Shaped Music Provides Monitors
for Acoustic Artists
Written by Charles Conte
www.bigmediacircus.com
Rocky Grass
Lyons, Colorado, July 28th
David Grisman, Jerry Douglas, Peter Rowan, Sam Bush, Doc Watson, John Hartford are just a few of the artists at "Rocky Grass," a three-day festival of Bluegrass music from Planet Bluegrass (www.bluegrass.com).
Shaped Music (Ft. Collins, Co) provided an all-Meyer stage
monitor system for the festival including
9 - UM-1P's
1 - USM-100P
1 - USM-1P.
"The UM-1P's were a natural choice because they provided
a big punch in a small package while maintaining excellent sensitivity and
bandwidth at low levels," says Shaped Music owner, Rich Werdes.
"The USM-100P worked well for drums and percussion." (The
USM-1P has a narrow beamwidth of 45° H x 45° V to
allow close placement with minimal interaction. The USM-100P has 100° H x 40° V pattern for broader
coverage.) Werdes also used two UPA-1P's as side
fill monitors, flown from the downstage edges of the proscenium.
Lloyd Kinkade, from Meyer's Western US Regional Office, was on site
to lend a hand if needed but mostly to hear the music and snap a few
digital shots.
Shaped Music also provided a Meyer monitor system for the Folks
Festival, August 18-20 at Planet Bluegrass, which included
artists: Emmylou Harris, David Crosby, Nanci
Griffith, Stacey Earle, and Guy Clark among others.
Werdes heard the monitor system praised more than once from on stage - an
unsolicited and very unusual testimonial. Shaped Music also provided four
UPA-1P's for a
delay sound ring some distance from the stage.
Tour Has Sunshine Day
Ft. Collins, CO (September 16, 2002)--Shaped Music recently handled audio duties for perhaps the most eclectic tour of the summer, Unlimited Sunshine, which featured acts like Cake, The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, De La Soul and Kinky. "The point of the tour was to have diverse musical offerings," reported Shaped Music's Rich Werdes. "Since they were different styles of music, they had vastly different stage setups. It was a testament to planning and digital consoles."
The digital desks in question were a pair of Innova-Son Grand Live digital mixing consoles, one each at front of house and monitors. "We decided to use the Innova-Son consoles for quick changeovers," Werdes noted. "The fact that the Innova-Son has input matrixing within the software meant that we could have a separate sub-snake for each act, pop that in, and those inputs would show up on the appropriate inputs on the console. Plus, all the settings for the gates and compressors are stored."
Peter George, FOH systems technician on the tour, added, "It was either that or carry around half a truck of analog consoles." George, a veteran of the road and studio, had not used an Innova-Son console previously, but says that he was up and running in no time. "In four hours, I had all six bands programmed in, and I never even cracked the manual. This board is pretty intuitive. We've been really comfortable on this tour--on schedule and on time, every changeover, every day. For a tour like this, where you want to run six bands, there's no question that this is the way to go. We even threw the 'betweener' act some extra time. Why play a CD when these guys can get the kids going?"
Innova-Son
www.innovason.com
 |
| String Cheese
Incident CANDACE HORGAN Mix, Mar 1, 2001 |
|
Blending bluegrass, reggae, jazz, blues and straight-ahead rock 'n' roll into their own unique musical stew, Colorado's String Cheese Incident has, in a few short years, risen to the upper tier of the jam-band echelon. As recently as 1999, the band was playing the 600-seat Fox Theater in Boulder, but in 2000, the band headlined a show at Red Rocks for a near sold-out crowd. Constant touring and a slot on the 1999 Summer Sessions tour with former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh has let fans across the country in on the secret that Coloradans had tried to keep for over five years. String Cheese Incident is made up of mandolinist/fiddler Michael Kang, acoustic guitarist Bill Nershi, bassist Keith Moseley, keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth and drummer Michael Travis. The musical hopscotch the band performs every night keeps soundman Jon O'Leary working hard. "It is difficult to be perfect every single night, because we change so much from genre to genre in each song," says O'Leary. "Every song needs to be mixed differently. When we go from reggae to bluegrass, I have to redo my whole mix, and they genre-hop so much it constantly keeps me on my toes. There are a lot of subtle things that need to be done to make it sound good, and that is what I like so much about working with these guys. They go so many places soundwise during an evening that it keeps me very focused on the music. It is a big challenge to make them sound good each night." O'Leary has been doing sound for the band since 1996, when Kang approached him at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and asked if he would care to mix the band's set. O'Leary, one of the founders of the Fox Theater, had gained extensive sound experience at the Fox and readily agreed. After leaving the Fox and joining up with String Cheese Incident, O'Leary formed Shaped Music Productions with Rich Werdes, and the company owns the entire SCI sound production setup. The core of the band's sound system is a
