Marc Carolan FOH Live Audio Engineer - Muse

In this series of 9 videos, Avid specialist and Sound Engineer Robb Allan (Radiohead, Massive Attack) talks with Muse front of house engineer Marc Carolan. Topics include how he got the gig, transitioning from analogue to digital, signal path, choosing the Avid S6L, outboard gear, plug-ins, snapshots and events.

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[Music] hello yep so this kind of level down here so hi welcome everybody I’m Robb Allen from avid I’m here with Mark Carolan mix in front of house from News probably the biggest rock and roll band in the world right now flames huge stadiums around Europe MCTS friends yeah so and we go back a few years mate yeah JDI 72 open from Manic Street Preachers or even ya know thinking before that before that or something else yeah and then also I picked up some stuff that you you moved on to bigger things and we’ve had a couple of bands in common I think after you left there and and the thrills was correct after you we’re not doing this I did a visual lovely once you fellows oh yeah so how long has it no you went from you soon I started mixing news in 2001 so this will be my 18th year

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well actually Jade is 72 and opened from use when Muser on their origin of symmetry European tour so we’re doing kind of like you know big clubs small theatres that kind of saw his party so the example yeah yeah and I do know if you remember back in those days where engineers have to share the whatever in-house console was going up yeah so we share channels and let’s just say the engineer is mixing views wasn’t forthcoming with the channels one over three over there yeah yeah you’ve got one channel compression into one show where I had to I to mix my band on five channels Wow yeah so but I I use I as a little challenge yeah so I would challenge myself with those five faders to try and make Jenny say of DTS and better news but all joking aside I turned out that Christa Besler from use had come to see

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JJ 72 in a show in the Bristol Anson rooms must have stuck in Chris’s mind so on the origin asymmetry tour there seemed to be some memory of that and but that’s the right way around for it to happen right the artist here she mixes somebody else and and you get the gig that we are it’s kind of that reassuring feeling yeah yes I mean you’re not the meat of the production manager or something yeah the terrifying bit about that was you know like that this was definitely a big step up for me but I’d already committed to some festival shows which ages 72 so I couldn’t actually do all those news shows so you know news had you know various other big-name engineers come in and mix those shows I wasn’t mixing and thankfully they they they stuck with me okay so what was the favorite mutual ever who’s 2003 you might have to crack me on the year the first year we headline Glastonbury we were on the

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absolution to her I’m used we’re in no way a big-name band at that point how I remember when we were announced as a headliners a lot of pooh-poohing and they can’t do that and yeah we had Morrissey on before us and you know your words to say about it as well and you know it was a sense of yeah you know yeah we shouldn’t have been there and the band absolutely doctor has smashed it obviously the first time we headline when we stadium there was a bit of a feel a bit of that you know music gonna do when we stayed him and then if we did two nights so night you know and so that was a big moment what was great I thought for me was that we we heard a lot you know which meant I got to mix a lot yeah you know and you know that the the the often used phrase of holding your craft you know there was certainly yeah you know a lot of time to do that you know I like you know proof is in the pudding there you know yeah yeah well that’s that’s always the way right you hundreds and hundreds of gigs it takes yeah become a sound engineer yeah I

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learned that it or the years ago yeah yeah exactly yeah certainly when I was coming up as they say you know like when I be opening with alongside engineers like yourself you know the you know the idea of like keep your eyes open keep your ears open learning learning learning and then keep doing not the whole way through your career yeah yeah the way I did it you know yeah we were talking about Eddie with me off-camera but you know that kind of getting away from the ideology yeah of audio and and just listening and being open yeah what you hear and not starting to listen with a specific idea yeah yeah you know we’re you know the kind of purist approached like I don’t know if remembered as a fashion like on people’s ride or is where they would say absolutely no digital – yeah you know that kind of thing which you know I mean yeah certainly it way way back in the dark days of very early digital consoles you might have at a point but you know certainly the way

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things have gone now you know you can’t [Music] you

