android touchscreen smartphone that came out last year. There's nothing wrong with enjoying your Windows XP but the world is moving onto Win10 whether you like it or not... As much as we all like up-close-and-personal church services (and we should!), any church that doesn't explore online service options will literally get "shut down" by Covid-19 lockdowns. Again, whether you like it or not, technology is where everything's at these days and if you want things to progress, you need to stay updated. It's the only way to win people over to Jesus. Keep in mind the world wins people over away from Jesus with the same method (high tech etc). I will admit that IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) cost a frickin' fortune though. It can't be helped, your average SkullCandy $25 earphones won't cut it for live gigging unless you want to blow your own ears out.

I often end up pulling one of my in-ears out so that I can get a better feel. I still get the mix I want but it feels less artificial.

Just a bunch of layers as the whole church concept is.The music in church is the way to manipulate people’s emotions so they have the ideia that what they are feeling is the presence of god. Precisely that is what happened in every single church, in particular the modern ones with powerful bands, what I mean by powerful is just the technology, equipment the skilled musicians, technicians, sound engineers, music directors and so on. Just as any other professional music productions, the only difference between this idiots on a church stage and the others on a mundane stage is that this idiots tell the lyes about this being worship of god and through them the god manifests it’s presence as if God, or Jesus Christ would be there somewhere listening to what they have endlessly rehearsed and practised and thinking “wow” this band really love me so they make this music from they’r hearts for me and my father” they are so good in making the people give more and more money for the church because the people believe they are doing something for god. How ridiculous this all is. After the music @ the top of the emotions, when the people are kind of in transe then they collect the money, and then the preachers come into play to reinforce the lies of the church. A incredible busyness, but they know that well, just the people that are the true sustainers of this busyness don’t.

Good to hear the full band chorus at the end ...

couldn't agree more, being a drummer for 55 years I've visited quite a few churches as they opened after the covid lockdowns and seen many worship bands and one thing I see is putting that poor drummer in a plastic box and being given the job of following the band instead of leading the band....and sound man makes the drums sound like cardboard boxes

@@rhnstjegilrhkscvn1djhrj969 They attempt to contain and control the sound of the drums to an unnatural degree. The result is the amplified sound of drums in an empty aquarium...

This is most common, it acts as a metronome or click track and keeps the band in tight formation. It's usually the second thing they ask for, after, "more me".

I started off that way too. I found that day to day, in the different rooms, it was quite difficult to hear things well a lot of the time. Chris' band is well rehearsed and they are playing familiar tunes and (I would guess, unwavering) arrangements. Keeping your mix simple and predictable, with enough space between things helps with intelligibility. It's more helpful to have the things you absolutely need in order to do your job well and cut down on the superfluous in an ears mix. I get a reasonable blend of things from the ambient mics, including the lead vocal, so that I don't really have much of that pushed in my mix. We're a vocal band, with a lot of four part harmonies--but with a familiar set and arrangements, the lead part, acoustic guits, tracks, just cloud up my mix and eat up definition, headroom, and sonic space. I've been much happier day to day after paring down the non-essentials, and panning wider than I'd initially thought. I'd venture to guess that the backing players all have their vocals pretty prominent, but are rock solid on the parts and need little of each other. There's a lot of melody instrumentation, and likely more in-tune as well, aside from the vocals from which to draw pitch reference.

Because they are familiar with the songs. I found it weird that the drummer's IEM mix was not having the bass guitar up loud.

@@dodmusic9255 me too

I think everyone’s reason for their mix is different. I personally keep all background vocals down to about 10% volume and lead is quiet. A lot of times the singers will get off tempo and my church so we as a band stick together because they’re following me. I used to depend on vocals but have learned its a bad idea at times because they don’t seem to know the songs as well as our band. This of course is subjective, but it’s the reason my vocal mix is so low in my personal mix.

@@nathandrums0 There is a meme out there... someone is in the gates of heaven, and St. Peter says, "You are supposed to be in hell, but since you did monitor mixes most of your life, that counts as time served."

What he said, it's about your reference points, not some imitation of FOH or good time listening.

yes. he's actually using GGD samples

Yep, so it’s important the e-guitarist balances the volume of the pedals beforehand so there arent any volume jumps/drops during worship

Some vocalists like to drag the tempo just slightly or sing different rhythms and it can be somewhat distracting when all the musicians need to click together.

As a drummer, I have keyboards, bass and myself at 90% and the lead voice at about 40% and everyone else below that.

Everybody has a preference for what they want to hear in their monitor mix, and it's the monitor engineers job to deliver. Generally, musicians want to hear their instrument and the drums forward in the mix; a lot of the time vocals too. The same goes for vocalists; they absolutely need to hear their own vocals forward in the mix to insure they are in pitch.

@@ShawnATX Thanks for the insight, Shawn 👍

@@stefank6763 Absolutely :)

@@stefank6763 Another common thing that's put into a monitor mix especially for drummers is a metronome click.

