Getting feedback? Try stepping back!

This piece is about an observation that I have had with many performers as of late, specifically singers that play guitar. Some people just don't know how to properly position themselves in front of a wedge monitor to optimize how they are hearing its output. I suppose that not everyone considers the mechanics of the speaker and what is typically ideal for positioning of the floor monitors. For some it just takes some road experience.

First let's think about what you want to hear the most. If you are a vocalist you will want to hear your own voice primarily and you will be looking for it to be fairly clear and clean and loud enough to cut through loud amps etc. Until you are able to hear it that way you are likely going to ask the monitor guy to turn it up. Next thing you know you are getting blasts of feedback? What is the sound guy doing? He's just giving you what you are asking for but it's still not right, right?

Here' a simple idea you can try. Back up! Yes, your body, the mic and stand should move back about a foot at first and hear the difference that makes. Too often I see people burying the base of the mic stand under the bottom of the wedge, this brings the capsule of the microphone in line with the top edge of the monitor wedge and then they ask for more and more monitors till they get their head cut off by sharp short burst of high end feedback.

Next problem is when you are moving around with your instrument that close to the monitor, the high end is hitting your instrument and deflecting directly into your microphone's capsule and bypassing the mics natural rejection ports. This is what produces the loud, high squeals.

So what does backing up do? For one it puts you in a better placing for the horn to reach your ears. Each horn (the speaker that delivers high mids-high frequencies) has a dispersion ratio which might have a ratio of 90 degrees by 30 degrees. So if you are a tall person standing within that ratio, there is a possibility that all of the high end is going to your belly, being absorbed by your body and not even getting to your ears, hence the feeling that there is not enough clarity/volume.

I have experimented with this the past few sound gigs I have done. When I know I am already feeding a lot of monitor signal to a performer who keeps asking for more, I go have a look at their position relative to the horn's dispersion and then ask them to try backing up, or I simply pull the monitor back. More often than not, this not only does the trick, but they ask me to lower the monitor volume. The other bonus is that the feedback stops happening pretty much entirely.

When you move back, you put your ears and the microphone directly into the path of the high end dispersal and then the microphone can do it's job properly of rejecting the feedback frequencies. This way, your ears get the clarity a singer needs to perfect intonation and enunciation, improving the performance greatly.

By having an understanding of how the speakers work, how the microphones work and how they reject feedback naturally, you can get a better sense of how you can affect what you hear on stage and not always rely on the sound guy to "fix it" for you. Take responsibility for how you perform with all of the gear involved in your performance and you will find your shows go more easily every time.

So the next time you get a blast of feedback and want to scowl at the sound guy... just back off! ;-)