It was Super Bowl Sunday and the freeways of Los Angeles were surprisingly forgiving. While most citizens were settling in for a long day of chicken wings and clever commercials, I was tooling toward Ground Zero for the music industry: the Staples Center, home to the 48th Annual Grammy Awards.
Despite the tranquility of downtown L.A. that morning, as I approached the Staples/ Convention Center staging area, I could literally feel the hum of activity in the hive. It was the first of three days of rehearsals, the technical shakedown before Wednesday's live broadcast of "Music's Biggest Night." Down On the Farm
The delivery ramp and underground dock were referred to as the "The Truck Farm" during the Grammys. As the arena has no permanent production facilities, the show's audio and video command centers were housed in trailers parked here. Massive trunks of cabling snaked from the deep interior of the building to connect these trucks, each with their own backup gennys to protect against any power outage. At the top of the ramp, following the many runs of coax and optical cable, sat the mighty XM/Effanel L7 truck, the king of the mixing beasts. L7 was located near the end of the signal flow; the music mix was then distributed to the NEP Supershooter #24 Facility, which feeds it to CBS and Westwood One (TV & radio respectively) for their broadcasts to the world on Grammy night. So, let's begin here.
"When it's rolling down the road, there's nothing to differentiate the L7 from any other truck, other than the 'XM/Effanel' logo on the side," explained engineer-in-charge and general manager Joel Singer.
This 48-foot expando mobile mixing studio was the Sanctum Santorum of John Harris and his crew of crack engineers. A recent half- million dollar renovation was recently done to replace the Neve Capricorn with Harris' new toy: a Digidesign ICON console. "I'm really happy with the ICON," said the 11-year Grammy veteran. The desk is a virtual surface, and it's set up to model an older console. All channels had the exact same FX. All plug-ins and boards were natively surround. Co-mixer Eric Schilling and I liked the Digidesign EQIII plugs and Waves Renaissance compressor. They were also using Trillium Labs TL Space, and SoundToys EchoBoy, for various types of reverbs.
With the ORB (Offline Remix Booth) implemented into the mix system for the first time this year, we took the mix session out of L7 after the rehearsal and moved the session over to the ORB, which allowed L7 to move on to the next scheduled rehearsal on stage. They could move the Firewire drives of U2's rehearsal and bring it over to the ORB (Offline Remix Booth) to refine the mix with the artist and their engineers. That way, they could spend more time with each artist getting what they want from their performances sonically.
"We're really pushing the envelope this year, refining the art of 5.1. There wasn't really a market for surround before. Now, I get e-mails from China saying, 'What was that snare drum sound?' This show is so beyond the scope of any other production. It's fun to do because it's hard to do. It's an exercise in teams. I represent two dozen people and manufacturers. And without Eric, L7 engineer Max Feldman and Joel Singer, I'd be dead in the water," Harris said.
Singer waited for us across the driveway at the ORB truck. "I've been doing this show seven years…it's just a plethora of emotions. You'll never find a better bunch of engineers in the world," said Singer.
The ORB truck was designed to mirror the L7 precisely, complete with its own ICON desk and Adams 5.1 speakers. Here, the Pro Tools-recorded mixes of the rehearsals of each act could be analyzed and fine-tuned prior to the live broadcast, a new technique in the world of awards shows.
"I built these trucks to be the most highlyevolved audio platforms. Aircraft aluminum, lead-lined walls, fiber optics, all digital. Our Capricorn was a million-dollar console, but when we found out there would be no more replacement parts, we knew we'd have to move on," Singer said. "We sat down with a lot of manufacturers. We are big fans of Pro Tools, so it was natural to talk to Digidesign. Digi actually loaned us our ICONs. If not for the support of the retailers, we couldn't do this show," Singer said. But it wasn't easy installing them. "Their footprints are actually larger than the Capricorn's, because the specs don't take into account the legs out all the way. I had to make modifications to the trucks. But now, we can handle 96 tracks at once. The MTV VMA Awards in Miami last year was our first show. But the Grammys is a huge undertaking. The enormity of handling 500 to 600 mics, live…" Singer considered the job at hand. "We let John and Eric be the artists. I'll handle the technical end."
Passing the Baton
The newest member of the Grammy audio engineering team was Tom Holmes. Tom was selected to engineer the SD broadcast production mix out of a few select candidates discussed for the position by the producers. Tom took over from Ed Greene, a veteran of mixing the show for more than 25 years, who realized shortly before this year's broadcast that his schedule conflicted with his duties as A-1 for the Super Bowl halftime show. Ed graciously bowed out after many years of involvement in the show. Tom was located in the NEP Supershooter #24 Audio control Room mixing on a Calrac Alpha 1 Digital Console. He was responsible for the production elements of the broadcast, which consisted of all audio, videotape and profile playbacks, announcer VOs and all production microphones.
