FEATURE LIVE SOUND
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Like any good production, however,
they’ve planned for the worst, with a dual MacBook set-up with two Universal Audio Apollo I/Os kept in check by engineer and Ableton specialist Omar Kamran. “It’s an expensive bit of kit but it’s
worth it,” expresses McDonald. With any major production, staying as self-sustainable as possible is key to ensuring a smooth transition from venue to venue and this is refl ected in the set-up at monitor world. “We got rid of wedges very early
Ring the Bells
Jory MacKay catches up with front of house veteran Dave McDonald to talk kit and technique during his latest run with American indie rock group Broken Bells.
C
omprised of former T e Shin’s frontman, James Mercer, and producer-of-the-moment
Brian Burton (better known by his moniker Danger Mouse), Broken Bells fi rst came to attention in 2010 after the release of their self-titled debut album. With the release of their second studio album, After the Disco, earlier in the year, the duo hit the road accompanied by Dan Elkan (guitars/ keys/backing vocals) and Jon Sortland (drums/bass/backing vocals). Beginning in North America, with shows from Montreal through to Louisiana, the band’s sole UK appearance on this world tour took place in west London at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire with veteran live sound engineer Dave McDonald manning the helm at FOH. After an introduction to the world of sound through a government- sponsored theatre company (“something to keep you off the street so you wouldn’t cause any trouble”, he recalls) McDonald cut his teeth touring with Portishead, moving onto acts such as Air, Sigur Rós, Florence and the Machine, and most recently, breakthrough American singer- songwriter and rapper Frank Ocean. At FOH, next to the formidable Midas PRO6 house board, sits McDonald’s relatively compact Allen & Heath iLive 112, which has been
20 May 2014
a staple for the veteran engineer for a number of years. McDonald is running 42 channels through the desk on the night, complemented by an iDR-48 MixRack. “All the rental stuff like the
stageboxes run into our split onstage and from there they run into my Allen & Heath rack and over to Steve [Versaw, monitor engineer] with one section left over for if there are any broadcasters or anything like that. It means it’s easy for me; it’s just one Cat5 cable in. T e amount of stuff you can put through that thing is incredible.” T e night of the show, McDonald
is running into the house system, an EAW set-up comprised of 14 KF850s, eight SB850s, four SB1000s, two JF560s, four JF260s, with three UB42s for rear stall delays, and four JF260s for top balcony delays, all powered by
Lab.gruppen amps.
ON STAGE
T e band’s two-hour set kicks off with the song Perfect World, highlighting the dual nature of the band by showcasing Mercer’s somewhat delicate vocals over electronic drums and massive layered synth lines. McDonald describes the tour’s stage set-up as similarly two-sided: there’s the bare-bones microphone set-up including mics from Sennheiser and Shure (with a few Neumann
Dave McDonald
condensers “for a little bit of sparkle on the overhead”) matched with an elaborate stage set-up including four customised keyboard rigs. “We’re running Ableton on stage,” explains McDonald. “It’s locked to a grid so we’ve got four keyboard stations on stage and the drummer has a selector, so as he selects a song it sets all the diff erent keyboard sounds for each station. “Not only that, but because it’s all
locked in, when it gets to a certain part of a song it will change the sound for just say a verse or a chorus. T ey’re all playing but they don’t have to do any fi ddling about with presets, which is great, but it also can be a real recipe for things to go wrong. It really has to behave itself.”
on, which I’m happy about,” explains McDonald. “You never know what you’re going to get building-to- building so it’s key to keep the stage volume down.”
Monitor engineer Steve Versaw opted to go strictly in-ears for the tour with four band mixes and three tech mixes running out of an Avid Profi le desk.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
“T ere are two very diff erent kinds of engineers – there’s the technical engineers and there’s the more artistic engineers,” explains McDonald. “Technically I’m dead in the water but when it comes to the more artistic side, that’s where I get excited.” A big part of McDonald’s creativity comes through the use of his iLive 112, which he describes as being the closest thing to the feel and fl ow of an analogue desk. McDonald: “It’s all about mix speed
for me. When it comes to mixing artistically it’s the speed of being able to think of something you want to try and just being able to do it. I’m using it as a mixing desk with eff ects. I’m not doing anything fancy. What goes into patch one comes up on [channel] one on the desk. It’s traditional.” “What’s in this box is very
powerful,” he adds when asked about his decision to forgo any outboard gear. “You can tailor some of these old classic chorus eff ects, which do sound like the old choruses, or things like automatic double-tracking in stereo, which we’re running on some of these old disco-y tracks.” Along with the chorus and ADT Doubler, McDonald is utilising the iLive’s EMT plate and slapback eff ects. “People ask if we can do a gig on another board and I don’t think I could. I’ve got everything here. You’d have to have racks and racks of outboard to get the same sound.”
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