Today's Lesson

Proper mic placement is a simple thing that can give you a big head-start in eliminate and controlling feedback on a live stage. 

For starters, you always want to set up your main PA loudspeakers in front of your performance area and most importantly, your microphones. Anytime you have a microphone pointed directly at a loudspeaker feedback is inevitable, so don’t do that.

What about floor monitors? The trick here is to make use of cardioid pick up patterns in your microphones. This means, that the microphone rejects incoming audio and noise that is behind it. If your monitor is directly behind your cardioid microphone that mic will be rejecting the audio coming at it from the monitor. There are also super cardioid as well as hyper cardioid microphone pick up patterns that offer more rejection around the sides of the mic. As long as we understand the pick pattern of our microphone, and where the rejection is, all we have to do is make sure the monitor is placed within the rejection pattern and feedback is prevented. This may or may not require you to do a little research on your equipment, but understanding and applying these techniques will save your ears and your nerves in the long run. 

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