Cue the Announcer
Don Worsham's official title was ATPB mixer, but for this no-host version of the Grammys, you could think of him as the Fastest Trigger in the West. Donny, as he's affectionately called, cued all the prerecorded audio from beginning to end. "The entire show is documented on paper. The 'Long Rundown' spells out all the announcements, all the commercials, all the song lyrics, every camera move…you name it," he explained while showing off a huge three-ring binder. There's even a "Quickie Rundown" that's just three pages. The "Short Rundown" was more like a script. "I follow along while listening for my cues," he added. In front of him was an LCD touchscreen displaying color-coded squares labeled with titles and timecodes. This was SpotOn, a "playout utility" written by British software developer David Markie of Markie Enterprises and distributed by Sigma Broadcast Limited, and Grammys' newest toy.
"SpotOn is Windows software that replaces many pieces of audio gear for playing cues. It's also a 5.1 solution," Worsham said. For the third year, L.A. morning jock Kevin Ryder was the voice of the Grammys. Ryder's prerecorded commercials, announcements and presenter intros resided as WAV files on Worsham's touchscreen.
Christine Bradley, the show's AD, called the "readies" into Worsham's earpiece, and he tapped the appropriate square. But what happens if, say, L.L. Cool J wrapped his limo around a light pole on his way to Staples and couldn't get there in time for his bit? Well, Ryder was physically present somewhere deep in the catacombs, mic at the ready in case Christine or director Walter Miller should call with updated info. "He's live because the show is," said Worsham. He added that the winners are kept secret, even from production staff, so there's nothing on the SpotOn saying, "and the Grammy goes to…" Winners were announced to the world by the presenters opening the envelope on the live show.
OSR Truck
Parked in the shadowed interior of Staples was Effanel's OSR truck, the 5.1 domain of Paul Sandweiss. Kicked back and comfy in his truck, the affable surround mixer modestly offered, "I have the easiest job here. I integrate the audio stems with Klaus Landsberg's 5.1 audience mix. I try to picture the surround mix as you might hear it from 10th row center where sound is best. Not front row center, which is often pretty lousy sound. I go for realistic surround, not trickery."
Sandweiss mixed with twin Yamaha DM 2000 desks: "They're bulletproof devices." He composited the 5.1 stems sent through a TC Electronic DB 8 processor and the 5.1 mix was then embedded into the HD video signal, which was then sent via fiber to CBS TV in New York; the L+R stereo was folded down and transmitted with the SD signal.
"We first tried 5.1 with the Salute to Heroes 9/11 tribute. It was on something like 40 channels, and it looked and sounded different on every one of them. Local TV stations may throw on additional compression, crushing your mix. But in the end, the consumer has to take some responsibility for the sound they get from their sets; 90% of people don't set up their TV audio right, especially if they don't have 5.1," Sandweiss said.
Surrounded By Applause
Klaus Landsberg was the 5.1 audience mixer, a relatively new specialty for the pony-tailed 15-year veteran, who also serves as senior production mixer at the Oscars. "This is the second year we've mixed the audience separately at the Grammys," he said. This year, he had it all mapped out. He checked his chart of Staples seating, which pinpointed mic locations likely to pick up enthusiastic audience responses (as opposed to cranky industry mutterings) during the show. "I've got 24 KM 84s, 4 416s, two TLM 100s and four AKG 547s hung and spread in the audience," he said.
His fingers flew as he set up his channels. "We're about a day behind because production wanted to save money," he said, half seriously. "We'll also do some sweetening, using digital samples to emulate the house. We'll use a room shaper and a Cedar DNS1000 to take some decay out of the room. I work out a scene with Paul, who mixes my audience feeds into the 5.1. The main truck folds it down to two. There was some talk of me being tapped as co-mixer in the L7 this year. That's fine…I charge my same day rate either way!"
Front of House
Last time I visited FOH at Staples, I had to scale a nasty metal ladder to their loft. The crew's stage view was partially blocked by the even-higher video platform, and at times, we felt threatened by flying crane shots. No more. "We came down to the floor a while back," explained ATK/AudioTek's VP Mikael Stewart, production mixer for the house. "When we were up on the riser, we had poor representation of bass. It sounds better down here. Better sight lines. Logistically easier, too."
"It took a lot of extra time just loading the gear on the riser," added music mixer Ron Reaves. "We use the extra time to relax and soak in the atmosphere." In fact, systems manager Andrew "Fletch" Fletcher and tech Jeff Peterson pointed out the espresso machine they'd brought to make FOH a tad homier. As if on cue, the executive producer of the Grammys, John Cossette, wandered over for a cup. The price for a latte was a joke, and John's was…well, we can't print it, but it was really funny. Most of these guys go way back with each other, and many came up through pushing rock gear around. There was plenty of gear here, too. Stewart looked up from his calculator: "We've got 375,000 watts and 2,700 amps of power up in the ceiling. And around two miles of wire for Front of House and monitors."
I asked Fletch whatever became of the "crotch monitors" they used for the frontmost seats in the P.A. shadow. "Come on, I'll show you," he said.
