We have recently completed James Taylor’s 2012 European tour, and I am writing this column while kicked back in a comfortable London hotel room, enjoying a couple of days of R&R. My flight home from Reykjavik to LAX was routed through Heathrow (yes, really), so I decided I would do two things. First, I spent two extra days in Iceland sightseeing with my friend (and JT monitor engineer) Rachel Adkins. It was the first time either of us had been to Iceland, and we each figured that we might never get back there. It is a starkly beautiful country, and we enjoyed every minute we spent there exploring the island. Second, I jumped ship in London and took a little time to myself. Everyone in our business deserves a little pampering once in a while.
But First, A Couple of Surprises
Events in Iceland caused me to think about how greatly the process of live engineering has changed in a relatively short time. Surprise #1: As there are no Avid VENUE desks available in Iceland, both Rachel and I were required to put the show onto identical Midas PRO9 consoles. However, neither of us had even seen one in operation. We each benefited from having onsite help with the programming, but this was still treading through completely foreign territory. The user guide is a daunting 617 pages long! The available offline editor is only useful if one has some familiarity with the operation of the desk. Special thanks, however, go to Midas for making the editor software Mac-compatible.
The consoles are owned by Harpa Hall (the venue in Reykjavik) and were offered as part of the in-house package. We were very pleased to discover that the technical staff at Harpa had made a substantial investment in top-end gear. There was a well-arrayed, well-tuned Meyer MICA system installed in the hall, and Meyer wedges were provided for the stage. The only glaring problem was that we didn’t get to start working onstage until 1:30pm. There was an orchestra show with local children performing ballet that was scheduled to continue in the venue until 1pm. Surprise #2!
The day was a scramble from start to finish, for both Rachel and myself. We were coming off two-and–a-half months of working on Avid VENUE Profile consoles, and the show was very locked in. The musicians’ expectations for subtlety and nuance were also very high at that point in the tour. At both FOH and monitor world, the songs were all snapshotted. Some songs demanded more than one snapshot to adapt to changes within the arrangements. Many inputs were split on the monitor desk and custom-tweaked for each musician’s mix. Of course, none of this data from the VENUE was available to be transferred onto the Midas PRO9s. We work in an age in which digital consoles make shows totally predictable, infinitely repeatable and completely programmable. The contradiction is that no two platforms from the major players are compatible, and programming a complex show from scratch on any large format digital console is a very work-intensive, time consuming process.
Regardless of the struggles we encountered on that particular day, the Midas PRO9 is an excellent-sounding piece of audio gear. I am sure that given enough time to explore and comprehend all of the available features, I would become an enthusiastic supporter. However, trying to get ready for a 4:30pm sound check in three hours was nearly asking the impossible. We did get the band on before 5:30 and everyone had adequate sound check time before the 8pm start time for the show. By all accounts, the evening was very successful, but the stress level for Rachel and I was very high, because we were definitely forced well out of our comfort zones.
Back in the (Analog) Stone Age
After the show, I mused about what this day would have been like 15 years ago when desks were overwhelmingly analog. Back then, I documented console settings using a pencil, a yellow pad and a grid of circles, squares and rectangles emulating channel strip knobs, buttons and switches which I had printed out on multiple sheets of paper. Graphing all the console settings was incredibly time consuming and, in the end, not all that accurate, as the silk screening on various generations of consoles varied greatly and pot values also demonstrated large variations. We would also take photos of the work surface — Polaroids and 35mm — and blow them up on a copy machine. The advent of digital photography surely helped but the sheer amount of busy work often led to mistakes and having to start over. It would take two people furiously turning knobs to ready a desk for a one-off or at a festival. This is why tours would end up shipping very heavy analog consoles around the world. The cost was well worth the pain saved.
Trying to ballpark settings from one manufacturer to another was a total crapshoot. It was usually enough just to get effects sends and the various assignments set up correctly. Then one would have to furiously crank knobs in order to get something going on the gain pots, the onboard EQ and the outboard gear. Having memory cards for my Lexicon 480 and T.C. M5000 was serious luxury! For everything else, my brain was the best available recall device.
Flash to the Present
These days, I carry my professional life in my computer bag. The change is profound. My most valuable possession is the little USB drive wallet that contains the iLoks and the memory sticks that hold my various software installers, user licenses and the documentation from my shows. This saved data includes show files, song snapshots, console setups and plug-in presets. My laptop serves as the backup for all the console information. My Mac also runs the Pro Tools system I use to make 2-track recordings every night for the band. Two external hard drives back up the Mac and hold the Pro Tools files.
Recallability is no longer a dirty word. As long as I remain within the Avid VENUE platform, I am able to load even my most complex show setups and be show-ready in about an hour and a half. I have been using this platform for six years now; I have built up an extensive inventory of audio software, and I have created libraries of settings that allow me to access all of the data from every past tour. Furthermore, if I accidentally screw something up in the loading process, I simply go back in my console’s “History” and undo the error by recalling the state of the system from a few minutes before. The power of recall is more than awesome — it’s nearly inconceivable to a guy like me who began his career in the 1970s.
An Almost-Disaster In The Making
Is everything now foolproof? Hardly. Although I have backups of backups, my worst fear is that I will lose that little wallet of USB drives that now holds my electronic life. In 2009, when I was also on tour in Europe with James Taylor, we were flying from Copenhagen to Dublin for a show the following day. As we were going through security, I dutifully put my computer bag through the X-ray scanning machine. As luck would have it, a new employee was being trained at that particular workstation. The senior officer decided that my densely-filled Tumi bag represented a great training opportunity. He pulled it off the conveyor belt and dumped out the entire contents for the trainee to observe. They then ran the individual pieces of electronics and cabling through the machine separately.
Finding nothing suspicious or illegal, I was handed back my belongings in a plastic tub. As one can imagine, this process took an inordinately long time. Pressed for time, I hastily repacked my computer bag and jogged off to immigration screening. When I finally arrived at the gate, I thought it would be best to quickly inventory my stuff and then — total panic. The #%*&@ iLoks and the USB drives were missing!
I sprinted back to immigration and made a fast deal with the guy at the window to let me immediately re-enter the gate area. He was very cool. I then ran the quarter-mile back to the security area in a new Olympic record time. As I arrived, I screamed, “Where are my USB drives?” to the guy who had caused the problem. He very calmly held up a plastic bowl that now held my professional life.
“Are these yours, sir?” he asked. “Yes! They are!” I replied vehemently, while grabbing the bowl. I shot him a look using my most demonic face and cursed him under my breath before turning away and sprinting back to the gate. I arrived just in time, as the flight attendants were getting ready to close the doors. Our production manager had convinced them to give me a five-minute grace period, and I slid in just before the whistle blew. I was still as white as a sheet and my heart was.pounding.
The Good, The Bad, The Reality
This just goes to illustrate that every forward leap in technology is accompanied by new — and often hidden — dangers. But most importantly…I’m heading home tomorrow!