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[Music] so here’s a question boy so when you you use virtual soundcheck musical tools in the air 6lu the band play mm-hmm you recorded the tools you play it back so in the production process right the production rehearsals build in the show together the battle comes sit with you they come and work on the mixes with you it’s generally more focused on when we’re you know when there’s new material coming in right and but what’s great is that you know we’ve got you know what I’ve been working with further that long that there’s a shorthand yeah you know yeah and there’s an understanding there as well but certainly with details they will come and listen and they you know they want to make sure things are right so I’m guessing much very particular advice guitar sounds yeah it’s just that source you know he he knows what he wants he knows how to get it yeah I take

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a left and right yeah that’s it so did you can ever make it she’s a really good bang well yeah there’s that and also to know when to not interfere you know when to going to just leave it alone you know I mean with mass guitar you know I do tell like every will will look get into a bit of the plug-in stuff but yeah I use a tiny bit of the the Perl multi band yeah and a tiny bit of a tube tech compressor sure but it’s it’s hairs you know what I mean it’s only for like some of the really extreme good di sides whereas like a lot of you know really you know super high content that you know coming out of a huge PA system at large as you know what a big SPL just it just doesn’t work on the ear you know but it’s just stuff like that but it’s it’s all what I would call control not

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color you know because he knows what he’s doing up there and and you know leave it alone same with Ron kids right well there’s two things with it with the the drums around here one is a fantastic drummer absolutely phenomenal drummer and a very consistently fantastic murmur as well and then Jeremy Berman who’s our our drum technician builds the drums right Wow so you know Jeremy may ask me you know do you think is a little bit too much resonance that rock Tom Oh No maybe and so instead of get the moon jelly he reshapes the rim that’s the level of detail let’s go into the drums you know as you know the drum sound starts with the drummer’s on yeah yeah and then the stake a name is going there data but I’m guessing you have to model the drum sounds a lot because the album’s sounds of the drums have changed over the years and you’ve got straight you haven’t dipped into the dance music II kind of thing as well some of those kind of yeah from machine sounds and yeah so we’ve

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got a em we’ve got a couple of live triggered signs happening off the drums certainly more this time round but never replacing the acoustic drum with triggers well it started just one instance of supermassive black holes but it’s all these studies playing electronic drums at that one [Music] you

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[Music] so marking the other community I think you’re quite famous for being you know mixing big shows with a big Daniel yeah little animal analog desk there yeah and I think you know there’s some people out there in the world a little bit surprised that you’ve changed them you know you’ve made a transition yeah I mean I know that you you mix back in the D and a profile is something I know that you you know that I love use by any any means but the talk talk to me a little bit about the transition from from mixing this band on an analog desktop to bring the SXL back to the center of the show yeah well I mean you touched on one thing there about the the you know the analog purist yeah so it turns I you know I kind of worked at I thought with this system there’s less a 2d path and it was with my exhales for system because with how I used a pro to see sidecar yeah I was busy doing loop through so there was actually quite a lot of a 2d deeds way going on now what

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you know the reasons for changing where it was a couple one was you as you can see with this show it’s it’s quite the opticals or our input kind kind of jumped again so they were you know well I mean I’m often asked this question about how many inputs do your hands but it’s not really I don’t think the number reading matters anymore because there’s so much control channels that we’ve so many multiples of say Matt’s vocal is six different mics here and there there’s so much talk back there’s so much so we we’ve got a you know we’ve got two stage rack system here yeah I think we’re using at the moment about 112 lines there yeah but I’m not I don’t have a hundred and twelve live in what’s happening here you know so it’s all do you like remember back in the day is like oh he’s got hurt you know always got 32 channels who does he think he is first time I mixed a medics in an arena yeah their team channel 13 there we go yeah that beats y5j do 72 channels so

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having the the input capacity so you know for instance we need a drum kit on the B stage yeah I can now say okay yeah the last year I did with the ax forces to mon drones the rare moments where we had to go like well no we can’t do that because this that the other and so it was to kind of get freedom back to the artist from my own point of view there was things that I you know I wanted to move on with you know you know how I was approaching mixing sure and to keep learning we were touring an a/b system of that xl4 system I could imagine that was quite unwieldy you know heavy and you know the maintenance aspect of that as well sure so it was just it was kind of a time for change and then the other thing was that Adam Taylor who mixes monitors he was on a pro-x I was on an xl-4 we were on different platforms and so it was you know a little bit splintered yeah so