We carefully worked our way to the "mosh pit" area at stage left. "We got rid of the shadow. We've flown four 4880 subs atop each cluster, and the arrays now points almost straight down. We've also put in these little JBL arrays as side fills and one DeltaMax at the stage split. There are two more 4887s and CSW 18 AudioTek subs mirrored in the mosh pit. Every seat's now an e-ticket," he said.
Things were relaxed before the pressures of rehearsals and showtime. "I have more fun on this show than the VMAs or anything, really," said Reaves. "We do a lot of musical acts–one every eight minutes. We're the only position all the bands and all the production sound comes through. While the guys on stage make order out of chaos, we're under a lot of scrutiny."
Indeed. In addition to audio coordinator Michael Abbott's frequent visits, the Front of House's work was also a concern of producers John Cossette and Ken Ehrlich, as well as Phil Ramone, Leslie Ann Jones and Hank Neuberger. After all, think about who this live audience is: the golden ears of the music industry. So the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences provided "audio chaperones" who might sit with Reaves during the show. "I don't have total free reign," sighed Reaves, "but I do get an extra pair of ears. They'll make suggestions, especially on things like orchestration."
Leslie Ann Jones, director of music and scoring and mixer extraordinaire of Skywalker Sound, joined us. "It's my first year doing supervision, actually. I did house sound, vocals, at the Shrine Auditorium. I'm orchestral. All the mixers get such limited time; I'm here to help. We push the envelope here," explained the woman who mixed Apocalypse Now. "This is the most important music show there is. Most important ears, too."
Monitor World
Perched in the steep seats above stage A was David Velte, monitor mixer. Velte handles the Oscars and is the regular monitor maven for The Jimmy Kimmel Show. "I mixed monitors for the VMAs this year when Katrina hit. It was my first hurricane, and I didn't like it!" he said. Here, he was handling 48 sends from eight wedges sunk into the three Grammy stages, as well as PMs. There were 10 or 11 deck people on each stage pulling inputs and outputs on rolling carts. Each act was miked separately, pre-wired, then rolled into place.
"Five years ago, nobody was on PMs. Now it's about 50/50. Many bands have that same split among their members. Most bands send up a guest mixer who knows what each singer likes in their mix. Clint Black likes all hi-end, loud," Velte said.
"Christina won't wear ears OR underwear!" chimed in a techie who shall remain nameless. Velte continued, "Lead vocalists play with mic distance more when they're on ears. This makes life tougher for Front of House. We now keep an emergency handheld mic on stage to ward off any more 'Celine Dion moments' like we had a couple years back. Her mic had come unpatched, and the 'spare' was a production mic, not a vocal. We had dead air for maybe 20 seconds. It felt like forever. She cried. Never again."
Command Center
"Welcome to Split World," said stage tech Steve Sich. Similar to Zion in The Matrix, it was deep inside Staples and marked only by the words "Zamboni" and "NHL Officials" on the wall. This was where all the audio signals from the stage were split between FOH/foldback and the broadcast trucks. "We're the front end for John Harris. We get the music elements from the stage, the production and podium signals come here first, then we split the signal with isolated 'Y' transformers which keep everyone electrically isolated from each other," Sich said. This was also the position where another HD3 Pro Tools system, operated by JP Velasco, provided track augmentation for any performance that required it.
Michael Abbott was inside the NHL Officials Room backstage with Johnny Caswell of Center Staging at his side. For six years, the monumental task of coordinating everyone involved in audio, engineering, outside production services, the manufacturing partners, the unions and NARAS itself has been this man's gig. He is, more than anyone else, the audio go-to guy inside the Grammys. "The show is a huge collaborative effort–it's the biggest audio platform assembled for any TV Broadcast in a single facility annually," said Abbott.
"We go 3 1/2 hours this year, with more than 30 different artists performing and 11 awards presented. My job is to put out fires before, during & after the show." But Abbott's connection with the show goes much deeper. "We will start our postmortems one week after the broadcast. I then start working on next year's show on and off throughout the next year. I'll put in two to three weeks of intense preparations ahead of the show, then one week on-site," he said.
Showtime
It was nearly time for rehearsals to start and Kelly Clarkson was up on stage. Abbott was introduced to Clarkson's manager, who wanted to discuss an aspect of her performance. "At our rehearsal, the song opens with kids onstage playing a toy piano. The way we rehearsed it is, first the live guitarist does a little intro with a sustained chord. Then, the kids hear a count-off in their ear buds from Pro Tools playback. The live toy piano is being 'played' by a young girl, that leads into Kelly's first verse," her manager said. "We want to play live, but are afraid the kids will be terrified being onstage and not play when cued."
Abbott said that it wasn't a problem, as the piano is on the track as well and the mixers would use those tracks as a backup if needed. Just one small fire Abbott had to tend to during the rehearsals leading into the show.
But the technology that makes the show possible is also giving Abbott an opportunity that he has not had for a very long time. "I just figured out how to program my TiVo over the holidays," he said. "I am going to record the show and watch it for the first time in 18 years in the comfort of my home next weekend."
