The British indie rock band Franz Ferdinand is currently packing houses in Europe, having recently completed its successful North America leg, with high-energy sets that kept the audience on their feet. The four-piece Glasgow-based band is comprised of Alex Kapranos (lead vocals/guitar/keys), Nick McCarthy (rhythm guitar/keys/backing vocals), Bob Hardy (bass) and Paul Thomson on drums and backing vocals.
On the Road
Making it sound good to the audience is front of house mixer Mike Parker, and keeping the band in line is monitor engineer Tom Howat. We caught up with the two as they were winding up their U.S. dates in late April.
The band is playing a variety of rooms, from small clubs to decent-sized theaters, arenas and festivals. Production includes carrying their FOH and monitoring consoles, mics, wedges and signal processing, but relying on house systems or racks ‘n’ stacks at each venue.
This puts the pressure on Howat and Parker to keep things consistent in whatever environment they are playing that day. Most of the time they are playing on their own stage set, which goes over and around the backline so the guitar amp volumes and tones can vary. “One trick I use to circumvent this is using Radial JDX boxes on all the backline amps, which gives me a consistent sound source whether or not the set is there,” Howat says. “The JDXs also provide a very immediate and responsive sound — which is important for the musicians, especially in terms of in-ears.”
The U.S. leg of the tour had the same opening act (Frankie Rose) for all the shows, so they’ve been carrying a mic package for them, but they have also been working with a series of local monitor engineers to support the shows by getting acquainted with Howat’s Heath & Allen iLive console. “This of course, requires me to explain the iLive to someone new each day,” Howat notes. “The great thing is that — without exception — they have all come to grips with it really quickly, and they’ve all been very impressed with how intuitive it is and the quality of its sound, as well as some of the operational features that are unique to iLive,” he adds.
Monitorland
Howat was technical manager in a U.K. club in the early 1990’s before working on tours with a company called AudioLease, which later became Electrotec UK, but reverted to being an independent sound company in 2001 and currently maintains its presence as a major European audio systems company from its base near Cambridge. In the early days, Howat monitored for a wide array of music including Morrissey, Motörhead and Beth Orton — among others. He also works as a crew chief/engineer/system tech with large rental companies when not touring. Howat has been with Franz Ferdinand since August of last year.
For Franz Ferdinand’s U.S. run, one guitarist relies only on wedges. The other three players use both wedges and Sennheiser G3 or SR2050 IEMs, with drummer Paul Thomson relying on a Shure P6HW hard-wire pack.
“When I joined last year, the drummer was using wedges, but he had some molds and was considering the switch, which I strongly encouraged,” Howat explains. “He took to the in-ears straight away and hasn’t looked back since then. We also have a small sub cabinet behind him for some low-end reinforcement of the bass drum. Both Alex [Kapranos, lead singer] and Bob [Hardy, bass] were already very used to IEMs. Nick [McCarthy, rhythm guitar] is the only one using wedges although we are tentatively discussing the possibility of switching him over to IEMs… but at present that’s just a conversation.”
Howat himself relies on a pair of wedges and PFL RF IEM pack with his own Jerry Harvey JH16 molds. “They have excellent sound with a great low-end response,” he says, adding that he keeps the wedge and the in-ear PFL’s on separate buses.
Regarding the iLive, Howat is definitely upbeat. “It’s very versatile, responsive, and sounds great. Pretty much all the tricks and methods I deploy are available to me in this system,” he continues. “I particularly like the way you can put the relevant faders on the top layer of the surface and apply scenes that only change the fader layout. I’m also using a PL10 accessory [Allen & Heath’s 8-channel rotary encoder remote] which I use for ‘combo’ PFL, fader flip and select, so I can access all the monitor mixes immediately without needing to see the faders on the surface.” This provides Howat more fader real estate for other needs. “I also enjoying using the ‘tweak’ app on my phone for a quick wedge EQ and delaying one particular pair of wedges to another — it is very responsive, and I can dial in the delay time ‘in situ’ and hear the change immediately. Very handy indeed.”
This is his first run with the iLive, and he says that once he got familiar with the system terminology, he found it a very intuitive environment and easy to get used to. He adds that the reverb and compression algorithms are “first class.” He’s using close to 40 inputs with no other hardware outboard, plugs or DSP.
There are no radio mics — but there are two Shure ULX guitar systems in use along with his RF IEM mixes, “so a little bit of frequency coordination work is needed, which I do. I carry a TTi 1301 handheld RF scanner for on-site spectrum analysis and move on from there on a daily basis. The other thing I do is always specify that the IEM transmitters are split across more than one frequency range so that I have more options available to me in a crowded RF environment. Ultimately, we can forego ‘roadie mixes’ if necessary and re-patch the transmitters if we get in trouble. At the end of the day, as long as there are two solid frequencies for the two band members using RF IEM on stage, the rest is peripheral.”
