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Need my own monitor -- can't hear FOH


maarkr

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We've done a few gigs for charity where we play for an hour and just take our instruments and use the opening/ending band amps and FOH sound. I usually just take one keyboard, a light stand, and seat to make things easy.

The prob is I can't hear my keys thru the FOH very well when i get stuck behind the speakers and/or next to the drums. If I turn myself up so i can hear well, then i'm louder than the rest of the band on the FOH. What do you do in those situations??? Do you use a smaller monitor for yourself that you feed out of the R output? or use earplugs/headphones? Just wondering what works or what you have tried?

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yeah, for a quick one hour set, i want to bring as little as possible... usually no stage monitors. I can try the headphones but i was more curious if anyone has tried headphones or if they just bring their own monitor.

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Unless it's something that I can do as a "piano only" gig - chances are that I'll schlepp my regular live rig. It's certainly NOT the lightest rig out there - but the reality is there's not much that can be cut out of it. 2 boards, 2 speakers, 1 rack, 1 stand, 1 bench and 1 rolling case of pedals, cables and miscellaneous stuff. There's really not much that can be left out.

 

Stand? Nope - gotta have that!

Bench? Nope - I play seated, that's on the keep list

Rack? Nope - Line mixer, sound modules, MIDI interfaces ... it's all in there.

2nd Board? Maybe - BUT, many if not most of my favorite sounds are achieved using both boards

Misc Case? Nope - Too much "gotta have" stuff in there!

2nd Speaker Maybe - BUT, hell, if I schlepped everything else - why leave 1 damn wedge behind? I love how my stuff sounds in stereo

 

In the end, I schlepp it all - and put my best foot forward. If a gig ain't worth taking what's needed to actually hear myself - I'd be seriously questioning why I'm even there.

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I generally take as little as possible to a gig, keeping things as simple and with as little setup hassle amd footprint as possible. Severely limited stage space is another consideration. My smallest rig is a lone 17 lb Hammond SK1 keyboard, Alto TS10 powered speaker, X stand and stool, small Behringer mixer, and a Radial Duplex DI. That's enough to get the job done and sound good while having a good time. Although I much prefer bringing along my Yamaha CP300 digital piano for piano-heavy gigs (CP300 is nothing if not heavy, lol).

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I got stuck behind the FOH on Labor Day playing a party/jam session. That was easily the suckiest place to try and hear what's going on. Made worse by the fact I was stuck behind my own amp and couldn't gage how loud I was. I thought I was quite loud until someone came up after a couple of songs and told me they could barely hear me. So then I cranked it for the a synth solo and everyone said it sounded great, although to my ears, I thought I had completely over-saturated the bands sound with synth; go figure?

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