I used to do a lot more work with exceptionally strong vocalists. In the period from 2005 – 2010, I was the operator of an all-ages music venue. In Salt Lake, if you were all-ages and all-genre, you did a lot (A LOT) of heavy music. Death/ Black/ Doom/ Whatever Metal. Hardcore. Screamo.

Pretty much every night, you would encounter vocalists who could produce levels that were surprising, staggering, or even frightening.

Nowdays, I mostly encounter vocalists with average to slightly-above-average power. As such, I have my mic-pres set up to afford about 9 – 15 dB of headroom to the singers I have around most often.

Every once in a while, though, I get a big surprise. When that happens, I have to adjust my tactics accordingly.

A Surprise From The Daylates

Picture the scene.

An Americana band called The Daylates has brought their show to Fats Grill. They’re a quartet of highly personable dudes who can REALLY play.

Plus, the lead guitarist’s actual, honest-to-goodness name is John McCool.

Seriously, when someone rolls up to a venue with “McCool” stenciled on their roadcases, things are about to get extremely real.

Anyway.

At this last show, we didn’t do a full-on check. We got tones for all the instruments, spread some things around in monitor world, and confirmed that the mics were audible – but we didn’t actually do a song. What I ended up with was a “ballpark” rock-band mix where the vocals had a very healthy amount of gain applied on stage and in the house.

And then, the actual show started.

Brian, the vocalist, got on the mic and promptly blew the band away. The backline was completely swamped by the lyrics…as in, the band was almost a whisper in comparison. He drove the console’s input stage into audible clipping. The low-mids and lows from monitor world were outrunning the “clarity zone” in FOH by a wide margin. I was hammering the “sane level enforcement” limiter on the console’s main output.

In a word: Dang.

Obviously, I was going to have to make some changes.

Using The Tools

Being able to really sing in a rock-band context is a mix of both talent and practice. In essence, it’s all about good “tool use.” The first tool is your own body. The second tool is the microphone.

Really strong vocal inputs come from two things.

The first thing is that the singer can actually “bring it to the table.” Actually being able to vocalize with serious output, great tone, and correct pitch is a major skill. Also a minor one. And Mixolydian too, not to mention all the other scales and modes out there. THAT’S A LITTLE MUSIC JOKE, FOLKS. Please, try the veal.

Anyway.

The second secret to a super-strong singer is that they get up-close and personal with the microphone when they’re singing at or below their average level. That is to say, a vocalist should be right up on the mic most of the time. If they’re going to get really loud in proportion to the rest of the show, then backing off a bit is “good form.” The “proportion” bit is very important. For a good number of metal vocalists, their average level and maximum level are basically the same – so they should be right on the mic at all times. For other folks, the range is wider.

…but why be right up on the mic?

Ironically, separation.

A singer’s proximity to the microphone element is (effectively) a “force multiplier” for their vocal strength. As many audio techs have said in a variety of ways, “the loudest noise at the capsule wins.” For a given sound pressure source, the apparent sound pressure level increases as distance decreases. So, if a singer wants to be clearly distinguished from all the sources behind them (drums, amps, etc), their chances go up significantly if they are – literally – right up in the mic’s grille. It’s essentially a classic signal-to-noise ratio issue, and proximity to the mic tilts the ratio in favor of the “signal,” that is, the vocalist.

Now, if you’re like Brian of The Daylates, what you’ve got is tremendous natural power coupled with a willingness to be as close as physically possible to the microphone element. This results in an excellent signal-to-noise situation, in addition to a very “hot” signal from the microphone, and some combination issues between monitor world and FOH.

In such a situation, the audio tech needs to be mindful of, and adjust for, a couple of major factors.

Gain and EQ

Mics can have “hot” output from receiving a lot of input, having a high-output element, or both. An important thing to note is that mic output which is proportionally hotter due to a high-SPL signal is a good thing. It lets you maintain your final system output level for that signal, while running at a lower gain. This increases system stability.

(This does NOT apply for mics which simply have high-output elements. The sensitivity of the element is a kind of fixed gain, so reducing the downstream gain just gets you back to the same overall gain as you would have had for a different mic. This being the case, there’s no stability benefit.)

With a vocalist like Brian, you do need to reduce your preamp gain to keep the signal out of clipping. That’s exactly what I did.

What did NOT happen, however, was a preamp gain reduction significant enough to restore the usual balance that I have between FOH and monitor world. Everybody on deck seemed to be happy with the lead vocal blend as it “settled in,” so there was no need for additional changes. What this meant from the FOH perspective was that the vocal started out a bit muddy.

Why?

Beyond just the simple fact of the monitors being louder, their tonal balance was different. This is a side-effect of having the vocalist very close to the microphone element. Single-element directional mics work by creating conditions necessary for audio traveling to the rear of the element to be significantly more delayed than it would be otherwise. As a result, the audio arriving at the rear of the mic is out of phase with the audio arriving at the front. This effect is different at different frequencies. For a given delay time, low frequencies will generate a smaller pressure difference than higher frequencies, because they have less “cycle time” available. This being so, the element has to be increasingly damped at higher frequencies to get an overall response that’s actually pleasing.

When the singer gets right up on the mic, the overall sound pressure at the capsule increases. However, the high frequencies are more damped than the low frequencies. This means that the effectiveness of increasing proximity to the element is greater for low frequencies than high frequencies. This is what causes “proximity effect” – the boost in tonal richness when a singer is close to the microphone.

Now, then…

In a small-venue situation, the monitoring on deck interacts – greatly – with the sound from FOH. Part of the tech’s job in a small room is to get a nice balance between the “monitor wash” and the PA that’s meant to cover the audience. In a reasonably decent room, the monitor wash is mostly midrange and below. The high frequencies get soaked up to some degree. As such, the contribution from the FOH PA will need to have less midrange and low-frequency content…unless FOH is completely overpowering monitor world.

In a small room, completely washing out the monitor spill with FOH is usually – to use formal terminology – way too !@#ing loud.

So, what I ended up with was a much louder than normal monitor contribution, and (because of proximity effect) that contribution had a lot of low-mids and bottom end. Like I said, the vocals were a bit muddy “out of the gate.”

The fix was to aggressively high-pass the vocals in FOH, while applying some mild taming to the low-mids and bottom end in the monitors. You don’t want to get crazy with changing the monitor mixes, because you can’t necessarily be sure that what sounds great at FOH is actually tonally pleasing to the players on deck. At FOH, however, you can get as nutty as you like, because you probably have a pretty good idea of what the audience is hearing. High passing the vocals (or cutting away the general area where monitor world and FOH are combining) lets you use your FOH power for what really matters – the high-mid and high frequencies which govern vocal intelligibility.

With the FOH audio trimmed to work well with the monitor wash, the mix cleared up nicely.

The bottom line is that a powerful singer who is willing to get close to their mic is a joy to work with. You just have to be ready to do your part.