WASHINGTON, DC – In Performance at the White House, produced by WETA, aired March 1 on PBS at 8 pm EST. East Shore Sound provided audio support, including the use of the Roland M-48 Personal Mixing System for the monitor mix for the house band.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the event, taped Feb. 24, part of the celebration of Black History Month. The concert focuses on the legacy of Motown music and featured Jamie Foxx, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Ledisi, Seal, and Gloriana.
East Shore Sound was contacted in the early planning phase of the production to coordinate the house audio and RF systems for the show.
"We have worked on several events at the White House over the last decade," said Bill Saltzer of ESS. "The East Room is not your typical performance venue. The room is only 40 by 80 feet, and there is no offstage space to house the traditional amount of equipment that goes into making a one hour TV show. The stage is only 14 by 32 feet, so with eight musicians on stage, space is at a premium.
"Adding to the complexity of the logistics, since the event is being shot for television broadcast, it is not feasible to have a monitor engineer on the side of the stage where he can easily communicate with the musicians. Also, since there will be a separate recording and broadcast mix, controlling the ambient sound from the monitor mix becomes even more critical."
To accomplish this, Music Director Greg Phillinganes agreed early on that the band would wear in-ear monitors. Traditionally, this would have equated to a monitor mixer controlling 8 independent mixes of audio for the band as well as mixes for the various guest artists. Given the limited amount of time in the production schedule, it was obvious that a personal mixing system would efficiently provide each member of the band with the flexibility to get the mix they needed for their in ear monitors. This would also allow the monitor engineer to focus his attention on each of the sixteen guest artists.
"Once everyone agreed that we would use a personal mixing system for the band, there was really no question that it would be a MADI-equipped digital console along with the M-48 Live Personal Mixers and S-MADI REAC to MADI bridge," said Chris Anderson, of Anderson Audio, the provider of the PA system for the event.
"The M-48s offer several unique features that set them apart from other personal mixing systems on the market," Anderson continued. "First of all, the M-48s allow you to choose up to 16 stereo groups from 40 sources in any order. The flexibility of this allows each of the musicians to choose and group the audio sources and assign them in any order providing a truly personal mix. Each M-48 sees 40 audio sources in 16 stereo groups along with power via a single Cat5e cable. This makes for a much cleaner stage free of wall wart power supplies. Additionally the local ambient microphone built into the M-48 allows them to have conversations with each other without having to remove their ear buds."
Rehearsals were held in a hotel ballroom. By utilizing in-ear monitors with the M-48s, the mixes translated perfectly from the hotel ballroom to the East Room. This saved a significant amount of time getting the band up and running once they moved from the rehearsal space to the East Room.
After sitting through the first day of rehearsals, Mitch Maketansky of Music Mix Mobile commented, "The Roland System is great. While the band wasn't too sure of the personal mixer concept at first, after a quick explanation of how the M-48s worked, rather than spending an hour having the monitor engineer dial in a mix for each of the musicians, within five minutes they each had their own mixes created allowing them to get on with rehearsing the music."
The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House is a production of WETA Washington, D.C., in association with Bounce, a division of AEG, and the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC). Corporate funding for the program is provided by Pepsi-Cola. Foundation support is provided by The Annenberg Foundation. Major funding is also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and public television viewers.
For more information, please visit www.rolandsystemsgroup.com and www.eastshoresound.com.