Regarding stage volume, Howat says the IEM-less guitarist McCarthy has a pair of wedges in front of him and a pair off to the side in place of a side fill. “These are the mixes I bring together with output delay so as to create a wider area of coherent sound for him to move around in, but it also allows me to keep the volume on that side of the stage under a bit more control. This is relevant to the other guys in terms of keeping stage volume at a reasonable level. Getting the drummer onto in-ears has also helped in this regard.”
“Embrace the bleed, dudes and dudettes!” chimes in FOH engineer Parker, with a laugh. “Within reason,” he adds. He says Kapranos sings at a decent level, which helps a lot, as some of the other acts he’s worked with has been more challenging. “On my second gig with one of the bands I worked with, I asked them to trust me as I removed all the guitar amps, 90 percent of the wedges, the side fills and keyboard amps and pushed the drums back a couple of feet. It was night and day! Suddenly it was actually possible to mix the band.”
Out in the House
Mike Parker was hanging out with musician friends and noticed they were going out on tour and “having all the fun. So I secretly trained up and jumped a ride on the next tour.” Not the most auspicious beginning: he had to wedge himself underneath a kick drum in the hatch of a hatchback. Starting with getting a roof rack for the bass drum on that car, things started looking up for Parker and from there he’s mixed for MGMT, Warpaint, Tame Impala, The Cribs, Haim, Julian Casablancas, Hot Chip, Chairlift, and James Blake. But he’s been with Ferdinand for more than a decade, going on what he figures is about 1,500 shows.
To complement his Avid Profile console at FOH, he’s carrying a local rack, a couple of delay pedals and “a load of plug-ins” from Massey Plugins Inc., including the CT5 compressor. He has a Massey L2007 mastering-grade look-ahead brickwall limiter on his main stereo bus (although he cautions that if it’s not authorized, it doesn’t pass any audio). For good measure, there’s also Massey’s De:Esser and THC (Total Harmonic Corruption) stompbox plug. Reverbs are served up by Avid/Digidesign, and a Waves 9 bundle comes into play with C4, Maxxbass, Q10, Doubler, H-Delay and flanger, among Parker’s faves. He also uses “parametric EQ’s on everything — no graphics.” Specifically, it’s a Serato Rane Series Parametric EQ plug-in.
When asked about the combination of a Profile at FOH and the iLive on monitors, Howat explains they use a passive analog split. At FOH, there’s a MADI feed for recording the shows and virtual sound check, and then there is also a MADI card in the iLive system, which can be used for third-party multi-track requirements when the need arises.
“I multi-track every show for virtual sound check and archive purposes,” Parker adds. “It’s a simple setup with MADI option card in FOH rack and optical cable to RME MADIface into MacBook Pro.”
For Parker, it’s pretty straightforward from his seat in the house. “There’s a few sibilance issues, but I have processing for that. Then it’s just making the mix powerful and doing occasional special effects — a few big delays, reverbs, etc.” He also leans on a Roland Boss RE-20 Space Echo pedal and a Strymon TimeLine delay pedal, the latter of which is MIDI linked to some snapshots.
Howat and Parker will continue to mix it as the tour continues through the summer, when it wraps up at the Gasometer in Vienna on August 23 — and likely will be back when the band goes out again.
Franz Ferdinand 2014 Tour (First North American Leg)
Sound Company: Delicate Productions
P.A. System: Local racks ‘n’ stacks
FOH Engineer: Mike Parker
Monitor Engineer: Tom Howat
FOH GEAR
Console: Avid Profile with MADI option card.
Ancillary: Avid Stage Rack, Avid Local Rack, Radial SW-8 Backup Switcher
Plug-ins: Waves 9 (C4, MaxxBass, Q10, Doubler, H-Delay, Flanger); Digidesign reverbs; Massey CT5, L2007, De:Esser, THC Total Harmonic Corruption; Serato Rane Series Parametric EQ.
Outboard Hardware: Roland Boss RE-20 Space Echo pedal, Strymon TimeLine delay pedal MIDI linked to desk.
Recording: MacBook Pro, Reaper DAW software, Sonnet Thunderbolt adapter, RME MADIface.
MONITOR GEAR
Console: Allen & Heath iLive-112 surface
Ancillary: A&H iDR 10 Mix Rack; A&H PL10 Extender; 48-channel passive split system; BSS MiniDrive.
Monitors: (10) d&b audiotechnik M2 wedges with (6) d&b D12 amplifiers; Martin Audio drum sub plus Martin MA 4.2s amp.
IEM’s: (6) Sennheiser G3 IEM systems; Professional Wireless combiner and helical antenna; Shure P6HW hard-wired pack.
Microphones: Mostly Sennheiser with some Shure Beta 56 and Beta 57s.
Direct Boxes: Radial JDX and J48 boxes.
