It's one man versus 10,000 fists and one of the most rambunctious rock bands that hit stages last summer — Disturbed — yet FOH mixer Scott Canady doesn't look worried. It might be because he spent a number of years with the quartet — singer David Draiman, guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist Fuzz — working as their monitor engineer, taking them from wedges to personal monitors, or it might just be that he knows what he's doing. In addition to this recent run of work with Disturbed, Canady has recently spent time on the road mixing monitors and FOH for such bands as Nickelback and Chevelle. FOH caught up with him while Disturbed was on the road supporting their latest offering, Ten Thousand Fists (Warner Bros. Records).
FOH: You've been with Disturbed how long?
Scott Canady: A little over three years. I did a year and a half as their monitor engineer. I was brought in to take the singer over to PMs. They made him so happy that I brought in every other guy in the band. Eventually I got them all on PMs and about a year and a half later the front of house guy went to do another gig, so they threw me out there and never told me to come back.
How loud will it get tonight?
Tonight, I'd probably say, max, 118. Your usual. We've been in situations where it sounds ridiculous. I've run anywhere from 121 to 127. At the same time, people tap me on the shoulder and try to communicate with me at that level and say, "I can't believe how loud it is and it's not something annoying." It's loud, but at the same time, it's comfortable.
Well, it is a metal band, and I'm sure it's loud coming off the stage.
When we were on Believe, [The band's 2002 release. –ed.] our stage consisted of a drum kit that rolled up and two microphones. Everything else was iso-boxed and not even on the stage. It was a progressive thing to get them to do that, but for me it was absolutely fantastic.
So, you didn't have to fight anything coming off the stage?
Nothing at all, and everybody was happy. Then, while I was out with Chevelle and Nickelback, they started back up and were jamming while nobody was in control. We were back to a couple of stacks up onstage, but not like when I first got with them where Danny's [The band's guitar player. –ed.] rig was anywhere from 118 to 121 within a 15-foot radius.
And there's nothing you can do.
Well, you can kindly say this and that, but at some point, you're gonna see somebody or he's going to ask, "Turn it up or down?" Sometimes you have to bite your tongue, and sometimes people will listen and understand. Sometimes they don't.
You guys are carrying the 5D on this tour?
We carry two PM5Ds. This band had a successful three-year touring period off the first two albums. They kinda needed a break; they had babies, and they wanted to take time recording this album. They've been on hiatus for about a year, so when they came back, they wanted to re-associate themselves instead of jumping into arenas. There was some possibility that some of their fan base had grown up and gone away. Anyway, this is the Jagermeister tour, and that dictates where we play. We can only play where they sell Jagermeister, so it's not going to be in an arena; it's not going to be an amphitheatre. It's going to be in the local House of Blues and the local, 800–2,000 capacity clubs. So with all of that in mind, we decided the best consoles would be the smallest.
So, I'm guessing you're using all the dynamics and effects on the board.
Yeah. I'm new to the console. I have been on it for about six or seven months now, through a series of different legs and breaks. I was kinda freaked out like every other engineer. When we have a local opener, their FOH mixer comes walking up, thinking they are going to do their show. The next thing they see is something they might have not read about or touched. The thing that I learned was that I still knew how to mix; it was just the visual burden that I didn't know what I was doing. The learning curve was really quick. The console, to me, basically sounds like and works like a 4K, and if you've ever been on a 3K or a 4K, there's half your battle. It's just a matter of knowing what to do and how to do it; you're just not familiar with grabbing something and immediately going to go do something. You actually have to think. Like anything else, it becomes routine to where you're not even realizing you're doing something to get where you need to go.
How do you like the digital desk?
I think there are a lot of advantages. For instance, last year I went to Sturgis [The annual Harley-Davidson gathering in South Dakota –ed.] with Nickelback and we dragged an H-3000 and all these gates and comps. There were racks everywhere in monitor world, a ton of gear, and it rocked. This year we are going back there, and you can ride a bicycle around monitor world, because there's a PM5D and there's a PM5D at front of house. Then there are times like when we played with Queensrÿche. Even though they were playing first, by the time they would load out and drive to the next date, they would be three hours behind. So their engineer came up and said, "Can we use your desk?" I said, "Well, if you have a card," and he pulled out his card. Within 18 seconds, his entire show was there. He saved his songs as scenes.
Now for me, with Disturbed, a straightahead rock/metal band for 90 minutes, 60 minutes, 45 minutes, I don't need it. I'm not saying that I don't like it, but I don't have to call somebody and have it freighted because I have to have it. I grew up on everything. I've climbed every rung on the ladder. I think that was the best way to learn.
That's a generational thing, and I think your generation is going to be the last that can say they learned on every rung on the ladder.
Can you see any disadvantages with digital desks?
One of the drawbacks for engineers, and you nailed it on the head, is that there's a gap. If you don't start in the trenches and locally in the bars and in the clubs… I think one of the first consoles I mixed on was a Sun. Technology has progressed, and I've said to people, "Well, you've run a 3K or a 4K? Are you familiar?" They're like, "No." That was a huge shock to me. Another disadvantage with a digital desk is that on some of them you can't multitask like you can on an analog desk. You can't grab a gain, mess with the fader and do this. You're either going to confuse it, it might lock up or you're going to tell it to do something and send something somewhere or back that you don't want to do, because you're not paying attention. But once you get comfortable with the technology, you're not even really aware of what you're doing because you know what you're doing and how to get there.
Musically and technologically, monitor engineer Will Miller's run with Disturbed is a dramatic shift from Miller's previous gig with Josh Groban.
How big was the Groban gig?
I was running 39 mixes and had 112 inputs. There were seven musicians on PMs and an orchestra and drum subs, sends to the Pro Tools rig offstage, sends to the lighting guy and sends to the video guy. Then there was the live orchestra being miked and 16 channels of playback, plus the band and the audience being miked. It was a lot.
How many mixes are you sending with Disturbed?
Four stereo, three wedge mixes, two side fill mixes and an emergency front of house mix. That's it. With the effects sends and everything, I still use every send on the board. Danny, the guitar player, only wears one PM. He likes hearing the stack behind him, and he works off that.
It seems as if many bands are not bringing out monitor engineers, and with the 1D or the 5D a band can plug in a card and mix their own monitors. Does that mean that there's going to be less work for monitor engineers?
Well, who wants to do it? It can be horrible, and even if it goes really well, you're probably not going to get people saying, "Hey, good job." It's just, "Hey, I didn't get yelled at tonight." That's as good as it gets for me. As far as the whole personal mixing thing, I don't know. These guys could never do that, they're moving around too much. Danny is very physical, jumping around onstage, and it would look ridiculous if he went over to adjust his mix. Also, the idea that a musician is going to instantly know how to give himself what he wants… That's why we are here. It's like me going out there and him saying, "Hey, play this arpeggio this way." I can't do that, so there's no reason to expect that they naturally go, "It hurts my ears, I should cut 3K."
Right, it just seems with the pressure to cut budgets that at some point people are going to buy the gear rather than hiring an engineer.
Well, I don't want to compare it to lights, because I don't like to compare anything to lights, but you look at an LD and say, "Where do they go all night? They don't make a lot of changes. The show is set, and they can go. Why do you have them there?" It's because things go wrong. It's the same reason why they have a monitor guy. You can put the best sounding personal monitoring system in the world out there, but what happens when something goes wrong?
