Monitoring is a key component to any live music. Musicians and DJ’s need to be able to hear themselves. They also need to be able to hear the other people onstage they are playing with. Can the singer hear their voice over the guitar player’s pummeling Marshall half stack? That’s when two songs into a set, you hear a plea from the stage to the sound engineer, “Can you turn me up in the monitors?”

Getting that proper mix in the monitors can be a monumental struggle. Not many bands get the hour and a half long Radiohead sound check. If you are not the headliner, normally you just get a quick “line check” before your set. The band that played before you is rushing to get their stuff off the stage. You are rushing to get set up. Not much time to dial in levels you need. After the line check, you realize you can’t hear anything. But the set needs to start because you took too long getting set up.

Good sound engineers are loved and revered because they can dial in a monitor mix quickly. But levels onstage can change. It’s not an exact science.

Drummers have special monitoring needs. Often, they need to be able to hear a little bit of everything. If the band uses loops or a drum machine, the drummer absolutely needs to be able to hear them. Trying to play to a drum machine or a loop you can’t hear is like a blind person trying to drive through an obstacle course.

U.S.E.’s drummer Jon E. Rock is here today to tell us how he does his monitors. He’s as solid and tight as they come. He’s tizzight:

Mr. Rock, you guys use some drum machines. How do you make sure you can hear everything?
Rock: We route a stand-alone monitor to me from an independent p.a. system we bring along. It only sends our drum machine signal to me. This serves as both a safeguard in case the drum levels have changed since sound check, as well as being a click track for me to play along to. I have the regular stage monitor on one side, and my drum machine “slave monitor” on the other. Monitor sounds a lot like minotaur, so I will refer to them as such from now on.

Have you ever tried the ‘in-ear’ monitors?
I would love to try in-ears out. I hear that Shure makes the best but I guess that’s like saying Google is the best search engine, or that Top Ramen is better than Maruchan.

Can you give all the drummers out there any monitoring advice?
Know what you need. Knowing what you need is important. If you just need a click track you can use the quazi-superfluous set up that I have, or employ the use of a Buttkicker. It is some type of woofer that attaches to the bottom of the drum throne and hits your boys with low frequency waves. I hear it makes you impotent though. But if you just want over all sound, in-ears are a great investment, especially if you do the Guitar Center “no payments ‘til we suck out your sole” program. (Whispers: shop at American Music.)