If you’re remotely familiar with Peter Gabriel’s music, you can probably guess what his audio crew says is their biggest challenge: “His music is very dynamic, both within a song and between songs,” says FOH engineer Richard Sharratt. “I enjoy the whole show but dynamically it’s hard — I’m pushing and pulling Peter’s vocal all the time, constantly riding it. But it’s really satisfying.”
The artist’s recent i/o – The Tour has “great new material, and a great band,” Sharratt notes. The lineup not only spotlights Gabriel’s usual bandmates — bassist Tony Levin, guitarist David Rhodes and drummer Manu Katché — “but new elements as well, including violin, viola, cello, trumpet and French horn that add a different flavor and texture to the old songs and define the characters of the new ones.” It’s a bit of dream gig too: “I’ve been a huge Peter Gabriel/Genesis fan since my teens, and here I am mixing FOH for him.”
The concert, Gabriel’s first solo outing since 2014, begins on a quiet note. He comes out alone and starts talking to the audience, who are already on their feet. After telling them to sit, he “lights” a campfire center stage, and introduces longtime bass player Tony Levin for a duet. Soon the rest of the band is in a semi-circle beneath a large round video screen showing a full moon and he plays songs from his early career. “Peter and [keyboardist] Don-E have wireless MIDI keyboards,” Sharratt explains. Gabriel also has a wireless DPA 4288 headset mic; the rest are on Shure 98/HC headsets.
“Peter is very particular about the sound, and wants everything to be just right,” says band monitor engineer Damon “Dee” Miller. “He will spend a lot of time on the details.”
By Way of Orchestra
Sharratt was born in Dorking, southwest of London. “I went to a Quaker school that had a good drama facility,” he says. In 1978, he left high school with a desire to work in theater lighting. He worked a couple of local theaters, and then moved over to sound, transferring to the West End with the original production of the musical Blood Brothers. In October of 1986, he found himself behind the console at the opening of Phantom of the Opera. His ability to mix orchestras well was duly noted, and soon he was mixing BBC’s Proms in the Park, Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé and arena operas. In 2010, Peter Gabriel needed an engineer for his New Blood tour, and Bryan Grant of Britannia Row put Sharratt’s name forward for that orchestra-rich gig.
He was there again for the Gabriel/Sting Rock Paper Scissors tour of 2016, which he mixed with Sting’s engineer, Howard Page. Both earned FOH Mixer of the Year Parnelli Awards for their efforts. He also mixed for Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul for a few years, and since the end of the pandemic, he’s been back with Gabriel.
Britannia Row Productions, a Clair Global brand, supplies L-Acoustics’ K1, K2, K3 and KS28 concert sound system for both legs of the tour. “I’m loving mixing on K1 for this tour as it gives the mix a great warmth, depth, and clarity that really draws the audience in,” Sharratt says. “K1 makes me feel like I’m listening to everything on a set of audiophile nearfield monitors, even at the back of the room.” He says with the L-Acoustic rig, he “gets to walk the room in virtual soundcheck and during soundcheck, and, thanks to system engineer Ben [Webb], the coverage is always great.”
Sharratt works his magic on an SSL Live L550 and has been using SSL consoles since 2014. “It’s very visual, and the colors and icons make it easy to be hands-on. And everything is onboard; it has great, smooth compression and EQ.” He uses light compression on each of the music and vocal stems and the matrix outputs. For Gabriel’s vocal inserts, he uses the onboard de-sser, multi-band compressor and a noise gate to minimize spill. There are four i/o racks, 68 mono inputs, 39 stereo inputs, 12 stereo groups, 13 mono auxes, 19 stereo auxes and 24 matrix outs. Outboard are four MIDI-controlled Bricasti M7s reverbs with M10 remote, SMAART and a full Pro Tools recording rig.
He uses parallel compression on the drums consisting of two stems, one essentially uncompressed and one hard compressed. “All the drum mics are timed back to the overhead mics which are rigged as an XY coincidental pair,” he says. There are also 10-band group EQ inserts for “squeaking” Gabriel’s vocals to maximize gain before feedback. “I use channel comps to catch the big stuff and to smooth out those dynamics.”
