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Playing without IEMs – My first gig in YEARS without In Ear Monitors!
Introduction
I recently put out an article going over playing my first festival (Article Here). In that article, I mentioned we didn’t use IEMs. I wanted to talk about this because this was my first gig in a very long time that I was playing without IEMs! So, having used IEMs for so long I had got familiar and comfortable with it, so I thought I would put together an article about what it was like playing without IEMs.
There were some good and some bad points to playing without IEMs, and I am going to go through them. Firstly, I will quickly go through why we didn’t play with our normal rig and didn’t use IEMs and why we had to go proper old school. Then I will go over how I felt about it. What I liked and what I didn’t like. Hopefully, this might give some insight into what it is like to play gigs with both.
Why Didn’t we use IEM’s
The main reason for them was that we were going in blind! We hadn’t done a festival before and didn’t want to roll up with our full IEM rig and cause confusion. So we decided to scrap that and just do the gig without IEMs and hope the monitor situation is good!
So what did I use instead? Well, I went fully old school! I took a new amp (more on this soon), which is a 22w super clean amp. I took my LT Custom Strat (Review Here) and my pedalboard with a selection of pedals. The amp was turned up on stage and was mic’d with a Shure SM57. This is what you would consider a standard rig! Amp, guitar and a few pedals!
Why didn’t I use my “straight to desk” rig without IEMs? Well, to me this is always a risk! If you don’t have a good monitor set up you have nothing to rely on! You won’t be able to just stand in front of your amp to hear yourself! You will be playing blind (or more like deaf). This is not a situation I want to be in, so I took my amp! Personally, Straight to desk only makes sense if you are using IEMs!
How was it not using them?
Was very nice! Very refreshing! It does sound and feel so different but in a way that is comforting to play. The only way I can describe it is as someone giving you a compliment with a hug. It wraps around you and makes you feel lifted. However, playing with IEMs, you still get that compliment but no hug. If that makes any kind of sense!
Sound-wise, I was loving it! Was fairly loud, the amp sounded incredible, and speaking to some people in the crowd after it sounded great out the front of the house. Goes to show that you don’t need expensive mics! Stage volume wasn’t super loud, but I did have the amp turned up and fairly loud. Was very nice! Heard myself very well!
I think the question you might all be asking is “Do you prefer it?” Honestly, I do! I think it is more freeing, and you can 100% be involved more in the music. However, I think I was lucky to get a good sound engineer. If monitoring was poor, this could have been a different story. The one thing playing with IEMs does do is allow you to perfectly hear what you need to.
Conclusion
So, that is my thoughts on playing without IEMs! This was only a short article, carrying on from my lessons from playing a festival article (Article Here). Have you, or do you do gigs using both IEMs and old school? Which one do you prefer? It is a tough choice. I think for feel and experience then playing old school is the best. For accuracy and consistency then IEMs win hands down! It isn’t which one is best, it is which one is right for the job.
Overall the adjustment to playing without IEMs wasn’t that much! At the end of the day, we had to get the gig done and perform so you just accept whatever you have and make it work for you! I would love to hear your stories about playing with or without IEMs. Do you mix between them both? Or are you firmly on one side of the argument?
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