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what what made you choose ES exhale well first of all I got to get to the X s Excel I looked at all the the big players out there and you know I looked at all the big platforms there’s a lot of great sign of platforms out there you know and anybody says oh you don’t use that because that sounds bad you know nothing sounds it you know and you know at the top level nothing sounds bad you know they all sound good what brought me to the SXL was a couple things first of all its pristine sounding now I know like you know to some people pristine is a bad word but what I mean by that is it allowed me to bring the character I wanted to it it didn’t impose its character on me for you so open platform you can use the plug-in yeah oh yeah so Nokia yeah well obviously the control section

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and the snapshots and that whole part of this is that was massive for me as well yeah the you know you know I remember he cuz you know your ex I think what we were talking first about me possibly you know getting on it me I’m you just what you’re gonna love this yeah I tell you I knew you’re gonna love it because the thing you’re a bit like me you’re a bit of a control freak in your you’re a better if I cared of detail detail yeah and I knew I knew just from having known you for so long that when you saw the events stuff yeah do you you would flip out and you and not only that but you would come up with a whole bunch of stuff that nobody else had ever come up with so I was really excited about being coming here yeah and you show me your so I’m MC we’re gonna gonna reset the cameras we’re gonna get the chairs out of the way we’re gonna dive in on the desk and we’re gonna go through the show I’m really looking forward I um yes so that’s gonna be the

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second half of this video um let’s do that good [Music]

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[Music] right MC yeah yeah front of the es6 l mm-hmm soon front of these a little bit myself yeah um just would you talk me through this signal path just from the beginning until we get it into the desk and what you did with it once it’s in there Dex curl yeah um so as you probably noticed there’s a bunch of preamps sitting on top of the console so again this is just a this is a color choice that’s what’s going on here it’s the old xl4 preamp sure um so the main acoustic drum bass guitar Matt’s vocal channels this clean vocal channels all come here it’s just simply a an analog multi down into here right comes in here a asses into the system you drive the pries yeah it does what it does is it technically perfect no but it’s it’s

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it’s it’s not saying although that you want it’s that thing yes yeah that’s kind of part of it right exactly yeah all these channels also hit the stage 64 so I was wondering about that yeah well yeah obviously to get to the monitor nest but also it allowed me the option on certain numbers if I don’t want that color I don’t have to have it on you so you can see here I’ve got virtual pries excel freeze or avid freeze that allows me to just quickly go okay that’s the XL 88 that’s the Alvin freeze Wow so I can flip those any sort of really cool yes you really go wait to use events yeah when we get to our events if you could show me the event yeah that’s amazing because otherwise that would it be no so yeah like you know I’m you know well obviously we’re touching this a bit more but this is what informs a lot of

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these color decisions was the ability to do something like that yeah because you know you’re not just making the decision based on oh yeah I like Excel for priests because they do a thing in Lamia not really knowing what it is that you’re not doing right this allows you to actually you know epoca so for instance with this summer I was able to to here am I just doing that because I think something is cool yeah is it actually bringing something to the party your gain tuned on this to arrive with them yes yeah yeah yeah and I remember again you you use you you kind of advised that we went that route and I was a bit like well I don’t know you know I’m gonna and then it worked and then I literally have not thought about it since right it’s awfully seamless right so just to be clear just what have you begin in a pod yep mana desk is the master boner desk as the Masters in a pod actually changes the whole thing yeah and you have a virtual gain in a pod yeah and the desk

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works out the difference between the two of them yeah now obviously there’s been various systems like that in the past yeah but this really is invisible it’s it’s absolutely invisible [Music] you

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[Music] so we got different paths into the desk via via you know a little snake into some preamps we have the ABB digital snake cause oxygen gains here and yeah got it into the desk mm-hmm right okay so what are we because we got our bloods of other stuff as well right so okay so me about this out here so how I constructed Y is we start with a you know the inputs the inputs come in yeah I’m a big believer in well faders dropping dead and a you know what where inputs are combined for a result yeah so I mean a basic example is you know to kick drum mugs like that you know you know right even I like to you know combine them make that decision Europe put together move on yeah snare saturate Tom’s yeah overheads base so that