A wide variety of mics are employed. Some of these include Sennheiser E901 and Shure B52 on the kick drum; Shure B56 and B57 on the snare; and Sennheiser E904s on the toms. On overheads, ride and hi-hat are Schoeps CMC6/MK4s “which I’m still using from my orchestra days – these are expensive but are lovely, open, uncolored mics.” The violin, viola and cello are double inputs with DPA 4099s and pickups on the viola and violin, and there is a 4099 and Schertler Stat C on the cello. The trumpet and horn have Shure Beta98s, and there is a Neumann KM184 on flute. After the “campfire” set, Gabriel and the band use Audix OM6 vocal mics.
Present and Future
“I’m the past, he’s the future,” band monitor engineer Damon “Dee” Miller likes to say of his monitoring partner, 24-year-old Dom Shaw. Miller is being self-deprecating, though he makes a case for Shaw, who is Gabriel’s monitor engineer. Plucked from a recording studio, this is Shaw’s first tour. Miller, having been on the road for 39 years, has logged a few more miles. He has worked for Robert Plant and Jeff Beck among others. “Peter is always pushing the boundaries,” states Miller, who first worked with Gabriel in 2003. Miller says he was also the first person to use an SSL live in 2012 and notes that Gabriel was one of the major stakeholders in the company and had a hand in developing the console. Miller has a good relationship with all the band members. “There are challenging moments, because it’s complicated music, but they are all great people and amazing musicians.” Apart from a wedge for the drummer, the bandmembers all receive monitor mixes via IEMs.
Shaw’s story is just getting started. Four years ago, he began working at Gabriel’s recording studio, and got to work on the i/o album. Shaw was then asked to come out and mix monitors for Gabriel on this tour. “[Live] is a completely different animal,” he says. He adds that Gabriel wants his in-ear mixes to sound as close to the recording as possible, so Shaw provides a similar mix to what they heard in the studio.
The Systems Approach
System engineer Ben Webb describes the typical P.A. setup: 14 L-Acoustics K1 over four K2 down per side for mains; a center hang of two A15 (one Wide, one Focus); and left and right arrays of eight KS28 subs flown in a cardioid configuration. Twelve K1 over four K2 per side serve as the outfill hangs, while 16 more K3 per side cover the 220° seating sections. Twenty-two ground-stacked KS28 subs are deployed in a cardioid array, with four A15 per side for out-fill and four A10 as lip-fills. For the North America tour, four hangs of eight K3 are flown for delay. The full system is powered by 66 LA12X amplified controllers and processed via two P1 Milan-AVB processors using M1 for tuning. Sharratt also has two X8 and a SB15 sub as a reference system at FOH.
“On the recent European run, we were playing quite a range of venues, from amphitheaters to outdoor fields to arenas,” Webb says. “Getting a consistent sound from the very front row to the top back seat is critically important.” Most of his designs are done in advance, where he relies on a mixture of CAD drawings and knowledge gained from touring through the venues before. “Every morning, I verify my design with the stage and rigging positions and then make any final tweaks. In my initial designs, I rely a fair amount on [Soundvision’s] Autosplay and Autofilter functions as they give me a very good starting point to work from. And with the mixture of venues we are playing, especially the outdoor shows, L-Acoustic’s P1’s Autoclimate tool for temperature and humidity compensation is particularly helpful.”
Webb began his career as an audio tech for local companies in Southampton, England before becoming a freelancer for Britannia Row. This is his first tour with Gabriel, and along with his efforts to achieve consistent coverage from front to back in a variety of venues, he must also factor in Gabriel’s wide dynamic range. “We want people in the back to be able to understand what he’s saying, and there’s a lot of delicacy in the songs. That’s the hardest part.” The initial design of the system was done at Britannia Row by Josh Lloyd, and Webb adjusts to fit whatever room they are playing in. “There’s a lot of getting the timing right, and also just listening and doing what feels right.”
