NEWS
Oundle School visits Yamaha
In early September Yamaha Music UK was delighted to welcome Oundle School’s director of music ,Andrew Forbes, and members of his music department staff to its Milton Keynes headquarters. In a recent decision to upgrade some of its pianos Oundle School’s music department had already chosen Yamaha but it was keen to view a full range of Yamaha instruments and equipment in order to inform purchasing decisions elsewhere in the department. Its highly successful and busy department sits within an 11-18 independent boarding and day school which is famous for its musical excellence, and not just in classical music. It also prides itself on the breadth of musical opportunity available to pupils and boasts one of the oldest school ‘rock societies’ in the UK! Yamaha is the only manufacturer of high- quality, long-lasting instruments and equipment which also offers such a broad range, spanning orchestral instruments, wind and percussion; a full range of pianos from premium concert grands to entry-level digital
Yamaha’s Ian Frankland introduces Silent Violin digital effects to Oundle School’s head of strings Angus Gibbon
pianos, rock band instruments, commercial audio and audio visual equipment, as well as a variety of educational projects and partnerships on offer from the company’s recently extended education department. So the visit to Yamaha took in quality brass and woodwind instruments, like those now being used by Yamaha Class Band projects across the country. Keyboard staff were able to compare instruments side by side, including Yamaha and Bösendorfer premium handcrafted grand pianos, and high quality upright pianos which are unsurpassed as practice instruments.
A performance of Spamalot at Dauntsey’s
They also road-tested the AvantGrand,
digital pianos and keyboards, Silent Strings, Yamaha guitars, drums, Pocketrak recorders, PA systems and digital mixing desks, with Yamaha specialists on hand throughout the visit to demonstrate and answer questions. It is an event which could be made available to other large music departments, music services and academies which are considering major purchases or upgrades across the range and would value this kind of help in making well informed buying decisions.
Kester adds, ‘Those productions have a
Dauntsey’s Goes Digital with a Yamaha M7CL Desk
Dauntsey’s School, a Wiltshire co-educational independent day and boarding school with a strong tradition in music and drama, has refitted its main 730-seater performance venue and installed a Yamaha M7CL48-ES digital mixing console and three Yamaha SB168-ES stage boxes.
The venue is used for many events including plays, musicals, live bands, classical concerts, chapel services, school assemblies, discos, speech days, indoor sporting events and exams. It is also available for hire to external opera and music groups, corporate clients, celebrity dinner organisers and others. ‘We opted for this system for two main reasons,’ says Graham Paddon, of Amber Sound, the company which supplied and installed the system. ‘Firstly it is the only current digital console that makes all the
input faders available at once. Secondly, the remote stage boxes could be located in different positions. Knowing the kind of work that the school does, it seemed like the ideal solution.’ Kester Sims, the school’s head of music
technology, explained that the new system had to be ‘
...usable by a non-techie to bring up an iPod or radio mics, but the next day it might be needed for a full stage show with 18 channels of radio mics, several spot mics and 20 channels coming from the pit.’ One of the main reasons for needing a desk
that could provide control of 48 channels on one layer is because, unusually, the school has permission to stage its own versions of a number of major West End musicals, like ‘Spamalot’, that are otherwise unavailable to schools and amateur companies.
complex sound specification and it would be no use having a pupil trying to mix the radio mics on the first 24 faders if I am trying to mix the orchestra on the same faders, but on a second layer of inputs.’ As well as providing opportunities for actors to perform in school productions, the music technology syllabus also fully integrates the production side of staging a show, and has produced a number of alumni who have gone on to have careers in the industry. Looking forward to next year’s annual rock band competition at the school Kester commented: ‘Each song can now be stored as a separate “scene” and I anticipate the bands sounding more like their soundcheck than they sometimes have in the past!’ Yamaha’s digital mixing consoles have
become the industry standard and are the mixing console of choice for major theatres, music festivals and recording studios across the world. Because the operating system is used across the whole range of Yamaha’s digital mixing desks, students learning to mix on the M7CL can easily operate any of the Yamaha digital desks they may encounter professionally in other venues. Schools and colleges interested to learn
more about the benefits of the Yamaha M7CL digital mixing console should contact Karl Christmas, senior manager at Yamaha UK’s Commercial Audio department at
karl.christmas@
gmx.yamaha.com
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Photo: Billl C Martin
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