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creates a kind of middle layer or what I call my automation there right okay which is like our you know the groups of the cake snare hi-hat Tom’s yeah and so Jerry at this layers we’re sort of this insertion is happening okay so kick snare are the dbx 160 space tube tag guitar cheap tech yeah quite straightforward and again the reason I’m using these InDesign transient designer and the Tom’s a little bit on the kick and snare yeah and the reason I’m using these I board pieces are supposed to plug in pieces is simply a color choice again yeah it’s you know the some of these pieces I’ve been using since I started mixing the band sure so they they work and again you notice I don’t interfere if it’s working yeah yeah ideology just lint in there no but actually you can see how fine it is you know it’s just tiny bit vague I actually use it too in some stadiums to reduce

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the sustain of the kick drum it’s the last thing we need is more system so it’s odd people to like try to get that John Bonham kick drum you know okay okay well anyway so so that’s where the insertion happens lair yeah so and so we’re you know there’s fader movements are fine automation or whatever it’s it’s generally hopping out this layer so as you see is like sheep tracks and its tracks this is moving and then on the top layer yeah is essentially so what I do is I take direct outs of these yeah and I use the trim plugin yeah yeah yeah okay and I take the input of the direct out of the group yeah and I’m able to use the I put of it to read it back into an input go yeah I’ve seen the return a return

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face and white pass yeah it’s in body pass yeah it’s just two samples or whatever it is for samples me I can’t remember so those input channels yeah are then what I call what I call by mix layer sure I think you’ve got the same approach it’s layout one yeah it’s the stuff you need for that song what you need for that song yeah you got a lot of stuff yeah just want to filter things you know you need to get that information to where you need it I try as much as possible to keep relatively the same things in the same players to try and retain some muscle memory yeah yeah and so you know you can react pretty quickly focus vocals generate match vocals generally yeah Matt’s guitar is right there kick drums over there yeah you know it’s it’s quite quite straightforward I I like to keep my master and an extension of the master fader down here I just like the longer throw because I spend so much time in

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that theater I find up here just fell a little bit unnatural to me big it’s only because I use it so much yeah I’ve just put it down here in a long throw for you okay so yeah and I also keep a kind of band basic band VCA there all the time but hasn’t moved in a while and yeah so that’s that’s how that structure works DC and as you can see song to song it so how I use VCAs is quite minimally it’s it relates more in the automation layer saying sometimes the VCS will do stuff from the automation there yeah in in in mixing the show not really no not really yeah because that automation has already happened or that movement has already happened so this is free yeah so there may be VCA information that’s

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happened behind here but you’re not looking at it here reactive up here’s intuitive it’s done all the programming yeah to give yourself the space for intuition right there is nearly up here is bound go sorry you up here is music back here is brain you know brilliant brilliant because you know one of the things is if you can get used to get lost in the Technicolor Yanks and forget to listen to the music and enjoy just look around you there’s a lot you know just you know there’s moments like the start of history or and Christa’s out there in the base and you’ll see it comes right down to the B stage and anything just kicks off and it’s great fun to just like whack that bass fader up it’s got bad yeah you know that’s you know and then finding your way out of that you know yourself how do you get out of pushing the bass a TV up you know you’ve got to love it right you still yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s the best feeling in the world right to sit behind a mixing desk with a great band on the stage yes so that’s that’s to to

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reference back to a question you asked me earlier about the transition on the choice yeah I’ll be using the console another massive factor for me is the surface yeah when I was making this decision I know I’m gonna have to wear it for about four years five years minimum yeah you know whatever decision I make with an arts like knees where you know the tour is long tour cycle I’m I’m so this surface just worked for me yeah I was able to put things where I wanted to put things I was able to at the surface to give me the information I wanted when I wanted it the exporting good yeah the color action funny funnily then you know you get into the show you program the show you don’t even see the colors on yeah yeah and the XY button is just fantastic being able to customize whatever they do one of the