Crew chief Fergus Mount began working audio on the London theater scene and ended up working the 2012 Olympics held there. That’s where he met Dave Compton, who is now a Britannia Row account manager. This is Mount’s first time out with Gabriel. “The show has been well received,” he says. Gear-wise, the North American leg is similar to the European leg with the exception of additional delay speakers for the larger rooms on this leg. “That’s why we have some additional crew members, too, including Taylor Samuel.” (Samuel was “borrowed” from Eighth Day Sound, also part of the Clair organization.) He says the overall resources of Clair make moving back and forth easier; not all on the European crew had visas. This worked out well for Samuel, and she was grateful for the opportunity to get more experience on a tour this size.
Compton, who has been with Britannia Row since 2013, is handling the account. There is a lot of history with the artist: “Peter became a client of the then-newly formed Britannia Row Productions in 1979, with Bryan Grant looking after the account for 43 years until 2022,” he says. “We have had the privilege of providing the audio for most of his tours, both in Europe and the U.S.” The tour’s move to North American production shifted the control from Europe, picking up the L-Acoustics P.A. and three U.S.-based techs to join the three others that came over from the UK. “It was all very easy to maneuver alongside tour manager Dave Taraskevics and production manager Gary Trew. It’s a tough gig with very high expectations, and everyone has pulled together to give the audience an exceptional experience.”
After starting out with the European leg this spring, the North American leg of “i/o — The Tour” wrapped up Oct. 21 at Toyota Center in Houston, TX.
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Britannia Row (Clair Global)
- Production Manager: Gary Trew
- Tour Manager: Dave Taraskevics
- FOH Engineer: Richard Sharratt
- Monitor Engineer (Band): Dee Miller
- Monitor Engineer: (Gabriel): Dom Shaw
- Crew Chief: Fergus Mount
- System Tech: Ben Webb
- RF Technician: Tom Gardner
- P.A. Tech: Chuck Wells (U.. leg); Odysseas Tatsis Sofianopoulos (European leg)
- Stage Tech: Stephen Wharton (U.S. leg); Jason Thomas (European leg)
- Delays Tech: Taylor Nicole Samuel
P.A. GEAR
- L/R Fronts: (28) L-Acoustics K1 (14/side); (4) K2 downfill
- Center: (2) L-Acoustics A15
- Sides: (24) K1 (12/side); (8) K2 (4/side)
- 220°: (32) K3 (16/side)
- Outfills: (4) A15/side
- Lip Fills: (4) A10
- Delays: (32) K3 (8 per delay hang)
- Flown Subs: (16) KS28 (8 flown L-R)
- Ground Subs: (22) KS28 in cardioid array
- Amps: (66) L-Acoustics LA12X
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: SSL Live L550
- Outboard: (4) Bricasti reverbs w/remotes; Rational Acoustics Smaart
- Recording: Avid Pro Tools
- FOH Nearfields: (2) L-Acoustics X8 with SB15 sub
- P.A. Drive: (2) P1 Milan-AVB processors w/M1 for tuning
MON GEAR
- PG Monitor Console: SSL Live L550
- Band Monitor Console: SSL Live L550
- Wedges: d&b M2, APS
- Monitor Amp: L-Acoustics LA4X
- RF Hardware: Shure AD600US Axient Digital spectrum manager; (10) Shure PSM1000 IEM transmitters; (3) Shure P6HW hardwired IEM bodypacks
- Wireless Mics: (6) Shure Axient Digital AD4Q-A quad receivers; (19) AD1 beltpack transmitters; (6) AD2 handheld transmitters
- Wired Mics (partial): Shure Beta 52, Beta 56, Beta 57, Beta 98s; Sennheiser e901, e904s; Schoeps CMC6/MK4s; DPA 4099s; Schertler Stat C; Neumann KM184
- Vocal Mics: DPA 4288 headset; Shure 98/HC headsets; Audix OM6 wireless capsules and handhelds
