Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - ASIA TOUR 2021-2022 A ~23rd Monster~
View Single Post
  #109  
Old 30th September 2021, 06:37 AM
AJFmzk's Avatar
AJFmzk AJFmzk is offline
Initiate
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 698
Quote:
Originally Posted by koumori View Post
There is some speculation that a live band is too much strain on her ears, which might be why she has experimented with performing without them. Namie had some comments about this in the 2010s but I'm not going to go dig for that right now (about her own reasons - she didn't comment on Ayu ).
I remember Namie commenting on this. It was something about her voice wearing out because she was constantly screaming in order to hear herself over the band...which partially makes sense because as far I can tell from the live dvd's she didn't use monitors regularly until around mid 2000's, like around 2004 or 2005 or 2006, something like that, so her voice and her ears would definitely take a lot of strain from it. This definitely could have been fixed with proper ear monitor levels, but we'll probably never hear the whole story and it always bothered me that she ditched the band since the problem she mentioned could have been solved. But Ayu used monitors pretty much from the beginning I think.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris85 View Post
Very weird theory considering that a performer can decide themself what kind of audio track is playing in their in-ear monitors. You can customize it so that it includes only some of the instruments or has things that the public doesn't hear like that thing that counts the rhytm.
This is very true. They certainly can be adjusted to anything she wants, provided the mixer board has enough output channels for everyone, which I'm positive even if they didn't she would still get one for herself. Just to share an interesting anecdote on this. A professional mix engineer once told me that monitor engineers are supposed to build monitor mixes starting with the singer and then slowly brings the rest of the band up after that. That is to make sure that the singer hears themselves first before the instruments are too loud and thus prevents them from having to scream to hear themselves. However, according to this engineer (so probably take it with a grain of salt, but it could have a lot of truth in it), a lot of mix engineers tend to do the reverse, bringing the band way too loud before bringing the vocals in last, and at that point the singers always ask to be turned UP instead of for everything else to be turned DOWN in their monitor mix ears. After a while of this, ears have adjusted to a mix that is way too hot for continuous touring and will have bad effects over long term. And it contributes to pitchiness and not hearing some instruments correctly if everything is super loud and the vocalist is constantly asking for things to be turned up. Anyway, just my two cents as it was mentioned to me by a mix engineer.

I certainly hope Ayu brings the live band back eventually. It really downgrades the quality of the shows for me and I don't watch or enjoy them as much her shows that had the band there.

Last edited by AJFmzk; 30th September 2021 at 06:50 AM.
Reply With Quote