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early ones I did was this this is when I was just kind of bill destruction I don’t love the base and I know why is it based you know stuff like that yeah you know why are you the guitar cuz yeah everything I do with the guitar but you know you’re I was able to make up my own logic that why man well you know and you know that that openness of being able just like any logic you can think of you can probably make the surface too it’s just a huge factor this is to me that clear that means that we you can use that button to do virtually anyone and what you use it to do there’s to interrogate interrogate that groups play alright [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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[Music] okay so MC we got we got inserts for the base of the one called the backline really right yep drums bass guitar meat potatoes yeah yeah talk me through this rack okay so the GML and cheap track are my stereo buss the GML obviously is the venerable I hate use not we’re really overused I wear 8200 EQ sure AM it’s simply it’s I use it as a mix EQ it’s it’s not a system EQ at all it’s a mix EQ really really important difference yeah big big important difference yeah I just love it it does as you can see it’s just little tickles here and there and I’m I try not to get stuck with it either moving around quite a bit and the 2-pack multiband yeah it’s just

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taken away again like half a DB here a DB there but it just does this lovely I mean the trick I’m trying to do with the high end yeah this could see it’s really fast attack really fast release you’re on a high race you know I’m trying to mimic a little that old-school video ask tickle of the year and I don’t know if it’s really doing it but it does a nice little thing at the top and then just a little bit of control the low but but I again not really I’m not clamping the mix together at all it’s it’s just little you know it’s taking out a little 1/2 DB here and there and I’m just it just adds a nice cohesion the things yeah I guess I’m just you know that just like extra top and extra high-end control you know just the super top you know just just catches any any crazy and that’s really good for to fight fatiguing your listener you

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know that spurious things get caught you know yeah I mean you know you’ve been aware of my stuff this yes yeah just furious stuff that you know it’s just information yeah that that you know can just tie yet I mean SPL wise my show is a Rand like a 15 minute average sitzt about a hundred right I’ll go anywhere you know weight iron – I mean I don’t go super loud like 102 Navy you know here and there yeah I’m on a strange actually when the measurement people come in we don’t really change our show and it’s always compliant but when I need any over fifty minutes is kind of typical yeah just fine you know yeah I mean but you know with the GSL and with the clarity of the console I don’t feel the need for more yeah absolutely and you know it’s and it’s you know getting your audience through the show that’s two hours long and not you know you got to have them fresh and listening to the lot of song as if it’s you know as if it’s

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the first song and if you’ve just abused them the whole way through sitting all that happens if you you go too loud too early today assisted Lee yeah then use compressed air is compressed they just get tired or they good their pockets and put the ear plug yeah you know you’ve lost them yeah they’re down here sorry keep going on Yammer to get this sits on what I call my kit kit being anything that’s not a kick and snare okay and it’s simply a modded fatso and the mag eq4 yeah which is just how’s the most beautiful top end it’s beautiful yeah and it’s kind of its tape emulation ish but at a lower and lower it works at a lower frequency sorry that the frequency nice tars lower then the standard fatso is like classic tape emulation which operate quite high yeah this operates lower if you know the

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main sooner which is great for you know when the cymbal start gets really just just controls a lot and again that’s a fatiguing it helps with fatigue right then that brings us to summer and this again is a color choice yeah it just brings a little bit of that I mean very overused word but glue yeah as you can see I’m using a little bit of the texture as well that’s just like a it’s it’s like an emulation of the transformer yes and it is make it so nice blue Blues higher-frequency red is lower frequency I leave it blue yes again we blind a bead all this as well yeah so this summer is just it’s you

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know it’s 16 models or as I use it to Manos and seven stereos well and then just proves a little thing and goes the whole thing together you read Keith Richards he talks about that the glue of the meet degrade here he says who’s initially wanted get rid of all the separators he goes because it where their obliques together that’s where that yes for the master yeah and so we return from that he comes back here yeah and that’s what goes to left right that’s what goes to live that’s what goes left right back into the desk yeah and it out again yeah so that comes back around there obviously I’ve also got a sub auxilary yes that sentence subwoofers that’s timed to you know could it be a little bit lazy composition and that matches up with that but the way I’ve done the sub

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is that I can move that one fader yeah my sober left right all move together that’s it’s very important for me because I’m doing that so much yeah I used to have a trick to do that in the Exile for with the mono and the VC and you know this convoluted thing and I was actually able to replicate that same thing internally here to allow me the same behavior I mean I know you can do it with tomorrow but I like to solve on an August thing it’s a you know so you do oh no no no it’s just like a construct if you’re not you know a routing constructor so yeah so again that goes back to simply you know blood or quieter I wouldn’t move together nice yeah nice cuz it’s all about the cohesion of the mix right yeah you wanted it if you want to you don’t want to bring bits of the mix up and down you want to just this kind of lean in – yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly that yeah very nice yeah right so inserts we got they’re kind of summation there yeah