Chorus mostly I think

@@cdt-briansequeira8279 the best key players are the ones you don't hear. with the exception of solo's offcourse

No, don't learn to "fake" it. Learn to "enjoy" it. You probably know this already, but music is played from your heart. Of course, what you hear around you as you play it affects your music-making, but it should have as minimal an effect on your music-making as you can possibly achieve. The only way to do that is to enjoy the music-making, regardless of what medium your playback tracks are coming through. Also, IEMs should not sound horrible compared to stage monitors. Anyone who says that are probably in the following situations: 1. The setting is too small of a space, and the music is really mellow. In settings like that, you don't need IEMs, if anything they might even hinder your music-making because of their built-in noise-cancelling features. However, in situations like that you don't really need stage monitors either. If you need stage monitors at all, IEMs are almost always a better call unless the noise-cancelling messes you up - in which case you can just take out one in-ear (left or right) and adapt. 2. Your IEMs are too cheap. Cheap IEMs are crap, they're not worth the money at all. The cheapest stage monitor is designed to make good sound, or else no one would buy them. Think about it: who would go to such lengths to buy a foldback monitor if any average speaker effectively does the same job? The only reason why someone would go for a foldback monitor instead of just sitting a speaker on the side next to them is because they need a functional monitor to do its job at its best, and only musicians use gear like these. Whereas everyone uses earphones for anything... Not to mention IEMs are more expensive (it is more difficult to cram speakers and noise-cancellation tech and whatnot into two earbuds than cram only speaker-tech into a big-as foldback). So cheap IEMs are a trap for novice musos, and should never be compared with specialized gear. 3. The mix is crap to begin with. Not much to say here, take that issue to your soundie... IEMs can almost never sound worse than monitors because IEMs "personalizes" the settings for you. It is like you playing in a room with as little interruption from anyone else playing with you as possible, and you get to pick what you want to hear. It is like going to a 5-star restaurant's VIP room and order your food with your exact specifications and preferences. Monitors on the other hand is the equivalent of you going to the same 5-star restaurant but sharing a table with two other people and the other two people ordered food that smelled vastly different to your food. Anyone who says that experience is better than a VIP room simply hasn't experienced the *real* VIP room before... In addition to having a "VIP room", IEMs also often allow the use of click tracks for everyone in the band. This is very important: click tracks are used to keep *everyone* in time, including the drummer. Contrary to popular beliefs, it is not just the drummer who needs the click track. Everyone needs it, no exception. Even the vocalists need it. I can write you an essay on why that is but I'll give you a short story version: Try playing four click tracks simultaneously, each of them at 89, 90, 91 and 92 BPM respectively, and keep in time to the 90 BPM click. You can even use different click sounds, but I guarantee you that you'll f*** up the job after a few bars. Imagine the three clicks you aren't following being your worship band members, including the MD and you're about to get blasted for not being able to play in time because everyone else didn't follow you. This is the primary reason why I'd rather not have a click track in my ears at all if I'm the only person who gets to hear it. Also, this specific situation was something I frequently encountered in church - it is one of the reasons why I no longer play in church. These experiences are traumatizing, I kid you not.

Use an ambient mic if you need a crutch

Its all personal preference...

Everlasting God

fr lol

That's the problem, we've gotten used to this muddy garage band mix in the wedge monitors, now we can use IEMs to define the reference points we individually need. It's a mistake to believe that you should be hearing some representation of FOH to somehow get in the mood. Be a professional, YOU are providing the mood and atmosphere, not the other way around.

FWIW monitor mixes are not really meant to be super fully-EQd. Headroom matters more.

Well, to be fair it makes sense sitting here watching the video versus hearing it live in your ears while you're playing because they have notoriously poor bass response in the ears. Also if they're like me, it's probably fairly loud so the high frequencies can get a little grading on the ears over the course of a whole set when it's loud. But like if you took my band's in ears and recorded the drummer's where he has a TON of the 56hz triggered sine-wave we use for the low end of the kick, and put it on a set of studio monitors like I'm listening on, that's all you'd hear, but through the in ears, that gives him the punchy kick he likes in his ears without having to resort to have a big speaker behind him to get that feel he likes, but it takes having that "Kick Low" fader, as it's called on our board, at 0dB while the next loudest thing is at -5dB or so. Bottom line is, I'm sure it's like that for a reason, because I know ours is.

Nice crisp high end = Ear fatigue A crisp mix can also damage your hearing quite fast.

I'm pretty sure pros know what they need lol. They are not trying to get a polished mix in their ears, simple monitor mixes are best for keeping things clean and seperated. If you try too hard to make your mix sound like the album, you're probably not gonna sound that great in the house lo

yes if you go to any professional setting, 99% of the time they use click. It locks the band together, then it also enables the use of tracks, time synced FX etc.

@@isaacfanai2006 yeah I know. Seems a bit egregious though for 4 chord Praise and Worship. Are they really struggling to maintain that tempo?

@@gcavy1 it ain’t just about tempo. Human nature we slow down and speed up. Plus when they use tracks they gotta be time locked with everything. Even with easy worship songs, everyone is gonna speed or slowdown.

@@isaacfanai2006 Jesus wants authenticity...not perfection! ;)

@@gcavy1 yes sir, but in the professional world too peopled rive for perfection. You also wanna give God the best.

ok clown