It Starts With The In-Ear Mix

The key to a good musical performance is confidence. Confidence comes from comfort. Comfort means the musician can clearly hear himself or herself.

The in-ear mix is the key to a musician’s performance.

The in-ear mix has a few parts:

1) The Headphones

Buy Shure SE215 earbuds. $100 is a small amount to spend on a crucial part of your performance.

There are two considerations when buying earbuds: build quality and sound quality. All Shure earbuds are built to last. The SE215s and above have removable cables, meaning that you can fix your headphones for the price of a new cable (around $30) instead of having to buy a whole new pair. The SE215s have a warm, full, reliable sound. You will not miss anything when you wear these onstage.

The foam tips provide a tight, bass-enhancing seal that blocks out ambient noise to protect your hearing. Always wear both earbuds. If you leave one earbud out, you will damage your hearing. One ear is hearing the loud house mix and the other is hearing the relatively quiet in-ear mix, so you will naturally turn up the in-ear mix to compensate. You might not suffer hearing loss in the open ear, but you will suffer hearing loss in the ear with the loud in-ear mix.

Read my guide on wearing the Shure SE215s here.

2) The Mix

Do not turn every channel up. Turn the click track or rhythm-keeping instrument up, then the lead vocalist, then your own instrument and/or vocal. Everything else is fluff.

Take advantage of panning. Pan the vocals, drums, or anything else to the hard left and right to clear out some space in your in-ear mix. This may sound abstract, but panning is the key to bringing your in-ear mix to the next level.

Use the ambient microphone. The ambient microphone is intended to give the musician an idea of what the house mix sounds like and what the audience is doing.