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they’re kind of finalizing the mix if you like yeah right yeah yeah the yeah and then let’s talk about effects okay and see thanks for this is getting chilly we’ve been here yeah you’ve probably seen this gone dark out there they’re trying their laser beams and stuff over there so on this side of your setup and I love the whole economic you set up this is fantastic norm for Legos in you test what’s going on here okay so this Rack is our busy our vocal compression chain yeah so bassy so so matt has we’ve got six mics that could can be used i grip those into Mike’s or what I call in or out yeah in meaning he’s behind the system yeah meaning he’s forward in the system sure and I treat those slightly differently yeah so this subgroup comes into the old

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exile 42 yeah which I like to just I’ve got a grab analog EQ here cuz you’ve got a body memory off oh yeah you know just you know it’s the kind of thing I can just feel around yeah you know then the de-stressor obviously is our compressor that’s enough path yeah I’m back I know it so there’s one one for the end one for the edge and the Avalon compressor is for his slightly over driven vocal channel mm-hmm and the reason I’ve you’ve got that on top like he’s a game just quick control because you know the finest adjustments on that if there’s feedback issues and stuff you know what it’s like yeah I really feel it on the on the on the unit and then just some record and playback machines effects rack the history thousand yeah so nothing else is that nothing else does it yes it’s just one of those irreplaceable things models always went

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back to their 3,000 yeah Allah says no fourth hours is no good to me the Aether’s is no good to me but it has for me it has to be the D I see yeah you know it’s very specific with that because I did all fits a lucky charm thing for me cuz when I started mixing me is I brought that on and it yeah it’s not even really doing that much but what it does it does so well yeah you know yeah m7 Reavers one for vocals one for both the user for Tom’s uh and are you yes in and out and those acid in it though yeah yeah isn’t there you know what is predominantly my snare reverb yeah I’m using the old-school snare or sorry plate yeah most of the time I mean there’s a bunch of presets in there to do different variations of Distortion and short gated plants and stuff like that but majority of the time it’s just the old SPX play then the bottom SPX

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symphonic doesn’t have at the time again it’s another one of those things that you can’t find anywhere else yeah it also shows some vocal doubling and some distortions so yeah obviously I’m mixing up this weight with some onboard plug-in stuff yeah both effects dynamics and EQ see we have a plug-ins for we hear talks about mice [Music] you

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[Music] so I hope you have you got your plugins laid out first and it’s always it’s a strange when you’re building your show file up versus how are you gonna organize stuff oh yeah and sometimes you you end up with a system that you look at and go like why did I anyway here we are drums yeah why all my drum plugins yeah inserts or anything that are not drama yeah yeah vocals are vocal plugins yeah effects are effects and what I called I poured rocks so when I was building the show at first yeah and none of this stuff was here yeah so I just emulated all that stuff right here knowing that you would go back to the originals so yeah so this was kind of a holding place I’ve kept all my trim stuff out here as well so it’s you know that’s kind of like my notepad yeah where yeah so all this stuff is more fixed so when in the effects world which is what I think we’re talking about yeah this was a game

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changer for me the 300 genius what you put me on T I’d used the Eco Pro for years and years and years yeah and I thought nothing would ever replace it but but this has I mean I know there’s other delay plugins out there but too high easy it was to integrate this into the show in terms of programming it yeah you know getting tempo sorted all that it’s just so easy so quick to get it to sound good so I’ve got one on the main vocal yeah I’ve got one on the TVs as well so they’re not always doing the same thing go yeah this is another replacement that I thought would never happen but the old dbx 120 is done you know again I thought nothing will ever replace that over the you know and then

