Nothing's worse - outside of breaking off 1/3 of your front tooth during the last song of a gig (yes, I did that. Yes, I looked stupid. Yes, I had it capped. Yes, I'm more careful.) - than having your gear crap out on you during a gig/show. It's BEYOND suckage, and in my case - as a singer - there just ain't much you can do about it.
A few pieces of equipment are ABSOLUTELY vital to a lead singer. Let's get the obvious ones out of the way: a good mic, a good PA, a good mic stand - all must-haves if you're a professional vocalist. However, without a good vocal monitor a singer is SCREWED.
Here's why: when singing in front of a band, the singer CANNOT hear his or her own voice. Think about it - the singer's battling with electrified instruments (guitar, bass, keyboards) AND very loud acoustic instruments (drums). There's no way to yawp over the din.
The solution is vocal monitors - either in-ear or wedges (you've seen these. They look like little speakers on the stage). What I use is cordless in-ear monitors. I use Shure, with ear buds (resembling the headphones that come with most MP3 players) that plug into a little Altoid-box sized pack on my hip. The belt pack receives a signal from a base unit that's plugged into the PA. So, the PA sends the vocals to the base unit which - wirelessly - sends the vocals to the little Altoid box pack on my hip. This way, I hear all the vocals - lead and backup - and I never try to scream over the music and I can make sure my singing is dead solid perfect.
But what happens when something breaks? Remember when I mentioned "screwed" above? Last weekend I had the base unit crap out at a gig. I'm pretty sure it was the base unit, as I switched inputs AND frequency channels for the wireless stuff. My voice would just faaaaaaaade out and disappear. I swear, it sounded like the battery was going bad. So, I had to take the in-ears out and set the pack aside. I stood on the edge of the stage, hoping to pick up enough from the main speakers to keep me from yelling over the music.
See - that's the WEIRD thing. Even though you KNOW you shouldn't yell above the din, you JUST DO. It's some strange wired-in-our-DNA human thing.
The result? I woke up Sunday sounding like Joe Cocker. I was more hoarse than the winner of the last Kentucky Derby (thank you - I'm here all week. Try the veal). So, this week I'll be troubleshooting the base unit in the hopes that I can fix the thing.
SHURE - JUST GIVE ME THE SPONSERSHIP I'VE ASKED FOR AND WE'LL ALL BE HAPPY!
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