Using a Metronome in a live rock/pop concert w/ear plugs

[Jake 2.0]

Metronome in a live rock/pop concert w/ear plugs

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I just bought the yamaha click stattion metrnome that yamaha makes and i was wondering if any drummers on here had expiernce with a metronome in a live setting. I wear ear plugs so i can conserve and protect my hearing and ears. I run a project studio and am very at ease with playing to a click in the studio and live. my question was what is the best way to interface it into my live setup,

heres what i thought off as far as interfacing it live , but ive never done it before so if anyone has any better ideas please reply and you will make my day!!

1-Run it through the front of house and have it only in my wedge (or the whole band)

2-Only wear one one ear plug and stick a mono in ear headphone in the other ear so i can hear the click,

[Tibbon]

The best solution overall, is to get some high quality In Ear Monitors (IEMs) from Shure, Entymotic, etc.. and get the custom ear molds made for them. They block out a TON of noise and sound that way, and will help protect your hearing. At the same time, you can also get a great mix from the monitor board (maybe you don't need to hear the vocal harmonies, or the second gtr, but just your kit and the bass player and vocalist?) and you can also have a click put in that way. They are a WONDERFUL investment for playing live. Some smaller clubs will have trouble accomidating them if you are using their board and they don't have a monitor mixer offstage, but still... that's basically what you're looking for.

The BAD news is that it costs ~100USD to get the custom molds made I think, and the earphones start about 100USD too. The good side to it is, unlike the singer and guitarist... you don't need a wireless pack (which can cost upwards of 1000USD and give you loads of trouble at times) since you are stationary I assume. I'd also get your own headphone amp (nothing too expensive) and a cheap (Behringer even!) stereo compressor/limiter to put on your IEM feed. You really don't want nasty spikes from feedback, or a FOH mixer that accidentally set the B3 too loud to bust your eardrums.

Luckily for your hearing, you can have a pretty quiet mix in fact, which is cool. I might recommend keeping a REALLY cheap condenser mic around and put it on a small stand at the front of the stage facing the audience (some MXL junk will do just fine). Have a bit of that fed into your mix as well, even better if it's ducked a bit vs the guitarist or band, so that when you aren't playing loud (between songs?) you can hear the audience and their interactions with the band.

The freakiest thing to me, is using IEMS without such a mic, and not hearing the audience at all. With bright stage lights that make it hard to see anyone that's not in the front row... you can feel like you're playing all alone. I played a show or two in NYC that we didn't have such a mic set up, and I didn't even notice until the lights when down between shows that we had a full house! Freaky!

[Remoteness]

I don't know, I'm thinking this thread belongs here.