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in the beginning I did up the 120 in the rack no no no and but what had happened was I’d be mixing some stuff in the box and I’ve been using this quite a bit so then how the drum side you know it’s you know there’s a lot of just control I use I really like hello the the the channel strip dynamics are fantastic I just like the extra control that the prologues founder gives me you know pulsar is just fantastic here and [Music] little bit of Oxford dynamic on my overheads maybe that’s really just tiny stuff your taste on some of the drum pad stuff so the Dom has to what we call our SPD’s but they’re not actually STDs but like stand-alone yeah yeah electronic could be staged some of the sea state what called sea stage yeah so I’ve just got the the arrives or just gripping those together you know so I also see you with this gesture for as

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long as I can remember you use this – yes I round up plug in really good really good yeah really good I don’t you know there’s a couple of toys not as well that are bring it beyond a de-stressor the obviously a blend function yeah as you can see here I’m using it yeah the saturation is kind of interesting you kind of miss just like whereas this is a bit more control the attack modifications you can actually use not on this as well and yeah it’s a really good plugin again with the pro multiband on some of my playback channels you know I’ll just sit that on so it’s not a song by song basis what it’s doing it depends the content of what’s going on there and nursed you know it could tailor that to that but you know so quick so powerful you know simple straightforward and you know it if you don’t want it to sonically get in the way if you know what I mean if you doesn’t have yeah yeah it’s peaceful here it’s alright so exactly he doesn’t miss what if it

0:04:00. –>
doesn’t matter the players it’s it’s you know it’s invisible lot right you know a little bit of taste compression these are more what I would call auxiliary channels yeah they’re happening here too is bf76 yeah and just just when you want to try a different no as you know no no one’s for anyone yeah yeah definitely my thing it’s a gig with one of the yeah and again something I never thought it’d be replaced but see look around is there kind of gone acoustic guitar Arizer yes but with the Oxford de-esser oh yeah I do exactly the same thing for the you know and you know storm gets a bit too much these again are just sitting on Chris’s distortion channels – Chris the bass player yeah distortion channels so the way that the bass is you’ve got a like a main kind of clean island and then two levels of distortion that’s it without as well so it’s again it’s just taking away it’s

0:05:01.2 –>
just again it’s a little bit of anti fatigue and just catching stray things that come out no no yeah yeah just just a little bit of control on that that’s what that’s Dan so then vocals a600 again is just kind of replacing how I used to use them nine on one essentially a little bit of D how yeah as I call it and then just a little bit of control up here you know when you see it actually I mean it looks like there’s a lot going on but in operations it’s just talking stuff at its most active around here yeah you know it’s you know cuz I don’t want to over compress the vocal either it’s like we were talking about like allowing things to get loud and quiet yeah you know it’s okay 3 DB pole

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[Music] you

0:00:00.6 –>
[Music] okay snaps no snapshots okay so a high detail the snapshots get depends on the song I don’t only automate if I need to automate yeah if the song calls for Ana you know when you start building the show you know what it’s like you at some point have to figure out what is it you want to automate how do you want to automate it where is it all gonna go yeah and how you gonna build a show go yeah and this is this you know that you know and so you don’t have to go back to square one when you get five days since you’re programming going oh but I have to say that that process on this platform was the least painful I’ve experienced youth so I start with like a castle I say ego okay his son begins like that’s what I worked on first yeah so before I did all that I

0:01:02.1 –>
worked on what I call my setup scene right but yeah I’m the setup scene to find the structure yeah what you know so for instance what plugins are mostly gonna get automated what you know what what’s within the scope what are they you know what are we trying to automate how we talked about a minute yeah and then so I create the the setup and then the choice so the setup sets the song up then choi lister behavior if it seems that the follow on from knocking within the song yeah yeah okay so that’s my you know that’s my like master scene isn’t wearing there so each song is just a variation of how many chart you know child seems there are two the master yeah or to this song yeah and it’s the best way i can explain that so you can see once once we get beyond that it’s not automation as much as the other stuff actually weirdly automate my gates quite a bit you ever seen that yeah well that was a decision made back at the

0:02:01. –>
master scene and the reason for that is i just love to maximize the dynamics of the drums you know eyes and to make sure I catch everything everything that Dom’s doing you know sometimes I’ll break buildups into like two sections yeah just to maximize all those moments yeah I’m kind of lucky again with with good musicians they are that I can get into this kind of detail I know that they’re gonna literally do consistently you know the level of that type of perform okay say it’s replicated all the side where it’s boring yes but but that the intention in the momentary snappy with quite simply some of them are for one of a better word get-out-of-jail-free actually a day-to-day operation if you you know I cuz I use virtual sign check quite a bit yeah so obviously inverse to sign check