V-DOSC O'Leary mixes on a Midas Heritage 3000 console. "It's a great-sounding desk and gives me a lot of flexibility," O'Leary comments. "It has 24 auxiliary ins, which help me create the full stereo effect and wide sound that we go for, and it also helps with the multitrack recording we do." For effects, O'Leary uses TC Electronic M5000 and M2000 multi-effects units, plus a TC Electronic D-2 delay unit and a Lexicon MPX-1. Dynamics are handled with dbx 1066 compressors and an ACP 88 for gating. O'Leary has a variety of microphones set up onstage. The drum mics include six Shure SM98s on toms and percussion, two Shure KSM32s for overheads, an M88 on kick, Shure Beta 57 on the snare and Audix CX-111s for hi-hat. Michael Kang's amplified mandolin gets stereo Sennheiser 409s and an Audix CX-111 on his fiddle cabinet. Acoustic guitarist Bill Nershi is assigned a Neumann 170 on the speaker cabinet, plus a stereo direct input. Keith Moseley gets an Audix CX-111 on the bass cabinet, plus a direct input from his preamp. Keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth's Leslie cabinet is miked with two Audix CX-111 mics on top and an Audio-Technica AT25 at the bottom. Left and right Rhodes piano and left and right synthesizer inputs are submixed to a stereo pair through a Mackie 1201. "That isn't the way I want it, but it saves inputs for the multitrack," says O'Leary. "We might change that in the future." Vocal mics were all Audix VX-10s at the time of writing, but O'Leary intended to change vocal mics in the New Year. "I want to start using the Neumann 105s," he says. "Eventually, I would like to have a whole rack of mic pre's to go into, with the ability to remote-control the levels from FOH. That is all lots of money, and we will have to see if we can afford it. There is a lot of cutting-edge stuff we'd like to keep up with." Mixing acoustic guitar with electric mandolin and keyboards could be a feedback nightmare, but in late 1997, the band switched to in-ear monitors, and that has made life easier for both O'Leary and monitor engineer Ian Skomski. In particular, O'Leary says using in-ear monitors helps him get the volume of the acoustic instruments up and balanced in the mix. "One of the things that certainly has contributed to getting volume out of Billy is using the in-ear monitors. Since no sound folds back from the monitors, I can get his guitar further up into the mix and get tonal qualities that I couldn't get if we had open wedges onstage. As far as balancing the tonal aspects, there are a lot of mid- to upper-midrange frequencies that Billy, Kyle and Mike live in. It is equally important for me to try to create space between them and for them to play parts that don't step on each other. They have to realize that they shouldn't fight each other, but complement each other, and I try to separate them a little bit in the stereo image to give them a little more space than if it was a strictly mono mix. It's more taste and who I feel needs to be on top a little bit and who needs to be layered underneath. That is very tricky. I have to understand where each individual wants to be in the mix. We talk a lot about that, about where they should be in the mix during parts of songs, and I do my best to find a balance between what is working for me at front of house and where they want to be in the mix." Monitor engineer Skomski, who joined up with the band in the summer of 1998, describes the in-ear setup: "We use a Midas XL250 monitor desk and Shure ESM600 personal in-ear monitors. Everybody in the band has a stereo mix going to their head. We use a pair of AKG microphones onstage to add stage and audience ambience to the in-ear mix, so the band can really pick up a little on what the audience is hearing and adjust accordingly. Those mics just go to the monitors; one is between Mike and Billy, and one between Kyle and Keith. There is also one for Travis. The mics also allow each bandmember to talk to each other, which really helps them give each other cues for the segues between songs. In-ears cut about 20 dB, so the mics are necessary for communication. It's much better than having everyone yelling at each other. We use very little outboard EQ on the monitor desk. We use some Ashly EQ, but no other processing. We have a reverb, but they don't even use it." Placing the cabinets each night is something O'Leary works out scientifically with systems tech Phil Krumrine and is an important element in the finished sound. "Phil will measure the dimensions of the room and the height of the rise to the back of the room and the height of the balcony to the back of the balcony," explains O'Leary. "Specifically, we measure where the ear level of the front row of the balcony is to the ear level of the rear row of the balcony, and that is where we aim the sound. We only shoot sound where the patrons are sitting or standing. After we get the measurements, it goes into the computer, and it will give us a physical display of the P.A. and what angles straps to use between each speaker. The computer gives the optimal splay to make the sound the most consistent, so that people in the back row should hear the same tonal qualities as someone in the first row. Obviously, dB levels will be different. The whole technique is called 'wave front sculpture technology,' and that is critical to making line array systems sound good. "We are pretty happy with the L-Acoustic
V-DOSC Candace Horgan is a freelance writer based in the Denver area. |