0:03:00.7 –>
these priests are not gonna work no so what I’ve done is a routing momentary snapshot that simply rereads the patching from that back into where they should be right and the whole thing works seamlessly do you but it’s it obviously to go and patch that and you know it’s gonna take a bit of time so I just have a moment restart job that puts me over to what I call virtual preamps yeah actually yeah preamps yeah or another get-out-of-jail-free yeah if for some reason you know we lost parties or whatever or the multi got caught her also be whatever I’ve got you know I can jump onto the avid preamps do you and again we talked about you know I can also use that for taste um why we talk about redundancy I mean I’ve got snapshots to also get me out of all of the the the outboard yeah the next stage of redundancy we have s 6l 24 C for our openers yeah who all because you’ve all been loving it and but I also

0:04:01.5 –>
have a redundant show over there right so we can simply move the avb over to there yeah I’ve got full show that runs on that surface [Music]

0:00:00.6 –>
[Music] now you came to this right because I remember talking to you about the events and just just for the people that don’t know this there’s basically an event is a trigger in an action right yeah a trigger an action or a logic yeah so if something happens or something happens and something I’m something happens then do something yeah so the trigger can be a multitude of things and the action can be a multitude things yeah it’s such a simple thing to say but the possibilities are myriad really simple one-line check median so what I’m in our line checks yeah um also I want to check the MIDI incoming from stage but I don’t want to fire scenes because you know so I simply set up a little thing that chases the red light I know that’s working and then all my m41

0:01:05.9 –>
of all my scene recall happens in here as well right so rather than using LTC I opted to stick with an old MIDI kind of timecode system I developed when I was using the midis consoles as you know Midas has no time cold integration at all yeah but what the pro to see did have was the the global section which is quite powerful so what I was able to kind of make up a time code so an example would be uprising we call that song one yeah so far one of uprising would be MIDI notes see one velocity one well okay well it’s actually note 65 yeah which is the round middle C actually I think so you can see when it sees not 65 velocity – yeah it flashes the bar so let me know what’s going on

0:02:00.9 –>
yeah I don’t recall that snapshot why are you doing weighted medium you know not a linear time old you know obviously when I come over to this platform I was going great okay I could just go a linear time code yeah it was two factors one was I already had all that well for for the kind of legacy as long as you want to call that existing the songs already programmed I already had all this data of where at this note this is right of course is it this note this is where the verses so was actually able to program along as Polly you know just as data entry yeah no but the other great part about it is is that if the band changed the tempo of the song yeah or would rearrange the song yeah I don’t have to change any of my programming if they jump up four bars if they chopped out four bars my recall is still work if they change the tempo from 120 222 all my programming still works I don’t have to still live there yeah yeah so you know my friends and the lighting in video Department or pulling their hair ID reprogramming everything every

0:03:00.6 –>
night I’m gonna go it’s music there’s things like you know so if a channel becomes active mute another channel go yeah yeah which is so user above is the trigger yeah the meter above which is seems like quite a simple thing that’s quite a powerful thing when you’re extra you know start expanding that idea like the behavior of something dictating the behavior or something else you know and I don’t it’s me honestly yeah I only feel like I’m getting started with all this yeah that’s what it feels like and you know lots of simple stuff like that that that more goes back to you know may not be useful for anyone else but it just ways I want the console to behave yeah I’m not that’s pretty you can customize the console to do what you want to do rather than have to have you work floor and adjust to the console yeah and obviously I’ve talked about all these layers of stuff or not but when you’re operating it in what I call it much more simple mode I mean how quick it is you know how’s the mixing desk how

0:04:01. –>
quick it is to layout stuff where you want it yeah it’s just genius I mean obviously you’ve got videos that cover all this and you know I won’t go too far into it but but it it is so quick I’m so malleable good man you know MC thank you so much for sharing that some people be Vangie and ness and he’d be very generous with the amount of his permission that you shared with us and uh I really really appreciate it I’m dying to see the show tomorrow yeah hopefully won’t be windy [Music] [Applause] [Music] you